Q&A: Deaf filmmaker discusses the complex contrast between sound and silence in her new film

The Tuba Thieves premieres at Denton's Thin Line Fest at 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 29, at the Campus Theatre.

For more information about screenings and the festival, visit ThinLine.us.

Q: What inspired this film?

A: The first thing, probably, is that I'm deaf, or hard of hearing, so I wear hearing aids. When I graduated from grad school, I made a thesis film. Half of the cast and crew were hearing, and half the cast and crew were deaf and hard of hearing. I finished that film in 2011. I just had this experience where I was with all these people who had such different relationships to sound and listening, so I was kind of in this mindset of thinking about that. Then I heard a story on the radio in Los Angeles about tubas that were stolen from a high school. I [thought] it's a weird, goofy story.

Q: What inspired you to take this nontraditional approach to making your film? How do you think this serves your story better than a more traditional format would have?

A: My hearing. I didn't want to make a documentary that's like, “This is what it's like to be deaf or to be hard of hearing.” Instead, I really wanted to create this experience for the audience where they're kind of experiencing the feeling of what it's like. How I would describe it is — obviously, it's different for a lot of people — but the experience of my hearing is that I kind of always feel like I don't know what's going on.

It's like this thing where there's a lot of information, so I always feel like I'm like 10 steps behind everybody, even in a conversation. I'm kind of filling in information, and sometimes I answer a question that's a little off, and people are polite [about it].

I wanted to create that feeling for the viewer, where there's a lot of stuff [that is] sort of coming together, but kind of not. And then maybe it does, but maybe it doesn't. There's elements where maybe there's an explanation, but maybe there's not. I was just talking to somebody and they were like, “Nature Boy, why is he called Nature Boy?” And I was like, “Well, I have all these reasons.” But you're right. I don't tell you in the film why he's called that. I had this goal to create this thing for the audience where potentially the audience is frustrated. I was like, “But I don't want them to walk out.” That was always my thing — how do I keep people from walking out of the theater, but maybe being a little frustrated? And so it was always a balance, as I was editing. I was like, “Have I pushed it too far? Are people going to be curious about this experience of kind of not knowing what's going on? Or are they just going to be annoyed?” I think for the most part most — at least the people who've talked to me — have obviously not been the ones who hated it.

Q: The film has a huge focus on sound. Could you talk about what sound means to you?

A: I love it — funny answer. I think what it means to me, and what I've observed for a long time, is that I really, really love all these experiences of sound that I noticed a lot of hearing people getting annoyed by. A good example in the film is the tunnels. I love that moment, when you're driving under a tunnel, and the thing you were listening to on the radio cuts out. I love that sound. I love that moment of having a story and then it getting broken. There's something about that sound that I find genuinely fascinating.

Today I laughed at myself because I drove under a tunnel, and I really wanted to hear what they were saying. It was just a short little tunnel. I drove a little faster to try and get through the tunnel so that I could hear the questions the person was asking, and I was like, “Oh, that's funny.”

Then, I used to have a roommate who has really sensitive hearing. She's a meditator. I kind of used to laugh because she would just be so annoyed all the time by sounds of construction down the street, or the neighbor's music or something. I find those things really interesting the way they'll blend. She had a hammock and I used to lay on the hammock and listen to the birds and the construction and how they kind of matched and became [kind of] musical together.

I don't know if this is an easy answer to the question, but I'm really fascinated by sound. I have a kind of amazement at irritating sounds. Things like sirens don't hurt my ears. So I'm when I'm around hearing people, and they're like, “Oh, your feedback.” Oh, my gosh, I love feedback on a microphone, even though I know it's painful for other people. I just love that kind of stuff.

Q: The film has several mini-stories within it — could you discuss how they all relate?

A: OK, so there's a few different relationships. There's the film, that's Nyke’s story and Geovanny's story. Those are all linked by two things. One, they all take place in 2011 to 2013 — the time period when the tubas were stolen. And then they're linked through noise pollution. That's one of those things that links everyone in Los Angeles. Then there's the interruptions of the 2011 to 2013 story by these jumps back in time to three different concerts — the 1952 premiere of John Cage's 4'33, that 1979 punk concert [and] the very last punk concert at the Deaf Club, which was in San Francisco. That's the very last night that it was like an actual deaf social club. They had that for like a year and a half. I think they hosted West Coast punk shows. Then the neighbors complained about the noise, so they had to stop, which I think is hilarious and really funny.

