An Interview With The Cast of Space Cowboy

On a cool Friday morning in early September, I was feeling a little jittery - and this surprisingly was not related to the large amount of coffee I had already consumed by 8am. It was in fact, because I was about to interview someone. Not just anyone, but a freefall cinematographer and skydiving stuntman. And his story was about to be told in one of TIFF’s highly anticipated documentaries, Space Cowboy. I was of course nervous, because as a freelance journalist, it can be sometimes difficult to build a repertoire of journalistic experience as many big magazines and publications are already looking for exactly that - experience. And so, when Joe agreed to this interview, I was elated and ecstatic at the opportunity of interviewing someone with a profession so unique and idiosyncratic. And when asked if I would also like to interview the directors for this film, Marah Strauch and Bryce Leavitt, I quite literally couldn’t believe the possibility of doing so. And let me tell you, this interview did not disappoint. I can safely say that this moment was one of the highlights of my journalistic career and one I will find difficult to forget. Interviewing the cast of a film premiering at one of the world’s biggest and most infamous film festivals is something I will remember for many years to come.

Space Cowboy centres on the story of Jennings and his career as a skydiving stunt coordinator and freefall cinematographer. Achieving a lexicon of awe-inspiring, spellbinding and frankly unbelievable cinematic shots, Jennings’ career is definitely something most of us media consumers have been exposed to, yet we likely didn’t recognise his name. Space Cowboy, however, is about to change that. This documentary chronicles Jennings’ latest and perhaps greatest stunt as a skydiving cinematographer. We follow him on his journey to complete this skydiving venture, which at times seems like a perplexingly difficult feat. While we accompany him, a masterfully-executed character study on Jennings begins to unfurl itself to the audience. What begins as a documentary showcasing the great successes of Jennings’ skydiving career, evolves into a nuanced and highly poignant story about overcoming troubling times. While he was achieving athletic success, Jennings was also battling with depression - something he so courageously and sincerely discusses throughout the film. This is what makes Space Cowboy such a powerful and resonant film, as it places mental health and its open discussion at the foreground of the film. It doesn’t shy away from elucidating the highs and lows of living, and sometimes the co-existence of the two.

And so, I was extremely excited to discuss such a film with the people who made it. As I clicked ‘launch meeting’, I was excited to delve into the world of Space Cowboy:

HH: How does it feel to have your movie feature at one of the world’s most infamous film festivals? 

JJ: I mean, as I understand it, it’s a big deal and I have heard of TIFF, you know, obviously I’m aware of it, and you know when they called and said we’re in TIFF, it was just kinda like, it’s all kind of mind-blowing. It’s more than expected. Most of the time when I film and I do projects, it’s, like, I go, I film, I do my work and then I’m not really a part of the rest of it. I’m a freelancer and then I just move on, and this is the first time that I’m actually involved in the whole process of going to a festival and you know being apart of all this, and its kinda mind blowing, you know I’m just kinda waking up to it, but it feels really good.

MS: This is my second time at TIFF, I actually premiered my first film here ten years ago, so it's very meaningful for me, and very meaningful for me to come with Bryce, my collaborator on this project.

HH: For both Marah and Bryce, how did you happen upon Joe’s story and why did you feel it was an important story to tell?

BL: Well, it kinda started with me and I met Joe very randomly kinda happenstance through a commercial and initially was just blown away by his career, you know, I didn't even know that that was a craft or a career that existed - a skydiving cinematographer, a freefall cinematographer. So that caught me from the beginning and it compelled me to stay in touch with Joe and as I grew a friendship with Joe through phone calls and poking around at him, I started to uncover this incredible, personal, emotional journey he has been through in his life and that just completely resonated with me, especially at the time I was playing basketball professionally and dealing with some mental health struggles of my own, so to see somebody else that was kinda at the top of their craft doing the same was extremely powerful for me and I just felt like it was a story that needed to be told, you know, it was somebody that on paper looked like a rockstar that was dealing with some of the same highs and lows that anybody can deal with. And so, at that time I hadn’t made a film and I needed to figure out OK I want to make a film but how do I do it? One of the very influential films for me was Sunshine Superman, that Marah directed, the one that she debuted at TIFF ten years ago. And so I reached out to her and she was generous enough to give me some mentorship, and I don’t know if she knew that she was getting recruited to be a co-conspirator at that time, but I roped her into the madness. That was the initial thing, and then Marah came in and it really started taking off.

HH: For Marah and Bryce, how important was it to mesh Joe’s own stunning cinematography with the beautiful cinematography within the film itself? Was this one of the major aspects you thought about prior to directing this film?

MS:  Absolutely, and I think, you know, with any film that I've done, I do a lot of really archival-heavy films, you always want it to not throw your eye, meaning you want it to all feel like a cohesive piece of film, and I think, you know, we had an amazing cinematographer, Tony Johansson, who is Swedish, and I work with him often, and he did a lot of the other vérité footage and a lot of the other beautiful footage that was shot for the film and I think, you know, both of their styles lended itself so much to what this film became. So for me, it was very important that it felt cohesive.

HH: For Joe, within the film itself, I really adored the line “life became about the shot” - what do you mean by this? Is this still the sentiment you live by?

JJ:   I think so, I think that is the motivation, it is sort of the obsession that drives you right, you just really really want to get a cool shot. I guess it's like anything, you really wanna do it well and the reward is getting it and seeing it again and again and again. Yeah, it's been a driving force in my career for sure, like, when I get hired to shoot a job, its like I want the shot as much or more than the people who hire me to get it.

HH: Do you think that risk-taking is an essential part of your job. Is it something you feel is an important quality to have while you’re completing that kind of work?

