There’s a moment filmmaker Michael Premo recalls from being at the Capitol on January 6, 2021: He and co-producer Rachel Falcone were swept up in a crowd of insurrectionists, and he found himself pressed so hard against a wall that although he was protected by body armor he couldn’t breathe.

“In that moment I recognized somebody in the crowd,” Premo recalls, “a militia member who I recognized from filming years ago. He saw that I was distressed and helped me out of the scenario.” The gesture is unsurprising — many on the political right are described by those who know them or have interacted with them as kind, thoughtful, and generous. At the same time, however, they are angry — enough so that the hair-raising images the world saw on January 6 can’t simply be brushed aside, no matter how many lawmakers and pundits insist that it was “a day of love” or, if not that, then an occasion not so very different from normal tourism. (One wonders how often normal tourism results in millions of dollars in property damage, lawmakers having to be escorted to safety, and several deaths.)

Together with Falcone, Premo has co-directed the Hurricane Katrina documentary Sandy Storyline. He also directed POV’s Water Warriors, which Falcone produced. Now the two have made Homegrown, a powerful, sometimes frightening, documentary about the social and political forces that drove the nation, perhaps inevitably, to the events of January 6 — and are only gaining greater momentum today.

Premo and Falcone’s presence at the Capitol riot was journalistic, not pugilistic; they had been following a number of individuals belonging to right-wing groups such as the Proud Boys. In the end, though he had filmed and spoken with a dozen people, Premo whittled his footage down to focus on three: Chris, a New Jersey father to be who breezily vows to another January 6 demonstrator that he’s “gonna go drag Nancy Pelosi out by her fuckin’ toes”; Thad, a Navy veteran from South Texas who works with a Black Lives Matter activist because he sees they share similar objectives (we eventually learn how much of an outlier from the Proud Boys as a whole this makes him); and Randy, an Air Force veteran who celebrates at how many fellow New Yorkers who turn out for a right-wing demonstration despite the state’s reputation as a democratic stronghold.

Premo has noted that what drives today’s extremists on the right is often similar to what drives extremists on the left: An existential fear of how government no longer supports and protects ordinary people but instead shields and enables the powerful and wealthy. Perhaps the most telling moment in the film comes when Thad talks with his mother about his membership in the Proud Boys. “I felt like I was doing something that was right,” he tells her — words that probably any of the insurrectionists would also say.

Michael Premo chatted about the film, how his interactions with those on the rightward fringe of American culture changed his perspective, and what it’s like to be watching through a camera when chaos reigns from all quarters.

Kilian Melloy: The film follows three members of various right-wing groups. What is your sense of why they wanted to speak with you and include you in their activities?

Michael Premo: There were so many people that felt like they were this aggrieved minority — that the whole system was against them. They were just so eager to talk to anyone interested in hearing what they had to say. Some people who Googled me and looked at other films that I have made were intrigued that someone like me wanted to talk to them, so that was interesting.

Kilian Melloy: Did you find your worldview was shifted as you spoke with them?

Michael Premo: I think I developed a much more nuanced understanding of the diversity of thought within the conservative movement. I hadn’t anticipated that, and certainly that changed my perspective.

I think what’s interesting is that, from the social movements that I’ve experienced across the political spectrum, people come to these movements for very similar reasons that often are not about ideology. A lot of the people that I met are looking for community, looking for meaning they’re making. They’re looking to make sense of a chaotic world, and they find they’re often attracted to people who welcome them in, regardless of ideology, and then that puts them on a path.

Kilian Melloy: What would be the difference between somebody looking for community falling in with a left-wing group or a right-wing group? Is it that they were fed a line about transgender children being a menace, or they heard some other narrative, and they simply went with it?

Michael Premo: I think for a lot of people that we encountered, what drove them to become activists was they were aggrieved about something. There was something that really touched a nerve, and certainly the transgender conversation, and how it’s completely overblown and misrepresented, strikes a nerve with people.

There are so many people that I’ve encountered who are just grasping for some level of stability. Whether it’s understanding gender norms, or economic scenarios, or racial stereotypes, they’re looking to try to make sense of things when their worldview is [challenged].

Kilian Melloy: You were quoted in the press notes as sayingthat democracy in our country is being “systematically undermined.” Is that a reference to the theory that people are being turned on each other by those who are doing the actual harm?