The connection, it's not like a film where you're following this story and that story, and then they connect because two people end up in the same room or something like that. It's nothing like that. I guess the connection between all these things is more about how the audience experiences it, because I'm putting you in a position where you're kind of like, “How does this connect?”

You're kind of doing work as a viewer to make these connections, or maybe just through the idea of sound — sometimes through actually hearing, but usually it's the idea of sound.

Maybe one other answer to that is that I was thinking a lot about the loss of sound, the theft of sound, the removal of sound. So, in some ways, it took me a long time to actually understand this, like in the last year of making the film. I think one of the things that connects everything is this sort of idea of grief. ... Nyke's story doesn't so much [tackle] grief. It's more as she gets pregnant and is getting ready to have the baby, she's really wrestling with things that can happen [and] if she's going to be a good mom, or the fear of losing her dad because maybe he won't hear a fire alarm. It's kind of connection through these ideas of loss or actual loss.

Q: Focusing on preproduction, the film has a lot of beautiful wide shots. How did you go about finding these locations? Was it hard to secure some of them?

A: So, some of it was really standard filmmaking stuff, like the location where Nyke and Nature Boy are, having the conversation about the sex lives of mushrooms. That was my old roommate's house. So you do favors. I paid her — not a ton, but we paid her. We also paid for the house to be cleaned before and after the shoot. Also, I think I put her in a hotel, or something. I don't know where she ended up staying, but she didn't stay there. So that was just [a] mix of friendship and favor, and budgeting.

And then other places you have to go through the hassle of dealing with a school administration and getting all the paperwork. Some schools were really kind and easy, and some were not. You just do the due diligence of talking to people high up in the school district to get the correct paperwork. That stuff is a slog, it's always a slog.

Certain things like the location of the death club — I had been invited to do an art show at the space, and it was so nasty. I was like, “This doesn't really work for anything I want to make, but I am about to film a punk show, and this could really work.” They were like, "OK, the Maverick Concert Hall is a much more interesting story."

I said this thing about how I wanted to make this film backwards and started with music, so I asked these composers to make me these pieces of music. They didn't have any film to respond to, so I gave them all these references, and one of the references I gave to one of the composers was a picture of that concert hall. I have this book that I found at a flea market that's like hippie architecture from Woodstock. It's all these cool dome houses. I just liked the book. So when I was trying to give him random things, I gave him a picture of this concert hall. I sent it to him, and then he was like, “You know, that's where John Cage premiered.”

Q: Were there any segments that you wanted to film but couldn’t?

A: There was this one thing I really wanted to film of two cars traveling next to one another, with groups of people having this whole conversation between cars, because that's an amazing thing that can happen with deaf people. As long as you can see each other, your conversation is not getting interrupted. My producers were just like, “No, we can't do that in L.A. We can't shut down a road.”

Q: What was the biggest lesson you learned while making this film?

A: I think it would depend on when you asked me this, but right now, what I feel is this really amazing sense of, “Oh, my God, keep editing.” I really have this deep feeling of artistic capability. It's so amazing, this feeling of “holy s--t, I did it. I pulled it off. I pushed and I didn't stop.” I was able to do it. I did it. I just learned all this stuff — there's so much I didn't know.

Even in the last few months, what I'm learning now is what it means to actually have a film festival strategy. I hadn't heard that term. I didn't really understand it. You know, there's so many things like that where [there are] these terms, and you're just like, "OK, that's like a thing out there." Then suddenly, you're confronted by it. It's contracts — really boring, annoying stuff — but really important stuff. When you sign under contract, it could mean years of hell, or it could mean ease. Work with people who really, really want to support you. There's so much I learned. I learned everything.

Q: What do you want the audience to take away from the film?

A: There's a bunch of things, but one thing right now I'm thinking a lot about is just how great it is to have both streaming options and theatrical options. Because I think it's a film that is really amazing to see in a theater. I hope you'll come see it.

So if you can come see it in the theater, see it, because it's different. It's a really different experience. My biggest dream is just that cinema still has a lot to do. I'm really not into rules, [but] it's like filmmaking rules. That's what I'd love to contribute — a little piece.

Film is only 150 years old — there's still a lot we can do, so I'd like people to be excited about so many things that can still happen in storytelling and that things don't have to be normal. I don't like normal so much.