By ABNER HAUGE|LEFT COAST RIGHT WATCH
On September 22nd, Harim Uzziel, a minor figure
in the Trump/far-right protest scene in Southern California, held a meetup
at a Culver City Denny’s. It seemed like it’d be a boring event where a dozen
or so Trump supporters ordered chicken tenders, heard speeches and learned how to
register voters.
But it wasn’t.
A group including John Turano, a.k.a Based/Cucked Spartan
and Charles Brandon Recor, both far-right figures who regularly go to protests to
brawl with people, and Antonio Foreman, a Unite the Right attendee with ties to
the white nationalist media outlet The Red Elephants, stood outside the Denny’s
to confront Uzziel.
Uzziel isn’t just some local Republican booster. He attended
the April 15th, 2017 rally in Berkeley that turned into a massive
brawl between militiamen, open white nationalists, Proud Boys and antifascists.
He’s mingled for years with the extended West Coast right-wing protest scene
that includes Proud Boys, conspiracy vloggers, militias and open white
nationalists. He’s gone on conspiratorial rants against the Illuminati and was kicked off a flight after an unhinged
rant. He later expressed in a since-deleted
livestream that he was trying to distance himself from the openly white
nationalist strain in the pro-Trump activist scene.
The conflict between Uzziel and his former colleagues is the
subject of Sunday Afternoon at Denny’s,
a short documentary by Xavier Rotnofsky. The film’s been well-received. Patton
Oswalt called it ‘Amazing’
and it became a Vimeo
Staff Pick. LCRW reached out to Rotnofsky this week to talk about the film
and the art of documentary.
LCRW: Give us
some background on you and your career as a filmmaker.
ROTNOFSKY: I wouldn’t say I have a career in filmmaking
yet, but I write and produce as much as I can with friends. I’ve always been
interested in documentary, and I hope to do more of it.
LCRW: What about
documentaries appeals to you?
ROTNOFSKY: There’s so much drama in real life, so I
love documentaries that explore that. I love weird, unscripted moments people
post online like on Worldstar and Twitter.
LCRW: Any
directors you’d cite as influences?
ROTNOFSKY: I’m a big fan of Adam Curtis but he’s not
really a slice-of-life director.
LCRW: How did you
find Harim Uzziel and this story?
ROTNOFSKY: My friend sent me a screenshot of Harim’s
Facebook event. My roommate and I decided to go to Denny’s for lunch and just
see what would happen. We didn’t expect what went down.
LCRW: What
initially drew you to it?
ROTNOFSKY: The venue. It’s such a strange and surreal
setting for a MAGA meeting. The infighting between the MAGA groups made it even
more surreal.
LCRW: What were
your impressions of the MAGA crowd going in to filming?
ROTNOFSKY: Everyone just seemed so sad, desperate, and
empty. Even the people outside.
LCRW: What kind
of story did you initially think you’d be doing when you went to film Harim’s
meeting that day? What did you expect would happen?
ROTNOFSKY: There weren’t really any expectations. We
figured it would just be a MAGA meeting held in a Denny’s. We didn't know there
would be so much conflict.
LCRW: Did you
expect the people who showed up outside to be there?
ROTNOFSKY: Lol no.
LCRW: What was
shooting that conflict like for you?
ROTNOFSKY: It felt a bit risky, but ultimately both
groups were so concentrated on bothering each other, we were the least of their
worries.
LCRW: The crowd
that confronted Harim included Antonio Foreman who was at Unite the Right in
Charlottesville and others who have incited violence and brawled with people at
protests. Did you know anything about those people beforehand? What’s your
reaction to learning more about who they are and what they’ve done now?
ROTNOFSKY: I knew about Antonio beforehand. He once
came out in one
of my videos from a few years ago. So I’ve had experience with him.
LCRW: What’s the
reception to the film been like? Do you find people like antifascist activists
who were familiar with the characters in your film beforehand reacted
differently than the people who didn’t know who they are?
ROTNOFSKY: The reception has been wild. I did not
expect such a positive reaction. I don’t think the reaction has been different
between people who are familiar and people who aren’t. Though, antifascist
activists understand more of the backstories.
LCRW: What’s next
for you? Do you plan to explore right wing extremists further in your work?
ROTNOFSKY: I’m not sure what’s next. I have to figure
that out. Yes, I would like to explore them further in my work.
LCRW: Are there
any major lessons or messages or broader awareness you hope the audience takes
away from your film?
ROTNOFSKY: I hope you get the vibe of what it felt like
to be at Denny’s that day.
Rotnofsky’s work can be found here on his Vimeo page. Check out his
film Wipe here. You can follow him on Twitter at
@xrotnofsky.
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