Tom Putnam, writer and director of The Dark Divide film, talks about his career as a director and what it was like to write and direct the movie.
Tom Putnam is a filmmaker known for writing and directing documentaries and short films. After reading Robert Pyle’s book, Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide, he felt compelled to turn Pyle’s story into a movie. After 10 years of writing and re-writing the script, Tom brought the entire cast and crew for The Dark Divide film into the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Oregon. They shot the film on-location in just 22 days, and it was quite the wild adventure. In this episode, Tom talks about his career as a director, what it was like to write and direct The Dark Divide, the stories and hiccups they faced while shooting the film, and more. You can now rent or buy The Dark Divide now on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play and On Demand everywhere. To learn more about the movie and where you can watch it, visit darkdividefilm.com.
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CHARACTER 1: How long have you been on the trail?
CHARACTER 2: Two weeks. Or no, longer maybe. I don't know. I guess I've lost track.
CHARACTER 1: Seems ill-advised to be hiking so long without a radio or a rifle, what if you run into a bear?
CHARACTER 2: I did. We worked it out.
Shelby Stanger: This is a clip from The Dark Divide. It's a new film set in the untamed Pacific Northwest wilderness. If you haven't heard of it, the film is based on Robert Pyle's memoir called Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide. The movie stars David Cross and Debra Messing, and it's written and directed by Tom Putnam. Tom is first and foremost, a documentary filmmaker, but for this project he had to adapt. Tom and his entire cast and crew spent 22 days in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and it was quite the wild adventure. I'm Shelby Stanger and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living. I talked to Tom about The Dark Divide and like so many films about the outdoors, it's not just about nature, but human nature. It tackles big themes like masculinity, illness, and the unexplainable. Just a real quick summary, what is this film about?
Tom Putnam: Okay, so the film's called The Dark Divide, and this is a true story of Robert Pyle, who's one of America's foremost lepidopterists. Which means he's an expert in butterflies and moths. If you go buy the Audubon Field Guide to North American Butterflies, it's his name on the cover. He's an outdoor writer and it's about a period in his life in the '90s, where he was going through some pretty major changes. On the surface, it's about a man's month long trek through one of America's, to me, most amazing, most beautiful, largest, in some ways scariest, undeveloped wilderness areas in Southern Washington, the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
Tom Putnam: But it pretty quickly becomes more than a physical journey for him. He's the guy that doesn't learn to necessarily master nature, but he learns to be a part of nature and understand the importance in his life. But he also, I think, comes to terms with who he is and things that maybe he doesn't like about himself at the start of the movie, by the end of the movie, he realizes they're strengths and not to be ashamed of the kind of person he is. I think we live in a society where we have a very narrow definition of what it means to be a man. And I love that here's this pretty epic action-adventure film about a guy who loves butterflies. And maybe in the beginning, people might roll their eyes or something like, "Really, it's an adventure movie about that?" And by the end, I think as an audience member, you're like, "Hell yeah, butterflies are awesome. This guy is a badass."
Shelby Stanger: Tom grew up in roughly the same region where Robert Pyle's butterfly journey took place. So, when he first read the book that the film is based on, it resonated with him. Did you grow up as an outdoorsy kid? Maybe tell me a little bit about how you grew up and ...
Tom Putnam: Sure. I grew up outside of Portland, Oregon. Two acres across the street from a farm. And I mean, for me every weekend was either fishing, hiking, or camping. That was what we did. And I had read Bob Pyle's book, and it's written in the exact places that I spent my childhood, during the same time. And wow, it took me back to such a special, important, and I guess, healing place in my life.
Shelby Stanger: So, how did you come across Robert Pyle's book?
Tom Putnam: Actually, a producer friend had suggested I read the book and his suggestion was like, "This is an amazing book that nobody could make into a movie." And so I was like, "Oh, give me, give me." And he's really unique in that he's an outdoor writer, that's what he's known for, but he has such a personal style and he takes all of those things you feel when you're out doors and he can put that into words in a way that's so personal. I just read the book, and page after page just felt like, yeah, that's how I feel. I never thought about it that way. And it really just spoke to me in a really personal way. When you read his books, you feel like he's sitting across from you just talking to you.
Shelby Stanger: Can you give any example of how you felt similar to the character?
