Fact and fiction meet in "Low and Behold"

Zack Godshall and Barlow Jacobs were two film students - kicking around ideas for telling fictional stories in real world settings - when Katrina drowned their home state of Louisiana.


Barlow Jacobs in "Low and Behold"
His house destroyed, Jacobs became an insurance claims adjuster in around New Orleans, often sleeping in his car before heading out the next day to speak with people who wanted to talk for hours about what happened, because they wanted to tell their stories.

That job became research for the character he would play in "Low and Behold," a film about an insurance claims adjustor who makes his way through the shocked New Orleans landscape, picking up a haphazard entourage along the way. (A 20-something, college graduate, the character is not based on Jacobs, just on his experiences and on the other adjusters with whom he worked.)

The creative idea they'd bandied about as students became the mouthpiece for the state they loved during the summer of 2006, when so much wreckage, so much destruction littered the streets, as surreal as a Hollywood set.

"We started rewriting as we went, because the people we met became our greatest collaborators," Godshall said. "It ended up being a profound experience. People shared their stories and they became a part of the film."

Godshall remembered one man in particular. "He was acting as a caretaker for a deserted neighborhood, and he came up and asked us what we were doing. He'd survived the flood dragging his 73-year-old mom to a boat he'd tied to the house, and using that boat to pick other people up off the roofs. It was some pretty extreme stuff. And yet a year later, he's yet to receive any insurance. But to see the way he is fighting to endure physical and mental hardships was the most profound and valuable thing. It made us realize it was much bigger than all of us."

Shooting with people who were not paid actors had some challenges.

"I really give Zach a lot credit," Barlow said. "The hardest thing about working with a non-actor is getting a person not to act, to be themselves. Zach was great at coming in and creating situations where they could be themselves. Going into it probably triggered the memories in their heads, and we were shooting it in a very documentary style with a small camera. So we turned on the camera, and Zach turned me loose. For me, it was the most exciting acting I've done. It was so authentic and so real."

If they loved the reality of it, why didn't Godshall and Jacobs just make a documentary? Was there a purpose to their desire to mix fact and fiction, or was it all affectation?

"A fictional story is a good way to reach a broad audience, people who want to be entertained, and there is an entertaining, comedic story that happens throughout the film," Godshall said. "That fictional element gets them to engage in ways they weren't expecting."

It also allowed some level of narrative control. But so much was left to chance ("chance" of course being the editing room) by including the unscripted elements.

"We were shooting a lot of scenery - unscripted scenes, interviews, everything - knowing we were capturing stuff that was important, not knowing how it would fit together," Godshall said. "It was an idea, something we believed in, almost like going into a dark cave and not knowing where you're going. Knowing there's a way out and not knowing how to get there, but I think we found it."

Godshall and Jacobs called up friends, some of whom were still living in trailers themselves, to work as the film's crew.

"Every morning coming to set, this crew was made up of my friends in New Orleans who embraced the vision Zach and I had for the film, and they worked for nothing, because they believed in the project," Jacobs said. "They were coming from trailers, still wrestling with the loss of families and loved ones. And they came to tell their stories. And the work ethic, the amount of heart they put behind it. It was so humbling. It was probably the most overwhelming experience, just to see that someone else puts that amount of everything into your project".

The film became a balm for everyone involved at a critical time - after the celebrity whatever-a-thons had died out. "There was also a point just after the anniversary, when people were dipping deep into depression; remember, this is a story that effected every socioeconomic class," Jacobs said. "The suicide rate spiked. I stepped back and was thinking that this film was my therapy. I was so consumed with the story… it kind of pulled me out of it in a way and allowed me to process things and work through a lot of things."

Jacobs said the most dramatic moment in creating the film for him came at the end of the editing process, when the duo was struggling with how to conclude the film. "Zach called me to drive to Lafayette, because he thought he'd figured it out. He'd just gotten new music from one of our composers, so I drove over, and Zach and I sat down and we watched the movie through. The final driving sequence, combined with the music that Michael produced. At this point, I'd seen the movie 300 scenes, but that scene was overwhelming. It was like, 'Yes, this is how you end our film. It's perfect. This music and these images. This is the way it is.'"