5 people. 32 years.
What the Hell Happened
The day after I graduated from the University of Iowa in 1992, my wife Eliza checked out a VHS camera from public access and we interviewed a handful of friends as a sort of time capsule, thinking it would be interesting to see how their lives turned out sometime downstream.
It was a random sampling of Iowa college kids — people we knew, people still there in January 1992, people willing to participate, and people who actually showed up for the 3 days we had the camera. The tapes were chucked into a box and survived many moves; from Iowa City to Philadelphia, to Seattle, then Los Angeles in 2019 where I got them digitized.
Just seeing all my old friends again made me want to reach out. Some I had stayed in touch with, others I hadn’t seen the entire time and had to track down. In 2021, I had a break in my freelance schedule so I went around the country to interview everyone and find out what the hell happened.
Here are the thoughts, hopes, dreams, disappointments, successes, failures, mistakes, victories, losses and great loves of me and 5 of my friends over 32 years.
A documentary about life, love and friendship.
Produced and Directed by Matt Wilkins and Eliza Fox.
Bios
Matt Wilkins
I made my first film in 1989 in Davenport, Iowa and have been making things ever since. I’ve been a cook, delivery driver, videographer, and producer. I’ve worked as a Field Producer, Story Producer, Supervising Producer and Writer on Hoarders, Inside Homicide, Yard Crashers, Mountain Men, My 600 Pound Life, Twisted Love, Twisted Sisters, Fog Of Murder, Biography: WWE Legends, Violent Minds: Killers On Tape, among others. Full filmography at IMDB.
Counting public access skits, I’ve made over 30 short films and 3 narrative features. In one sweet stretch, I received 16 grants in 14 years from the Seattle Arts Commission, the King County Arts Commission, Artist Trust, The Allen Foundation for the Arts, 4Culture and the NW Film Forum to make several shorts and my first two features.
I worked for 5 years making my second narrative feature, Marrow, which premiered at Cinequest in 2011 and played a handful of festivals including Seattle International. While I was editing Marrow, I was commissioned by MTV to make a short documentary for $5 Cover. I shot McMullen’s Machines in one day, edited it in two, and it played Sundance in 2010.
I thought, “Shit maybe I should make documentaries.” I am currently finishing my first feature documentary, What the Hell Happened, about 5 people over 32 years.
Eliza Fox
I started this project when I took a class at public access in Iowa City in 1992, then checked out a VHS camera. Back then, before cell phones, pictures were taken mostly on vacations and special occasions like birthdays, and it was even more rare to shoot videos. There weren’t a lot of camcorders around and most people were not used to being filmed, so many were reluctant to participate, but whatever, it was fun for me, so I continued to document many events and occasions over the years, with the goal of creating interesting time capsules. A lot of that footage is in this film.
I have several other interviews that aren’t in this documentary, and hope to make another documentary called Saw Was, about the rise and fall of Secluded Alley Works, a Seattle Arts organization that survived from 1999 to 2003.
Over the years, I performed in, shot, wrote and produced several short films including The Gods Looked Down and Laughed, Interior Latex, Fart Perfume, The Communicators, The Screwy Guy, three narrative features Buffalo Bill’s Defunct, Marrow, The Things We Tell the Ones We Love, and now a feature documentary, What the Hell Happened. Full filmography at IMDB.