Tom Putnam: There's so many moments in his book, frankly, that were ... So many moments I felt when we were filming it too, that I feel in life where you just feel like you're past the point of no return and how am I going to get out of this? He falls in freezing water and he's in the middle of nowhere and how do you dry yourself out? And you almost just drowned or you almost fell off a cliff by doing a tiny, tiny thing that in hindsight was incredibly stupid, but you wouldn't have thought of it beforehand. And I don't know, I feel like my life to some extent feels like that kind of high wire act. And I'm constantly like looking at my situations like, how did I get here? What were the series of decisions that brought me to this point and how can I make different decisions next time?
Shelby Stanger: So, then how did you get into film?
Tom Putnam: Yeah. I went to film school at USC, University of Southern California and my two passions in life have always been film and journalism. So, I've spent a lot of my career, I guess you could call it that, as a documentary filmmaker.
Shelby Stanger: So you've been doing this since you were in college.
Tom Putnam: I've been doing this since I was in ... I'm like that guy who was in high school with the Super 8 camera, running around.
Shelby Stanger: Oh, cool.
Tom Putnam: It's been a while. 30-plus years at this point. And yeah, it's almost like it's my therapy too, right? Where I can't imagine my life without it because it's how I explore my own feelings and thoughts and share those with the world.
Shelby Stanger: How did you decide to become a director?
Tom Putnam: Originally I thought I was going to be an animator or a screenwriter and I just, as I started to write scripts, nobody was really interested in them and I just fell into directing as a way to try to get some of these stories on camera. I think for me, it's a pretty good match. I'm collaborative. I like working with people. I'm a little bit of a control freak. So, it was a good fit, documentaries especially are a great fit for me because I love the editorial process. And documentaries are all about just getting the ingredients together, so you can sit in an edit room and craft the film and figure out what the story's going to be.
Shelby Stanger: Any advice, really quickly, on how one might pursue a life of a director?
Tom Putnam: I've been lucky in that the subjects I've chosen have been pretty unique, and I think they've helped me try to hopefully find a style and a voice to my work that isn't quite like anybody else's. And I think if you're going to try to make a movie, especially this environment, when probably everybody knows three people who make movies now, you want what you say to sound special and stand out from the crowd. So for me, I got to that point by making a lot, lot, lot, a lot of short films.
Tom Putnam: And that was a great way for me to better understand what sorts of movies I wanted to do, how I wanted to tell those stories, and try to come up with something, that if someone hopefully sees a couple of my movies, they can feel a little bit of me in that. The other thing that's important is just to actually go out and do it, right? Everybody talks about wanting to do anything in life and the hard part is just actually going out and doing it, and finishing it, and putting it out there, and not being afraid of the criticism and just taking what you can and then going out and doing it again, and hopefully doing a little better the next time.
Shelby Stanger: Even though Tom has been working in the film industry for decades, he doesn't just snap his fingers and make a new film appear. It took him 10 years to write the screenplay for The Dark Divide, and then when he was finally done with the script, he thought it totally sucked.
Tom Putnam: I've written a lot of scripts, I've written probably 30 or 40 scripts. And a couple have been made, a few more have been optioned, but honestly ... Okay, every time I write a script, I finish the script and I'm like, all right, this is the one, this is going to be the greatest movie ever. It's going to be so easy to make. And then it's brutally hard. This was the first time I finished a script and read it and I was just like, why did you do this? Why did you spend time on this? Nobody's going to make this. This is a period action-adventure movie about a guy who loves butterflies. It's impossible. This was a waste of time. So, of course that's the movie that gets made, but it took 10 years to get the movie made. And that was basically a 10-year long conversation between myself and Bob who wrote the book, about life.
Tom Putnam: And I learned so much during that, I tried to put a little of my experience in it as well. That was, I guess the other thing that appealed to me, it felt like a good match if I wanted to do a fiction film, right? Because it's definitely about a guy who has his own modern day Jack London experience. And I got to take a lot of what I hope I've been able to tune up doing documentaries and take a more traditional film crew, small crew, to some crazy, crazy places that a bigger crew couldn't go to. We went to a lot of the locations where Robert Pyle's book, which is a nonfiction book, takes place. So, when you watch the film and you're in a lava tunnel deep underground, that's really where we are. Or if you see David Cross hanging off a cliff or in freezing cold water, that's what we did. If it seems remote, it probably was.
