Documenting cardboard boat races

Story by Paul South
Photos by Richard Rybka
and Carol Pappas

“The best way to make friends with the audience is to make them laugh. You don’t get people to laugh unless they surrender – surrender their defenses, their hostilities. And once you make the audience laugh, they’re with you.” – Frank Capra

Most documentarians – Ken Burns springs to mind – want audiences to examine society’s ills through film.

For award-winning documentary filmmaker Sam Frazier, the direction he heads is quite the opposite. Laughter, he says through his work, is the best medicine.

Frazier, a Birmingham native, has captured the hearts of audiences at prestigious film festivals like, Indie Memphis and Birmingham’s blossoming Sidewalk Film Festival and across the United States and Europe through old-fashioned absurdist escapism.

Videographer films interview with racers

Think sketch comedy – Monty Python’s Flying Circus or Saturday Night Live plus pro wrestling – meets reality. Or as he puts it, “Smart people being stupid for no apparent reason (except it’s fun).”

His current effort uses an unusual vehicle, or in this case, vessel. They are cardboard boats held together by miles of duct tape – as college professors, doctors, engineers and the like try to build seaworthy boats that can successfully allow them to navigate Alabama waterways, including Logan Martin Lake.

As Frazier and his crew began filming the races at Lakeside Park in September, a crowd of about 50 gathered to watch filming that leg of the inaugural Cardboard Boat Racing World Cup. Each competitor—mostly Frazier’s friends – earns points depending on their finish in each race. Even a boater who finishes “DFL” (Dead Freakin’ Last) earns points.

Just as in NASCAR or Formula I auto racing, the points leader at the end of the heats will win the Cardboard Boat World Cup championship trophy.

“That’s pretty prestigious,” Frazier says, laughing.

His friends are folks he’s known for years, through a charity kickball league he created or through years of hanging out with pals who are in his words, “weirdo artistic types.”

“They are a bunch of weirdos who are up for almost anything, like myself,” Frazier says. “And that helps. The weirdos that I don’t know, all you have to do is tell them what you’re doing, and they’re all about it. If you’re talking to the right person, they say, ‘Oh, this is something I’ve got to do.”

The final film will be roughly half script – featuring scenes with Sportscenter-like studio anchors – and half improvisation, including interviews with competitors.

His road to filmmaking is as colorful as his subject matter. A graduate in philosophy from Washington & Lee, who also studied abroad at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, Frazier described it this way. Law school, the track chosen by others in his family, wasn’t for him.

“You have three choices,” Frazier said. “You can either get in the unemployment line, or you can try to use philosophy for extortion … That’s not really an option, or you can do something weird and creative. I went with weird and creative.”

Unlike today, when documentaries find homes on multiple platforms from PBS to streaming services like Netflix, Apple TV and HBO, that wasn’t the case as Frazier came of age.

“I saw Roger and Me (Michael Moore’s expose’ on GM), for the first time, and it blew my mind. Then I found out all the ethical problems with that movie, I guess you could say, that were egregious, and it broke my heart.

“I also remember seeing Hoop Dreams (the story of two African-American high schoolers dreaming of playing professional ball) for the first time, and it equally blew me away,” Frazier says.

The genesis of his films comes from comedy and the land of Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair or masked villains from “parts unknown.”

“I’ve always been into comedy,” Frazier says. “It’s an influence to have sort of an absurd style and kind of the pomp of professional wrestling, along with different sorts of comedic approaches of how to do a documentary.

“Nobody really does a documentary like me,” Frazier adds. “I’m the world’s only comedic, short documentarian.”

Most documentary films don’t yuk it up, he acknowledges, instead focusing on sober subject matter.

“It’s not funny when you hear about people in war-torn nations trying to survive. That’s not going to be a laugh riot. It’s also hard to watch. You have to be in the right frame of mind.”

Frazier’s approach?

“I focus on events that mostly people can do on any given day on their own, just with some friends.”

