9DCU0103HD_Directors_Cut_Studio_Transcript

 
 Wild cats.  We were rather surprised to hear about a proposal being debated in Wisconsin that would allow hunters to shoot stray cats like they do skunks and gophers.  It turns out there may be more than a million stray cats in Wisconsin.  But you had to know this idea was going to be controversial.  Song birds are at stake, as well as other small animals.  When we say feral cats, frankly, I don't think of Fluffy at home.  I think of a wild cat, an alley cat on the street, no better than maybe a cockroach.  This issue is so heated that the hunter who proposed the idea is receiving death threats.  I'm not a cat hater.  I've had cats in the past.  People need to keep their cats under control.  Hi, and welcome to Director's Cut.  I'm your host, Charles Monroe-Kane.  Here at Director's Cut, we're dedicated to bringing you the best in independent films and filmmakers.  Our film this week is called "Here Kitty, Kitty. " It's a documentary about one of Wisconsin's shining moments in history, the 2005 great cat hunt debate.  You guys remember, right? Wisconsin became the laughing stock of the nation as we publicly debated the hunting of cats.  The film, "Here Kitty, Kitty" captures that amazing moment in history.  And no pun intended, but it's quite a tale.  A tale that involves crazy cat ladies, slandered scientists, a couple of death threats, even a guy who drowns cats, aka the "Merrill Cat Killer. " It is quite a story, and told well from the documentary, "Here Kitty, Kitty. 

" "Here Kitty, Kitty," is the directorial debut of Madison resident Andy Beversdorf.  Andy, welcome to the show.  Excellent film.  Thanks.  Where in the world did you get the idea to make a film about the great cat hunt? Well, the way I got going down this path is I worked with Brian Standing, who's made a lot of movies here in the area.  And I worked with him at a radio station, WORT.  I had worked with him on another film, called "War is Sell. " And I've never had any film training or school, or anything like that.  But he was making the movie and that sounded like, you know, a fun thing to do.  So I was helping him out with that.  And that's when he told me that he wanted me to take the reigns of the next film that we made.  So, this issue was in the news at the time.  And I thought, well, what great drama.  What a great subject for a film.  You know, it's got all the elements of a good documentary.  Take us back to that moment.  It was Q62, question 62.  What was the question? What was the issue? Q62 asked people at the Conservation Congress-- People get to vote on issues involving conservation in Wisconsin and hunting issues.  And it asked them if they wanted to list cats as an unprotected species in Wisconsin.  What that means is that cats would then occupy the same unprotected class as say, opossums, squirrels, rabbits.  And hunters would be-- It would be legal to shoot a feral cat if it came on your property. 

 Now, that's just, you know that's going to be controversial.  Were people naive? I mean, we all know that.  But at the time, people were like okay, let's just introduce this bill.  It was a huge controversy.  It was a huge controversy.  And I think a lot of it stemmed from this notion that got tossed around repeatedly, which is people, like I just said, people kept saying, "hunting cats," "shooting cats. " And really, when Mark Smith, the person that you saw in the clip there, when he introduced it, he did it as a response to someone who had been trapping cats on their land, and then was prosecuted for a felony.  He's a trapper himself.  And cats sometimes wind up in the traps of people who are trapping muskrats, or beavers, or whatever.  And he didn't want to be charged with a felony for accidentally trapping a cat.  And the idea that people were going to go out on a cat season and get in their hunting gear and go out in the woods and look for cats was something that, you know, that got blown up.  But it was never really what was going to happen.  And you know, that's something when I first started doing the film, as well.  I was interested in this idea, what makes hunters as a group, want to keep of expanding the number of species that they can hunt.  You know, you had mourning doves that they could hunt, and now all of a sudden cats.  I wanted to get at that.  That was an interesting for me.  Why do they want to keep expanding this? Well, it turned out that there were more interesting things, so I didn't really explore that too long.  But it was interesting in your film.  And like any film, documentary or full length film, you've got to have a great character.  And you have one of the great characters in a documentary film, a guy named Gordon King, also known as the "Merrill Cat Killer. 