Shelby Stanger: The imagery in this movie is pretty remarkable and the conditions were even more extreme than what Tom is letting on. When we come back, Tom tells us about some of the wild adventures that The Dark Divide team experienced while shooting the film.
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Shelby Stanger: When Tom Putnam first envisioned what it would be like to shoot the footage for The Dark Divide he thought he knew what he was getting into. He imagined he'd bring a small crew into the wilderness, shoot in some epically beautiful locations, and pull it all together in post-production. Little did he know, filming this movie would prove to be an entirely different beast.
Shelby Stanger: You did this in the middle of the wilderness in Washington and Oregon. How did you guys physically make that happen? Did you camp, did you take over a small town? I mean, that didn't look like it was that easy to pull off.
Tom Putnam: Yeah. So, if you can imagine, remember Endor in the Star Wars movies, with the Ewoks and stuff? It looked like that, with just giant trees everywhere and those aren't that easy to find anymore. I mean, most of them have been logged. That's something we get into in the film. And I wrote the film thinking, stupidly thinking, all right, I'm going to get an actor and we're going to go out in the wilderness with a crew of five people and we're just going to go hike and shoot as we hike. And then, you start to put the movie together and it's, oh, you wrote a campfire scene, it's illegal to do that. You actually need three special effects guys and you have to build a propane fire and bury the thing underground.
Tom Putnam: Or, right this takes place over a month, so the guy gets more and more tanned, but you have to shoot out a sequence and that takes a hair and makeup person and a trailer for two hours to make him look tan or hide some of the tan because we've been out there. It had that scary thing that happens a lot when you make movies, where the thing got bigger and bigger and bigger. There's a scene with an owl, that's a whole thing. So, as it got more complicated, my original really documentary-style vision from it got shoehorned into what it takes to make a movie, even with a pretty small crew. And it involved a lot of surprises, especially on a film that was so location-based because we were shooting just as winter was ending.
Tom Putnam: So, literally every day when we would finish shooting, the DP and the locations guy and I would race up to these roads that were filled with snow to see how much the snow had retreated, and if we could get to the next location. And the crew ended up moving around a lot. We didn't have a lot of money to make the movie. So, for two weeks, I and a big chunk of the crew were living in a youth hostel, people were crammed into Airbnbs. There's literally a point where we were ... Because we're out in these locations, there's no hotels there, there's no houses to rent there. So, at one point we all had to stay in a basketball camp where there was no electricity in some of the cabins. It was like some serious Friday the 13th action. And I got to give the crew credit and the cast credit, I mean, they put up with a lot.
Shelby Stanger: What was the hardest part about making this film?
Tom Putnam: The pre-production was insane because we got to Oregon to location scout and everything was snowed in. And it was like, okay, we're shooting in three weeks. What are we going to do? So, we ended up with locations, ultimately all throughout Southern Washington and Northern Oregon, hundreds of square miles, which is not a good way to make a movie because you have to move everybody constantly. I mean, I swear to God, if I didn't shoot it, I've stomped over every square foot of Mount Hood. I mean, there was a day where there was a mountain lion, didn't expect to have to deal with that.
Shelby Stanger: How did you deal with that?
Tom Putnam: Ran away. And then the shooting was really hard. We shot in 22 days, which is a really short shooting schedule.
Shelby Stanger: Wow. That is fast.
Tom Putnam: Every day is just a massively different location. There's scenes way above the treeline, in the snow storm on Mount Adams, there's scenes in a lava tunnel a half mile underground, rushing rapids, logging camps, you're in Portland in flashbacks. The production was really, really hard, not just because we were moving around so much, we were trying to do a lot with a little.
Tom Putnam: And then, also that was hard I think emotionally for me, I took this group of people out here to make this really difficult movie and ... I'll give you an example. There's a scene, I spent 10 years writing and rewriting and rewriting, amazing scene, and it's supposed to take place with him wading out into this lake. And it's a key scene in the movie and you show up and there's a thunderstorm, and you have to shoot something. So, you have to stand there and just say, "Well, we're not shooting that thing I spent 10 years working on." And you have 10 minutes to come up with something else to shoot that does the same thing for the film at that point. And we did, and it's cool, and I like it.
Shelby Stanger: I like that scene. Yeah. That ended up being really cool. I know exactly what you're talking about.
