Producer York Baur Interview
You have a home near Forks?York Baur: "That's right, yes. I grew up near Forks, partly. My family built a cabin out there, a summer cabin in the '60s when I was a little boy. I've been going out to the area ever since. My family now, my immediate family, we own that cabin."
Since you have a connection to the area, how do you personally feel about it now being connected to Twilight and this huge vampire craze?
York Baur: "I followed that area for a long, long time and while the area has incredible natural beauty and has had a good industrial base for a long time, the town of Forks itself is more than a hundred years old. It has experienced its ups and downs, as you might imagine, because it’s a forest products-based economy, largely. That's been a difficult area, particularly in the last year. Everybody knows what's happening in the housing market and certainly that had a big impact on the forest products market. So a long-winded way of saying that, while I don't think anybody could have possibly envisioned this happening, the reality is that it’s certainly very good for the challenge economically. But I think more importantly, at least from a personal point of view of Jason and I - Jason [Brown] who’s the director and my partner in this - the thing that we feel the most strongly about is that both the beauty and the very unique nature of the people and the culture of not only Forks, but certainly the La Push area and the Quileute culture, this is an opportunity for that to get exposed to the rest of the world through the lens of the Twilight phenomenon. That was the impetus for us to do this project."
Is it being represented well? Does it fairly demonstrate what the town’s actually like and what the culture’s actually like?
York Baur: "Well, we certainly have made every effort in our project to do so. The world will judge that I guess when our movie comes out. But we've made that the focus of our project. That being said, I think it’s probably also worth noting that while the Twilight saga is…it’s certainly fiction, Stephenie Meyer did, by all rights, a great job of characterizing the area. Now, obviously, the debate about are there vampires or not and those kinds of things, you know, we certainly explore those things in our movie. But if you think about the descriptions of the area itself, how incredibly remote it is, the natural beauty that exists there, the mysticism of the Quileute heritage, those things I think are well represented in the Twilight saga."
Did you find that in general most people are accepting of the Twilight phenomenon and they don't look too harshly on the fans of the books?
York Baur: "You know, I think that was the striking thing, at least to me having as much history as I do in that area. Sometimes when these things take place there can be a negative reaction, but I think universally what we found is that the people of Forks have embraced this. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is a fan of the story themselves or likes the fact that there are not twice as many stoplights in town as there were before. Now there are two where there was once a single stoplight. But everyone universally recognizes two things. One is they recognize the economic boom that it is bringing to the area at a very critical time in Forks’ history. And, secondly, that universally the fans are wonderful, nice people that are excited to be there, which is critical, obviously, if you’re a townsperson. So that, I guess, was maybe not surprising because that’s the way I've always felt about the people of Forks is that they're great people. They would give you the shirt off their back to help you. So I'm not surprised that they would be welcoming to people. But still it’s nice to see it actually be the case, you know?"
And they were very cooperative with the filming of your documentary?
York Baur: "Not only cooperative but really went out of their way to be of help, and that's something we certainly would want the word to get out very strongly on. It was really a wonderful experience working with folks, universally. I mean every single person we worked with, while they all brought their own views and style to the project, everyone was universally helpful and went out of their way for us which we’re very, very thankful for."
I read there's actually someone in Forks who gets mistaken for Bella [played by Kristen Stewart in the Twilight films].
York Baur: "That’s right. Yes, that's in fact the case."
Is it because she looks like the actress?
York Baur: "Well I think it’s safe to say that fans that come… You know, a big piece of the gift that Stephenie Meyer gave all of us is the gift of fantasy, and I would say that that plays a role in how much people - fans - extrapolate the reality to match their fantasy. So it doesn't necessarily mean that each and every thing that’s in Forks perfectly matches what's in the fiction. But, yes, there certainly are some various look-alikes and things going on in town which I'm afraid I have to leave a little bit mysterious…"