" Tell me about Gordon.  He is quite a character.  Well, Mark Smith, the person who proposed Q62, knew about Gordon King.  Gordon King lives in Merrill, Wisconsin, in just a residential neighborhood.  And he had cats coming across his property.  He took them.  When this would happen, he would take them into the Humane Society.  But one time he took a cat to the Humane Society, and it got loose, and started running all over the place.  And he didn't want somebody to get hurt.  So, he decided to go about it the way that people of his generation, in his sort of rural setting would get rid of cats.  And that was by trapping them and drowning them.  So he was doing this until a neighbor reported him.  And the police got involved.  He was charged with felony cruelty to animals.  A felony.  You know what? We should look at Gordon again.  Here's a short clip of Gordon King, the Merrill Cat Killer.  This is where you drown the cats? What are you trying to do, get some evidence here? Sure.  A very handy place.  A sufficient depth to completely cover a trap.  They have a very brief period of trauma, since they're covered until they're down here. 

 And then, I just set them in the water.  So, when I catch the first cat and drown it, I re-set the trap, which seems to be a greater attraction, evidently, the pheromone is so strong, or what it is, permeating inside the trap.  It won't even wash off in perhaps a half-hour under water.  Of course, there's no real motion going on.  The cat doesn't squiggle very much before it drowns.  So the trap seems, the more cats you catch, the more effective it becomes.  So ultimately, you catch the last cat.  And that's what I thought I had.  So tell me about that guy.  What was he like? I mean, you hung out with him in Merrill, Wisconsin.  What was he like? He's very outspoken, very intelligent.  Very opinionated.  And also very reasonable.  One thing that, you know, these epithets that got hurled about during this whole issue cast people in a light where they didn't belong a lot of times.  So if you just see Gordon King as the Merrill Cat Killer, which was what he was commonly referred to as, you're missing a lot of the story about him.  He is a self-proclaimed disciple of Aldo Leopold.  He's very concerned with conservation.  And he sees cats as a non-native species that are not anything.  They're not an animal that needs to be protected.  He's not an exception.  He's part of the zeitgeist of rural Wisconsin. 

 I mean, that's what people think.  What was the phrase they came up with? "Shoot, shovel and shut up. " But that's the standard belief in rural Wisconsin, wouldn't you say? Wouldn't you say a lot of people support him? I mean, he's not that odd.  He's not that odd in that regard, as far as people who don't like cats running around on their property, and want to get rid of them for a variety of reasons.  Now, of course, there's the other side of this story.  We have the Merrill Cat Killer, Gordon King in rural Wisconsin.  Then you have the other side of the story, which tended to be a little bit more based in Madison.  But also, there was a person who we talked about earlier, who Gordon King got charged with a felony.  The DA had to do that.  And tell me about her.  Who's the DA that went after Gordon? Her name is Shawn Mutter.  We also talked to her in the film.  She was pretty ambitious in her prosecution of Gordon King.  She charged him with felony cruelty to animals.  And what I wanted to get at when I talked with her is, how can you charge Gordon King with cruelty to animals, when people are allowed to say, bow hunt deer in Wisconsin? It's pretty rare that a deer doesn't suffer when you go bow hunting for a deer.  If you shoot a deer with an arrow, it's probably going to suffer before it dies.  Okay.  So, I understand that hunters are allowed to shoot deer with a bow and arrow.  How can you prosecute Gordon King for drowning cats that probably suffer a smaller amount of time than a deer with an arrow through its side? And that was the hypocrisy that I saw and tried to bring out.  That's the issue right, because they're cats.  People like cats. 

