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Square dancer. Director Patrick Creadon films American Crossword Puzzle Tournament past finalist Al Sanders of Fort Collins, Colorado, who keeps finishing near the top. Going into the 2005 competition, Sanders had taken third place in five of the previous six years and fourth place once.
PHOTO BY ROBIN HOLLAND/IFC FILMS
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One word, eight letters: a film about crossword puzzles and their editor at The New York Times, Will Shortz.
"The first question, and sometimes only question, people had when they discovered we were making this film," says director Patrick Creadon, "is how on earth do they make those puzzles?"
This sort of ready honesty is at the heart of Creadon's documentary, which takes both an insider's and an outsider's view of the unexpected world of crossword puzzles, culminating with moving coverage of the 2005 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford, Connecticut.
Throughout the feature, famous puzzle enthusiasts like ex-President Bill Clinton, Daily Show host Jon Stewart, and PBS filmmaker Ken Burns are interviewed along with less well-known puzzle pros like Trip Payne, Al Sanders and Ellen Ripstein. The film is a document of connected worlds told through the eyes of seemingly disconnected individuals, resulting in an eclectic mix of people one might be surprised to find culled together in the same film. But these jump cuts of lives seem ideally suited to a film about crossword puzzles.
"Making a movie really is like making a crossword puzzle," Creadon admits. "Ultimately, you want to grab a bunch of very different topics and ideas and pull them all together very tightly in order to tell a story. It's exactly what crossword puzzle constructors do. So as we were making the movie, we thought it would be really fun to play off the structure of a crossword puzzle. How different things are next to each other, above, or beside one another."
Creadon's interest in crosswords began, like most, with the Games page of The New York Times. His interest in filmmaking, however, was somewhat more unorthodox. A Chicago native, he spent his early years as a child actor with his brother and two sisters, appearing in various clothing catalogs and commercials. From this modest start, Creadon found himself drawn to telling a story from the other side of the camera lens, working in public television for several years, and spending the last 15 years as a freelance camera operator.
Though very familiar with documentary filmmaking and hardly a novice, this was Creadon's first feature film, and of all the topics in the world to cover, crossword puzzles is an admittedly odd choice.
"My wife and I are big fans of Will Shortz's puzzle. We wanted to find a topic that was interesting to us and fun to make. We loved it. Literally, after a long day of working on the film, we'd wind down by taking out The New York Times crossword puzzle." This enthusiasm for the game helped shape Creadon's intimate look at the people who dedicate part of their lives to puzzle solving—from Daniel Okrent, who keeps a daily record of his puzzle-solving time, to fascinating footage of cruciverbalist Merl Reagle constructing an original crossword in front of the camera.
This attention to the craft of puzzlemaking echoes Creadon's belief in independent filmmaking. Today, with the advent of digital cameras and computer software to edit footage quickly and professionally, there are more opportunities to make films that couldn't have been made 10 years ago.
"Nowadays, if you have an idea you really believe in, and you can scrap together the money, you can really make almost any movie you want to make," Creadon reveals. "In the past, if I had the idea to make this movie, it might have taken years to find somebody to underwrite the project or greenlight it at the studio. With independent filmmaking the way it is now, if you have the story you really believe in and are crazy enough to see it through to the end, your options are almost limitless. It's a very exciting time to be an independent filmmaker."
Wordplay, the title of Creadon's film and the answer to the opening clue of this article, is an example of the work independent filmmakers have been producing in the last few years. Intimate examinations of worlds few know of but which are as worth documenting and learning from as any major news story—often more so. Thankfully, such films have begun to gain national distribution. Creadon's movie, released by IFC Films, has found a fairly wide release for a feature of its kind—opening in New York City on June 16 and eventually spreading to nearly 200 different theaters throughout the country.
As audiences begin to build for these small films, people will inevitably find themselves drawn to a wide array of subcultures and differing points of view. An effect which can only help piece together the varied facets of a shrinking globe in an age of mass communication.
"In a funny way," Creadon says, "life is like a good crossword puzzle. Going through it, you're faced with a wide-range of different people, places and experiences, and it's sometimes hard to make sense of all those things. But we really are all connected in one way or another, and it's worth taking a step back to appreciate that."
Originally Published:
The Mercury (6.7.06)
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