Network sports shows, like ABC’s iconic Wide World of Sports, also influence Frazier’s films. Remember Mexican cliff diving, logger sports and wrist wrestling, along with NASCAR, the British Open and table tennis from the People’s Republic of China?

“I always thought that was an inherently sort of a silly way to view the world,” he says. “These are sporting events. This is not a world war. But it’s treated on that level of importance. So, I thought, let’s take unimportant sporting events and raise them to the level of a World Cup or Super Bowl.

“I think that is inherently funny to treat something like a cardboard boat race like the World Cup. That’s essentially what we’re doing – a carboard boat race World Cup.”

Fans of the British comedy troupe Monty Python doubtless recall The Upper-Class Twit of the Year sketch, satire on dimwitted members of England’s upper class. There’s a dash of that in his cardboard boat racing series, Frazier says.

“Shooting this at times, I realize that I have these highly successful people building cardboard boats, people you’d think would be naturally really good at it.”

 Not necessarily so. One of the film’s boat builders, for example, is a successful architect.

“He’s designed Lord knows how many buildings, and he’s a terrible cardboard boat designer,” Frazier said. “His boats barely got off the beach. That is inherently funny to me.”

Audiences seem to think Frazier’s films are funny, too.

Frazier’s films have captured “Audience Choice” Awards at the Sidewalk Film Festival, Indie Memphis, the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival and others.  The Santa Fe recognition came after a vigorous write-in campaign by festivalgoers.

The first Cardboard Titanic film was done while Frazier was “retired” from moviemaking. He screened it at Sidewalk, intending to go no further.

“People asked, ‘What’s your next project?’ ” When he responded that he was retired, the response was surprising and made his calling clear.

“You don’t understand,” he recalled moviegoers saying. “You’re not good at anything else.”

From there, the film was screened at some 50 festivals in the United States and Europe, winning a “ton of awards,” including Best Documentary at the Louisville Film Festival.

 And it led to a sequel: Cardboard Titanics: Smart People Being Stupid. “Cardboard Titanics was in competition with the short documentary winner at that year’s Sundance Film Festival.

The film that was in part shot with Go Pros, cameras, drones and the like on Logan Martin is the latest in what Frazier hopes will be a six-part series.

And cardboard vessels aren’t his only methods of fun filmmaking. He’s also had tall bicycle jousting films – riders on stacked bikes bearing lances tipped with cushions and boxing gloves.

Sam Frazier Jr. directing

“When you’re doing a comedy, (festival) audiences are going to like you,” Frazier says. “Especially if they’re getting a lot of very dark things and documentaries. People would really rather laugh than be miserable or be outraged on a certain level. It’s a happier way to live.”

 Asked if the positive audience response is the result of these days of COVID-19 and polarized politics, Frazier didn’t mince words.

“Damn right,” he says. “Social media has polarized us to a different level of conflict. We’re becoming increasingly tribal, and I’m not a very political person. I’ve spent my life trying to get people to get along.”

So Alabama’s happy warrior of independent documentary soldiers on, dumpster driving for cardboard, hoping to outrun the winter chill in his latest project, all while funding his films from his own pocket.

Pell City and Lakeside Park drew rave reviews from the filmmaker who shot a portion of his current project in August. He still has two more races to film.

“It was the perfect location, and they were so nice to us,” Frazier says. “The staff helped tremendously. They were so enthusiastic about it. We would love to shoot there again. Maybe there will be season two of the Cardboard Boat World Cup. I hope so.”

His mission is simple. Unlike other documentarians who hope their films will change the world, Frazier charts a different course in part with a small fleet of soggy cardboard vessels and a crew of more than 30 people.

While audiences may see the glamour of film, Frazier compares his calling to “herding cats and walking into traffic. The only thing I can do is make people laugh and enjoy their lives for a certain period of time.”

Frazier recalls an encounter at the Atlanta Film Festival with a California filmmaker, who looked every bit the part of a surfer dude, with attitude to match. As an Oscar-qualifier festival, Atlanta is a marquee indie film showcase.

