GALO: Can you describe what it was like to see Ra sculpt these caves essentially from scratch?

JK: One of the things I learned about how the caves are made is there are two distinct processes. The first is the dig process, which involves the wheelbarrow, pickax and shovel. That’s the gross work of it, the heavy lifting, and, by my estimation from watching it, the most extraordinary of the two processes. He’s perched on the mountainside uncomfortably, and all there is, is this solid mass in front of him. I think he can close his eyes and see space. He can feel the empty space. I think there’s a touch of genius in that.

The second phase of it is the carving phase. I think there are equivalents in many other types of carving, the ice caves for example. The carving that’s done in the ice reminded me of Ra’s carving. I think that there are people that are doing that kind of finishing work in other materials. That’s a little bit less unique. But the creation of the space, I’m not sure anybody else is doing that. I’m not sure anyone else has ever done it, except for the sake of creating shelter.

GALO: Have you ever seen a project of Ra’s from beginning to completion?

JK: I always thought that the structure of any film I would make about it, since the moment I saw the first cave, would be “I’ll be there on Day 1 and I’ll see ground-breaking, then I’ll capture all of the side stories and then the film will end when the cave is complete.” Given that there was so much distance between us because he lives in New Mexico and I live in Los Angeles, I missed a bunch of cave starts over the years.

After he had the collapse, I spoke to him a few days later — this story is in the movie — and the extraordinary nature of his recovery is really the thing that sent me into capturing the film. I couldn’t really believe that anybody would lose two years of work and a week later already enthusiastically be talking about his next venture. He didn’t need any recovery time at all. I asked him not to start on his new project until I got there. He took us up and started it, and that was Day 1 of our filming. I was really excited to get that shot because I knew the transformation of what it was when we were there to what it was going to be would be really impressive. I asked him at that point when he was going to be done, and he said it would probably take 10 years. I was crestfallen [laughs]. There goes that idea for shaping the movie. In the edit, it ended up that we turned the thing around and ended the film with the start.

GALO: That last shot, the way you ended it, that was the way you started the filmmaking process?

JK: Yeah. All the rest of the filming came after that. I realized that when you shoot one cave in process, it looks like every other cave in process. In the digging phase there’s nothing distinctive from Cave 1 to Cave 2 to Cave 10. It’s in the carving process that it becomes unique. So I couldn’t structure it like that. But what it allowed me to do was use work on one cave and call it another cave. It was a gift in a different way.

GALO: Was there anything in particular you were trying to highlight to audiences about Ra, his life, or his art through the film?

JK: A couple themes emerged to me. You can tell from watching the film that Ra’s not that guarded about his flaws. I don’t think the film would have been interesting if he had been someone who wasn’t willing to reveal himself, but he was. He also put me in touch with some of his patrons with whom he had not had a particularly good relationship. What came about as a theme was this conflict between the visionary having to create his ethereal creations, and needing the very concrete reality of money to do it. He needed patrons. Those things came into conflict with each other because those people providing the money had ideas about what they wanted this art to be. It’s a very unusual situation. You don’t commission a painting, for instance, and then sit in the studio and say “more red” or “I want a border around that please.” You trust the artist’s vision. But in something like this that crosses over into architecture people have opinions and that was very difficult for Ra.

The other theme that emerged for me weaves this line fairly commonly in our modern culture, which is “follow your heart.” Live the dream. What I discovered from getting close to Ra was he is living the dream, and doing exactly what he wants to do. And there is a cost to it. It doesn’t come free. There’s a cost to his personal relationships and his financial situation. It’s not all roses.

GALO: And he makes it perfectly clear that he’s never really tried to be financially successful. He thinks success will come to him on its own.

JK: He might be right. The success might have found him. We’ll see what happens. When we were making this film, we thought it would come out good enough to get in a couple festivals and a couple hundred people would see it. Where it’s got to is far beyond where any of us expected, which for me is unabashedly great. But for him, I think it’s a mixed bag. He waited for it to come to him and now possibly it’s here, and how is that going to be for him? I don’t think he knows yet.

GALO: It seems like some of these locations he digs at are fairly remote, or not exactly easily accessible. Was it difficult for you and your film crew to access some of the spots?

JK: It was. There were times when we were doing quite a bit of hiking. The crew never consisted of more than four people. My cameraman and I did almost everything, and on some occasions we picked up two locals. There was a day when I had a sound man, but other than that, I ran sound myself. We needed people to help carry and set up stuff, and Ra himself is a very generous guy. He would pick up the heaviest load and carry it up the mountain. He was stronger than all of us.

GALO: The man does hike up the mountain with a wheelbarrow on his back.

JK: [Laughs]. We shot light. There was a shoot we did where we brought a motorized slider, a kind of lightweight dolly you can control with motors. That had to be carried and assembled every place we went, so there was a lot of work involved in that.

GALO: How does it feel to be nominated for an Academy Award for the first time?

JK: I don’t think it has completely sunk in yet. It’s a stratosphere that I just never imagined would happen, certainly not as part of this film. Being in film for most of my career, I can vaguely fantasize about winning at Sundance or being recognized by the Academy, but to be here as a result of this film that was entirely a labor of love, I have not totally absorbed it yet. But I can tell you I’ve been feeling pretty darn good.

“CaveDigger” is currently playing nationwide across select theatres and is also available for rent ($4.99 for 72 hours) and for purchase ($9.99) on Vimeo. For more information about the film, please visit http://cavediggerdocumentary.com/. Tune in to ABC on March 2, 2014 at 7e/4p to watch the Oscars.


Trailer Courtesy of: Jeffrey Karoff.

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Featured image: A still from Jeffrey Karoff’s Oscar nominated short documentary film “CaveDigger.” Photo Courtesy of: “CaveDigger.”