Director's Statement
The
genesis of “Under the Influence” came around the time of the seventh
trip (2001), wherein we discussed the possibility of creating a
full-length documentary aimed at telling the entire story of “The Trip”
since 1996. By that time lots of non-attendees (largely
friends from California) had been gathering every year to watch short
edited videos after each trip, anticipating how the “characters”
evolved from year to year: how much whiskey A.J. chugged, if Bryan went
missing again, etc. This growing local interest fostered my
motivation to set up interviews, unearth old video footage, and put the
true story together, piece by piece, in a way that could be
entertaining (ideally) to an audience other than just us.
The result I hoped to achieve was essentially a ten-year cross section of our lives, told through a simple weekend vacation every year. Through the lens of the camera our lives change; we get older; some of us settle down. It’s a portrait of that energetic, intoxicating stage that many American men pass through on the road to maturity—it serves us now as nostalgia, a drunken diary, a warning.
This chronicle is complete in its entirety from gate to gate: where the weddings signify the end of an era, it marks the dawn of another story, which is, for us, a story that has not yet taken place. As we come to find our place in the new story, The Trip will continue every year.
--Robert Hestand, Producer/Director
The result I hoped to achieve was essentially a ten-year cross section of our lives, told through a simple weekend vacation every year. Through the lens of the camera our lives change; we get older; some of us settle down. It’s a portrait of that energetic, intoxicating stage that many American men pass through on the road to maturity—it serves us now as nostalgia, a drunken diary, a warning.
This chronicle is complete in its entirety from gate to gate: where the weddings signify the end of an era, it marks the dawn of another story, which is, for us, a story that has not yet taken place. As we come to find our place in the new story, The Trip will continue every year.
--Robert Hestand, Producer/Director
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