Telling Stories
Bill Gallagher ’05 always knew that he wanted to tell stories. An associate producer on the recently released documentary, Racing Dreams, Gallagher is putting his journalism degree and UMass Amherst experience to good use.
What did you do after graduating from UMass Amherst in 2005 with a degree in journalism?
I wanted to go into journalism and some form of telling stories, but I just couldn’t find a job at that time. For a few years, I worked for a human service agency helping people with mental illnesses find jobs. I liked the experience, but the whole time I was thinking that I would rather tell these people’s stories than walking around town trying to find them employment. This led me to enroll in a graduate program for creating documentaries at the New School in New York.
How did you start working on Racing Dreams?
As soon as I finished graduate school, I saw an internship posted on Craigslist to work with Marshall Curry, who is the director of Racing Dreams. I was familiar with his work; his first film was called Street Fight, about the 2002 mayoral campaign in Newark, N.J., where Cory Booker went up against longtime mayor Sharpe James. It was nominated for an Oscar and was just an amazing story both on and off screen. I started working as an intern on Racing Dreams, and decided to stay in New York working for Marshall Curry Productions.
What is your role as an associate producer?
It varies from film to film. I oversee everything from budget, to music licensing, to applying to film festivals, to assistant editing. I will sit in on rough cuts or final cuts where we're literally screening the film and I will give notes and feedback. Because it is such a small operation, I manage all the nitty-gritty tasks that the director doesn’t have time to do. Once the filming is done and we’re in post-production, it’s really just the director, the editor, and me getting the rest of the work done.
What is the premise of Racing Dreams?
On the surface it is about three kids—age 11, 12 and 13—who want to become professional NASCAR racers, but really it’s about them trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives, which is a universal story.
The documentary follows the kids as they compete in the World Karting Association’s National Series and how it touches them during that beautiful age when they are just trying to separate from parents and struggling to articulate their own hopes and dreams.
What have the reviews been like so far?
The reviews have been incredible! The NY Times called it “absorbing” and the LA Times called it “the best film of the year”, not just the best documentary of the year.
It’s been in a little more than a dozen cities, mainly down south and of course NY and LA, and so far we’ve been completely floored by the response. When you spend two years in a dark room editing 500 hours of footage down to 96 minutes, you just don’t know how people are going to receive it. It's an incredible feeling to have such positive feedback.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on another film for Marshall Curry Productions about radical environmentalism in the Pacific Northwest. The focus is on one man who grew up in Brooklyn and becomes part of the Earth Liberation Front. I’m going through a lot of archival material to research his story and what the FBI calls his “acts of domestic terror.” I'm really enjoying working on this project because it’s a completely different process than Racing Dreams.
Is there a story out there that you would like to tell?
Yes, I have a few, actually. My ultimate goal is to direct, and there is one film that I have been dying to do in Amherst. While I was a student at UMass Amherst, I was hired to help a man with Down syndrome to learn photography. I instantly saw how talented he was with the camera and we became friends through that experience.
I know this is going to sound naïve, but when I started working with him I was shocked by how nobody put any limits on him. And because of this, he has achieved the most amazing things, including being an artist through his photography. He has his own little business where he sells his photos and greeting cards. He is also incredibly articulate in ways that people without Down syndrome are not. I think it would make for a very interesting documentary.
Speaking of Amherst, what are some of your favorite memories of your time on campus?
I remember strange little things. I loved getting to school in the fall every year and having this endless hope that the year was going to be amazing. I remember reading the Collegian in between classes and sitting in the dining hall when I was a freshman thinking to myself, “Really… I can stay here all day and eat? Yeah, I am going to!”
UMass definitely helped shape my thinking about what I wanted to do and my teachers were fantastic. But I think the biggest thing that UMass taught me was how to be scrappy. Most of the people of UMass have to work for what they have and no one really holds your hand because you should figure things out for yourself. So yeah, UMass taught me some valuable lessons about being self-sufficient, independent, and scrappy!