Errol Morris’ first documentary, Gates of Heaven, may feature smaller scale subjects than his future films, but it is also the most soulful of his oeuvre, a somber and humorous meditation on life, death, consumerism and many things in between. Morris’ view may have turned even more insular for his follow-up, Vernon, Florida (1981), a portrait of the strange and eccentric people who populate its namesake, but the filmmaker still managed to pack a lot into its short runtime.
Vernon, Florida actually happened by happy accident. Morris, tipped off to a scam there where nearly 50 men cut or shot off their own hands and feet to collect insurance money, first went to the Florida town to make a movie about that. However, after he received death threats from his potential subjects, Morris retooled the documentary into what we see today: A short film featuring the musings of a collection of strange folk who live there.
Vernon, Florida features a similar approach as Gates of Heaven in which Morris turns on his camera and allows his subjects to act naturally. Any questions he asked them occurred before the camera began rolling. And it worked. The subjects are never tense or appear threatened. This naturalistic tactic ekes more truth out of the people, makes them feel comfortable and always allows them to ramble on about their reveries and fascinations. Morris also returns to the same folks multiple times throughout the film, including a man obsessed with shooting turkeys, an old-timer who keeps a possum and a turtle in makeshift enclosure and a bored, local cop who doesn’t really want to bust speeders coming over the bridge into town, but wishes he had something more to do there.
A line of absurdism runs throughout the film as Morris captures the hunter musing sadly about the turkeys he’s missed while another man celebrates the sign from God that aided him in buying a van and some land. Like Gates of Heaven, it is completely unclear whether Morris is celebrating his subjects or mocking them. Perhaps it’s a little bit of both.
Cadence and vernacular are particularly interesting to Morris as he looks to expose “an interior world, a mental landscape, how people see themselves as revealed through how they use language. If you listen to what people say, that gives you a route into how they see themselves.” But it is also the subjects’ complete lack of self-awareness that makes them so interesting and endearing. Henry Shipes, for instance, the turkey hunter and true heart of the film, talks about nothing else other than blasting turkeys with his shotgun while gleefully showing off a row of bird feet mounted to his wall.
Urbane moviegoers may scoff at the folksiness of the people in Vernon, Florida, but how would you come across if the cameras were turned on you? Have you ever lost yourself in story? What is your obsession? Vernon, Florida cuts to the heart of what makes the small town tick. Perhaps the most jarring moment of the film is when the only woman featured appears. Up until this point, all of Morris’ subjects are white males, but the sole woman is equally eccentric. She recounts a family trip to New Mexico where they collected some white sand in a jar.
According to the woman, the sand has been growing in the jar and would soon fill it completely. In some ways, Morris’ early films are exactly like that jar, partially full of beautifully weird material. He leaves it up to our own imagination and judgments as to whether or not the sand itself has grown, or if it’s just a trick of the light.