When it was on the air, “Your Opinion, Please” out of Billings could go pretty much anywhere. That was the thrill of it. Now it’s getting a new treatment by filmmaker Marshall Granger, whose father co-hosted the legendary radio show.
Your Opinion, Please, also the title of Granger’s in-development nonfiction short film, is built on audio clips from the show run by DJs Marvin Granger (Marshall’s dad) and Ken Siebert. During its run on Yellowstone Public Radio from 1998 to 2008, the show celebrated and embraced open, live discussion. The public did, too. Each Thursday and Friday night, radios in restaurants, living rooms and car dashboards spread the voices of random Montanans saying random things across the state. It was an era of the burgeoning talk-show host and, with it, more and more didactic programming. But Montana is a land of both sheep and wolves, and this radio experiment stood confidently for the peoples’ voice, unfiltered and unscreened.
It’s a bit of a reunion for Marshall to rework this piece of Montana culture. He’s a film editor in L.A. now and this prodigal return feels packaged in reverence and love for this place.
With this film, Granger’s seeking to bring the audio source material into a new filmic experience by juxtaposing it with contemporary footage of Montana’s natural and built environments. It’s a tight and Montana-focused crew for this project. Marshall serves as director, producer and editor, with Alana Waksman as a producer and Lorin Granger as director of photography. The radio show’s gone quiet and the film’s not yet finished, but the conversation has certainly reopened. Your Opinion, Please is as much a statement as it is an encouragement. And whose opinion better to start with than Marshall’s?
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Hi Marshall. To spin right into it, how would you identify yourself and your work? And how would you describe who you are in relation to your new film project, Your Opinion, Please?
Marshall Granger: Since I was a teenager I began being broadly comfortable with declaring myself a filmmaker. In recent years, as I refinine my skill set and focus on this very particular track, I say I am an editor. So this upcoming project does feel like the first time in a long time that I’m comfortably stepping back into the space of being the author, being a filmmaker.
Hearing you talk about that reminds me that the subject of this project, the radio show, which is already communally constructed. So in a sense, your editorial chops will come in handy. You’re from this place, know these people, are these people. And then you’re re-authoring some other thing.
It comes down to what you actually have as footage and how you’re going to put it together. And then how you’re going to hold the responsibility of putting someone’s words up against a certain image. That’s the whole business of context as an editor. And this is totally what this project is. It’s recontextualizing this radio program a decade later. To start a conversation of what has changed since then. Could we still facilitate something like this in a public space now?
Could you say more about the genesis of this project?
When I graduated high school in 2010, I had this great computer science teacher who knew that I was interested in filmmaking and let me explore with Premiere Pro 2.0. When I graduated, he happened to also have been cataloging and recording radio programs. So he had recorded this show every week for a chunk of the time, like several years’ worth. And he just gave me a disc. In recent years, I found that disc, put those files on my computer and then on my phone and while driving around or washing the dishes or whatever I would just throw an episode on. Initially it was interesting to hear my dad at this different time in his life, but it also became this fascinating thing, to hear a time with less interpersonal dynamics around political issues, which has become so just openly volatile.
Also Montana doesn’t have a huge population, so there’s a lot of times where there wasn’t a big line so whoever called was often put straight into live radio. Warts and all. People were figuring out in real time what they’re trying to articulate, which is a huge part of why this is so fascinating in the age we live in now. Your words weren’t edited. My dad and Ken would converse with people and they would correct them if facts were off or if they had something that they could contribute. Just trying to facilitate someone getting their opinion across and never really judging them or casting their perspective in any specific light.
So how are you negotiating the tension of your voice and the various voices of these community members?
I think what it will come down to is a portrait. It’s not a film about the show. It’s not going to be interviewing my dad or anybody who was on the show. It’s putting together what feels like a kind of all-encompassing experience of what it was like to hear the show and then setting that up against present day photography of Montana. I don’t know about my “voice” yet. There were a decent number of callers who were coming from the other side of the political spectrum. So maintaining that is important. This is what it could sound like for people of opposite political beliefs to engage their ideas in public space. And maybe even find that there’s some respect there.
