Les Branson. Screenshot from the prizewinning documentary Guerrilla Filmmaker
Les Branson’s interview with Paul Halas, with additional questions from Phil Hall and James McGuire.
Les Branson is a filmmaker, poet, playwright, novelist, newspaper columnist and erstwhile business person, one of those people who’s annoyingly talented in multiple areas, and breathes fresh air into everything he turns his hand to. We were captivated by his documentary Guerrilla Filmmaker, seeing obvious parallels with our own efforts, and wanted to know more. We were also fascinated to learn he lives in Poolville, Texas, which we in the UK hadn’t heard of. Apparently not so many people in the USA have either.
Davenport Building in Poolville. Photograph Renelibrary Wikimedia Commons
Paul Halas: So pleased to meet you!
Les Branson: Thanks… It’s a bit of an intellectual wasteland out here, so it’s good to have these talks.
Phil Hall: Well, with what you’re doing I think you’re changing that. Creating an intellectual landscape.
Les: I certainly try.
Phil: So, how many Bernie supporters are there in Poolville?
Les: Probably just me, would be my guess. There may be a few closeted Bernie supporters, but none that’ll admit it.
Phil: I’ve had a lot of friends from Texas, dating back from my time working in Saudi Arabia.
Les: There’s a lot of nice people in Texas. Texas has quite a few stereotypes, but people generally are very kind, very well-mannered, soft-spoken for the most part. They don’t all live up to the stereotypes. So, it’s not quite the intellectual wasteland I might imply.
Phil: Is there a kind of cultural revolution in the sense that you’re recognising cultures that have been ignored? For example, Mexican culture, which I guess is a bit ignored in Texas, along with other cultures. A question of submerged cultures, if you like.
Les: There’s some truth in that. Certainly there are some horrible actions being carried out right now. But, for the most part, we do share a culture with the Hispanic and Latino population. A lot of people get along very well, and don’t hold any of the animosities coming from some for political reasons.
Paul: Looking at your body of work, and in particular the way you go about that work, we’re very impressed. As I implied, we see parallels between your guerrilla filmmaking ventures and our own efforts. We like to think of ourselves as guerrilla publishers.
Les: I appreciate that. It’s not quite as grand as it sounds, but I’ve tried to make the most of it. It’s been a long struggle; fun in a way, but also very gruelling.
Paul: I was very interested by what you said in Guerrilla Filmmaker about making movies on a shoestring – or even less… (We have the same problems!) How did you go about raising the money to put anything on film? I wouldn’t insult you with any comparison to Ed Wood (although there’s nothing wrong with a cult hit or two), but you must’ve faced similar challenges.
Les Branson’s definition of Guerrilla Filmmaker. From the prize winning documentary ‘Guerrilla Filmmaker’
Les: I’ve been surrounded by some talented people who also became good friends –in particular my executive producer, Sam Roden. He’s in the oil business, an autodidact who taught himself to drill oil wells. He made enough money to feel comfortable financing my early projects, including my stage plays. So much is thanks to that, plus I was making enough money at the time to be able to take any extra I had and stretch it to accomplish as much as I was able.
Sam couldn’t always come up with all the money I needed – whether for financial reasons, or possible doubts about the budget, or just the way things were going. Producers keep the purse strings very tight. So I owe a lot to him. He’s also a musician, has his own band, and he likes movies – so he invested in my talent.
I’ve been surrounded by some talented people who also became good friends –in particular my executive producer, Sam Roden. He’s in the oil business. Photograph Les Branson
Paul: Can you tell us what films you’ve made?
Les: There is Blood is Thicker (a crime drama), Having my Baby (an action film about a guy who gets a girl pregnant, and learns she’s going to have an abortion, so he kidnaps her and takes her to the mountains)… and then there’s the documentary Guerrilla Filmmaker about the making of those two movies.
Michaell Ray Davis. Sheriff from ‘Blood is Thicker’ (link to trailer). Credit Les Branson
Paul: Were there any issues regarding the content of your films? Any ideological conflicts perhaps?
