As the co-founder of Ragtag Cinema and the True/False Film Festival, David Wilson is a big name throughout Columbia. Now, with the release of his first feature-length documentary, Wilson is gaining even more notoriety.
The documentary, “We Always Lie to Strangers,” follows four families who live and work in the entertainment industry of Branson, Mo.
Wilson got the idea to film a feature-length documentary after making a short film after college about teenagers in Moberly, Mo. Afterwards, Wilson felt like he wasn’t done with the topic of small town youth culture and wanted to make a feature film.
“The town that made sense for a feature was Branson,” Wilson says. “It was a small town that everybody knew about, it was a small town that was nationally famous.”
Wilson came back to Columbia and met MU alumnus AJ Schnack, a documentary filmmaker whose first feature, “Kurt Cobain About a Son,” was showing at Ragtag at the time. The two started talking and found they had a lot in common, and it wasn’t long before the two made an exploratory trip to Branson in the fall of 2007.
“We met some people who would end up being characters in our movie and definitely figured out that there was something there in this town that we could really latch onto,” Wilson says.
Filming took place over five years, spanning from 2007 to 2012.
“It’s a weird and awkward thing to go into people’s lives, and they don’t always want you there,” Wilson says. “It’s challenging to win people over, and you do that being genuine … Branson is used to being portrayed in the media as sort of a punchline. And it took us maybe a year of shooting until we could really convince people that wasn’t what we were interested in, that we wanted to do something deeper and more interesting.”
Wilson says every step of producing the documentary has been rewarding.
“Getting to spend time in Branson and getting to know people down there was really, really extraordinary and I feel lucky to have had the experience just of being there,” Wilson says. “And then to get to turn that experience into a movie, it feels really great.”
“We Always Lie to Strangers” premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, where it received a Special Jury Recognition for directing.
The film will premiere in Columbia on May 2 at Ragtag Cinema, where it will have an open run.
“We want this film to surprise everybody,” Wilson says. “No matter whether you’re in Columbia, in Branson, in New York or wherever, we think that some aspect of this film will surprise you … I think this film plays like a drama and we think that it’s a film that a lot of different people can watch and enjoy.”
