PRESS KIT
Once More to the Cabin
a documentary by Jim and Tom Isler
Running time: 27 min. 20 sec.
A film by Jim and Tom Isler
Written by Tom Isler
Filmed and Edited by Jim and Tom Isler
Featuring:
Barbara Follansbee Luccock
Robert Luccock
Nancy Luccock Strong
Michael Strong
Susan Luccock Isler
Robert Isler
Tom Isler
Jim Isler
Emily Isler
Official website:
www.gloamingpictures.com/cabin.htm
Download Hi-Resolution Images:
www.gloamingpictures.com/press_cabin_pix.htm
Press contact:
Tom Isler
tom@gloamingpictures.com
PRESS KIT LAST UPDATED: Dec. 30, 2009
 Gloaming Pictures
SHORT SUMMARY:
Once More to the Cabin tells the story of Barbara Luccock, a 93-year-old
widow, who returns to the place where she fell in love for the first time since
the death of her husband, Robert. Barbara and Robert met in Boothbay
Harbor, Maine, in 1945 and together returned to Boothbay every summer for
the rest of their lives, creating a wealth of memories in the family’s cabin
overlooking the harbor. Filmed by the Luccocks’ grandsons, the documentary
is a tale of love, loss and the ritual of summer in Maine, as well as a
meditation on aging and memory.
LONG SUMMARY:
Filmmakers Jim and Tom Isler follow their grandmother, Barbara Luccock, as
she returns to the family’s log cabin in Boothbay Harbor, Maine for the first
time since the death of her husband, Robert, to whom she had been married
for 61 years. Barbara and Robert met in Boothbay Harbor in 1945, when she
was a social secretary at the Green Shutters Inn, and he was on vacation
with his parents and sister. One year later, Barbara and Robert were married
and together went back to Boothbay every year for the rest of their lives. To
cope with her loss, Barbara returns to the place where she fell in love in
order to say her final goodbye to her husband.
Once More to the Cabin reconstructs the chance encounter and courtship
of Barbara and Robert by combining stunning present-day footage of
Boothbay and interviews with the couple, shot in 1997.
More than a tale of an individual romance, the film is a meditation on aging,
memory and the ritual of summer in Maine. Photographed in 2007 and 2008
over the course of all four seasons, Boothbay Harbor and the log cabin
become active characters in the narrative, enhancing the personal drama by
illustrating the cyclical nature of time and life’s pattern of creation,
destruction and restoration.
The film’s title is an allusion to E.B. White’s famous essay, “Once More to the
Lake,” another intergenerational story of mortality set against the backdrop
of Maine summers.
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FAMILY HISTORY / FILM PRODUCTION TIMELINE:
1944 — Robert Luccock, along with his parents and sister, vacation in
Boothbay Harbor, Maine, at the Green Shutters Inn for the first time.
1945 — Robert Luccock returns to Boothbay and meets Barbara Follansbee,
who is working at the Green Shutters Inn as a social secretary.
1946 — Barbara and Robert are married in Newburyport, Mass.
1948 — Robert’s father buys a log cabin in Boothbay, which is later handed
down through the family.
December 1978 — Barbara and Robert’s grandson, Jim Isler, is born in
Massachusetts.
December 1981 — Barbara and Robert’s second grandson, Tom Isler, is born
in Maine.
January 2007 — Robert Luccock dies in Portland, Maine, at the age of 91.
August/September 2007 — Over Labor Day weekend, Barbara returns to the
cabin for the first time since Robert’s passing. Jim and Tom Isler film the
trip.
October 2007, December 2007, March 2008, May 2008 — Additional filming
in Boothbay.
December 2008 — Barbara dies in Falmouth, Maine, at the age of 94.
May 2009 — Editing of film is complete.
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BIOGRAPHIES:
BARBARA LUCCOCK was born in Rowley, Mass., in 1914, attended high
school school in Newburyport, Mass., and graduated from Wheaton College
in 1937. She taught English at Falmouth High School in Falmouth, Mass.,
until marrying her husband, the Rev. Dr. Robert Luccock, on Aug. 3, 1946 in
Newburyport. The Luccocks served two churches in Northport, N.Y. and New
Haven, Conn., from 1946 to 1962, before moving to Wellesley, Mass., where
Barbara became secretary of her garden club and a member of the women's
club and the antiques chairperson for the Wellesley Congregational Church's
rummage sale. She loved vacationing in Maine with her family, knitting,
gardening, and baking cookies for someone in need. She passed away at the
Ocean View Retirement Community in Falmouth, Maine in 2008, at the age
of 94.
