The Gas Station Attendant For much of her life, Karla Murthy listened as her father regaled her with tales of his troubled upbringing and eventual journey to America. Raised in poverty in India, Shantha Murthy spent years of his childhood destitute and working for meager wages at a restaurant, his only respite arriving in the form of an American couple who eventually sponsored his visa to the U.S. The rest follows a fairly simple pattern: he met a girl in his new home state of Texas, got hitched and started a family of his own. This, he claimed, was his true life’s goal; but the allure of the so-called “American Dream” drew Shantha to business ventures that didn’t quite materialized, resulting in debt that never got paid down. During one of his career pivots—this time as a gas station attendant—his daughter, Karla Murthy, decided to document the stories and anecdotes she’d heard him recount hundreds of times before. From her new home base in New York, she would call her father and record his musings, realizing that they contained more insight into themes of identity, migration and working class realities than she had previously realized.
The Gas Station Attendant isn’t only composed of audio recordings, though. Murthy blends together a variety of video elements, spanning VHS tapes, iPhone recordings and webcam footage. Sun-soaked mementos from childhood vacations are contrasted with the anxious reality of accompanying her father on a work venture, where the proximity of financial ruin appears to stalk Shantha just out of frame. Interwoven with the raw testimony of her father as he corresponds on the clock and narration from Murthy that contextualizes their relationship, The Gas Station Attendant offers a complex portrait of one child’s relationship with the family patriarch, one that oscillates between tender, distant and terribly strained.
Murthy and I spoke via Zoom the week before her film’s world premiere at Sheffield DocFest on June 19. Below, the filmmaker discusses the act of capturing her father’s “fairy-tale stories” via the family archive, the emotional process of cutting the doc and what she hopes this project passes down to her own children.
Filmmaker: Obviously, your father’s life story is incredible, from his status as a child runaway to his dogged small business pursuits in America. When did you know you would meditate on his life and your relationship via a documentary?
Murthy: I had always wanted to make something about his life ever since I recorded those conversations, which was, almost 20 years ago. Those were recorded on actually a Marantz, that ancient world of cassette tapes. The stories he was telling me were stories I had heard my whole life about how he came here. But somehow, hearing them while he was working at a gas station, they started to sound so different to me. Growing up, they were always these fairy-tale stories. Then hearing them with the sounds of the cash register and people coming in, it just sounded so different to me. The idea that this fairy tale ending wasn’t really true. I tried many times to make something, and I and I just couldn’t make it work. It took many years of just living, making my first film, becoming a mother. Him passing away was when I was sort of in that space of wanting to understand his life and kind of grappling with like, “What does it all mean? What am I going to tell my children now about his life?” That led me to making this film now as opposed to right when I recorded those calls.
Filmmaker: Have you always been one to intentionally hoard personal footage with the suspicion that it might be used for a project later? The footage spans from your undergraduate days to present day.
Murthy: I think so much of that was just fooling around with the camera. Also my dad shot so much Super 8 footage growing up. It’s not like I have like some sort of Steven Spielberg background where I was born with a camera in my hand [laugh]. I was just playing around with my friends. That really started in college, just taking out the equipment and filming each other. But I never imagined it would be in a documentary film. I was scouring looking for little iPhone clips of my kids or whatever. It was really meant to feel like rummaging through old photographs and footage and kind of assembling it into this meditation of someone’s life, as you might do after someone passes. Kind of like a memory film.
Filmmaker: How many hours of footage and audio did you end up sifting through? Was your family at all instrumental in kind of finding some of this footage from your past?
Murthy: Some of it, like our last trip to India, were clips or video that my family shot on their phones that we all had shared with each other. Then we had all these VHS compilations of our trips on these tapes. A lot of it was vacation footage, honestly. Then there’d just be the random little outtakes that I could use for emotional emphasis. So it wasn’t that many hours, but it was a ton of clips. Sifting through a lot of that was so time-consuming. So much of it was just random footage and finding those little moments that could be used in the film.
Filmmaker: You have several documentary heavyweights listed as producers on this film, including Stanley Nelson, Marcia Smith, Carrie Lozano and Geeta Gandbhir, whose film The Perfect Neighbor was one of my favorites from Sundance this year. I know that you’ve worked with some in creative capacity or professional capacities in the past. How they all came together to support this project?
Murthy: A lot of it was through co-producing. Some of it was because I have ITVS funding, so they are co-producers. Carrie Lozano and also I had gotten the Firelight William Greaves Production Fund.. Then Geeta and Rekha [Malhotra] came on board to help support the film almost towards the end of the filmmaking process and became champions of the story. Oftentimes you hear immigrant stories and they’re very simplified. They’re portrayed as one-dimensional, hardworking saints. I really wanted to show someone who’s fully human, has flaws and makes mistakes, but is really just trying to work hard and do the best that they can. To show some of that nuance and make them like feel full human being. I think that’s what attracted a lot of people to support this film.
