Ken Schmidtke - A Truly Independent Filmmaker

Anthony Kaufman's recent blog about "Ultra-Indie" filmmakers made me remember a guy I met at the Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison a few years ago. He had entered his film in the festival but hadn't been accepted. This stunned me, as I figured if my short could get in--then pretty much anything could.

Anyway, this guy, whose name is Ken Schmidtke, told me that he had been making films for six years in his hometown of Racine (in the Southeast corner of the state). This was his third feature, and he was already in post on his fourth. All of them were done in DV and were edited on his PC using Sonic Foundry's (now Sony) Vegas Software. None of his films had ever been accepted at a festival or had received recognition of any kind. He begged me to look at his most recent film, "Michigan Sunset." I wasn't over-excited by the prospect, but he fished out a DVD from his knapsack and I promised him I would give it a look. When I got home, I put it in the dusty pile with all the other films I was planning to look at after I finished the films I actually wanted to see.

But Schmidtke kept emailing me, and asking if I had seen "Michigan Sunset" yet. The kid was relentless. So one night I put the damned thing on. What I wasn't prepared for was that Schmidtke wasn't just the writer/producer/director of the film, he was also its star. It was the story of a cheesemaker in a Milwaukee factory that is poorly run and is going out of business. Schmidtke's character was an alcoholic. There were a lot of very long shots of him making cheese. And after a while, his cheesemaking skills start to slip as his drunkenness increases. That's sort of how the story develops, if you can say there's story to "Michigan Sunset." Bad stuff keeps happening to Ken (he loses his job, his dog runs away, his best friend sleeps with his wife, he has an argument with his father, etc.) and then it just stops. Ken's stirring a cheese vat and then it fades out and the credits roll. It wasn't very well directed, written or acted (although the girl who played Ken's unfaithful wife was pretty decent), but I've seen a lot worse get into festivals. I'm sure that if I showed the cheese scenes alone to the critics at Film Comment, Ken might be seen as a very promising talent.

(Photo by Areldos)

I called Ken up and thanked him for sending me the movie. It turned out that the film was extremely autobiographical. Ken did work as a cheesemaker, and he is estranged from his wife (who plays herself), his parents, and his dog. As far as the drinking went, I knew that he could put them away from the time I spent with him in Madison. I tried to be positive. He was almost done with his fourth feature, "Beloit Highway," and I didn't want to discourage him. He asked me if I would be willing to look at his next film when it was done, and I promised him I would. But then he asked for one more favor. He had sent all of him finished films to Professor David Bordwell of the University of Wisconsin, but had never heard back from him. That surprised me, because David, who was my teacher, is one of the nicest guys around. So Ken asked if I would intercede with David and I said I would.

I called up David that same day. He had not only watched "Michigan Sunset," but also his debut, "Winnequah Trail" (dealing with Ken's part-Indian heritage), and "Beer, Brats & Baseball" (an antic comedy). "Terrible films can be very interesting," said Bordwell, whose 486-page monograph on "Glitter" is considered the definitive tome on that much-maligned work, "but that's unfortunately not the case with the Schmidtke oeuvre. To tell the truth, after ten minutes of 'Winnequah Trail,' I not only wanted to turn it off, but I was seriously thinking about a career change," said the already-retired Professor. "Well, why didn't you turn it off?" I asked. "I wish I could answer that," said Bordwell. "I just couldn't turn my eyes away from the screen. And when the first two films were over, I put on 'Michigan Sunset' and watched it straight through." I immediately grasped what Bordwell was talking about. At first the cheese scenes in "Michigan Sunset" seem kind of boring...but then they get eerily meditative, even hallucinatory, not unlike like the coffee cup in Godard's "Two or Three Things I Know About Her." Schmidtke might really be on to something. "So do you think he has talent?" I asked. There was a long pause. "I'm sorry Reid, Kristin's calling me and I have to go. There's a glorious new DVD transfer of Edgar G. Ulmer's "Yankl the Blacksmith" that we're watching tonight."

I called Ken right up and told him about my conversation with Bordwell. Ken appreciated that Bordwell had looked at his films, despite his negative response. I said I didn't know if it really was negative. I told Ken that he should see it as an achievement that he had held Bordwell's attention for such a long time. (I didn't mention that Dave--who can really watch anything--once sat through 4 1/2 hours of an experimental film before someone told him that the lab had made a mistake and it was just blank leader).

"I don't care what anybody thinks," said Schmidtke. "I don't make films in order for people to like them--or even to call attention to myself. I need to make them. It would be great if they could get seen, but once I make them, they're successful for me."

"Maybe "Beloit Highway" will be the one to finally do it for you," I said. "I don't know," said Schmidtke, "but I'm going to keep on making films. I'm not going to stop. God knows, people have begged me to."