 Well, after I was done with all this, that's a lot.  That's kind of the way I saw this, too.  The people who were on the cat rescue side of the issue were on the cat activist side of the issue.  A lot of the times, they didn't want to bring that up.  That they're just cat people.  That they just loved cats.  And that cats hold a special place in our society.  They talked about animal rights issues and cruelty to animal issues.  But the hypocrisy there is fairly glaring, as far as I'm concerned.  You know, take an industrial-sized chicken farm, for instance.  Some of these chickens never see sunlight, okay.  That's not cruelty to animals, but drowning a cat is? That's something I wanted to bring up.  And I think that leads us down a path of, when people take very emotional sides, when they take-- a lot of times, they are blinded by their emotions.  And they don't want to see the fact that Gordon King is a conservationist, okay.  He can be completely different from you, okay.  You might abhor the things that Gordon King is doing.  But if you look closely, you'll probably see that there are a lot of ways that he's a lot like you.  Let's see a clip from her.  Because I think what makes her interesting compared to Gordon King, is that for me, personally, and we'll see this in the clip, she doesn't seem as reasonable, or as fair, or as interesting as he is.  She seems a little unfair.  Let's roll that clip of the DA. 

 I received a request for charges that he was, I think, the Humane Society had reported him, that he was live trapping cats and drowning them while they were alive in the Wisconsin River.  I think from the records there was at least 10-12 cats that he trapped.  He would lure them in with food, and take them to the river and drown 'em, a terrible death by making them drown alive.  Well, I charged him with mistreatment of animals resulting in death.  That was a felony.  Defense counsel filed a motion, and briefs were had on it as to whether or not drowning a cat is considered cruel.  And also whether or not Chapter 951, which is what I charged him with, if that cat has to be actually owned by the defendant or a particularized individual.  When I did my brief, I talked about what cruel unjustified death means.  And I took definitions from Webster's Dictionary: "Dispose to inflict pain or suffering, devoid of humane feelings, causing or conducive to injury, grief or pain, and unrelieved by leniency. " Do you have cats? Is it relevant? Just curious.  Yes, I do.  So do I.  Okay, that's fine.  That's fine.  People always ask me, like with child abuse cases, they'll say, "Do you have children?" "Yeah. " "Then how can you know what abuse is?" Mind you, this is just my humble opinion.  That is excellent.  Because what that does to me, as I see it and watch that, one, she was very defensive when you asked her if she had cats.  I think it's interesting when I watch that clip and compare it to Gordon King's clip.  And this is just in my gut, I don't like her.  I don't like her. 

 And I don't necessarily agree or disagree with her stance, but I don't really like her.  She's not the kind of person I think you want to hang out with.  But Gordon King, he seems like a man of integrity.  Did people come up with that from the film, or was it just, "I like cats, I'm on this side. " "I'm in favor of hunting on this side?" What about you? Did you like her? Who would you like? On a documentary filmmaker level.  What I see in her is what I saw in a lot of the people who were opposed to Question 62, which is this idea that "devoid of leniency," "meant to inflict pain. " I mean, to think that Gordon King was doing these things to cats because he liked to see cats suffer is just, it's completely untenable position to take.  And I think, a lot of times, when people are fighting, people are in conflict, they don't want to see the opposing side as having good intentions.  And it's very rare that people act out of malicious intent, as far as I'm concerned.  People who do bad things, oftentimes, things that we see as maybe even catastrophic, oftentimes these people have good intentions.  That doesn't mean that what they're doing is right, by any means.  They can do atrocious things with good intentions.  But if we set up ourselves, you and I are having an argument, and I see that-- We start the argument, and both of us realize that we both have good intentions, you're probably going to get a lot further down the road for whatever you're trying to accomplish, than hurling epithets or casting stones.  So Andy, from documentary filmmaker to the U. N. , your next step there.  Well, I mean, yeah.  It does have broader indications.  I mean, I'm not trying to say that this movie is some, you know, teach global peace.  But it is.  I mean, we have another clip I want to show, because it shows, to me, the juxtaposition of like rural Wisconsin to the urban people in Madison. 

