Newton filmmaker is drawn to the bleak side of life

Like most of his documentary subjects, David Sutherland doesn't have an easy life.

The distinguished Newton filmmaker may not live by the whims of weather and bureaucracy the way Nebraska farm families did in his riveting 1998 miniseries ''The Farmer's Wife," nor is he anywhere near as underprivileged as the troubled Appalachian teens seen populating an alternative high school in his latest six-hour Frontline presentation, ''Country Boys," premiering tomorrow on PBS. But Sutherland has spent the last 12 years of his life shadowing those people and shaping an image of their struggles via a complex process of filmmaking that few directors could or would undertake.

He lived with 40 farm families before focusing on Juanita and Darrel Buschkoetter for ''The Farmer's Wife." Then, guided by preachers, he combed remote ''hollers" from West Virginia to eastern Kentucky looking for the faces of ''Country Boys." For both projects, he recorded so many hours of film and audio that he needed hundreds of interns just to log and transcribe the many bits and pieces.

'' 'The Farmer's Wife' had more audio events than 'Apocalypse Now,' " the director says dryly. So maybe it's understandable that when you ask him what's next, he mentions contemplating a move to Nebraska, where he could take a break from the kind of marathon projects that ran right over a recent divorce (from filmmaking collaborator Nancy Sutherland) and other private-life events.

He admits to being physically and emotionally spent. But he also reckons that he's at the top of his professional game with ''Country Boys," another intimate cinematic portrait that takes viewers into undervalued corners of America. Sutherland's eclectic filmography includes documentaries about a blind cowgirl (''Out of Sight") and a female physicist (''High Energy"). This time his stars are Chris Johnson, an articulate underachiever from a dysfunctional family of trailer dwellers, and Cody Perkins, a Christian metalhead with a tragic past and an unlikely guardian angel.

In interviews conducted over the phone and at a Boston studio where Sutherland was recently re-recording ''Country Boys" narration with Perkins and Johnson, the filmmaker discussed his career and current state of mind.

Q: So what's a guy from Newton doing making documentaries about poverty in Appalachia and Nebraska?

A: I'm a '60s kid, so I've done a lot of things in my life. I hitched across the country like five times back in the early '70s. I sold agricultural tires over the telephone in Montana. . . . Growing up, I had lived with a variety of poor families, and it's been 12 years straight of filming these two documentaries, so, put it this way, my sensibilities have been in that world for a long time now. And I've always been fascinated by people living on the edge and in hard times.

Q: What made you decide to film ''Country Boys"?

A: At some test screenings of ''The Farmer's Wife," people said that the Buschkoetters didn't look poor. So I rhetorically said, ''What does poor look like?". . . In Life and Look magazines in the '50s, you'd either see African-Americans in Mississippi or you'd see people in Appalachia. So I thought, ''I guess I'll go to Appalachia."

Q: Was it partly your intention to shine a spotlight on this country's domestic problems?

A: I'm not an investigative reporter. I don't have an agenda. I don't know what I'm going to find. I just want characters that have a real chance to make it, but it's going to be tough. In ''The Farmer's Wife," it was putting a face on chasing the dream of family farming in the '90s. In this film, I thought I'd do a portrait of a small holler in Appalachia, but when I went there it evolved.

Q: Because you found compelling young subjects?

A: It belied everything I thought about the place, that all these teenage kids were much more sophisticated about the outside world than the outside world is of them. And then when I ended up at the David School [in eastern Kentucky] I thought of using it as a backdrop, but then I found these kids, and I went back and forth to the school for a long time before they let me do it.

Q: Is this your answer to reality television?

A: I'm just trying to make you feel like you're living in their skin. What I do is third person extremely close up. It's long-form documentary, which is not cost-effective. I'm a dinosaur, but at the same time I'm also cutting edge because I'm shooting six live tracks. No one does that, even in Hollywood.

Q: So what gives you the luxury? How did you get to be Frontline's Robert Altman?

A: Nothing gives me the luxury. I'm out of my mind.

Q: You say there's no agenda, but you do make choices, right? For example, sex and drug use occur off camera, and there's no racism in the film, even though Chris told me that his town is ''one of the most racist places in America."

A: You are there for some dramatic moments, but not for others. . . I'm not sanitizing it. If that was part of their life [and we had it on film], it would be there. You see Chris's alcoholic father hit him up for money and favor the hogs; you don't see things like that elsewhere. [In other TV programs] you see people [having sex], but the bottom line is that sometimes this stuff can be more hard-edged and more tragic.

Q: There's a lot of Christian signage in this film -- ''God answers knee mail," for example. Do you mean that to be humorous or is it just part of the landscape?

A: I use those signs to be representative of the area, and sometimes because Cody's going on a quest and he has faith. . . . I didn't write those signs.

Q: Right, but you understand what I'm asking. A Michael Moore would focus on those signs as commentary . . .

A: I'm not putting him down, but he's part of his films, I'm not. . . . I don't make fun of anybody. It's not my goal. If you find humor or ridiculousness, that's your perception.

Q: Do Chris and Cody represent the cycle of poverty in America, or is that too big of a sandwich board to hang on them?

A: It's too big. I would just say they're a couple of kids from that region and some of the issues in their lives are representative.

Q: Were you elated when they started delivering such great content?

A: No, because in these films the easiest thing to happen is they stop doing it a year in and you get burned.

Q: Do you have backups in case that happens?

A: No. I have to trust my instincts. And I'm crazier than they are. I had four people pull guns to my head between West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. They weren't mean, but I was on private property. I went into hollers that a lot of people who live around there wouldn't go into.

Q: Were they leery of you perpetuating stereotypes?

A: Everyone was wary. But . . . that's why I define myself as a portraitist. I want all the nuances of personality, and I'm not afraid to confront contradictions.

Q: Are you altered as a person when you spend several years filming in a place like this?

A: Yeah, I feel all their pain and frustration. I don't just get older and more beat up, I absorb it, even though I'm very clinical out in the field.

Q: Have the people there seen ''Country Boys"?

A: We were just out there. They really loved it. To anyone from that region, it's not like I came in there for 30 days like . . . well, there was that film that Bobby Kennedy's kid did [1999's ''American Hollow"]; she was there for 30 days filming. I've got over a thousand hours of film, 2,000 hours of DAT tape. I mean, my God, I was there forever. And my agenda is not to say this is what it's like there, it's to follow two kids from there.

Q: Are ''Farmer's Wife" and ''Country Boys" companion pieces?

A: They're companion pieces. And this one goes further on the sound; I got more close up. Also, this has more plot, and my side characters are more evolved. Chris's grandmother is like out of a John Ford movie.

Q: Might there be a trilogy?

A: I don't want to think about that. I usually have postpartum depression after a film, and this one I never thought would go so long. I was way over budget, I was two years late, and the bottom line is I can't believe I'm free. I feel like the Count of Monte Cristo, but I put myself in jail.