Directors' Statement

In the spring of 1990 when Jeanne's father Russ called us in Boston and said this might be his last year of farming we were in shock. The farm had been struggling financially for years but that's the state of the art in farming. The truth remained that this farm had been in the Jordan family for 125 years. It had survived the dust bowl, the Depression, two world wars and Ronald Reagan. Now Russ was saying it was time for a change.

That's how Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern began. In the hours and days after Russ's call we decided that as filmmakers this was one we couldn't pass up. We didn't really believe Russ would give up farming but whatever happened in the next year would be part of the farm's history. And unlike all the other pivotal moments stretching back over the years, kept alive only by storytelling, this moment could be captured on film.

We started with some equipment and only enough money for a little film stock. We made four filming trips until the summer of 1991. Shooting Troublesome Creek involved no script. We filmed life as it took place, with no re-enactments. During that time we couldn't afford to process the negative so we had to freeze it. For over a year, Troublesome Creek hibernated in the basement, between the chicken and the frozen peas.

We continued work on other projects while we wrote grants. After numerous rejections (for awhile we were collecting them but it got too depressing), the breakthrough came when the Iowa Humanities Board gave us their largest grant. Seven other Midwestern state humanities councils then joined in (all affiliated with the NEH). These and other grants gave us the money to edit. Finishing funds were provided a few years later by the BBC series FINE CUT and the PBS series THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE.

We shot 27 hours of footage that became a seven hour assembly which finally resulted in an 88 minute film. In a documentary like this, no matter what you thought you were doing at the outset, you find in the editing room that the footage tells you what film you're really making. In this precarious moment on the farm we found themes emerging of family, marriage, aging, loss and survival. We hope Troublesome Creek can help audiences understand the fragile nature of small farming and the tensile strength of a family's humor and love. And we hope that they'll find something of themselves in the Jordan family.