Les: Absolutely. Especially in Texas. There’s a large religious population –fundamentalists – and a lot of my scripts can be a little bit vulgar, a bit over the top, with rough language. A lot of actors wouldn’t even want to curse. They’d want to modify it. A lot of my stuff has to do with drug dealers, prostitutes, murderers, that sort of thing. A lot of it is made up, maybe based on things I’ve read or come into contact with. That rubbed some people the wrong way, but they still wanted to be part of it anyway.
Bible Belt bait? ‘a lot of my scripts can be a little bit vulgar’. Denise Prince in ‘Blood is Thicker’. Credit Les Branson
Paul: Did you ever set out to disturb your audience – maybe from the best of motives? Did you ever go for shock value?
Les: When I do it’s for a good reason – simply to better illustrate my characters. I’m not really into shock value per-se, but I do like to take my audience out of their comfort zone. I grew up around people who were clinically insane, heard a lot of bizarre things people aren’t used to, and I wanted to show that, because you can’t keep those relatives in the attic forever. There’s a certain beauty in bringing that to the screen.
Phil: Do you think you can explain the insanity in terms of environment? Sometimes if you’re in a certain environment, you can’t explain why people behave the way they do. If you’re stuck in Poolville – sorry, if you’re enjoying yourself in Poolville – maybe you’ve been reflecting for decades on why people are the way they are.
Les: Certainly. There’s a difference between clinical insanity and insanity brought on by history, life, and situations. What I would try and do when portraying insanity in an artistic way was based on things my brother Rene Branson said or did, or various other people.
Phil: Your brother’s a really interesting guy.
Les: Thanks. I wasn’t sure if that segment (of the documentary) would throw people off too much, but it really did start with my brother. He was such an interesting character that I was able to use that in an artistic way.
it really did start with my brother Rene Branson. He was such an interesting character. Credit Les Branson
Paul: I was initially puzzled with you opening your film like that, but then it made perfect sense. I think you hit us with the unexpected, though.
Les: Well, that’s something I do sometimes to shake people out of their comfort zone.
Phil: Can we talk about influences? I think we got to know each other when I was very rude about Cormac McCarthy. I love the film No Country for Old Men, and when I look at the Texas landscape, I fall in love with it… I’ve never seen such a beautiful landscape apart from Africa. So, I wonder what your influences are. Personally, I find McCarthy’s books disturbing, nihilistic, full of social Darwinism and strange theories about quantum mechanics, but he’s obviously a great artist. And there are more great films centred on Texas: Paris Texas, The Last Picture Show, There will be Blood… How do you explain these great movies centred in Texas?
Les: My early influences were when my mother would drop me off at a movie theatre in Chicago rather than hire a babysitter. She’d just say, “Stay here, watch the movies, I’ll come back and pick you up later.” So I was mainly by myself, exposed to ultra-violent films from the 1960s like Bonnie and Clyde, and spaghetti westerns with Clint Eastwood… All of America’s fascination with guns – I was swept up in that as well.
my mother would drop me off at a movie theatre in Chicago rather than hire a babysitter. Credit Les Branson
Phil: Did your mother leave you to see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?
Les: That came a little later; fortunately, I didn’t see it as a child! I was never really a fan of the horror genre until recently, when it became a little more artistic. As it happens, I did see Chainsaw Massacre when I was 14 or 15, at a drive-in theatre. It really terrified me. I was not used to seeing such on-screen carnage. Other influences: I like to read. My mother instilled in me a love of books. A seminal moment was when I was 12 years old and picked up The Big Kill, by Mickey Spillane. Up until then I’d read about mountain men and pioneers, but never any noirish detective novels. Regarding Cormac McCarthy, I’m not necessarily that fond of his storylines, more the way he writes – his tapestry of words, the way he puts words together to create magical images – that’s where his magic lies. And I do understand the imperialist and right-wing slant…
Phil: Wim Wenders, who made Paris Texas, said films shouldn’t be political. Do you think films should be political?
Les: Absolutely. There’s a saying, which I’m paraphrasing, “Everything we do is political. There’s no way to avoid it.” I try to put that in my writing. I’m always going to be on the left side of the political spectrum because I want to help humanity. I’ve lost some audience because of that, which is fine…
Paul: Would you say politics subconsciously underpins your work, or is it a conscious thought process… to get under an audience’s skin?
