Every now and again I stand back from one of my bags and think, "now THERE's a darn good bag". And I feel good about myself and what I'm contributing to the world. I create bags that people carry around and they look very cool in the process, if I do say so myself. Yet I am surrounded by brilliant and creative friends who constantly show me up. The latest upset in my world of Usurpia came when my friend and Sundance producer Chad Burris pulled the rug out from underneath me with his film Four Sheets To The Wind.
Written by Sterlin Harjo, the stars, Cody Lightening (Cufe Smallhill) and Tamara Podemski (Miri Smallhill) are sublime. As two sides of the same suffering, grasping coin of identity crisis, Cufe and Miri move slowly and quietly carrying our collective scream of self-discovery. What Chad and the crew produced was a piece of art that delivered on the Great Promise of Art: to get under the skin and leave the viewer forever changed. I can't say exactly what changed in me the night I watched the film other than I recognized myself. I recognized the striving, the reaching, the hoping, the starts and stops of life.
Chad modeled for Thickskin a few months ago (here he is with the SCOUT bag in black cannibal). I remember looking at him in this shot and thinking "man is he beautiful!" Beauty is often underestimated and I'm embarrassed to admit I underestimated him. He didn't talk much about his film that day. He was happy to let the day be about Thickskin. I had no idea that he, as he lay here on my white leather lounge, had produced something that would, only a few months later, stun me with it's direct and complex beauty. Just like Chad.
