The Making of American Collectors Film: by Terri Krantz co- producer / director
Most of us know someone who collects- 30% -of Americans are die hard collectors, and we love them anyway. But what drives obsessions such as this? That is the beating heart and prime directive of this documentary that examines the relationship between people and their objects of desire
When we stated to think about the idea of making a film about collectors, we immediately knew what we didn't want to be.
It was 2007 and The Antiques Roadshow was the dominant collecting show, most others were independent efforts by collecting clubs or websites, and we also found a few coming out of the United Kingdom.
The main focus of these shows was about the objects collected with a very strong emphasis on how much money its worth and how much the person had paid for it. We did not want to go down that path.
We also did not want to be exploitive by finding people outside the norm, and put them on film for others to ridicule.
I've spent over twenty years in the antique business and after years of observing collectors, both as friends and clients, a few things stood out. Collectors are different.
No matter what they collect, they form an emotional attachment to objects. It may not last forever but this attachment fuels their passion which leads to a joy or purpose for some and obsession for others.
On the positive side, collectors are the keepers of our culture. If not for their efforts many important artists and artifacts which were considered to be unimportant or trivial at their time, would be lost forever.
On the negative side, strained relationships, financial ruin and isolation often accompany the drive to acquire.
When I started to research collecting, I looked at the psychological and psychiatric treatises on the subject. Most but not all, portrayed collectors as flawed humans, making up for a lack of human attention in their early years by transferring their emotional needs to inanimate objects.
In doing so, they were labeled as weak willed and obsessive, not quite normal and lacking skills in human relationships.
Its been my personal experience that collectors are quite passionate and at times can go overboard in the quest to acquire a new piece.
And yet there are other activities, such as sports fans, athletes and fishermen that routinely are very obsessed with their chosen hobby or activity that don't come under as much criticism and derision as collectors.
With these thoughts in mind, we designed our questions to find out in the collectors own words, why they were driven to collect things and what they got out of it.
Many collectors in the film said they had wondered the same thing, but had never gone about trying to give a thoughtful answer. They enjoyed pondering the questions and their answers were varied but contained similar threads of thought.
All were quite passionate about their chosen object, and enjoyed the hunt for new items. For many collectors, this is the main reason they do it, but once they get to own the item, it loses its fascination for them and they need to replace it with another. In a way, its very much like a Don Juan scenario, but with things rather than women.
Another way to describe this process is the word, “More-I-tis” . More-i-tis was mentioned by a couple of the collectors in the film. Larry, an Axe collector with over 1000 axes in his collection, in the film states “ Its like a disease called More- i- tis, the only way to cure it is to go out and find another item, then that helps for a week or two but then the effects of More- i -tis comes back”
What we found was that people collected because they found something that spoke to them in a profound way. Whether it was a toy that brought back memories of happier times, or appreciating the craftsmanship of a particular item, these objects made them happy and in many cases were a gateway to acquiring knowledge about the past and our culture. We found most people use their passion to connect with like minded people, join clubs and organizations and enrich their lives in the quest of collecting.
American Collectors Film can be seen on your Cable ( video on demand ) or IndieFlix.com
