Pop-Culturalist.com

Don Argott’s duty as a documentary filmmaker is to help others discover their truth and share their stories. His latest project, Believer, centers around Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds as he reconciles his Mormon faith with the church’s policies against the LGBTQ+ community. It’s a moving piece that’s sure to ignite meaningful conversations. Pop Culturalist had the pleasure of speaking with Don about the film.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

PC: Tell us about Believer and how you got connected with Dan.
Don: I met Dan in April 2017. He was looking for a filmmaker to help him with an idea that he had for a documentary about profiling and sharing people’s stories on Fremont Street in Las Vegas. He wanted to turn the camera away from himself and onto these interesting people that live alternative lifestyles and are making their own way in the world. He thought it would be a great exercise for him to learn a little bit about himself in the process. That was the original idea that he had.

I came into it with a lot of questions about why he wanted to do it and what he was looking for. I think that the more I asked him, the more he didn’t necessarily have all the answers but loved that I was asking all the right questions. Very quickly, he said he wanted to make this movie with me. A week and a half later, I was in Las Vegas filming.

During the process, I spent a lot of time with him, his family, and Aja [Dan Reynolds’ wife]. I got to learn about their relationship. He spoke a lot about Mormonism, his depression, and being in this unique situation. He’s a Mormon rock star; there aren’t a whole lot of those. I think he felt the pressure from that community. Imagine Dragons are huge, and they touch so many people. They have a ton of LGBTQ fans, and their music means a whole lot to them. There were people in that community who were reaching out and expressing how much they loved their music but didn’t think he approved of their lifestyle because he was Mormon. That’s not how he felt at all, but, by being silent, his religion was speaking for him. At that point, it really became him identifying this really big part of his depression and his struggle. We abandoned the Fremont Street idea in favor of him spreading this message of love and acceptance within the Mormon community and trying to bridge that gap with the LGBTQ community.

PC: As a filmmaker who has done a lot of documentaries, how challenging is that to shift subject matters mid-film?
Don: You have to be adaptable when you make a documentary. Things don’t always work out. It’s real life. There are no scripts. There are no guarantees; so, you have to be open to what the reality is. In this instance, spending time with Dan, his wife, and all the things he’s dealing with, he comes to this epiphany in the film that he has to do something about that. It would be incredibly shortsighted to say, ‘Well, let’s table that, and let’s keep making this other movie that’s clearly not as interesting and maybe we can circle back around to that.’ It was so obvious what needed to happen. To me, that’s what makes directing a documentary so exciting. Once everything becomes clearly defined and there’s a natural arc laid out in front of you, that makes my job actually easier. There were all these connections being made and these historical moments in Dan’s life that are now relevant to where the story was going.

PC: As someone who isn’t part of the Mormon community, did that help or hurt you?
Don: I think it was helpful. I viewed it as a positive. Dan and I hit it off pretty immediately. We had a strong bond right away, and the trust came soon after that. When you’re making a film like this, those type of things can take a long time to develop, but with Dan, Aja, and a lot of the people we met, it came easily. We already had a respectful relationship established. The fact that I’m not a religious person, I think in a way, made it easier for someone like Dan [since] all he has ever known is religion. He had to explain it to me because I didn’t know all the ins-and-outs of Mormonism. It doesn’t matter what my religious view or non-religious view is; my obligation is to help tell Dan’s story and help him get to his truth.

As a director working on a documentary, you have to be a good listener. You can’t oppose your will on the project. You can help guide it and help shape it, which is what I did, but you have to know when to step back. I really tried to do that with Dan and this process.

PC: Can you talk a bit about the structure of the documentary and what audiences can expect when it’s released?
Don: Of course! It’s a journey. It started out in a pure and authentic place. We never deviated from that. Everything that was happening was really happening as we were filming. There wasn’t a lot of pre-planning or cutting floor stuff. Obviously, there are things that didn’t make it into the movie, but I’m really proud that what you see in the film is what was happening and unfolding as we were filming. There was nothing manufactured about it.

PC: Do you have hopes of what audiences will take away after seeing this documentary?
Don: For me, I feel like my job is to make a powerful film and one that resonates with people—however it resonates with them is great. I’ve had so many rewarding experiences with this film. People have come up to me, Dan, and other people associated with the film to say thank you. I can’t tell you how many people have come up to us and told us they came out after Love Loud. That’s incredible. That’s not a direct relation to the film but, obviously, Love Loud was born out of how we were making the film. On the inverse, we’ve had amazing conversations with people who have said, ‘Wow, I had no idea that this is happening. Thank you for shedding light on this. I’m going to do my part to get involved.’ I don’t like to impose what I want people to feel; I just want them to feel something.

 
Make sure to follow Don on Twitter and Instagram, and check out Believer when it premieres on June 25th at 8pm EST on HBO.
Photo Credit: Demian Fenton