Issue 15
BIG RIG! Trucks of Wrath
By Doug Pray
For his latest film, Big Rig, prolific documentary filmmaker, Doug Pray—director of Scratch, Infamy, and several other films—went all over the U.S., hitching rides with truckers. He was looking for fun-loving country music escapism, but he found America’s neglected working class, pining for the freedom of the open road, while struggling to make a living.
Gone are the days when “lot lizards” roamed truck stop parking lots, knocking on truckers’ windows and offering a little company. Toothpick chewin’ drug dealers no longer hang out by the gas pumps. Even the hustlers who polish the chrome on the eighteen wheelers are few amid the modern, vast, impersonal, corporate travel center parking lots where hundreds of idling semi trucks serve time. Those characters are around somewhere, but it’s no scene, and it sure isn’t like those classic ‘70s truckin’ movies.
So, the sight of Documentarius Americanus, a rare, dorky and completely out of place bird that migrates in a confusing pattern throughout all of North America, and who carries a large, high-def camera and feeds off the hope of finding an interview subject for his feature-length documentary film about truck drivers, was just plain wrong. Not welcome, not wanted, and not appreciated. Especially on a hot and humid August morning in West Memphis, Arkansas, on the very day that diesel fuel had reached an all-time national high.
I did what I had done at the last 33 truck stops—I tried to blend in. I left the big camera in the van with Jim Dziura, our one and only crewmember. I held a giant Styrofoam cup of lousy coffee in my hand and faked listening to my cell phone messages so it would look like I was talking to my dispatch to find out when some load would be ready for pickup. I’d split up with my producer, Brad “Alabama Lightening” Blondheim. He was working the north side of the convenience store, where the drivers exit after filling up with chickenfried steak. I was working the south side where they walk out after they pay four or five hundred dollars to fill up their diesel tanks. They’re usually in a hurry—because there are other trucks waiting behind them at the pumps—usually in a foul mood—because the price of gas is reaming them out of profitability—and usually pissed off—at me, because I’m a solicitor and truckers hate solicitations.
Knowing their disposition, I’d streamlined my approach to a seven-second burst: “Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you. I’m Doug Pray and I’m making a documentary film about truck drivers and I wondered if I could talk to you for a second about the movie and see if you’d be interested in participating.”
Then, I’d hand them my half-page, official-looking flyer that said “Big Rig” across the top. If they hadn’t already blown by me with no eye contact, as 90 percent of them did, I’d add, “I know. It seems ridiculous, but I’m completely serious. It’s a great project, all told from the point of view of truckers themselves, and—”
And then they’d look up and I’d get one three responses: “Is this another one of them goddamn Barbara Walters or 20/20 shows that makes us all out to be rapists, murderers and speed freaks?” (TV shows from the ‘80’s which forever ruined the image of American truckers.)
Or: “You don’t wanna hear what I have to say!” Then, they would break their own rules and go into an enraged tirade about the fuel prices and us disrespectful four-wheelers, and the asinine government regulations, and the stupid log book rules, and the corporate take-over of truck stops, and the lack of parking and the hundreds of unpaid hours they have to wait at the loading docks, and how they’re losing money, and how lame the speed limits are in most states, and how poorly trained the younger drivers are these days, and how they used to be heroes of the highway but are now feared because the media has given them a bad reputation, and how profane all the idiots are on channel 19 of the CB radio—the mode of communication truckers use to speak to one another—and how there aren’t any more “real” truck stops, and how the country is going straight to hell, and how they want their left lane back!
Or, they’d look me over, see how absurdly out of place I was, and say, “Sure.” And, within seconds Jim and I would climb up into a giant Peterbilt truck, clip a wireless lavalier microphone onto the driver’s shirt, slap a small suction-cup mounted Kino Flo light onto the inside of the windshield, hit the “record” button on the Panasonic Varicam and ask, “So what’s your name, what are you hauling and where are you headed?” And off we’d go into America, for two to eight hours, talking about trucking, taxes, music, marriage, war, life and death, while the countryside flew by.
This particular morning the fish weren’t biting, and time was running out. Usually, after about an hour of wandering the lots an employee would spot us and immediately kick us off the property. We were one of the three banished “P’s”: Pushers, Prostitutes and the Press. I became used to this treatment—I had been run out of dozens of truck stops. But I had also gotten dozens of rides and some great interviews. Today, however, I was stunned with an unexpected twist: another camera crew was coming around the corner.
My heart sank. There’s another crew, making another trucking documentary? Then, my ego kicked in. Will I need to have a headto- head battle with these perpetrators? Crew to crew, camera to camera, jousting with the boom poles, strapping on battery belts and tackling them on the pavement as we fight for interviews and rides to Nashville? I challenged them with a friendly wave, and found out they were here from a local news channel to cover truckers’ reactions to the highest gas prices in recorded history. No battle necessary, but the odds of getting a ride were a lot worse with the other camera around—and the truck stop manager was now angrily accosting them, about 30 feet away. The last thing the truck stop wanted was bad press about their gas prices. No cameras allowed.
