“Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.”
– Mohsin Hamid
In the late 1800s, when silver was found by Nicholas C. Creede in the mountains of Southwest Colorado, the rush of people led to the boomtown known as “Creede Camp,” which was the start of the journey to become the modern day Creede, Colorado. In its present form, Creede boasts a population of 300 (an “or so” added by filmmaker Kahane Corn Cooperman in the opening description) with its being less of a mining town and more of a theatrical one thanks to the influx of performers that come each summer to put on various shows at the Creede Repertory Theatre (CRT). As such, the small town is a motley crew, made up of generations of miners and artists who come and go with the seasons, translating to differences in faith and politics, yet, ultimately, remaining fairly steadfast as a community. In documentarian Cooperman’s latest project, Creede U.S.A., she offers a look at the past and present of the small mountain town nestled at the base of the West Willow Creek cliffs to present a very human story about the thing absent at such a critical moment in U.S. history: empathy.
There are two sides to Creede and they run parallel to each other throughout Cooperman’s documentary: the town and the CRT. Regarding the former, Cooperman begins Creede by following a man we come to know as Billy Fairchild as he rides a horse across the land, past a mine opening, and into town. Everything we see appears, at first, vacant due to the absence of anyone else where Billy rides, but it’s clear from the businesses lining the main road that this isn’t a ghost town but a still-thriving community. With the town set, he and others begin to give the audience the history of the place, which creates a natural transition to Brittni Shambaugh Addison and Lavour Addison who are married New Jersey transplants to Creede and are connected to the theater, she as its director and he as an actor. With their inclusion, the documentary spreads out even further from the dry historical elements and the black-and-white photos which provide a sense of the town from its inception to now to more of the townspeople and those who straddle the worlds of Creede and CRT. The thing is that, even as you read those words and a dividing line forms in your mind about what Creede must examine in a culture-clash of conservative-vs-progressive, that’s not what Cooperman conveys. This is a community with its problems like any other, to be sure, but there are so few people by comparison to other towns that many of them who reside there are connected by blood or bond, therefore, there’s a greater sense of community among them. For what Cooperman shows us, through historical record and capturing school board meetings, is that Creede persists *because* its residents never forget that they are speaking to a person.
At one point in Creede, one wonders if Cooperman is trying to dazzle the audience with the sudden inclusion of actor Mandy Patinkin, the bearded and bespeckled man joyously driving down a road we come to realize is headed to Creede, until it’s revealed that he was part of the original group of University of Kansas (UK) students who answered the call of the town to travel there and set up a theater. It’s hard not to pay attention when the man who will be, forever, Inigo Montoya (one among many great performances), but, smartly Cooperman doesn’t lean on him for audience attention. Rather, it’s through the introduction of him that, then, the audience meets the rest of the aged theater troupe, as well as several of the members who make it up now (circa 2023 when the film appears to have been shot). The significance of this is that Cooperman, as much as trying to demonstrate the lengthy and significant history of Creede and its residents, understands (and needs the audience to understand) that the CRT is equally significant for the ways it brought new life to the town in the form of the arts. Through the stories we hear from residents and performers (with there being crossover of the two), we come to understand the profound impact that the integration of these two worlds — physical via mining and creative via various productions — have had on the residents. So even though you have MAGA constituents and LGBTQIA+ allies living in town, each proudly displaying their paraphernalia, there’s not necessarily a love that’s lost between them.
Longtime town resident rides his horse down Main Street by Creede Repertory Theatre in CREEDE U.S.A.. Photo Credit: Graham Willoughby. Photo courtesy of SXSW.
