INTERVIEW: Sean Crowell, "Grounded"

Sean Crowell with a poster for his new doc Grounded

Sean Crowell grew up hearing about his uncles, usually by listening in on other relatives’ whispered conversations. He knew Terry and James Dougherty had checkered pasts, but the specifics of their exploits were shrouded in mystery. When he finally learned the truth, he was floored: in the 1970s, the brothers played key roles in an international marijuana smuggling operation.

“When I first found out, I was shocked.” Crowell recalled. “Cultural attitudes on marijuana have shifted dramatically in the last several years. But back then, I thought they were bad people.”

However, the truth was more complicated. The Dougherty brothers obviously knew that transporting pot into the United States was illegal, but they refused to do the job in a way that would hurt anyone.

“My uncles refused to carry guns, and their bosses only hired clean-cut, clear-headed people,” said Crowell. “They wouldn’t even use guys with tattoos. And it turns out that I also knew a lot of them peripherally as a kid. I’d see them at family barbeques sometimes.”

As Crowell, a 1991 University of West Georgia graduate who works as a key grip in the entertainment industry, dug up more details about the story, he knew he had the material for a great movie – especially since his uncles were amiable protagonists as opposed to murderous villains.

“I learned that even back in the ’70s, marijuana was treated differently than other illegal substances” he said. “Law enforcement officials usually thought of those guys more like moonshiners than drug traffickers. But they still had to punish people who were breaking the law.”

His research resulted in Grounded, a documentary chronicling the exploits of Terry and James Dougherty, as well as the law enforcement agents who eventually caught them. Crowell knew he had a wealth of material just by interviewing his uncles, but he didn’t want the story to feel one-sided. That’s why obtaining the participation of Alabama Bureau of Investigation agent Jerry Ward and Drug Enforcement Agent Jerry Schubel was crucial to the project’s success.

“I was nervous about talking to them, but after a few weeks of phone conversations they got more approachable,” said Crowell. “Of course, they eventually asked me how I heard about the story.”

He knew the question would come up at some point, so he decided from the start that he needed to be honest.

“I told them Terry and Jimmy were my uncles, and there was this long silence on the other end of the line,” he recalled. “But they both agreed to move forward.”

Crowell also learned that Ward and Schubel were good at their jobs because they did their homework.

“When we finally met in person to shoot their interviews, they handed me this manila folder full of old documents and photos,” he said. “It was the case file on my uncles, which was an important resource. We ended up using a lot of those pictures in the movie.”

But then one of the Jerrys held up another, considerably thinner, manila folder.

“They told me it was their file on me,” he said. “Before agreeing to be in the documentary, they had me checked out by every law enforcement agency in the country. My jaw dropped for a second, then I told them it must’ve been the most boring file they’d ever read. They said I was right. There was absolutely nothing on me.”

To get a complete picture of the story’s climactic bust, Crowell had all the participants recall that eventful night down to the smallest details they could remember. Each interviewee mentioned different elements, creating an intricate narrative once all the stories were edited together.

“I didn’t want to go into the movie with an agenda,” Crowell said. “I just wanted the story to be the story. The guys were smugglers, the cops were the cops and everyone was just doing their jobs on all sides. I wanted everybody’s perspective.”

Grounded recently completed an award-winning festival circuit run. It took home Best Feature Film at the Pittsburgh Independent Film Festival and the Audience Award at the Skyline Indie Film Fest in Winchester, Va. The documentary was also an official selection to the Dixie Film Festival in Athens, Ga., and the Dances With Films festival in Los Angeles.

The documentary is available for download now at www.groundedthemovie.com. Distribution deals with on-demand services and iTunes are on the horizon as well. Perhaps most exciting of all, considering the Elmore Leonard-esque characters involved in the story, is Crowell’s interest in adapting the documentary into a dramatic feature. He’s currently in the early stages of the development process.

In the meantime, Crowell is staying busy with his day job, working on television shows including HBO’s Silicon Valley and Getting On, and the upcoming films Godzilla and Wish I Was Here. He’s also prepping his next documentary feature, focusing on documented immigrants serving in the military.