INTERVIEW: Wildlife artists compete for top prize in ‘Million Dollar Duck’
The Million Dollar Duck, the new film from director Brian Golden Davis, follows a group of wildlife artists as they compete in the high-stakes Federal Duck Stamp Contest. Their prize is both fame and fortune, but there’s a conservation side to the competition as well. Sales of the stamps have raised a tremendous amount of money to save the nation’s wetlands.
The film will air on Animal Planet on Wednesday, Sept. 14 at 9 p.m. as part of the special Animal Planet Presents series.
For Davis, the only juried art prize run by the U.S. government gave him more drama and comedy than most blockbusters. “The real impetus for the project was I had heard about Martin Smith’s book, The Wild Dark Chase, and after reading that book, I was just so fascinated,” Davis said in a recent phone interview. “When I was younger, a friend of mine’s stepdad had won the contest, and he like showed up one day. He’s like, ‘My dad won. He painted a duck. It got on a stamp, and now we’re set for life.’ And I always thought that was such an interesting little quote that you could paint this duck, and your life could be changed over night.”
Some of the people in the contest try for 20, 30 or 40 years to win the top prize. It’s a fierce competition of highly skilled artists. Davis called them “dedicated,” especially those who fall short time and time again.
The output of these artists is something to behold. The reality of their depictions is spot on, and many stamp buyers will have a tough time telling the difference between the paintings and real photographs of the ducks.
“I was really impressed by the artwork from the get go,” Davis said. “I’m not an art collector or anything. I can appreciate the skill. … It almost can be mistaken for a photograph. It’s so realistic you kind of get caught up in that aspect, like this looks really real, but for a lot of the artists, they’re using a lot of creativity, and picking out the habitat of the bird and deciding what the lighting conditions are. To them, they’re almost making a sort of fantasy element, adding this magic into a real life situation or a natural situation, and that’s where the creativity comes in. So it’s not only just the skill of being able to replicate a duck or paint it in a certain way. It’s also like getting it into that environment where there’s a storm in the background, or there’s reeds placed in a certain way or the lighting is a certain hour.”
The big challenge for Davis was choosing the right subjects for the final product. He wanted to choose wisely because he was interested in following the story of an eventual winner. However, every year there are quite a number of entrants — more than 200, the director said — so the filmmaker constantly feared he had chosen the wrong contestants.
“I think I had a 3 percent change of following a winner, and we had to kind of go with that,” he said. “So that was really scary for me was just thinking that we could dedicate a lot of time in the filming, but we wouldn’t have had a winner in one of the characters that we chose. And so that was the biggest fear.”
Audiences member will have to tune in to see if Davis chose the right competitors.
An important aspect of the stamp contest are the dollars raised for conservation. That adds a positive element to the fierce competition of it all. Certainly each artist wants to win big and enjoy the money and prestige. However, the dedication seems good-natured and almost philanthropic. The money raised helps to save wildlife and protect wetlands across the United States.
“I think that’s where you see a lot of the passion of the people that do it because a lot of them are also very involved in this type of activity, either hunting, or birding or being a conservationist,” the director said. “That’s why a lot of people enter for so many years is because they have that connection just to that side of it, and they don’t care if they win or lose. They like being part of that conservation movement and knowing they’re contributing in some way.”
When Davis was making The Million Dollar Duck, distribution was always uncertain. For so many independent documentarians, making the film is only half the challenge. However, the ducks were all aligned for Davis and company because after an initial screening at the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival, where the film won the Audience Award and Jury Award for Documentary Feature, Animal Planet and Lionsgate came knocking.
“The chances of getting an independent film out are so small,” he said. “If I spend a couple of years doing it, and it doesn’t come out, I can live with it because it’s something I’m that interested in and that I’m passionate about. But, yeah, basically we sold the film at Slamdance in the first night. We did a screening. We walked out, and then Animal Planet came in right away. And Lionsgate came in right away with the offer to distribute the film.”
He added: “I think Animal Planet was the perfect partner to do that because they were looking for character-driven stories … about that human-animal relationship, and also it came from a focus on conservation. I mean how many films are going to come out about that every year.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Million Dollar Duck airs on Animal Planet on Wednesday, Sept. 14 at 9 p.m. Click here for more information.