Where one would think that Creede would make its point with Brittni and her time on the school board, itself a complex job trying to balance student needs, government guidelines, and local beliefs, it’s actually the story of one Lexy Mead and another young Creede resident that highlight why empathy matters and can’t be so easily discarded. In the field of political battle, abstract arguments and philosophical grandstanding can score points and lose them, but you put a face on things and all the posturing turns into exactly that. The two adolescents are both residents of Creede, born and currently-raised, one an active member of CRT and the other an avid fan. The first may be the first openly nonbinary individual in town, the other is a mixed-race child whose grandmother openly sports MAGA stickers but will walk through hell for her grandchild. To hear their parents talk about the way the community reacts or responds to them, politics is only a small part of the community’s core beliefs because they interact with each other all the time, either through work, consumerism, or the theater. One doesn’t get the sense that, on the wider scale, politics shouldn’t implode families (for some, the belief system of MAGA is a reductive approach to America that would see it return to the Gilded Age of America (1860-1900) when the rich possessed the majority of wealth and there was a tiny middle class and basically no lower class upon which a return would mean literal death); but it’s through the children that we start to see movement away from some of the more conservative ideals because there’s a face, a living-breathing person they are connected to who may suffer real damage from harmful laws and restrictions. Thus, empathy has a chance to save the day.
Cooperman and cinematographers Jilann Spitzmiller (Meow Wolf: Origin Story) and Graham Willoughby (Group Therapy) make sure to present Creede both as it is and as it was. This may seem typical, certainly even expected for a documentary centering a small U.S. town, but their work makes a strong impression. This means that landscape shots aren’t just about transition setting, but about conveying how Creede looks now compared to the 1890s when it was founded or the 1960s with the first CRT troupe. The theater is a significant part of the town, an anchor as much as anything in its history, so presenting past and present doesn’t just communicate the usual then/now of a documentary, but serves as evidence for an argument of the necessity of the arts in maintaining the Creede community. Not only that, it speaks to the communal belief system that the town propagates, that by pulling others toward them Creede is able to thrive – an aspect brought into focus through the inclusion of original UK troupe members like Patinkin and original leader Steve Grossman when compared to the younger members of the Creede community. We can see the various businesses serving customers, the snippets of shows with audiences coming in from surrounding areas, and we can see that Creede isn’t a town divided, but a town united despite their differences. What keeps them together is the empathy, their connection and desire to maintain it through differences of ideology (such as transgenderism and non-binary sexual orientation) but they are impressively able to navigate it. Seeing it at work, especially where it involves the younger members of the community, gives one hope that, whatever shape the U.S. takes over the next few years, the kids are alright.
Though there’s a massive global religion whose central message is “kindness to all” and that one of the lessons most U.S. citizens learn in kindergarten is “do unto others,” it seems fair to say that the climate in the country at this time is hot, not just because the current presidential administration is rolling back as many environmental protections as possible (though things are getting hotter than they should and maybe don’t drink the water in San Francisco), but because we live in a time where books discuss something called “toxic empathy,” because it’s being able to see things from a different perspective that’s divided people and not the one who’s preaching about the Ten Commandments while he has a money-covered gold goat at his Mar-a-Largo compound and had a gold statue of himself at the 2021 CPAC which — last checked — breaks at least one of those commandments …. If only I could remember which one (probably not important to the religion(s) that arose from the tablets). The point, if you will, is that empathy is typically only weaponized by the majority and not the minority. This is why there are so many instances of white women turning toward tears anytime they confront and fail to intimidate Black individuals. So why does it matter so much in a place like Creede where the largely conservative town, again, made up of generations of residents, can co-exist with individuals that tend toward the progressive? It’s a mighty question and Cooperman deftly threads the needle by making sure to capture the town past and present, while also doing the same with the people. By doing so, Cooperman not only anchors her documentary in a place but with the humanity of its residents. Surprisingly moving and honest to a fault, Creede U.S.A. is the kind of place we all want to live, but too few want to do the work to maintain it. All towns require cultivation to grow, but they also require a populace that can see past the bullshit and remember that we’re all human and worthy of empathy.
Screening during SXSW 2025.
For more information, head to the official SXSW Creede U.S.A. webpage.
Final Score: 4.5 out of 5.
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Categories: Films To Watch, In Theaters, Recommendation, Reviews
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