My producer, Alabama Lightning and I were about to bail, when a beautiful rose-colored Freightliner with a feisty, blond female driver, wearing mod, Jam-style shades pulled into fuel island #2. Alabama and I looked at each other with a knowing nod: she looks like a great character. We need more female interviews. We’re about to get kicked out of here—let’s get that truck now!
This woman had apparently been approached by countless other aggressive jerks at other truck stops, and she rolled her window up tight, in sync with my approach.
I wanted her.
I knocked on the tinted glass and could see her shaking her head “No!” I looked at Alabama. He shrugged. I knocked on the door again and held our flyer up to the window for her to read. After a hot, noisy, exhaust-filled eternity of standing in the precarious no man’s land between dozens of slowly rolling 80,000-pound loads, she cracked her window a bit and yelled, “You gotta talk to my husband.” On cue, a guy in a Hawaiian shirt hopped out of a blue, matching Freightliner and introduced himself as Jim, and asked me what I wanted with his wife. Alabama quickly negotiated, and it was agreed that if we first rode with Jim, he’d consider letting us interview his wife, Loretta.
I signaled to my assistant to quickly bring the gear around, grabbed the camera and started loading it into the big rig—when the truck stop manager descended on us. The manager had just gotten rid of the news crew, and she was furious to see that now I had a camera, and was also soliciting her customers. Two evil henchmen were by her side, one wearing rubber gloves and the other holding a mop like a weapon. I tried to convince her that I had the full permission of this driver to board his Freightliner, which I continued doing. She said the police were on the way, and forced me to remove the camera from the truck—Alabama threw it back in our van—and leave immediately.
I didn’t want to lose my double interview, so I asked Jim if I could ride with him off the property, and get my camera later. Rather amused by all this, he agreed, and we tried. But on our way past the security gate, two police squad cars, the angry manager, and now four large thugs stopped us. They forced me out of Jim’s truck, and in a bizarre public crucifixion, jabbed their mops toward me. One of them—I kid you not—said, “You’ll hang for this!” while the cops grabbed my license.
I have been in many weird situations with my camera. But, I am not a war journalist. My films are not known for their danger—unless you count being hit by flying chards of shattered vinyl from DJ Swamp’s turntables. Until now, I have never been told that I was going to be hung for being a documentary filmmaker. It was a defining moment.
And, it ended as absurdly as it started. The lead cop actually believed me when I told him that we had driven from California and had nothing to do with the local news crews or the rage against fuel prices. “Good luck with your movie,” he said, and the truck stop manager and crew scowled and walked back to the overflowing fuel islands.
I climbed aboard Jim’s big truck, feeling safe and above it all. We drove to the interstate onramp, and we were back on our way, along the Trooper John Gregory Mann Memorial Highway towards Nashville. I got the camera and started filming.
The whole idea of this production was to travel through the entire country—essentially hitchhiking—in whatever direction the interviews would take us. I had always noticed how open and lucid people are on long road trips. Something about the physics and psychology of traveling great distances and driving while talking makes people reflect on their lives. I wanted to make a road film filled with deep conversation, and juxtapose it against roadside scenery from every interstate. Fields, onramps, cities, white dotted lines and dark clouds, next to drivers talking about their lives.
In four two-week trips, we drove 25,000 miles through 45 states, visited about 115 truck stops and shot about 60 interviews—of which at least half were substantial, in-depth character portraits. When I was in the trucks, Alabama followed behind in our camper van, talking on the CB. Other times, when we couldn’t find interviews, we’d just drive together in the van to the next truck stop and I shot scenic vistas out of the passenger window along the way. My nickname became “The Scenic Bulimic” because I developed an obsessive habit of yelling, “Stop! Stop!” as if I wanted to vomit, and, even before we’d fully stopped, jumping out of the van with my camera to film anything remotely interesting: a road sign against the blowing wheat, or a frozen view of Pittsburgh, or a glistening collection of backlit “Pee Bombs”—you know all those half-filled iced tea bottles you see scattered along the roadsides? They aren’t filled with iced tea. At nights we’d park at the truck stops, review our footage on a little monitor and crash out in the camper van. In the morning, we’d take nine dollar truck stop showers, drink truck stop coffee and fish for trucker interviews, starting with the guys seated around the counter.
I had a naïve idea that making a documentary film about truckers in modern America would somehow be like Convoy or Smokey and the Bandit. I idolized the 1970s movie image of American trucking culture. I loved listening to classic trucker tunes like “Six Days on the Road” and “White Lightning Express,” and in my big city stupidity, I figured Big Rig would be a kick-ass anthem to the dangerous, fun side of America, just filled with wacky, chromelovin’, country-listening characters, like a giant episode of “Hee Haw” on speed. It seems incredible to me now, but when we set out on our first shoot, we even brought along a little barbeque and a guitar so we could hang out by the trucks at night, cook brats, drink beer, meet drivers and… What a joke.