Michael Premo: I think there’s more nuance to it, but I think there’s some truth there. If you look at the history of race in America, enslaved people and white indentured servants were strategically played against each other by the people who owned the farms and plantations. There’s this history of playing lower- and working-class people against each other so that the elites can maintain control of their labor force.

Increasingly, we’re in a society that sees billionaires and corporate influences having unchecked influence over the democratic process. Billionaires barely pay taxes, but working-class people are paying a high percentage of what they make to subsidize corporate relief programs. I think people are aware of this discrepancy; I think this is what populism is, fundamentally, this critique that society is weighted in favor of the rich at the expense of middle- and working-class people. The sort of conspiracies that spin people down different rabbit holes aren’t always true, but I think there’s a kernel of truth in the inherent structural inequities in our society.

Kilian Melloy: Were there moments when things were getting so out of hand you felt it was no longer enough to be there in an objective journalistic mode?

Michael Premo: Yeah, there were a couple moments like that. One in particular was on January 6, when Chris observed somebody he thought was having some type of health event, and he thought had died. The person, as far as we know, did not die. But it was a moment where I’m just like, “What do I do? If this person is actually having their last breath, I don’t want to capture that on camera, out of respect for this individual.” That was a decision point that I hadn’t encountered before.

Kilian Melloy: There’s a moment when Randy says to somebody that there are gay men in his organization. I’m not sure if it was Proud Boys or Loud Majority he was talking about, but did you see that that was true?

Michael Premo: Yes, it is Randy. He was talking about the Proud Boys. I met several Proud Boys who were out, and I met several people that were part of Loud Majority in Long Island who said they were out. I didn’t meet any women who were out, but I met several men who identified as being gay, and they didn’t express having any sort of issue with their sexuality within their communities.

Kilian Melloy: You also found there were many more people of color who were involved in these groups than you would have expected.

Michael Premo: That was my experience, and I think that was one of the big takeaways that we’re trying to leave people with. There’s a kind of monochromatic perspective on conservative movements, and what we encountered was far more racially diverse than we anticipated.

Kilian Melloy: Did you have any concerns that the presence of your camera was causing people to act in ways that might be more extreme than they otherwise would have acted?

Michael Premo: Absolutely. I think that’s one of the primary documentarians’ dilemmas. How does your presence affect people’s conduct? Are people performing? I think some of the things that we do to mitigate that is the amount of time that we spend with people. We started filming in 2018. We filmed about a dozen people from around the country, and when we got into the edit we had to make hard choices around who would actually make it into the film.

One of the things that allayed our concerns about people doing things for the camera that they wouldn’t otherwise do was summed up by our experience with Chris on January 6. Chris was very excited to finally go to a rally. He had negotiated with his wife to be able to go to January 6, and he was so excited. On the eve on January 5 I was like, “Chris, please, whatever you do, don’t leave the hotel without letting us know so we can follow you.” I was so afraid of losing him in this crowd. And, of course, he calls me [while] I’m still sleeping. He’s like, “Where are you? What are you doing? I’m already here. There’s a lot of people already. Are you coming? Are you coming? Are you coming?” We had to spend the next couple hours rushing to find him. That sort of summed up what we thought was emblematic of who he was: Regardless of whether we were there or not, he was going to go charging in.

Kilian Melloy: Theoretically speaking, would you have had any limits to what you might have participated in as a filmmaker and journalistic observer?

Michael Premo: I think the ethics as journalists is that there does need to be a separation between journalism and law enforcement. We’re very clear about not cooperating with law enforcement, except when there is a clear threat that someone is going to carry out an act of targeted violence against somebody. I think it is journalistically ethical to intervene at that moment if you find out that somebody is going to commit violence against somebody.

Kilian Melloy: Speaking of safety, we’ve seen how law enforcement will sometimes target journalists and film crews who are at the scene of a protest simply doing their job. Did you feel like you were in any danger there?

Michael Premo: We were nervous. Rachel was recording sound throughout the film [and] on January 6 she was hit with some type of projectile fired from law enforcement. It hit her with such force that it knocked off her helmet and gas mask, and she gulped a huge breath of gas. There were plenty of moments throughout filming where we were worried for our safety. Some of these individuals have terrible trigger discipline.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Homegrown is available to rent. For more information, visit the film’s website.

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