At the Walker, Indigenous actor Dallas Goldtooth explores masculinity through movies
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When Dallas Goldtooth was a boy on the Lower Sioux Indian Community and Yankton Sioux Tribe reservations, he didn't get to the movie theater much. He watched what his family had on tape, alongside his stepbrother, Migizi Pensoneau.
The pair started dreaming about making movies of their own. And together, they began making videos. Those early videos led to sketch comedy, to the stage, and eventually to "Reservation Dogs," the FX series created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, in which Goldtooth acted, and Pensoneau wrote and produced.
This summer, Goldtooth returns to the movies of his boyhood at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis with a film series he curated, "Once Upon a Time in Manhood.” The series is a run of iconic films from the 1980s and 90s that he grew up on and is now rewatching as an adult.
"I wanted to show fun movies to watch in the theater. I wanted to speak to folks of my generation who grew up watching these movies, whether on VHS or in the movie theater. And the third is a conversation around manhood and masculinity," Goldtooth said.
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Goldtooth sees the series as a way to reflect back on how his own generation learned what manhood was supposed to look like according to pop culture of the day. He still loves films that have since been flagged as problematic, and rather than disavow them, he believes it's possible to hold both affection and criticism at once.
The six-film series opened July 10 with "Willow" and continued Saturday night with "The Last of the Mohicans," both of which were introduced by Goldtooth in person. The rest of the lineup screens through the summer at the Walker's cinema: "Die Hard," "The Shawshank Redemption" and "Fight Club," closing with Taika Waititi's "Boy." The series is a part of the Walker's summer Moving Image program, which features screenings, residencies and curated series.
Goldtooth defends John McTiernan's 1988 "Die Hard," starring Bruce Willis, as one of the all-time great Christmas movies. Goldtooth said Willis' wisecracking cop reads as a departure from the stoic leads of "Willow" and "The Last of the Mohicans.” Asked whether John McClane is reminiscent of cowboys played by actor John Wayne, he didn't hesitate.
"In some ways, yes," Goldtooth said. "I think John McClane is John Wayne — in a tank top. It's part of the constant mythmaking of what it means to be American. It's not too different than almost every Western that we've seen in cinema. It is the lone cowboy, the rugged individual who takes on the gang by itself to protect the town."
Goldtooth introduced "The Last of the Mohicans" on the series' second night. He likes the 1992 film, "visually, and the audio story and the acting is just superbly done." But, he said, the film's hero never held much sway with him.
"The main character, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, never once interested me as a kid," Goldtooth said. What drew him, he said, were the Native characters the film pushes to the edges of its own story.
"I'm in love with the real Natives that you see that are in the margins," he said. “Because that's the story: that we're always in the margins that cater to a broader audience who doesn't really care about those on the margins."
Looking at the films together, Goldtooth said, one thing kept surfacing. He calls it "a language of violence," and he said it runs through every movie he picked.
He chose "The Shawshank Redemption," which he called one of the most influential films of his life. He described it as "a reflection of the systemic violence, the institutional violence of prison," a language in which "men are trying to find themselves in an environment where they are stripped of any sense of humanity, and yet there’s such beautiful displays of humanity through this film."
Goldtooth closes the series with "Boy," Taika Waititi's 2010 film about a Māori child in New Zealand, the only contemporary movie in the lineup. He sees himself in the film's lead, a preteen whose relationship with his father is shaped by pop culture representations of masculinity.
The question he wants to leave audiences with is the one he has been asking himself.
"What are we actively deciding to keep as a part of our own myth?" he said. "And what are we deciding? That was the past, and that's who we were, but we're going to leave that behind and forge a new path."
The film series, "Once Upon a Time in Manhood,” runs through Friday, Aug. 14.