 You went to some of these meetings.  Was it the DNR? These meetings where people would debate it.  And after I watched some of those, you're like, people are being completely unreasonable.  On both sides.  Everyone's being completely unreasonable.  Which is how we are when emotions flare.  This could be about anything.  Palestinians, Israelis, the conflict is unreasonable all over.  So, what I want to do is roll this clip.  And then afterwards, we're going to talk some more about that.  But here's a clip of a DNR meeting where people are presenting their case points for pro-Q62 or con.  Let's roll that.  Before we start with the first question tonight, I'd like to make sure we all understand what's expected of all of us.  The Chair will continue to have testimony on the question, as long as the comments don't become repetitive, and all continue to respect each side of the question.  If problems arise, the Chair will stop all testimony and call the question.  This is where I can speak! Let me speak! They hate me.  They're just disgusted with me, because they don't see how someone like me could go and kill such a cute, fluffy little animal.  He's fluffy.  He had a collar.  Collars can't be seen on him.  Ma'am, we have already established that people have a great love for their cat. 

 I'm not going to ask this more than once tonight.  If people do not respect each side of the issue, I will call the question and we will be done with it.  I wanted to mention that when sociologists study psychopaths and sociopaths and other criminals. . .  ( laughter ) Ma'am, that is not part of this question.  We have no desire to shoot cats.  We're not that cruel, whether or not you want to believe that.  Sir, we've covered that.  I own 65 feral cats. . .  ( crowd reacts loudly ) that have all been tamed.  Please.  I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep them healthy.  I have saved a lot more in my life.  ( applause ) I'm in favor of killing feral cats.  ( laughter ) I live outside Mt.  Horeb.  We had to stop raising pheasants, because we had feral cats on our land.  They've hit a population enough. 

 I've seen them feasting on rabbits.  I've seen them feasting on squirrels.  Sir, we've already established that.  Maybe you should get out in the country a little bit more and look around.  I propose a question here.  You've put some emphasis on the fact that feral cats are not native to Wisconsin.  I'd like to point out that neither are white people.  ( cheers and applause ) Sir! Sir! Do you have something to address to the question? That was, again, a clip from "Here Kitty, Kitty," a documentary by our guest today, Andy Beversdorf.  Andy, do you have a political stance? I mean, did you come to this, or did you leave it with an opinion on the issue? I came to it-- I left it, definitely, with an opinion on the way people reacted to each other during the issue.  As far as Q62 is concerned, I really, it doesn't matter to me one way or the other whether or not there's a law protecting cats, or listing them as unprotected.  If such a law comes about, that's fine.  If such a law doesn't come about, that's fine, too.  I do have a problem with, like I said, someone being charged with a felony for cruelty to animals, when much more egregious offenses are being committed against animals at the same time, you know, like an industrial chicken farm.  What's the reaction to your film? You showed it for your family.  You showed it at screenings.  How have people reacted? Where did you show it? Only in Madison? Well, Madison.  On a big screen, only in Madison so far.  But yeah, I've shown it to my family.  What did they think? Well, it seems like people are treating this piece of media, this piece of film, a lot of the way they treat the nightly news, or the local news broadcast on the radio.  And that is, that if you have an opinion already, a lot of your opinion is either strengthened by my film.  People I know that were in the cat rescue community, or the people who wanted to save the cats, were more inclined to view this as a film that was pro-cat. 

 And the people who liked Gordon King, or the people like Stan Temple, or people who were in favor of Q62, looked at this as more of a film that was in favor of Q62.  So, people are sort of making of it what they want.  How does that make you feel about the genre? I've been thinking about documentaries a lot lately.  And so, what does that mean about the news, and what we all bring to the news? Is that how we read the newspapers, too? Have you thought about that, how your experience of making this documentary makes you realize that people are set no matter what the facts are? In a way, it makes me feel like okay, maybe I failed a little bit.  Maybe.  But I wasn't really ever trying to change anybody's mind.  And maybe that's sort of trivial of me.  But I really wanted to make a movie where people would sit down and either rent it, or maybe buy a copy of it, or go to the theater and see it.  And say, wow, that was entertaining.  I had fun.  That was a good movie.  Because that's what the movies are.  Go out to the movie, buy some popcorn, have fun watching the movie.  And if you learn a little bit along the way, that's great.  So, I wasn't trying to change the world with this film.  But I hope people, if people get something out of it, that's a little bigger than just going to the movies and eating popcorn, that's great.  If that's all they get out of it, that's great, too.  Well, there's another character in your film.  One that I felt a lot of empathy for, because he's a professor here who basically-- Well, tell me about Stan Temple, and then we'll play a clip.  Stan Temple is a wildlife ecologist, a professor, now emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin who studied migratory bird populations in Wisconsin.  And one of the studies he did was on cat predation. 