This work of yours has me thinking about filmmaker Ephraim Asili’s The Inheritance (2020), which talks about bringing the individual and the personal within a context of collectivity, which for his work he means “Black radical collectivity.” And I think about Alana Waksman’s We Burn Like This (2021) , which you worked on, that explores collective and individual aspects of identity. I’m also reminded of this anarchist text by writer and poet Hakim Bey, “T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone,” which talks about a kind of pirate utopia, a temporary space made to elude control.
It certainly has to be taken with the understanding that I was a young person growing up with this certain idea that Montana was/is a purple state. It’s one of those few places in the country where you might actually have people of both political parties in charge at the same time and having to negotiate that. It might be a little like rose-tinted on my part from what the reality was. Something that my dad was always instilling in us was the importance of spending time around people with different perspectives than you. And that’s inherent to listening to this radio show. There is this component of this project that is speaking to this identity that I associate with Montana, which I’d like to believe is still true and continues to be true despite some of the very radical and scary legislation that has been moving forward over the last couple of years.
I feel like what you are saying speaks to Montana as a constructed thing. A constructed identity, both collective and individual. Arbitrary lines drawn on stolen lands, part of a larger constructed nation-state. You are a Montanan with a certain set of tools and expertise. You have the ability to participate in the active reinforcement, deconstruction and reconstruction of what Montana means and what it means to be Montanan. Do you feel a responsibility or accountability?
I’ve spent the last three years living outside of Montana for the first time in my life. And maybe it’s easier from a distance to feel a sense of responsibility. It does feel like a moment that calls for not necessarily rebranding, but a revisiting and a refreshing of the concept of Montana. Because “last best place” to me sounds like classic older Montana really hanging on to something. Or it’s the out-of-state people coming into the last good thing that they can escape to. There are people really fighting for Montana’s best interest and gaining some kind of momentum or doing some cool things to protect it. This project can be a companion to that effort.
Why did you choose the documentary format?
Working in the art house world and going to screenings at Big Sky Doc Fest of more unconventional forms of documentary filmmaking, I saw that there is such power in the visual component to documentaries. And technically, this project is just audio. So I think in order to really create the kind of space that I want, it needs visuals to bring people into a place. Literally, but it also opens people up to receiving things in a different way than if it was just a documentary podcast. The conversations don’t make sense without the context. It needs to be framed, to be lifted into the sort of greater context, the bigger picture.
Your project does position you as a sort of DJ. And as I watched the sample, I noticed this suspension happening, where the literalness of Montanans talking with images of Montana started to make a space for a larger or in-the-background, unnamed aliveness. A unity. A non-linear continuity. The literal stops making sense, in a good way. And I become aware of my own opinions. How do you see others experiencing this work?
My hope is to go all over the state, focusing mainly in the central and eastern parts of Montana, to get to these communities where the calls were coming from so that it can have, like you’re saying, a literal one-to-one. I do hope that all of these different corners of Montana start to melt together and that the viewer is transcending into this other space — of Montana as an experience. I hope that it equates to when you are on a road trip and listening to the radio or listening to music and you’re obviously paying attention to what you’re looking at because you have to, but you also are on a different plane. The film isn’t telling you anything specifically about what to do with all this information, it is just happening as a result of you being in that state. I want you to feel like you’re hearing complete thoughts and complete interactions and kind of drifting in and out of those. Pushing and pulling. I hope it creates this kind of transcendental moment of Montana.
What is next for Your Opinion, Please and for you?
Next, the biggest hurdle is to take this long production road trip to capture these places. Funds raised will make sure that that can be done with the correct time and attention. And then it’s figuring out how those images and the radio show can talk to each other. Then by later next year or earlier the following year, I will have something to share. I have longer term ideas to physically share it in person with people across the state, which I think is important because the whole thing is about community dialogue.
What do you think will happen or hopefully will happen when Montana listens to itself? Reflects on itself? What’s the significance of that?
It’s not the tagline of the film, but that is kind of the main purpose. To hold a mirror to Montana and give a reflection. At my most tired and pessimistic, when I listen to the radio show, I think about how it’s just not like that anymore. There’s always been these polarizing things about anywhere, about Montana. It’s a simple wish that this film won’t change things, but that it reminds people of where they are and what this place can be. It’s not an easy thing to frame and I love that challenge.
