The latest Made Here series premiere, Vermont director Tommy Hyde鈥檚 documentary Underdog, tells the curiously optimistic tale of Middlebury鈥檚 Doug Butler 鈥� a hardscrabble Vermont dairy farmer who risks losing the only home he's ever known to chase his dreams of dog mushing in Alaska.
In March of 2024, director Tommy Hyde was a guest on Vermont Edition, speaking with host Mikaela Lefrak about how he got to know his subject Doug Butler, and what it was like to make the film with him. Here's an excerpt of that discussion, and you can listen to the full conversation on Vermont Edition.
This excerpt has been lightly copy edited.
Mikaela Lefrak: When did you first meet Doug Butler?
Tommy Hyde: I was a freshman at Middlebury College, which is probably 14 years ago now, and I took adventure writing and digital storytelling, which was really great, because it got you out into the community, writing something and making a little movie about a local who was doing something interesting. And my professor, Peter Lowery, who is a hero, recommended that I check out a dairy farm on the outskirts of town that he had heard had a few sled dogs.
So I went out there with my buddy, Tito. And Doug, without knowing who we were, waved us on, and within about 20 minutes, we were covered head to toe in cow manure, and he thought he had scared us off, but we went to the local Agway and asked for a couple of pairs of farmer jumpsuits, which we only later learned are called coveralls, and showed up the next day. And Doug, to his credit, always said that that was the moment that he knew he could trust us.
Mikaela Lefrak: Oh, wow. So you spent a lot of time with Doug and his family. How long were you making this film?
Tommy Hyde: Probably about 10 years. You know, it was curious, because on day one, I had a camera. And so it just felt natural that when the class ended and Doug and I stayed friends, that when I came over to the farm, I'd just bring a camera, and I learned rather slowly how to capture a little bit of what I was seeing.
And I knew Doug had this dream of going to Alaska, but what I didn't realize was that he had never left the farm for more than five days his entire life. And a good story, as you know, has tension. And what better tension than a dream? And so I just stuck around and kept filming, and eventually started to bleed into the wallpaper. And so what you see now on screen is a collection of moments where Doug really bears his soul 鈥� has all the highs and all the lows.
Mikaela Lefrak: Let's talk about some of those things that that Doug went through, starting with the the farm itself. This is a farm, Tommy, that has been in Doug's family for generations, right? Yeah, and tell us about the finances, how he was trying to make ends meet.
Tommy Hyde: Yeah, it was a constant struggle. I don't think I saw one day where Doug was not on the phone at some point, talking with someone from the bank, someone from the grain company, someone from the lighting company, trying to make it all happen.
And I think one of the most poignant moments in the film for me, Doug is on the phone with a local power company, and he owes something like $4,000 on a bill, and he's only able to pay about $1,000. We've been calling this film the "curiously optimistic tale of Doug Butler," because he manages to harvest so much happiness and joy out of the nooks and crannies of his life. And so he is laughing on the phone, trading fishing stories with the woman on the other end from the power company. And by the end, he's sharing a very vulnerable moment when he had to go transport cattle away from a fellow farmer who just couldn't take care of them anymore, and he's crying on the other end of the phone.
And so the financial pressure has really never, never stopped since Doug took over the farm in the '80s, and it continues to this day with his son, who is still fighting for the family homestead.
Mikaela Lefrak: Some difficult news to discuss 鈥� (in 2023), Doug Butler passed away. What was it like for you to hear that news?
Tommy Hyde: It was, it was very hard. I was actually on a plane en route to a screening out in San Francisco when I heard the news, and it wasn't entirely unexpected. Doug had been diagnosed with ALS a year and a half prior, and he was in a slow but steady physical decline. It's a huge loss, personally, it's a huge loss for the Middlebury community.
At his celebration of life, there were probably 500 people in the room from all walks of life, a really beautiful cross section of the Vermont community. Folks were coming all the way from Pennsylvania, Maine, up in Quebec to pay their respects to Doug. I saw myself in a room of 500 people, and I was like, "Oh, a lot of people get it, Doug's special."
We're really grateful that we now have his ... "Doug joy" captured on the silver screen, and it's so nice that we're able to share that spirit with more people.
He did get to watch the film, and we had the distinct joy of bringing him to Hollywood. One of the nicknames he garners in the film is Hollywood Doug Butler, because he was always being followed by a camera. And so when we premiered the film theatrically in LA this past August, we got to bring Hollywood Doug out to Hollywood. We saw the Hollywood sign. He went dancing on the Hollywood Boulevard.
And I was always nervous, you know, if you're telling someone's life story, it's a big weight to bear. And yet, every day, we woke up and I asked Doug what he wanted to do, and he said, "Let's go see the movie."
Underdog premieres on 开云体育's PBS station at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 27, and is available now on demand.