 He did surveys of the stomach contents of cats to find out in a year, roughly how many migratory song birds cats eat.  And then, he wanted to find, what's the population of cats, how many birds do they eat per year.  And in a year, how many migratory song birds are lost because cats are eating them.  And of course, his research was used to support hunting of the cats.  Well, yeah, a lot of people used it as sort of-- A lot of people who wanted to list cats as an unprotected species started jumping on the bird bandwagon.  You know, just sort of like the people who didn't want to admit that they were cat people, and so they found other things to talk about that would support their cause.  The same with people who just wanted to get rid of this invasive species, or get rid of the cats that are on their property.  They jump on the bird.  They might not even care about birds.  But okay, this study's out there and it helps us out, so let's jump on that.  Let's see a clip on how people who love the cats reacted to Stan Temple's research.  Let's roll that clip.  Answering Machine: Monday, 11:06pm.  Line one.  Woman: You cat murdering bastard.  What goes around, comes around.  I declare Stanley Temple season open.  ( beep ) That was one of them.  How many of those did you get? Oh, between messages on the answering machine and email, probably eight or nine.  Death threats.  Things like this that were, yeah. 

 Well, open season on Stanley Temple.  The police said that's a death threat.  ( chuckles ) But, yeah.  In the middle of the night, cars would drive into our driveway and circle in front of the house and then leave.  There were threatening notes tacked up on the door of my office, which again, they considered to be a very serious escalation of the level of threat over just making a phone call, or sending an email.  To actually have come up and tacked something to my office door risked, you know, an encounter with me, or having other people see them.  So it was an interesting month.  Who's the hero in "Here Kitty, Kitty," in the end? I would have to say my hero of the film was someone who we interviewed for maybe 15 minutes.  And he said about everything we wanted him to say.  His name is Kurt Zengler.  And Shawn Mutter was the DA who prosecuted Gordon King, originally.  And then she lost her re-election bid, so Kurt Zengler took over some of her cases.  She was the DA in Merrill.  Kurt Zengler was an Assistant DA in Merrill.  And he took over the Gordon King case when she left.  And he abhorred what Gordon King was doing.  He was just revolted by the fact that Gordon King could be drowning these cats.  Hefelt terrible about it all.  But nevertheless, he realized that legally, the people of Wisconsin didn't have a problem.  Well, the people in Wisconsin didn't have any legal problem with this.  So he was forced to dismiss the case. 

 And the case was completely dropped against Gordon King.  In the end, all this heartache, all this emotion, all this stuff.  What happened with Q62? Q62 was voted.  The people of Wisconsin voted in favor of Q62.  In other words, they voted to list cats as unprotected species.  Then the governor vetoed it.  I remember this.  The thing is that Gordon King got off.  Good.  Gordon King drowned cats and he got off.  So the question then is, well, was Q62 ever necessary in the first place? Okay, Q62 was supposed to make it legal to kill cats.  But we still don't know whether it's illegal.  Gordon King is the one precedent that I know of in the state, where he drowned cats.  And he got off.  So, it could've been much ado about nothing.  ( laughs ) Well, thank you.  It was an excellent film.  I hope you keep making documentaries.  Great choice.  For more information on "Here Kitty, Kitty," or any of the films featured on our show, please go to our Web site: wpt. org/directorscut While you're there, send us an email. 

 We would love to hear from you.  Thank you very much, Andy.  Thank you all for listening this week.  I'm Charles Monroe-Kane.  And for everyone at Director's Cut, thank you for joining us.  Check the gate. ECHO is on.