#  Andy Koenig, G-5: Film & Archival Research 

 



 In summer of 2022, I began work on a project that lay pretty far afield for me: *Concord*, a film in preproduction directed by Richard Linklater. Linklater, best known for film epics like *Boyhood* and the *Before* trilogy, takes as his latest subject the Transcendentalists. This film is even grander in scale than his previous projects since it starts with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Divinity School address at Harvard and ends with his death over forty years later.

 I found out about the project through Megan Marshall, a consultant on the project. Megan and I corresponded after I heard about open positions for research assistants in February, and in May, after a position opened up, she recommended me for the job. After being brought onboard in May, I spoke by Zoom for about an hour with Linklater and the screenwriters, Karen Croner and Holly Ghent, who filled me in on the project, which has been “in development” for two decades and is only entering preproduction now. (Ethan Hawke has been cast as Ralph Waldo Emerson.) For perspective, it will likely be at least a few years until this film is in production, so it is best to think of my involvement with the project a little like someone whose job is on the front end of an assembly line—many stages must come after before there’s a finished product.

 My research subject was Henry David Thoreau. I read everything I could about him, from biographies to his journal to correspondence and essays. I had been asked to search for the human factor—how the Transcendentalists felt about each other, what their personal lives and relations were like. My subject was a tough nut to crack. Thoreau is not known to have had any romantic relationships and was notoriously reticent about his personal life, even if he was exceedingly articulate about certain aspects of his inner life, like his passion for nature. One of the filmmakers’ goals is to portray a Thoreau who is not just a hermit or a curmudgeon, but a passionate friend, ardent revolutionary and devotee of nature. He is, of course, all of these things, and the more I read of and about him the more nuanced became my view of this “extremely complex human being” (Virginia Woolf).

 I tried to be concrete and vivid when synthesizing my findings. I described what Thoreau wore, what he looked like and what others thought of him. I was, in other words, attempting to think cinematically about my subject. Film is an entirely different medium from writing, and I had been instructed in my meeting with Rick, Holly and Karen to orient myself around various enumerated “scenes” or pivot points. So, for instance, the death of Thoreau’s brother John was one “scene” for which I conducted research. First, I hunted for anecdotes about Thoreau’s behavior in the face of his brother’s death. (He caught a psychosomatic case of lockjaw; Emerson and friends were extremely worried for him; in later years he ran from the room when his brother’s name was mentioned.) But I also attempted to provide background and color. John Thoreau was considered the more gregarious, upbeat and affable of the two brothers; Thoreau himself was something of a black sheep compared with his father and brother, and, when John and Henry started a school together, they engaged in a good cop/bad cop routine, as various former students attest. In other words, the scene itself was the tip of the iceberg; beneath the surface lay a treasure trove of detail about Concord’s social milieu.

 As a research assistant, I did not attempt to be exhaustive, nor would this have been feasible given the constraints and timeline of the project. Part of my job was delineating a reasonable scope of research for myself in the course of a single summer. This, I expect, is a tool that will prove useful to me down the road as I continue with my dissertation and ultimately undertake book-length projects. I am satisfied with the results and feel that I provided useful information to the filmmakers. Additionally, I wrote a 15–20-page sketch of Thoreau’s life, his hobbyhorses, his passions, and his foibles. I hope that this may be useful to the cast of *Concord,* as actors are meant to get in character, and one way they do this is by reading about their subjects, particularly with a period film. (Linklater has likened the project he has in mind to Stanley Kubrick’s *Barry Lyndon*—historically accurate, but no mere “bonnet picture.”)

 Despite my initial fears that the filmmakers only sought the imprimatur of Harvard-affiliated scholars, I hope the research I and the band of independent researchers conducted will inform the film. The costume departments may well benefit from my research into Thoreau’s clothing and appearance, and the locations department may appreciate having access to Thoreau’s extraordinarily detailed description of the various houses he lived in throughout his life. As a researcher, I have tried to think in terms of what a film needs, what kinds of information are useful to a director and to the numerous departments in a film production. I hope to contribute further to this particular project. I hope, with the benefit of a positive recommendation from the screenwriters and director, I will be able to seek out similar paid positions in the entertainment industry. For me, this has been an eye-opening experience, which could ultimately lead to alt-ac opportunities down the road. I am grateful to the Literary Careers fund for helping fund this project, as the pay from *Detour Film Inc.* alone would not have sufficed.