What we actually found was more like Grapes of Wrath: 40 days and 40 nights with America’s neglected working class. Broken dreams. Empty wallets. Rolled up windows and suspicious looks. America is going to hell. And the truckers are the first to know it.
Loretta was no exception. “I think we oughta all block the entrances to the fuel islands and shut these highways down!” she said, in regard to the fuel prices. About the inability of independent truckers to truly organize and stage a strike, she said, “It’s crazy!” Like most, Loretta wanted to be a truck driver because of the independence and freedom of the job. “When I’m sitting up here behind the wheel? It’s my world,” she said.
She loves being a truck driver. But when we park at a Petro, she shows me a lipstick case that conceals a razor sharp knife blade. She carries it at all times, for fear of being attacked. “I have to carry a weapon with me, and at night, my doors stay locked.” There is a desperation in her voice, and it goes beyond a basic fear of violence against women. It’s a feeling of loss of respect—it’s a feeling that comes from the daily sight of four-wheelers cutting you off and giving you the finger, as if you’re to blame for all the traffic congestion; from getting a $350 ticket for a tail light that went out, while others speed by; from having the Department of Transportation dictate when you can and can’t sleep (they instated an “11 hour rule” which mandates the amount of uninterrupted hours you have to remain idle vs. driving); or paying at least 50 cents a gallon more for diesel fuel than unleaded, when everyone knows that unleaded is derived from diesel and it should be the other way around. At every turn and every transaction, you are reminded that you are not really in control, and nobody really cares—even though you have driven 100,000 safe miles this year, and transported Playstations, apples, paper, Coke, steering wheels, socks, shower curtains, insulation, DVDs, toothpaste and SWINDLE magazines to keep the nation alive.
But Loretta, like most drivers I interviewed, was honest and funny. She spoke about how she learned to drive a truck in the Navy, how she’d lost custody of her three kids down in Georgia, and had been homeless for a while. She told me how she met her new husband, Jim, and almost lost him to “another woman.” Throughout the interview, Jim checked in on the CB from the other truck to alert her of cops or tell jokes. He’d pass her and they’d wave, husband and wife in tandem trucks, hauling along I-40. When they stopped, she’d open up the doors on the back of her trailer and check the temperature of the 27 palettes of honeydew melons. Her “reefer” (refrigerator unit) was having issues. Keeping produce at the right temperature is a driver’s responsibility. If her melons aren’t in the right conditions, they won’t be accepted at the loading dock, and they’d have to be thrown away.
We drove about six hours with Jim and Loretta, and shot four hours of tape. We said “goodbye” at another set of fuel pumps, somewhere just north of Nashville. I pulled the camera out of Loretta’s truck to get a shot of her checking the oil and kicking her tires—but we got booted out of the truck stop by another manager, saying “Get out with that thing.” And so we did.
Heading north to Cincinnati, the “Scenic Bulimic” got shots of Kentucky horses, tobacco fields, a Louisville skate park off I-65 filled with teenagers and a giant black billboard that said “Hell is Real,” under an orange, full moon.
In Mississippi, I rode with Jessie, who was hauling cypress wood, and talked about his son in Iraq. In upstate New York, we met Jerry, a fiercely anti-government veteran, hauling cabbages through a blinding snowstorm. In Nevada, we rode with John in a Kenworth truck who was hauling pigs to their death. In Maryland, I filmed the most spectacular sunset ever while riding with Jeff who was hauling post-Christmas Wal-Mart returns. In Oregon, we met Ron, a Native American who had an upside-down U.S. flag in his window, and had just dropped off a load of vinyl flooring in Seattle. In the Bronx, we pulled an all-nighter filming produce trucks unloading at Hunts Point to feed the entire Northeast. In Lebanon, Tennessee, we ate damn well at Uncle Pete’s, one of the last, true, great, independent truck stops, and interviewed Uncle Pete himself. On the grapevine in California, we met Jacek, a Polish immigrant from Chicago who loved everything about America, as he grooved to Warsaw disco.
They all smoked. All of them. Many of them were vets. Most were fiercely independent souls with great stories. Other than that, none of them fit a single trucker stereotype.
Over the next year, I edited about a dozen stories together with all my scenic shots and fused it with the killer beats, haunting music and spoken word lyrics of Buck 65. We premiered the movie at SXSW in Austin, Texas, where all the drivers showed up and freaked out when they saw their faces on the 50-foot screen. Big Rig will be out this summer. If you’re still looking for a chromehookers- n-speed flick, rent an old truxploitation movie—they’re great. But if you want to hitch a ride with a bunch of real truckers who are out there right now, hauling your shit, check out our film. And next time you’re about to flip off that 18-wheeler in the number two lane, remember what they all say: “If you bought it, a big rig brought it.”
Look out for “Big Rig! Part II” in SWINDLE #17. We’ll explore the subculture of suped-up show trucks, featuring the photography of die-hard big rig appreciator Roger Snider.