ROBERT LUCCOCK was born in New Haven, Conn., in 1915, and spent his
early childhood in Rutherford, N.J., before returning to New Haven where he
attended the Hopkins School and Yale University. He graduated from Union
Theological Seminary in New York City in 1942 and went on to serve
churches in Plainville, Conn., New Haven, Conn., and Northport N.Y., and
teach at Boston University School of Theology. In retirement, he served on
the Chaplaincy Board of Newton-Wellesley Hospital and was interim minister
at Second Church in West Newton, Mass., and Weston Congregational
Church in Weston, Mass. He published nine books on religion, including “If
God Be For Us,” “Preaching Through Matthew,” and “On Becoming the Best
We Can Be.” Among his varied interests were national parks, Gothic
cathedrals, trains, stamps, music and the Boston Red Sox. He passed away
in Portland, Maine, at the age of 91.
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ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
Jim Isler is a freelance editor of film and television in New York City. He has
edited programs for PBS, A&E, VH1, Discovery, and National Geographic,
among other networks. Jim has edited two feature documentaries, and, in
2006, he edited an Emmy Award-winning Internet sitcom, Floaters. In 2008,
he was nominated for the Best Editing Award at the Wildscreen Festival, a
wildlife and environmental film festival in the U.K., for his work on a twohour film for PBS's NATURE series, “What Females Want/What Males Will
Do.”
Tom Isler earned a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies from Yale
University, where he studied documentary filmmaking with D.A. Pennebaker
and Chris Hegedus and for his work in film and journalism was awarded the
George A. Schrader, Jr. Prize for excellence in the humanities. Tom's writing
about the arts has appeared in a number of publications, including The
Boston Phoenix, The Southampton Press in New York, and the International
Documentary Association's Documentary magazine. He has worked as a
freelance cameraman for CBS and MSNBC.
About Gloaming Pictures
Gloaming Pictures is an independent producer of documentary film and
television, formed by brothers Jim and Tom Isler in 2000. Their first feature
documentary, FESTIVAL, about a high school play competition in Maine,
premiered at the Maine International Film Festival in 2005. Their next
project, “Critical Hours,” a documentary television pilot about inspiring
educational programs for kids, premiered at the New York Television Festival
in 2006, where it was a finalist for the MSN Artistic Achievement Award, and
earned a nomination for Best Documentary at the KIDS FIRST! Film and
Video Festival. For more about Gloaming Pictures, visit
www.gloamingpictures.com.
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Q&A with filmmaker Tom Isler
What is the story of the cabin?
The cabin is part of an enclave of similar log cabins called Sprucewold, on a hill between
Linekin Bay and Boothbay Harbor in Maine. The cabin was probably built in the late 1920s
or 1930s. It came into our family a little later. In 1945, my grandfather was on vacation
with his parents and sister at the Green Shutters Inn when he met my grandmother, who
was working at the Inn for the summer. They were married in 1946 and returned to
Boothbay every summer for the rest of their lives. My great-grandfather liked Boothbay,
too, and bought the cabin a couple of years after my grandparents were married. The
cabin’s been passed through the family.
How did you come to make this film?
After my grandfather, whom we called Bapa, died in January 2007, I knew that I was
interested in filming more with my grandmother, Nanny, just for personal reasons, so the
family could have footage of her from this point in her life. And I started thinking about
what we could film, and Boothbay was such a meaningful place for her, and I knew that her
first trip back to the cabin without Bapa was going to be a big moment in her life. And
quickly I started to piece together that I could not only achieve my goal of filming with the
family, but tell a larger story about what it was like to lose a spouse after 61 years, what it
was like to face your own mortality and how the symbol and the metaphor of our family's
cabin changed as we grew older. Everything was connected to this trip back to the cabin.
