OVO is a unique collective of filmmakers, writers, directors, actors and visual artists, who in their own words, make "small art...but with big ideas and profound impact." A perfect example of this is their film, The World's Best Prom, a moving yet terrifically entertaining look at the humble midwestern town of Racine, WI, where senior prom is treated as an event rivaling the Academy Awards. Filmmakers Chris Talbott and Ian Rosenberg spoke with SnagFilms' Liz Cook to discuss one of our favorite documentaries films.

So first things first. Why Racine, Wisconsin?


CT: Four of OVO’s seven members grew up in Racine in the 80s.  We couldn’t resist returning as adults carrying cameras.

Racine is absolutely prom-obsessed--and it’s an obsession that goes far beyond high school students. Why on earth is senior prom is such a big deal in Racine?

IR:A number of the teens we interviewed told us that in a small city with nothing much for young people to do, the 50 plus year history of Racine’s Prom transforms a traditional American rite of passage into something that becomes the entire city’s biggest night of the year.  Racine is also a unique city in that it’s big enough to make it’s prom an Academy Award style event (a citywide parade, screaming fans on the red carpet, full live television coverage), but a small enough community that everyone who lives there feels involved in the prom in some way.

Tonya, Dori, and Ben are among your principal subjects. Do you know what they’re up to now?


CT: Tonya’s older brother Perry was a legend in Racine, and one of my best friends.  Dori is Karen Sorensen’s little sister (www.love-research.com), and Ben is my cousin.  So we keep in touch and hear stories.  Tonya is still finishing a higher degree in forensic science at UW Milwaukee, Dori is moving to Seattle to embark on a new entrepreneurial career after some formative years as a SE Wisconsin local food advocate, and Ben is a single man living and working in Racine.  

What were their reactions upon seeing the movie?

IR: Tonya, Ben and Dori all had very positive reactions to the film.  Even though they are so candid in the film, they are all rather private people so we think it was a pretty intense experience for them to see themselves on screen.  But we also feel like it ended up being a fascinating time capsule for them, particularly since they were watching the final cut about 5 years after they attended Prom.


What were some of the difficulties you faced filming high school students?


CT: Though our subjects had all consented to being filmed, we still felt it was our duty to respect their privacy to a degree.  We did not want to ruin anyone’s prom experience, nor did we want to reveal all of our subject’s secrets.  Maybe that was a mistake, the movie could have been “The World’s Wildest Prom,” or whatever, but because these were young people we just didn’t want to go there. We approached all of our subjects with great respect, all the more so because these were kids, granted kids on the cusp of adulthood.  There are lots of laughs in the film, but I hope we were never mean-spirited.

The archival footage incorporated in the film really gives a sense of how long prom has been a core feature of Racine’s culture. How did you go about finding the old footage and was it difficult to obtain? And at what point did prom in Racine go from being merely senior prom, to the most important event of the year?


CT: A local photographer named Ray Wick was experimenting with film in the 1950s, and he shot the incredible prom footage from the 1950s that opens the film.  We assembled prom photos and memorabilia from over five decades of prom by searching the local museums and libraries, the abandoned archives of Ray Wick, through ads in the classified section, through word of mouth.  For a couple of years, we heard rumors about a VHS tape documenting an infamous 1988 arrival on the back of an elephant before we finally got our hands on that tape.  My mom’s cousin handed over a film my grandfather made in the late 40s as an employee of Mamco, her father’s small motor factory. My grandfather Emil Cikel also features in the film, his short film is a playful portrait of the factory’s workers.   An archivist found three incredible films by Racine filmmakers stored in the basement of The Racine Heritage Museum (www.racineheritagemuseum.org), we paid for their transfer to tape. One twenty-minute color film documents a summer of fabulous local events in 1955. Another hypes the small city’s range of local industries.  These films made me realize Racine has always had an outsized image of itself, proudly proclaiming itself “the small motor capital of the world.”  A lot of this extra material is available at the official Web site, www.worldsbestprom.com.  

Was there a particular theme or issue that you wish you had been able to cover in more depth?


CT: We always wanted the film to be a portrait of Racine, as well as the story of three teens and the prom.  And I think we succeed at that, we present a post-industrial city at the beginning of the millennium and ask what is this city’s future, what does it offer these graduating youth?  That’s rather ambitious, so yes, there is so much more I wish we had been able to cover.  We started this movie in the year 2000.  The Cannon XL1 had hit the market that year, and we immediately recognized that a revolution in media making had begun. Until then, OVO had been focused on theater, partly because it wasn’t going to bankrupt anyone; but most of us had worked in film and had professional film aspirations, so we bought that camera, borrowed a few other consumer type cameras from friends and just went for it.  We taught ourselves to shoot as we worked and that is pretty apparent in the production values. Our budget was incredibly small and there were all sorts of limitations from that, but OVO’s spirit has always been scrappy.  We never presented a play as a  “work in progress” or staged reading, even if we only had $5,000 with which to produce.  We thought that was a cop out and that one could present work artfully on any budget.  So that was our goal for “The World’s Best Prom,” and for all its limitations, I hope we succeeded.


If you were to take a poll today, do you think the prom in Racine would still rank as the “world’s best prom” or have you heard of any other towns with proms that might rival Racine’s?


IR: We all keep our ears open for prom stories, and we still have never heard of a Prom that challenges Racine for our self-proclaimed title of “World’s Best”!