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Stephan Wassmann: is the Director, Producer, DP, Editor and Writer of Scrapper. He grew up in Lebanon, Greece and England and studied International Relations and Film at Stanford University. After getting his start with Roger Corman he went on to work as a cameraman, writer, producer and director. He is currently editing a documentary he shot in Peru, developing two other documentaries about Rwanda and Cuba and also writing a fiction screenplay based on Scrapper.
Scrapper, won the documentary Spirit Award at the 20 1 1 Brooklyn Film Festival. (It also won Best Documentary in Seattle (STIFF), a Royal Reel Award in Canada (CIFF) and is an official nominee in the San Francisco DocFest in October). Synopsis: Scrapper explores a darkly enigmatic and brazen American outlaw subculture - a small clutch of survivalists and wild-eyed iconoclasts who earn a dangerous living scavenging bombs, missiles and other combat ephemera from the US Navy's Chocolate Mountain Aerial Bombing and Gunnery Range in Southeastern California. Rummaging over the 670-square mile live bombing range for spent ordnance, the scrappers find high-grade metals - aluminum, brass and copper - that are turned into cash at salvage yards. Often, this funds another week long meth binge. Inside their survivalist compounds and trailers, the scrappers share their insights into the dangers of scrapping, territorial disputes, national priorities, and the Chocolate Mountains' slide into a smuggling corridor for Mexican narcotrafficantes and coyotes (human traffickers). In sum, Scrapper is an excursion into a lawless and militarized post-apocalyptic wilderness.
Faktorovich: How did you decide on making this film?
Wassmann: Michael DiGregorio, one of my partners and a co-producer and co-writer on our documentary discovered the story of bomb scrappers while researching a book he was writing about the smuggling and illegal immigration in the Niland area. A veteran journalist who specializes in edgy stories set in the Southwest US, Mike came across an article in a San Diego magazine about a veteran scrapper, JR, and was inspired to explore the bigger story. After many abortive attempts we eventually tracked JR down in the middle of nowhere and over many months gradually persuaded him to let us include him in the documentary.
My earliest contacts with the Saltón Sea/ Chocolate Mountains Bombing range began in the...