Lone Wolf Lester

Lester Rowe is disappointed with his Sprite.

“Might as well be Crystal Lite. They just threw a pouch in there,” he says.

Rowe does not hold back from telling it like it is. Whether it’s Tallgrass Film Festival, the quality of the soda pop where our interview takes place, or being a black filmmaker in Wichita, he is more than willing to give his unadulterated opinion. And if you don’t like it, you can kick rocks.

His rough edges might relate to his being a son of gritty south Dallas.

“Where I’m from, that’s the place you have friends that don’t want to visit,” Rowe says.

A graduate of Dallas’ Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Rowe made his way to Wichita thanks to an art scholarship from Newman University. There he would study all the classical art forms. Or at least, all but sculpture.

“I don’t like my hands being dirty,” he explains.

He met art professor Mary Werner there, who became like a second mom to him.

“I think a lot of what it was is just being one of the few minorities in that program, I think she saw potential and didn’t want me to get away from that potential. … Without her, I probably wouldn’t be here, in terms of sticking with being an artist…” Rowe says.

Back in Dallas, before he came to college, Rowe knew he wanted to tell stories on film. In high school, he took a video camera and walked around his neighborhood, searching for stories. He even filmed a Scream-inspired horror flick with some friends.

“…We were just playing around, but that first 10 minutes was really good,” Rowe says.

That budding interest in film, plus a classical art education at Newman University, produced an artist who understood that the creation of art, be it on a canvas or on film, couldn’t be controlled once it left his hands.

“All the art I create is with a general perception and then everyone runs away with it and fucks it up. It doesn’t matter what I think. People are going to walk away with what THEY think. I just have to translate the purpose as much as possible and hope some of that walks away with you,” Rowe says.

At his core, Rowe is motivated by storytelling, even if the story is a difficult one. And Rowe’s 30-minute documentary film WiFi at Rock Bottom isn’t the easiest story. Meth addiction does not exude glamour and excitement: at least not the kind of excitement worth having. But the story of Amancha Coon’s addiction to crystal meth is captivating. Rowe believes it is his best work.

“With WiFi…, it was more true to the shit I wanted to make. It was the moment where I knew how to think about it and knew where I wanted to go. It was just getting there. I wanted to get to the grit of what is true to people,” Rowe says.

That truth that Rowe speaks of could very well be the humanity of Coon. Human beings often desire to “other” those that disgust them: the drug user, the criminal; any group of people commonly disliked. Rowe’s film can’t help but show the viewer the relatable qualities of Coon. Her positivity and warmth come through the screen. But the truth that Rowe speaks of is also ugly. Injecting meth with a needle is by its nature an unpleasant spectacle.

His claim that WiFi at Rock Bottom is his best work is buoyed by his storytelling. Though marred by misspellings in the captions, the film connects viewers to a real human being in ways that you might not expect. Rowe’s documentary films about Derby, Kansas mixed martial arts fighter Caveman Rickels might be more slickly produced. His short film about local BMX biker Damion Looney might be more avant-garde. But WiFi at Rock Bottom is, at this point, his seminal work.

“It felt like a defining moment. I didn’t get the documentary I wanted, but I got a much better one. Without a doubt it’s the work I’m most proud of. The most awards and nominations I got came from that particular story,” Rowe says.

WiFi at Rock Bottom is as honest as Rowe himself.

“I need people to know I’m not a savior either. This is me as a filmmaker exploiting someone. I wanted to show that side of it. There were points where I was like, ‘Oh, she’s terrible, but I gotta get the shot,’” Rowe says.

Though WiFi at Rock Bottom appeared in several film festivals, including Mulvane’s Doc Sunback, Rowe eschews that medium. Why should he submit to film festivals when there is YouTube?

“If you wait, it may be dated or be screened in a basement. I’ll make the shit, put it out, find my audience, create a podcast that can promote it; I’ll wear shit to make people say, ‘What’s that about?’ It is all geared around on getting people to go see things I create and not depend on an entity to decide that I’m good enough to be talked to or promoted based on whatever their fuckin’ agenda is,” Rowe says.

Rowe does not consider himself a part of the local filmmaking community. Though he is friends with filmmakers in Wichita and knows he can reach out to them and be a part of the projects they produce, he is somewhat unsure of his place in that community. His efforts to get WiFi at Rockbottom in Tallgrass came to naught. Though he understands the important role Tallgrass plays in the local filmmaking world, he is skeptical of its dedication to local filmmaking.

“I think it’s exclusive…Tallgrass couldn’t exist without [the Wichita film community]. I say that because I don’t think Tallgrass could get local funding without it because these kids and adults, who are aspiring filmmakers, they help fund it with the film races and some of the stuff they do for Tallgrass as creators. You see the same people doing it over and over,” Rowe says.

Rowe is very aware of his identity as a black man in a field that is dominated by white men. When asked if he’s a filmmaker first or a black filmmaker first, Rowe says:

“I’m a filmmaker first, but I’m a black filmmaker if it helps me get something made.”

He looks at me, contemplates the apostrophe in my last name, and says:

“If they were giving out loans for Irish people, you’re not white, you’re Irish white. You should use that kind of leverage.”

Being black might account for part of his feeling as an outsider in the local creative community.

“’We want these guys [minorities] in there so we look diverse,’” Rowe says, imitating the powers-that-be. He continues, “But I don’t feel like there is that support of diversity. People supported the big mural, but that was mostly white people saying, ‘Oh cool, this is something we can have.’ You would struggle to find more than five diverse projects that are supported. I don’t think they have the sight to see how to get minorities involved. I see the minorities that are a part of shit, but I don’t see how visually, people go, ‘Oh shit, that was a black film’ or ‘that was a Hispanic film.’ I don’t see that.”

Rowe never saw his films as destined for only a black audience. He simply wanted the audience to be the people that watched and enjoyed the films. His podcast, I’m Kinda Famous, is a different story.

“When I started, I said, ‘This is my opportunity to be black.’ If you see me in the film community, I use a certain voice. I’m relating to this group. I’ve done 1 Million Cups and things like that. They would like me because, ‘You’re a good black one, this is one I’m comfortable with.’ So I wanted my podcast to be my actual voice. And that would be for black people. I wanted to develop my black audience. I wanted to figure out how to get a black podcast audience.”

Rowe’s goal with the podcast is to get his voice out and to promote his films. But it has also become a platform to engage Wichita’s black and hip-hop communities, which are not always the same thing. It’s a process, and one he hopes will lead to a wider audience for his films. But Rowe is not a patient man.

“You’re probably gonna end up asking me a real question. I’m gonna wait. Let’s go on a journey,” he says to me, chuckling.