Movie Interview: Tyler Measom, co-director of 'Sons of Perdition'

By Ryan Michael Painter In Utah This Week

Filmmakers Tyler Measom and Jennilyn Merten have given five years of their lives to "Sons of Perdition," a documentary that looks at the struggles three polygamist teens face when they are forced to leave their families and community. Having grown up in Salt Lake City, Measom explains that the plight of these kids wasn’t a secret, but he and Merten felt like the news outlets were only covering it in the simplest of terms. Other directors, such as Davis Guggenheim ("Waiting for 'Superman") had tried to make documentaries on exiled polygamist teens, but couldn’t get access because the kids didn't trust them. Measom and Merten believed that they brought something different to the table that would help them to gain the trust of the teens. "These kids are told that they are going to hell. That’s a pretty heavy weight to put on a 15- or 16-year-old. And they believe it. Both Jennilyn and I had both been raised in the Mormon Church and consequently we'd left the Mormon Church. So we knew what it was like to leave a community and disappoint family and face that fear of hell. We knew that we could tell that story," Measom says. To give an idea of exactly how naïve and uneducated these polygamist escapees were, Measom talks about interviewing one of Warren Jeffs' wives who was convinced that America was the entire world and that it was flat. This 24-year-old woman was then shown a globe and, for the first time, suddenly everything she had ever been taught had to be questioned. "These kids have no choices. None. They are told what to wear, where they are going to work, what they can and can’t do and whom they are going to marry. Then one day they are faced with more choices than any of us have, especially when you have no parents or someone to watch you, and they kind of drown in it a little bit," Measom says. These struggles would become a central theme of the film as Measom and Merten crafted their narrative around a group of troubled youth who thought they were going to hell for leaving their families. In time, they would realize that not only were they not damned, they were — despite the sacrifices — better people because they left. This meant that Measom and Merten would need to scrap their original plan of shooting for six months and dedicate what turned out to be two and a half years to simply following the boys as they worked toward redefining their self-worth. "If you are going to make a film about the Iraq war, you put a flak jacket on and throw yourself into it. I see documentaries and [think], 'You know they shot for a couple of months. They checked in every once and awhile.' You can tell that they weren't honestly engaged. We lived it. We became a part of it," he says. Some might suggest that it is inappropriate for filmmakers to become so intensely involved with their subject matter, but Measom believes that it only strengthened the trust and allowed for the story to be told fully. He is also quick to point out that the kids were never coached and nothing in the film was staged or re-enacted. "We always said, 'Let's be as honest and real as possible.'" "Sons of Perdition" starts its theatrical run in Salt Lake and other select cities on Feb. 18. The film has also been picked up by the Oprah Winfrey Network and will air later in the year.

InThisWeek.com Originally published February 15, 2011

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