New West Pick | Big Sky Doc Film Festival

“Pushing Up Daisies” Showcases Depth of Fest’s Short Film Program

By Tad Sooter, 2-12-06

	Stills of Burla (top) and Jones courtesy of Full Mind Films.

Ronald Jones became a funeral director for the money, glamour and respect. He has found all three in his St. Louis suburb. Peter Burla is just trying to scratch out a living in rural Michigan, selling coffins to the elderly and waiting for people to die.

The short film “Pushing Up Daisies,� playing in the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival (screening 3:30 p.m., Feb. 15), examines the mysterious world of funerals by comparing these two men and their starkly different lifestyles.

One presents services with gilded caskets, chanting choirs and hundreds of mourners. The other holds burials in quiet cemeteries, with a plastic box full of ashes and a few surviving loved-ones.

With powerful depth the film explores how two men can be in the same profession but work in different worlds.

Director Doug Whyte says in his director's statement, "As a filmmaker I tend to gravitate toward subject matter that is overlooked in our society because it makes people uncomfortable. I look for topics that are deep, controversial, bizarre and eccentric. And what’s more mysterious and multi-layered than life, death and funeral directors?"

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