Les: It’s more like it’s my subconscious, surfacing. I can’t keep it from surfacing in my stories because of the class structure of society, and where I’ve occupied it for most of my life. But I also revel in that. I want to wake people up. I want a cultural revolution. I’m almost embarrassed to be an American at this point in time, with the inmates running the asylum.
Phil: Did your opinions form early? Where did you go to school?
Les: My first ten years were in Chicago. I was born in Chicago in 1959 – on the very day Buddy Holly died in a plane crash. My dad was part of what they called the hillbilly migration, from Appalachia to Chicago, looking for factory jobs. He was a hillbilly, the son of a horse trader. My mom was a country girl from East Texas, daughter of cotton pickers and waiters and cooks. I think the public schools in Chicago were good, very well-funded. They contributed to whatever intellectual yearning I may have. When we moved to Texas when I was 10, the independent, rural schools were somewhat inferior. There were 11 classmates in my graduating class of 1977. The school was very small. I did manage one semester in Baylor University. That’s the only college education I had.
Paul: I always associate Austin as having been a hotbed of left-wing culture in the 1960s and 70s, maybe because some of the finest artists in the underground comix movement went to college there. I’m thinking Gilbert Shelton, the late, great Frank Stack…
Les: I love the vibe there. It’s a mecca for artists; I would love to be an Austinite. If I had a choice of another city to move to it would probably be Austin. In fact, I found my first Conan the Barbarian book in Austin when I was 14 or 15. I read every Conan book after that. That gives you an insight into where my reading interests lie – I do like action and adventure.
Phil: Have you watched any Mexican films? There’s a great tradition of Mexican filmmaking –cowboy films, gangster films, stylised violence… Has that been an influence?
Les: Unfortunately, it hasn’t. It’s just been lack of time. But I was a big fan of Robert Rodriguez, and a few other Latino directors whose names escape me. Part of our gameplan 30 years ago was to have our movies dubbed into Spanish to sell to Mexico on VHS. But I’m not as familiar with Mexican cinema as I’d like to be. I love the Hispanic culture, but I’m a bit lax in that regard.
Paul: Going back to the subject guerrilla filmmaking, I presume you had to use locations where you didn’t have permission. You mention a film where you tapped a convenience store to find extras?
Les: Yes, it was a big challenge. It was a fluke we finished that movie – an absolute miracle. It was on 16mm film, and we could only manage one take most of the time. Luckily I had very talented people on board, many of them also learning on the fly. We couldn’t be afraid of failing. My director of photography, David Dixon, lugged that big 16mm camera around in the Texas heat for about 18 consecutive days. The movie you see now isn’t quite the one we filmed because we lost one of our sound reels and had to cut a lot of scenes. Regarding the rough characters, the henchmen, I got them from a rural convenience store in Poolville. They looked like bikers or roughnecks and had all the accoutrements. I just stood by the front door and said, “Hey, I’m making a movie. You guys want to be in it? I need some extras.” Several people said yes, and they really saved me in that regard. Shooting on a 1:1 ratio was very difficult. That’s one reason the movie has its shortcomings – we can overlook them in a grindhouse-type exploitation film, but it wouldn’t fly with a large studio that demands perfection. But it was fun to have to fill in the blanks on the fly – finding people and locations at the last minute. I got very lucky.
David Dixon with April Brown. ‘My director of photography, David Dixon, lugged that big 16mm camera around in the Texas heat for about 18 consecutive days.’ Credit Les Branson
Phil: What lessons do you think modern guerrilla filmmakers need to know? As an expert…
Les: I’m not sure I’m an expert, but thanks. The best advice I can give is: find like- minded people, who share your interests and are dedicated. It’s a collaborative effort. I was lucky enough to surround myself with talented people who believed in my talent. And not only do you need a good team, you need money! Gas money to get to the set, money for the props, money to feed everyone… If you have a crew, you don’t want them wandering off eating separately. They have to stay on location and be ready to shoot their scenes when the time comes. If they need to stay in a hotel overnight because they drove 80 miles to set, that costs money. So you do your homework and know it’s going to cost money and that you may fail. But in trying, you’ll learn and have a better chance next time.