JJ: I think it does, you know, I think that there are inherent risks that come with skydiving, especially when you are doing new things and in sort of, new territories there are a lot of unknowns. And so, yeah I had to get used to taking risks, I mean there are times when it was really, really unpleasant, you know, and there was a part of me that just felt like I really hope I survive this career, and as much as I love it and like I’m driven to do it, there’s another part of me that’s like I don’t want it to take my life, I really do wanna survive it and get to the point where I can, you know, just tell stories about it as an old man. But I also recognise that I’m not immune from the inherent risks that come with it. I’ve lost some really good friends and I’m under no illusion that there is some real risk-taking and I’ve just kind of surrendered to it.

HH: One thing I found really interesting that I have read about you is that you hope filmmakers begin to make the distinction between skydiving as a stunt versus a sport. Why do you think this is an important distinction to be made?

JJ: You know, so before I got into filming for commercials, television and movies, I was heavily invested in competitive skydiving. So, I was on tour with all of these competitors of different disciplines who were sort of the best in the world at what they did and they’d train. So, skydiving for me became more like surfing and so if a producer is interested in filming a really cool surfing scene, are they gonna go hire stunt people, or are they gonna go find surfers who are out there surfing all the time? And so, that became my attitude and, it actually got me into a fair amount of trouble when I first got into the industry, its really important, you know its union work right, so a lot of the folks that are there doing it are not interested in a bunch of new people coming in and joining the union and doing that kind of work and that was all I was bringing to the table. A producer would contact me about a job and I would think of the perfect person for it, and I would show the producer a video, like ’look at this person and what they can gracefully do’ and they’d be like, ‘ok, great yeah that’s the person we wanna hire.’ And so, you build up one black mark after another in the stunt community and so that was one of the difficult things for me starting out. I think people are beginning to understand a little more. It’s still producers still call the stunt people for skydiving, but I think its starting the change, I think people are beginning to understand they’re different disciplines, you know, trained skydivers really are more qualified, I think to do a lot of this stuff.

HH: What do you think your favourite sequence or filmic sequence you have captured is?

JJ: I mean there’s a lot of beautiful things that were exhilarating, I think, you know, travelling with Rob and Patrique. Competing with them was very exhilarating. It’s interesting because you know, I’ve been to some of the more beautiful places in the world and have gone and filmed skydiving and it’s refreshing and beautiful. But I’m always drawn back to just going out to the desert and crashing things into the ground, you know, like just building things and being apart of that whole process and then shoving it out of the back of an airplane and seeing what it does in the air, I mean that’s what really does it for me. So, I’d have to really rank the stunt that we did for this movie as probably one of my all-time favourites. I was really, really happy to do that, you know, they asked me in an ideal world, for this movie, we would love to build it around your wish list, what do you wanna do, what would be your favourite project and where in the world would you wanna do it? And I was like, I wanna go out to Arizona and I wanna go crash some cars in the desert. And they were like, ‘OK, fine, we’ll go along with that.’ And that’s what we did.

HH: Lastly, I just wanted to say that it was such a great honour to have viewed this film and to have had the opportunity to speak with you, I have no doubt that this poignant film will touch many of its audience members. What do you hope an audience member can take away from seeing your documentary?

JJ: I think one of the things that we captured was, you know, I had an interesting life growing up, and I grappled with dealing with childhood trauma and then learning how to work around it, and I think that you know, if anything, I would like to leave people with even somebody who has gone through some very difficult times, you know, I think very few of us get through this life without taking on some trauma and some damage, but yet we are all capable of still carrying on and really, having great lives and being really happy, doing the things we wanna do and were capable of creating a lot of beauty. And, yeah, I think I said that in a little bit of a discombobulated way, but that would be my answer to that one.

MS: I think I would echo what Joe is saying and I would also say, you know, I love that Joe’s difficult life brought him to all of the amazing places he got to go. I think, you know, there’s this experience we have in life of sometimes things being hard, whether its a learning disability or whatever it is, and it bringing us to just the place we end up that can be so beautiful. And I think that’s what’s really amazing about Joe’s story. I would also say this film should feel fun, and it should feel like a release and it should feel positive and it should feel like a lot of films that are not right now, which is something that leaves you feeling good and leaves you feeling energised and I would really like people to have that experience with the film.

BL: I think to combine those two, like just, the fact that anybody can find art and release in the strangest of places and that, when you find that thing you should chase it. You should dive into it, so, I think that is what leaves me whenever I still see the film, like uplifted, it’s like that’s what always has me excited about that, just like the inspiration that comes from that release.

JJ: I just have one last thing, you know, the difficult times that we go through, whether it’s going through a very difficult time in our lives or depression or anything else, when you’re in it, you feel like there’s no value at all that you can be getting out of this situation and it just feels dark and there’s nothing there, and you don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. But, what I found out is that, I really believe that for all of us, you know if you hang in there, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s brighter and more colourful than most of us can imagine. So, its really, I think, it’s a story about just hang in there.

Jennings’ final quote within this interview, although he probably didn’t know it, really struck a chord with me. That was something I really needed to hear that day. Emigrating to a different country and essentially having to rebuild your life brick-by-brick can oftentimes present its own challenges. There has been many an occasion in my twenties where I have felt so lost, so confused as to what I am supposed to be doing, what should I do be doing with my life? And so, hearing someone say keep going - he inspired me more than he’ll ever know in that very moment.

Overall, Space Cowboy is a masterfully-crafted character study which is sure to resonate with its audience long after the credits have finished rolling. It is an unforgettable documentary and an important one - one that shines a light on mental health. For me, it is my favourite documentary of this year and one that I will continue to recommend to peers. Leavitt and Strauch have formulated something so powerful within this film - it embodies what it means to be a human. For that, it is a documentary that deserves all of the success it is currently revelling in.

Taken at the premiere for Space Cowboy at this year's Toronto International Film Festival.