After I came up with the general concept, I started reading more about summertime and
houses and a sense of place. And that led me to essays that E.B. White wrote in Maine. We
named the film “Once More to the Cabin” as a reference to one of his more famous essays,
“Once More to the Lake,” which tells an intergenerational story of facing mortality and the
cycles of life, set against the backdrop of a Maine summer. It's an interesting text to
compare to the the film. Another instructive read was George Howe Colt's The Big House: A
Century in the Life of an American Summer Home. After reading all of this material, I knew
there would be a way to make a personal story meaningful to a wider audience.
What did your grandmother think about the idea?
She was tolerant. We've been filming family gatherings since we were very young, so she
was used to us hanging around with cameras. I don't think she was thrilled to be the
subject of a film — she didn't really like looking at herself on screen — but she was willing
to do it because she wanted to be supportive of her grandchildren. That was the way she
was. But she had fun and really did like wearing the wireless microphone, and she certainly
was happy that we were filming the cabin. We didn't really discuss with her the larger
themes we wanted to explore in the film because we didn't want those discussions to color
her behavior. She just thought we were making a film about the cabin and what it meant to
the family. Which, in a way, is what we did — that just wasn't all we were doing.
Who is the intended audience for the film?
No doubt this is an intimate family story, but we made it so that it would be meaningful to a
wider audience. It's a love story, it's a story about persevering after experiencing a death
and a loss, and I think a lot of people will be able to relate to those aspects of it. It's also a
story that will resonate with anyone who has a strong connection to a place that isn't their
primary home and who returns to that place with any regularity, whether it's a summer
home, a vacation spot, a childhood home, or any other place where you have a lot of history
and memories. For me, this film is really about how we create and confront memories.
Hopefully people will be able to see aspects of their own life in this film. So far, that's been
true for the people we've shown it to.
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You use interviews you shot with your grandparents many years ago in the film.
How did you have all of that material?
In 1997, we actually set out to make a biographical film of Bapa, and we only conducted
two sets of interviews before we abandoned the project. It's a coincidence that one of the
two interviews we did with Bapa was conducted on the porch of the cabin, with him talking
about what the place meant to him and how it had changed over the years. When we went
back to look at the tape and the questions we were asking 10 years ago, it was as if we
knew we'd be making this film down the road, which, of course, we didn't. We conducted
the other interviews with Bapa and Nanny at Christmas and cover how they met.
We couldn't have made this film without that footage. It's important that the audience
gets to meet Bapa and hear his voice. As a minister and author, he was incredibly
articulate, so the film benefits from his thoughtful insights. It's also valuable to see Nanny a
decade younger than she appears in the present-day film footage. It shows how time
changes people, and it's much more effective than looking at still photographs. We had no
choice with Bapa, but we decided not to go back over that same material with Nanny in a
formal modern-day interview. We wanted those moments to play in a sort of memory mode,
separate from the present-day footage, and it was a formal way to illustrate the connection
she had with him. We're also lucky to have color film footage of their wedding from 1946. I
can't believe that someone filmed it and that it survived, but it's a real plus to be able to
use that in the film, too.
You shot in Boothbay over the course of a year. How did you approach the shoots
in the various seasons?
We shot the trip with Nanny first and that way we knew what we needed to get in the other
seasons. Since that trip was late in the summer, I went back to shoot the fall footage only a
few weeks later, and then when winter came I went back and got a lot of same setups we
had filmed in summer and fall. In the spring I went through the same process again. We
wanted to get some angles in all, or at least multiple, seasons and we wanted to get shots
that really communicated what the place was like in each season. I was also able to go back
and shoot some pick-ups in the fall that play as summer shots — some of the footage of the
Green Shutters Inn I filmed in the fall, after we had reviewed the footage and realized we
didn't have enough. We also had that beautiful rainstorm in the fall, which was some of my
favorite stuff to shoot.
What was the most challenging thing about making the film?
