Film

Small matters

by Chris Wright

In a town that boasts such luminaries as Erroll Morris and Fred Wiseman, it can be hard for a budding documentarian to get his work noticed. Especially if his first documentary happens to be about doorstops.

So local filmmaker Gary Roma -- who made Off the Ground & Off the Wall: A Doorstop Documentary -- devised a way around this problem. "I spoke with film critics about how they keep their doors open," he says. "I figured if I'm going to get them to talk about the film, I'd better have them in it."

As well as revealing the doorstops used by David Brudnoy (a chamber pot) and Gene Shalit (a rock with his face painted on it), Off the Ground visits a doorstop factory, features a man who has spent 40 years collecting doorstops, and explores, as Roma puts it, "the philosophy of doorstops."

This might sound inconsequential, or even boring, but Roma insists there is a world of intrigue buried beneath life's extraneous details. "One of the things I love," he says, "is finding all these amazing stories that are out there." The tag line for Off the Ground -- "If you take a long, hard look at the mundane, funny things happen" -- applies to all his films, Roma says.

His second film, however, grapples with a much thornier subject than his debut. The first half of Puss in Books: Adventures of the Library Cat deals with stories about cats who live in libraries, he explains, "and the second half deals with the ethical issues and controversies."

"This," says Roma, "is a very emotional issue."

Puss in Books makes clear just how emotional the issue can be. When the board of a New York library voted to oust its resident kitty, for instance, there was an "uproar" among locals, and the library lost $80,000 in endowments. Then there was the woman in Connecticut who lobbied her library to get rid of its cat and -- in a scene reminiscent of The Godfather -- awoke to find dead mice in her mailbox.

Roma's latest film, Floss! A Meditation on the Possibility of Change, is his most personal yet. "I incorporated my own struggle with flossing," he explains, "to explore how to bridge the gap between action and inaction." But the film's not all introspection. "There's a lot more to floss than meets the eye," Roma says. "Or the teeth."

In the film we hear about a prisoner who used floss to cut through the bars of his cell. We meet the dentist who invented nicotine-laced floss, and the man whose girlfriend used floss as a tourniquet after he had been bitten by a shark. "I spoke with the guy," Roma says. "Floss has a special place in his heart."

Though Roma acknowledges that his work probably won't win him any Academy Awards, he isn't losing sleep over that. "I'm happy to keep on exploring the mundane and see what I can uncover," he says. "I do aspire to be successful, but if I can keep making my own work, if I can have my own vision and create things my own way, I consider that a success."

So what will Roma be working on next?

"Piles," he says.

Hemorrhoids?

"No, piles. I'm interested in how people organize their lives. I'll go to their homes and offices and have them share their piles with me."

Roma will present Puss in Books and Off the Ground at Harvard University's Dudley House on December 12 at 8 p.m. The show is free and open to the public, but seating is limited. Contact Valerie Weiss at valerie@pride.med.harvard.edu