Paul: Do you do your own editing?
Les: I oversee some of it, but my editor is David Dixon, who’s been with me from the start. He’s up on all the new editing technology and methods and is a walking encyclopaedia of cinema. Once again, you have to surround yourself with capable people – a good team.
Paul: Another question: distribution. How did you start getting your work distributed?
Les: I haven’t really found a distributor per-se, although with the advent of YouTube we can put things up. That’s one way in which my production team is probably inefficient – we don’t have a good marketing or distribution method right now. But we never let that stop us. Which is where YouTube is useful. To find a distributor you just need to come up with a gimmick or marketing point that draws attention to your project. It all boils down to money. None of us had big money. Sam was in the oil business, which can be feast or famine. He couldn’t always contribute as much as he wanted. Distribution is a stumbling block for most people trying to break into the industry.
Phil: How are you doing at festivals? You sounded surprised and pleased to be getting recognition.
Les: Surprised, yes. With my first movie, Blood is Thicker, we lost some of the sound and finished it 26 years later using the latest editing technology. It’s been nice to get local notice. In Dallas we were anathema to many people because of our methods, so it’s been rewarding to be selected for festivals and even win a couple. We submitted to about 20 festivals in the last year, were selected for three or four so far, and have won two – including Best Feature Made in Texas for Blood is Thicker at the 2026 Austin Indie Fest, as well as Best Action Movie at the Bocas Film Fest in Satellite Bech, Florida in 2025. And Guerrilla Filmmaker has been selected at the 2026 Austin Lift-Off Film Festival and can be viewed online this month by visiting their website and purchasing a virtual ticket. We also won an award for Most Ambitious Film back in 2010 for Having My Baby at the Columbia Gorge International Film Festival in Vancouver, Washington. It’s like playing the lottery – you enter as many festivals as you can afford and hope you get selected. We’ll keep on the festival circuit until the end of the year, and if we don’t have a distributor by then we’ll probably put the movies on Tubi and hope for the best.
Phil: I love Les’s spirit. I can see why he’s won things. He seems like a kindred spirit.
Paul: Yes, I see numerous parallels. The distribution side of things isn’t exactly our strong suit either. Some might say if we’re not being commercial we’re just amateurs, but I’m playing devil’s advocate here. In that spirit, do you think your time as a guerrilla filmmaker has been well spent?
Mitchel Self and Craig Taylor in Les Branson’s play ‘Hillbilly Karma’
Phil: I think if we didn’t do the things we do they wouldn’t exist. Les has talked about how desolate the cultural scene is where he lives. Maybe in a few years people from Poolville will look back and say, “There was this filmmaker named Les Branson. He made some really cool movies in Poolville.” And that begins to form the foundation of something.
Paul: What you’re doing is laudable, being in such a cultural vacuum. It’s different if you’re in a community where there’s a constant creative buzz.
(At this point the meeting is joined by James McGuire, an accomplished playwright, mime artist and author. We know some very talented people at Arsnotoria!)
Phil: James is a playwright, and Les Branson is also a playwright, and you’re both Texans – James originally at least. Les is from Poolville; do you know it, James?
James: I’m afraid not.
Les: It’s a very small town, blink and you’ll miss it. It’s in North Central Texas, in the middle of the Bible Belt.
James: Did you ever see Greater Tuna?
Les: I did, about 20 years ago. It was good.
Phil: Did you manage to watch Les’s documentary, James?
James: I did, and I enjoyed it very much. Really interesting stuff. Congratulations on getting it into so many film festivals.
Phil: We’ve talked about your filmmaking Les, but you’re also a playwright and a poet. What’s your history of publication?
Les: I just stumbled into it. I was very influenced by Sam Shepard’s play, The Tooth of Crime, so I thought I’d try to write a play. I’d written poetry and short stories, and a few unfinished novels. So, I wrote my first play, Warboots, about my brother. Sam, who I met when I moved to Dallas in 1987 liked it and offered to produce it in 1993. I never had any commercial success – all my recognition was local, my fifteen minutes of fame.
