Activist and film maker Erin Davies was a victim of a hate crime when someone spray painted her car with the words “fag” and “u r gay.” She ended up dropping out of college to drive her VW Bug all over the country with the offending words still visible. The perpetrator is still unknown. The end result was the documentary Fagbug. She visited campus to talk about her experience and to show the movie.
Evie M. Warner: Are you still in college?
Erin Davies: No. I was getting my masters when this first happened. I was going for art education. I graduated in May.
Warner: Did you find you had a lot to learn about doing a documentary?
Davies: I filmed another documentary about six years before this happened. I did have a lot to learn. I was starting to learn how to put that first one together. It was trial and error and learning as I went type thing. I hired an editor to do it, because it was about me. I wanted to have another point of view other than myself.
Warner: How much footage did you have to go through for Fagbug?
Davies: I shot 110 hours of footage. And it took a whole month just to import all the footage. A hundred and ten hours got narrowed down to 83 minutes. So it’s a lot to go through.
Warner: If you could go back and give your younger self advice on doing this documentary what would it be and why?
Davies: I would have wanted to tell myself all the things that we’re going to come out of it that were bad. I would have given myself warning.
Warner: Why do you think you had so much opposition from people on both sides of the issue?
Davies: I think it’s just human nature …I think it’s people who are not secure in themselves or feel like they’re not getting enough attention in their lives will sort of attack someone who is. I have also seen people who are gay, who are in the closet who are too scared to be open with themselves, and are very threatened by what I’m doing. And that’s the best answer I can give you for that.
Davies: A lot of people donated to the project, like helping me out with gas money and paying for hotels and just the random kindness of strangers. About halfway through I almost came home and just gave up on the whole thing. But I felt like that would be letting myself down and all the other people who were kind of pushing for me.
Warner: Will you be doing more films in the future?
Davies: I’m going to do a sequel like Fagbug 2; what the car’s like now. I’m not sure what other ones I’m going to be taking on. But I’m the kind of person that whenever I feel really passionate for something I’ll just jump into a project.
Warner: During the movie what was the most memorable thing that happened?
Davies: I’d say Volkswagen sponsoring me just because what are the odds that’s going to actually happen? It just kind of shows you that if you put something out there that it can be possible. That was kind of a huge moment to have a big company like that recognize what you’re doing.