Tom Putnam: Yeah. And it's like, oh, I never could have planned that, but that's pretty hard to just walk away from those things and be flexible. But I think that's also, as a documentary filmmaker where it was helpful, because I'm used to just showing up in crazy situations and like, oh, how do I make a movie out of this?
Shelby Stanger: So, you're also camp counselor while you're there. I mean, you're the most, probably outdoorsy of the whole crew.
Tom Putnam: We were lucky, we had some amazing, great outdoors people on the crew. I don't know if I was so much the camp counselor as the pilot of the plane, that maybe one of the engines is out and there's smoke, and people are running up there like, "Hey dude, how are we going to get to the airport?" And the film had a lot of challenges, there was weather, there were budgetary constraints. I mean, every day I was driving to set and thinking, "Oh my God, is this the last day anybody's going to let me direct anything. How are we going to get through today?"
Tom Putnam: And that was no joke. I mean, there were days where we would show up to the location and the forest service didn't unlock the gate, so you can't get to the location, or some crazy thing had happened, or there's a bear. And I've made two films with Detroit firefighters and they have this really cool saying, which is, "You take your fear and you turn it into power." And I kept telling myself that every day, almost crying, driving to the set, I'd be like, "I'm going to take my fear and turn it into power."
Tom Putnam: And every day, by the time I got to set, I would just be like, this may be the last day that anybody lets me direct anything, so I'm going to just squeeze the most out of it and I'm going to make this be the greatest directing day I ever have. And it kind of worked, I just tried to bring it every day. And every day, the day would end ... And our line producer has a lot of gray hair probably after this, he would just come up to me at the end of every day and just be like, "I don't know how we did it, but we did it again. Let's try to do it again tomorrow." Every day was like that. I mean, it's like sometimes people were crying on set or a couple of people had nervous breakdowns. This is no joke.
Shelby Stanger: Wow.
Tom Putnam: And it was hard, but I just tried to bring it, and then about every week I would circle the crew up and have to give my, please don't quit pep talk. But also, I started cutting together these little montages, I would show on Monday to the crew and everybody would be like, "Oh wow, okay. Okay. We get it." And I think it hopefully started to feel sort of, kind of like it was worth it once they started to see how the movie was coming together a little bit, and that it was hopefully going to be something pretty cool.
Shelby Stanger: So, Tom had a cast and crew of folks out in the middle of the wilderness on a super crunch schedule. But when you see the movie, you can tell that their long days full of torrential downpours and some rabid animals were totally worth it. The film is incredible and the cast is amazing. The two main characters in the film are Robert Pyle, who wrote the book Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide, and his wife, Thea. Bob Pyle is played by David Cross and Thea is played by Debra Messing. So, tell us a little bit, for people who don't know who Debra Messing and David Cross are.
Tom Putnam: Sure. So, David Cross is kind of a legend. He started off as a stand-up comic. Had a great show with Bob Odenkirk called Mr. Show. Was one of the stars of Arrested Development. And then, on the other end of the spectrum, he's in all the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies, but then he's in Steven Spielberg's The Post, which is a serious drama. And he's one of those people that when we would be just like, look, going to location or hanging out between shooting and Portland, people would run up and just be like, "Oh my God, it's David Cross." And he just has this really rabid fan base that love him and his style of comedy. And then Debra Messing starred on Will and Grace forever. I mean, it's a legendary TV show, right? And she's ... I think to most people, when they think of her, they think of her as a comedic actress, but she has this heavy duty, amazing dramatic background.
Tom Putnam: And it was really cool to get to cast her in this because I think she gets to show people the other side of what she can do, which is pretty amazing. And it was a really unique opportunity, I think for me and for her, because without giving too much away, Thea Pyle, Bob's real life wife and the character in the film, has ovarian cancer. And Debra's mother had died of cancer very quickly and very suddenly, and when I asked Debra, this huge actress, "Why do you want to do this little movie?" And for her, it was a way to come to terms with what had happened to her mom and explore what her mom went through.
Shelby Stanger: So, did those two enjoy the nature parts of making the movie?