In Warboots (the play) Les Branson was Hobo Bob, Taylor Hayden was Tripper X, and Tim Newkirk played Jack Frost.
James: What’s the difference between producing a play and producing a film?
Les: I love theatre. It’s a lot of fun but not quite as complicated as filmmaking. I knew nothing about working in theatre when I started and had to buy a book on play directing. I learned on the fly and embarrassed myself many times. An actor bailed at the last minute, so I even had to play one of the roles. Even so, I was bitten by the bug. Then I met friends from the theatre who wanted to make movies, and one of them had a Cable Access show. It was there where I learned in front of and behind the camera. I’ve always known that if there’s something you want to do, there’s a book out there that tells you how to do it.
Phil: What is Cable Access? We don’t have it in England.
Les: It was like a precursor of YouTube. It allowed community members and nonprofits to create and broadcast content in the 1990s on local television. That’s where I got my first filmmaking experience. An actor friend Taylor Hayden had a comedy show called Voodoo Plastic Arm, and I created a character called The Marxist Hobo, about a homeless guy who appears to be talking to himself but is actually spewing out Marxist dogma. The character got his genesis on Cable Access.
James: If someone gave you $100,000 – or $200,000 or a million – is there a project you’d really like to achieve?
Les: Yes, several! The cheapest would be a biker soap opera called Dead or in Huntsville. I have scripts for almost any genre you can think of. A road movie called King Lear and the Indians, about a washed-up theatre instructor in New York City who gets a gig directing King Lear using an all-Native American cast in Palo Duro Canyon in Texas. It’s based on a story by actor Dan Burkarth. I have a science fiction script called Junkyard Dog about an immigrant baby abandoned in a junkyard and raised by urban coyotes, who becomes a vigilante crime-fighter. A love story. I have several scripts ready to go that would work, depending on the budget.
The cheapest would be a biker soap opera called ‘Dead or in Huntsville‘. Poster drawn by Ray Orta based on a design by Les Branson
James: What kind of money do you need, realistically?
Les: For the biker drama, which takes places mostly in one location, I think I could make a pretty good movie for $100,000. It’s hard to put a dollar amount on it. The more money the better. But I feel like I could cut a lot of corners if need be. The easiest would be Dead or in Huntsville or King Lear and the Indians.
James: If budget weren’t a consideration – the subject nearest to your heart?
Les: That would be a screenplay I wrote called Joey & Jeffie – about New York mobster “Crazy” Joe Gallo and his showgirl wife, Jeffie Lee. I did a one-act based on the biography Joey by the late British author, Donald Goddard, and later got permission from him to adapt his book into a screenplay. It’s a love story with a mob backdrop. If I had unlimited budget I’d do that. I have both a two-hour version and four-hour version of Joey & Jeffie, or I could turn it into a six-hour miniseries.
Phil: That goes back to your interest in insanity – your brother. Maybe that’s what happens in Texas. It drives you mad.
Paul: We’re really impressed with what you’ve achieved. Can you talk about overcoming resistance… and the excuses not to do it?
Les: A lot of it was just naivety. A friend said, “You were stupid enough to think you could do it, and you did it.” You just disregard the naysayers and keep moving forward. You encounter resistance throughout life in anything you do. You roll with the punches and keep going. I agree with what Paul said earlier about originality – there’s so little originality now. That’s one thing I always strive for: tell a new story, not an old story in a different way. I always felt I had enough material based on growing up around insane people, drunkards, hillbillies, cowboys and farmers.
Paul: I think we’re all on the same page there.
Phil: Which brings us to a very suitable conclusion. Thank you both of you, on behalf of both of us.
Paul Halas is a writer whose escape from 1970s hippiedom was the discovery that he could invent stories. He spent forty years contributing to various Disney magazines and books, as well as a variety of non-Disney comics, books, and animated films. His retirement from commercial writing coincided with Jeremy Corbyn becoming the Labour Party leader (he is a self-described Corbynista) and becoming a Labour activist between 2015 and 2020… only to quit the party in despair soon after its recapture by the right wing of the organisation following the 2019 electoral tragedy. He has now rediscovered his first love – writing funny stories – which is just as well, as the real world isn’t very funny at present.
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