For me, the toughest part was finding the story's shape and having to write narration that
would fill in some of the blanks. We'd never done a film in this style before; we more
naturally gravitate toward vérité, so it was liberating and challenging to tackle something
like this. This wasn't a story that had much action that we needed to tell in sequence, and it
wasn't a story that would tell itself. It really needed to be set up with narration and we had
to figure out a way to tie all of the elements together while still giving the film an overall
arc. Early on, I had so much I wanted to say about the cabin and the repetition of life in a
summer community and aging and loss, but the film wasn't the right forum for it. It
sounded too much like an essay — and not nearly as elegant as what White or Colt could
write on these subjects. So we eventually cut most of that because it wasn't playing. It felt
heavy-handed and we wanted the audience to fill in some of the blanks themselves because
I'm sure they have more profound things to say about aging and loss than I do. That was
another major challenge: finding the right balance of articulating enough of these issues so
that people are aware of them, but not to say too much that we turn off the audience or
preclude people from seeing their own experience in this story.
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What was your favorite part of making the film?
Aside from connecting more with my grandmother, two things stick out. The first was the
process of getting up to shoot the sunrises on consecutive days. It was exhilarating. I like
how life revolves more around nature when we're up at the cabin. I definitely felt more
ownership of the place after that experience. The second was discovering the wonderfully
run-down state of the Green Shutters now — overgrown grass, paint peeling, furniture
rusting. It seemed like a perfect manifestation of my grandmother's memory. The place was
still there, still recognizable, but fading away. It was another twist on something Bapa says
in the film, which I think is one of the main themes: “The forest restores itself.”
Did your grandmother see the final film?
She never saw a completed cut, but we did show her a lot of the raw footage. She liked it.
It really transported her back to the place she loved so much.
Did she ever return to the cabin? Or was the trip in the film her last?
She never spent another night in the cabin after this trip, but my mom and aunt did drive
her up there in 2008 to see the place again.
What have you learned from your grandmother's experience?
Clichés are true. It's important to live life as fully as you can and create the kinds of
memories you'll want to look back on later in life. Though it was difficult for Nanny to get to
and stay in the cabin as she aged, it really was something that energized her. Although we
tend to want to protect people and are fearful of the dangers that confront the elderly,
sometimes we overlook the huge benefits of letting them do things and go places that
transport them back to happier times, despite the risks. Seeing Nanny in the cabin really
taught me the importance of spending time doing things you love, in places you love, with
people you love. I'm afraid it's not an original insight, but that's what I took away from the
experience.
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SCREENINGS:
World Premiere:
Maine International Film Festival (Waterville, Maine) (July 2009)
“Best of MIFF” (Bar Harbor, Maine) (September 2009)
Woods Hole Film Festival (Woods Hole, Mass.) (July 2009)
New Hampshire Film Festival (Portsmouth, N.H.) (October 2009)
Long Island Film Festival (Sag Harbor, N.Y.) (November 2009)
Wellesley Congregational Church (Wellesley, Mass.) (Jan. 13, 2009)
Television debut: Maine Public Broadcasting Network (Feb. 20, 2010, 5:30
p.m.)
Maine Public Broadcasting Network (Feb. 21, 2010, 10:30 p.m.; Feb. 27,
11:30 a.m.)
For an updated screening schedule, visit
www.gloamingpictures.com/cabin_screenings.htm
PRAISE FOR “ONCE MORE TO THE CABIN”
“By exploring the essence of summer this deceptively
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quiet film brings us closer to the essence of life itself.
Touching, illuminating and even inspiring.”
— George Howe Colt, author of
The Big House: A Century in the Life
of an American Summer Home
The Forecaster (Falmouth, Maine), July 7, 2009
“...a testimony to the 61-year marriage of Robert and Barbara Luccock
that extends beyond a family story to speak to a much wider audience
about enduring love, loss and perseverance, and the connection to place
that serves as a metaphor for life and the aging process...”
Downeast Magazine (Maine), July 2009
“From proposal to the birth of children to the joys of grandchildren,
the sea-view cabin becomes the lead, silent character in decades
of memories formed on the coast of Maine...The Islers use this backdrop
to portray how, over time, sense of place becomes sense of self.”
The Wellesley Townsman (Wellesley, Mass.), July 27, 2009
“Life has a way of playing tricks on us. One minute we are young
and vibrant, and the next — or so it seems — we're looking back,
hoping to somehow recapture a sense of who we once were.
The process of reliving and coming to terms with those precious fleeting
moments is what brothers Jim and Tom Isler bring to the screen...”
The Bar Harbor Times (Maine), Sept. 16, 2009
“…a tear-jerking, heart-felt documentary.”
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