Tom Putnam: So, Debra actually ... And I didn't know this about her, she grew up in rural Rhode Island, I think it is, and was like that tomboy that was out playing in the woods with her brother all day. So for her, she settled right into it. You'd have to ask David. I wouldn't be surprised if he never wants to go on another hike again after this movie. I mean, it was brutal. The poor guy, a) I can't believe he didn't quit, but b) I can't believe he totally brought it every day. I mean, there were days where he would be like, "I got this rash from yesterday. Nobody knows what it is." We had a medic on scene every day and even the medic would be like, "I'm sorry, man. I don't know what you got [crosstalk 00:25:11]"
Tom Putnam: Or literally, we would have him hanging off of a cliff that's 150 feet tall. And we had a safety crew and great stunt people, but not a lot of actors who would do that. And I went into the film thinking a challenge was going to have to be to get David to do things, but the challenge became the opposite, where I would have these conversations on the edge of some crazy place where David would be like, "No, just let me do it." And the stunt guys and I, and the AD would be like, "I don't know, man." And he would, just would talk us into it, which is amazing. I think that speaks to his craft. But I think what I also like about him is, you can definitely feel his discomfort in certain points, and I love that he was able to channel I think, some of that real life discomfort into the performance.
Tom Putnam: I mean, there's a scene where he's in rushing rapids up to his neck and his pack is on. I don't know if you can tell in the movie, but that water's like 34 degrees. It's brutal. And I definitely ... When I watch that scene or when he gets out afterwards, I definitely feel the discomfort and the pain and suffering. And you can see how cold he is, in a way that ... Maybe in The Revenant you see that, but you don't see it a lot in movies, somebody go to that limit. I mean, he's the whole movie, right? You're just on him every minute of the film. And there's huge chunks of film, I mean, there's a 30 minute stretch of the film where there's no dialogue, it's just him doing his thing. So, he really had to carry the movie.
Tom Putnam: What I loved about him when he was first suggested, there was a short list of people for the film, and what I really loved about him after we sat down and just talked about it over a couple of beers, was he comes from a really unique background in that he's a very experienced actor, but he's also a comic. And I loved how he was going to approach the film and the humanity he was going to bring to the film. Because in a lot of ways, it's a really funny movie, but not like haha sketch comedy funny. I think the laughs are more about those really human moments that pop up, where you watch what he goes through and think, you know what, I probably wouldn't do any better. I think he and Debra Messing and the rest of our cast are really the secret sauce of the movie, where we go to these amazing locations, but those are like whatever, the cup that the story's poured into. But the core of it is just those guys and the humanity they bring to it.
Tom Putnam: And I mean, some of my favorite scenes aren't even the wilderness scenes, they're these quiet scenes with David and Debra interacting as Bob and his wife, Teah, who's an important part of the film. And to talk about Debra for a minute, I mean, like David she just threw herself into this as well. A lot of the clothes and the jewelry she wears in the film are Bob's wife's from the '90s. And she just ... There's a really, to me, really special moment in their bedroom. Very quiet moment where they're alone together. And it was just awesome. I think we shot ... We didn't do more than one take of anything in there because they just became these two people. And that's what I love about David and about Debra, and about the rest of our cast, was they all just sunk into these roles.
Shelby Stanger: So, what was the most joyful part of filming?
Tom Putnam: I'm like that guy that, I love, I love what I do, and when I am getting to make a movie, which happens a lot less than I would like. Mostly I spend my time on the phone, just trying to get people to give me money or give me things for free. There's that license plate frame that says, "The worst day fishing is better than the best day working." Every day is like that for me. I'm just ... I'm where I'm supposed to be. So, every moment of it, I just suck it up and go to bed exhausted and terrified, and get up the next day. And it's like the first time you get in a chair lift, right? It's just like, it sucks, but it's awesome and you're happy you're there, and you're excited about what's going to be at the end of it.
Shelby Stanger: I love that Tom stepped outside of his comfort zone to create this film and it totally paid off. Those wild 22 days of filming were also full of memories, lessons, joys, and adventures. Tom ended up directing a film that was bigger than anything he'd ever imagined, and you should definitely go watch it. It's so good. You can now rent or buy The Dark Divide on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play and on-demand everywhere. To learn more about the movie and where you can watch it, visit darkdividefilm.com. And to Tom, thank you so much for coming on the show. I loved all your crazy stories and your incredible enthusiasm about the work you do.
Shelby Stanger: Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger. Written and edited by Sylvia Thomas and produced by Chelsea Davis. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we appreciate when you subscribe to this show, rate it and review it wherever you're listening. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.