Forget the Loincloths

Though he grew up on a Spokane reservation, writer Sherman Alexie never thought of himself as an “Indian.” “When I saw movies with Indians, I always rooted for the cowboys,” says Alexie, who wrote the screenplay for “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” billed by its producers as the first full-length film written, directed and co-produced by Native Americans.

“I didn’t identify with these Indians running around in loincloths,” he says. “That’s not the world I knew.”

“Phoenix” illustrates Alexie’s commitment to present Native Americans as three-dimensional characters. “It’s sad that in this day and time that is considered revolutionary,” says Alexie. “Our tiny little film is considered groundbreaking, when really it’s just a tender, domestic piece. But it is groundbreaking because of its portrayal of Indians, who actually get to play human beings with funny and complex emotions.

“I think this will change the way Indians are looked at in cinema.”

The movie is based on Alexie’s 1993 award-winning collection of short stories, “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.” Alexie says he was wooed by several producers to sell the rights to his book but declined because he didn’t trust his story in a non-Native American’s hands.

“I waited for an Indian director,” Alexie says. “The last thing I wanted was another ‘Pow Wow Highway’ [a 1989 independent release directed by Jonathan Wacks] or ‘Dances With Wolves.’ But I was interested in making a movie. Movies are active and alive, closer to the Indian oral tradition.”

Alexie, 31, met director Chris Eyre through a mutual friend. Eyre, a Cheyenne/Arapaho from Klamath Falls, Ore., had read “The Lone Ranger and Tonto” and seen its screen potential. “Our working together came about pretty simply,” says Eyre, a 28-year-old graduate of New York University’s film school. “I told him we should make a movie, and he agreed.”

Last November, Alexie pitched the project to producer Scott Rosenfelt, co-founder of the Seattle-based ShadowCatcher Entertainment. Two days later, Rosenfelt says he decided “Phoenix” would be his new company’s first feature.

“We had worked up a relationship with Sherman and were anxious to work with him,” says Rosenfelt, whose production credits include “Home Alone” and “Mystic Pizza.” “One of our goals with ShadowCatcher is to find and develop local talent in and around the Seattle area. His story is distinctively Northwestern, and that’s what we’re all about.”

With a budget just under $4 million, casting was surprisingly easy, considering most of the actors worked for well below their usual wage.

“We had our choice of Indian actors,” says Alexie. “They were just glad not to have to play a part that calls for a loincloth or war paint.”

“Native American actors just don’t get enough opportunities like this,” says Adam Beach, who plays the lead role of Victor.

Though shooting didn’t begin until April of this year, Eyre and Alexie began developing the project in 1995 at the Sundance Filmmakers and Screenwriters Lab. With money he received from a Rockefeller Foundation Intercultural Film Fellowship, Eyre directed a short film, “Somebody Kept Saying Powwow,” culled from the second act of Alexie’s script.

“There was producer interest even before the book came out, but I kept hearing the same stereotypes and cliches,” Alexie says. “One producer actually said, ‘This would make a great movie, but can I make the characters white?’ ”

Both writer and director knew they were embarking on a potentially groundbreaking project, though, as Alexie states, the material is far from it. Anxious to avoid a “plight of the Indian” theme, Eyre describes the film’s narrative as “universal. It just happens to be from the viewpoint of a Native American.”

Still, he doesn’t shy away from the film’s significance. “I want to reinvent the image of Native Americans,” Eyre says. “We’re never been characters, just icons. The difference between that icon of the Indian and actual Native American culture is pretty great.

“I bought into that icon myself,” he says. “I remember watching ‘The Searchers,’ a great movie, but I never noticed its negative representation of Indians.”

Such portrayals continue, Eyre says. “Oliver Stone is one of those filmmakers who is protecting that romantic view of what an Indian is,” he says. “But that’s the American folklore viewpoint, not how we view ourselves.”

“Phoenix” details the trek of two young Coeur d’Alene Indian men--Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-the-Fire--from Idaho to Arizona, where they claim the remains of Victor’s father, who had saved Thomas’ life when he was a baby but later abandoned his son.

“For Indians especially, a sense of home is such a strong thing, whether you have stability or dislocation,” Eyre says.

He hopes “Phoenix,” which will be distributed by Miramax, perhaps next spring, will serve as a springboard for more Indian-made films, much like Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It” did for African Americans.

“It’s a milestone in terms of self-representation of Native America,” says the director. “I think everyone involved knew what we as a community are moving toward, which is having our own voice in cinema.”

Progress is already evident, though largely in-house. Alexie says ShadowCatcher has enlisted him to adapt his second novel, “Indian Killer,” a murder-mystery set in Seattle, for the screen. He is also slated to direct.

“It’s encouraging, but realistically I know that movies are made for 15-year-old white boys,” Alexie says. “But that’s not going to stop me from writing about Indians. Write about what you know. That’s all I’m doing.”