“He watched the film and said, ‘That was a joyous celebration of life,’ ” Frazier recalls.

“That’s what I can do.”

BOO BASH

Doing Halloween Logan Martin style

They came by land, by water – even by air – to Logan Martin Lake’s biggest party ever. Stretching from one end of the lake to the other, Oct. 8 turned into a gigantic, floating costume party where the entire lake community was on the guest list.

Around these parts, we call it Boo Bash on Logan Martin, and what a bash it was! Sparked from an idea by Kelli Lasseter and coordinated by a crew of volunteers, it caught fire and is destined to become The Event of the year on Logan Martin.

Over 100 piers transformed into Halloween fantasy lands – a mermaid cove,  Charlie Brown’s pumpkin patch, the land of Oz complete with Dorothy, Toto, Tin Man, Scarecrow and the cowardly lion.

There were ghosts, ghouls and goblins galore, skeletons by the dozen and spider webs so big they encompassed entire boathouses. Witches, witches brew and characters of all shapes and descriptions were part of the mix.

Scenes from movies like Top Gun were reenacted. Pirate Island, a favorite any time of year, featured a 12 foot skeleton hoisting its famous pirate flag and the island’s owner, Jim Regan, in full pirate regalia – even an earring.

A helicopter hovered over the lake, close enough for Boo Bashers to spot the co-pilot – a skeleton, of course.

Equally entertaining were the passengers aboard more than 70 boats, shuttling masqueraders from one pier to another, charting a course for treats in sizes to order – for children, adults and dogs. Neighbors became friends, adults became kids and the children delighted in every bit of it.

To say it was a success is like saying Alabama vs. Auburn is just another football game. It exceeded all expectations. One only had to take a look around to see the proof measured in the smiles and laughter by the boatload.

On this day, the lake community was as one. And what a day it was!

BOOsters, eyes in the sky and more

As I write this, we are getting ready for Boo Bash on Logan Martin. Our eye patches and pirate hats are ready, and our miniature pirates dressed head to toe – my great niece and nephew, 7-year-old twins Sophia and Charlie – are ready to set sail for trick-or-treating on the lake.

Now in its second year, Boo Bash has catapulted into a lake community event of epic size and scope, and I can’t tell who’s more excited – the adults or the kids. Up and down the lake, ghosts and goblins have begun to appear as host piers ready for the big day. So have skeletons, pumpkins and even movie scenes running the gamut from Wizard of Oz to Top Gun.

Last year, it was simply a good idea to bring lake neighbors together for an afternoon of fun. This year, it has a full scale, life of its own. Over 100 piers and hosts, 150+ boats and more than 1,000 trick or treaters are no doubt destined to meet, greet and have a boat load of fun!

Carol A. Pappas, Editor and Publisher

It’s called community, and that’s what this day is all about. Water is the common bond. Events like these only make it stronger.

Hats off to Kelli Lasseter, Sonya Hubbard, Carl Wallace, Kari Harris and a host of volunteers who make it happen. Arrrgh, mateys! We’re ready for a BOO-tiful, SPOOK-tacular afternoon on the lake, filled with fun for the whole family – courtesy of our community.

While we have plenty of photos from the event itself we are sharing in this edition, there’s plenty more from our Neely Henry and Logan Martin communities in this issue.

We’ll travel down the Coosa with Gilbert’s Ferry and others, learning more about our waterway’s modes of transportation in years past.

High above Logan Martin, we’ll get a drone’s eye view of the lake from photographers who have captured everything from stunning sunsets to breathtaking lake scenery to the eye of a gathering storm.

Step behind the cameras of a documentary filmed in part at Pell City Lakeside Park. Check out the story behind this award-winning documentary filmmaker and his latest subject, cardboard boat races.

We will take you inside the kitchen and out back at Freddie Nelson’s Logan Martin refuge. It’s a cooking story you’ll savor for a long time to come.

And there’s even more in this edition of LakeLife 24/7 Magazine®. Turn the page and discover it all with us!

Carol Pappas
Editor and Publisher