A Vancouver director tells Hollywood lives through family archives

Adrian Buitenhuis is a Canadian documentary director who has directed "I Am" films since 2017, feature-length portraits of actors told through the people who knew them and the footage they left behind. Relay has four of them: I Am Heath Ledger, I Am Paul Walker, I Am Patrick Swayze and I Am Burt Reynolds, released between 2017 and 2020.

The approach matters because a star's life usually reaches us through tabloids and old press interviews. Buitenhuis's films go to family and friends and their archives instead. He has said of the series: "We always get to tell an honest portrait of the people that we're making the film about."

Who is Adrian Buitenhuis?

He studied art history and cultural studies in Montreal and began as a documentary photographer, then completed an MFA in Interdisciplinary Fine Arts at Simon Fraser University. By his own account, his television career began when he helped produce a segment for The Oprah Winfrey Show.

He has worked at Network Entertainment in Vancouver since 2015, the year he joined the Directors Guild of America. The company, led by the producer Derik Murray, makes the "I Am" series, which also covers Steve McQueen, Chris Farley and Richard Pryor. Buitenhuis says he has directed six feature films and about a dozen shorts and music videos.

How do you film someone who is gone?

For Buitenhuis the answer is to let the subject speak first. In I Am Heath Ledger the footage largely comes from Ledger himself. He filmed his own life, and his childhood friend Trevor DiCarlo supplied much of it. Buitenhuis calls DiCarlo "the soul of the film" and says it took a lot of convincing to get him to be interviewed.

He did every interview except Ang Lee's himself, with sessions running from 45 minutes to three and a half hours. He has said most subjects needed the first half hour to an hour to relax.

Which Buitenhuis films are on Relay?

I Am Heath Ledger (2017)

Buitenhuis directed this with Murray, and it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival before airing on Spike TV. Heath Ledger was the actor best known as the Joker in The Dark Knight, and he died at 28. The film follows him from his childhood in Perth to international stardom, with interviews that include Ang Lee, the director of Brokeback Mountain. Buitenhuis says Ledger shot the footage to teach himself about acting and break down his self-consciousness.

Documentary

I Am Paul Walker (2018)

Paul Walker was the Fast and Furious star who died in 2013 at 40. The film premiered on Paramount Network on August 11, 2018, with interviews from his family, including his brothers Cody and Caleb and sister Ashlie, and home movies. Tyrese Gibson, his co-star, and Rob Cohen, who directed the first The Fast and the Furious, appear as well. It also covers the work Walker did after the Haiti earthquake with the relief group he later founded, Reach Out Worldwide, and his support for a shark researcher.

I Am Patrick Swayze (2019)

Buitenhuis directed this one. It had its world premiere at the San Antonio Film Festival in Texas on August 2, 2019, then aired on Paramount Network on August 18, Swayze's birthday, a decade after he died of pancreatic cancer. His widow Lisa Niemi, whom he met as a teenager at his mother's dance studio, and his brother Don Swayze are interviewed. So are the co-stars Sam Elliott, Jennifer Grey and Demi Moore. Buitenhuis has named it among his favorites of his films.

Documentary

I Am Burt Reynolds (2020)

Burt Reynolds broke through in Deliverance, went on to Smokey and the Bandit and earned an Academy Award nomination for Boogie Nights. He was voted the world's number one box office star from 1978 to 1982. The film won Best Documentary at the 2021 Breckenridge Film Festival. Loni Anderson, his former wife, and their adopted son Quinton are interviewed, along with Jon Voight, Bruce Dern and Marilu Henner. Reynolds hoped for a football career until a knee injury ended it, and later struggled with painkiller addiction. Henner says nobody was surprised when he ran out of money, because he was always doing things for the crew.

What to watch first

Start with I Am Heath Ledger to see the method at its fullest, with an actor's own footage doing the talking. I Am Patrick Swayze is one Buitenhuis has named a favorite. I Am Burt Reynolds tells the longest career story of the four.