Filmmaker: You’ve edited all of your films, but I’m curious about the process of sifting through footage that, this time, carries a lot of personal history and significance?
Murthy: This is definitely the most difficult project I’ve ever taken on. A lot of it was having to be in that head space of intense personal reflection for so long. I’m just so sick of thinking of myself now. I was trying to work with a co-editor at the very beginning, and it just felt very difficult because the footage is not typical documentary footage. It didn’t necessarily lend itself to the same process of making a film, which is to lay it all out and see what you have. It had to be kind of constructed in my head, in a way. So I ended up doing a lot of writing. I would look at a clip and it would spark some kind of thought or memory. Then I would think of other clips that might be able to help tell this thought that I have. I actually started constructing it by making sketches of little moments in time, just as experiments. That’s why there are four of what I call “dream sequences,” which are telling my father’s story. Some of that was just playing around with footage and layering elements together. I wanted it to have this homemade feel to it and not to be like overly slick. I wanted to have a lot of grain and this like kind of collage-y feel. So I spent a lot of time working on those four sections and figuring out where they could lay in the whole structure of the film. That became the backbone because I knew I wanted that to be chronological, the story of how my father came to America.
It was very difficult to force my life and my thoughts into a three act structure that resolves. I sort of knew what I wanted the ending to be, so that helped me get to a point, but so much of it just came through writing. This film was all made in the edit, so I had to do a lot of writing to discover what the story beats were gonna be.
Filmmaker: That reminds me of your TalkHouse essay “How I Get Unstuck,” where you discuss the mementos hanging above your desk that guide or inspire you during the edit. Was there anything specific you kept glancing at this time?
Murthy: I’m like looking at my wall right now. One of the things that really helped me get through is this one that says, “Energy is never destroyed, only transformed.” That’s just one of the quotes hanging above my computer. My father’s spirit is still alive and with us. The film is looking back at someone’s life and trying to make peace about not being able to get all my questions answered. We’re all part of this continuum. There were times where I would be crying and editing at the same time, just tears on my face. Or with the narration that I was just recording, there were words that I was saying that I’d never said before about how I felt about my father or guilt that I had. Some of those very raw takes ended up in the film. It was about me creating this little safe space for me to kind of explore all of that, which I couldn’t really do if I was working with a co-editor.
Filmmaker: Speaking of collaborators, I noticed that you worked with several cinematographers on this project; how did you know when to employ them to take the film out of the archive and capture present day moments?
Murthy: That was very important because I wanted it to have this completely other feel that reflected present day. I also wanted the gas stations to look a certain way. I scouted out gas stations to find the perfect ones that I wanted to use. Andrew Fredericks and I have worked together for many years and he helped shoot a lot of those with me. Andy Sarjahani is based in Arkansas, which is where the last part of the film takes place, and he was just so lovely to work with. Raul [O. Paz-Pastrana] also filmed a lot of gas station footage with me.
I think like the laundromat scene is one where I had that idea in my head and I knew how I wanted it to look. I knew I wanted to capture the rhythms of a laundromat to reflect this feeling of being in motion yet stuck in one place. I wanted the dryer to look a certain way and have people trapped inside. I had this idea that my dad was always running in place, but he actually wasn’t. The world’s idea of the American dream was not his dream. His dream was actually achieved: to have family. This film is me trying to realize that and understand that I had all these preconceived notions. Because we have so many different formats of footage, I wanted those shots to just be as beautiful and as cinematic as possible.
Filmmaker: Another TalkHouse piece you penned ruminates on the idea of feeling connected to a concrete “home,” a concept you had a difficult time connecting with due to your family’s somewhat nomadic nature. Has making this film brought about any new revelations in this regard?
Murthy: If anything, it’s made me realize how important our family stories are in terms of feeling rooted and connected. I start the film with this quote about migration being central to humanity. We have these ideas of movement as being almost unnatural. Even in the science world, I’m reading this book about how we think that plants and animals don’t migrate, but we’re actually seeing that they do because of the forces of climate change. Whole trees are moving further north. Humans are this way, too. It’s part of how we survive as a species. I wanted to embrace that idea in this film, especially in this time, to show how central the idea of movement and migration is to humanity.
Filmmaker: Your film is going to be at Sheffield. What do you think audiences there might take away from your film that ruminates on the kind of folly of the American dream?
Murthy: You can replace the word American with British dream. There’s a huge immigrant population, obviously, in the UK, as well, especially the South Asian community. I feel like this is the perfect premiere for this film, because it is an international story in so many ways. One thing that’s been really gratifying is that after people have seen the film, they immediately launch into their own stories and reflections on their immigrant parents, whether they have a complicated relationship with their parents or some childhood passion or dream that was unrealized. That’s the goal with any film: to help spark that personal, internal reflection.
Filmmaker: Has your family seen the film yet? If so, what have their reactions been?
Murthy: That was tough. There’s this tendency when you make a documentary film [of it being labeled as the] definitive story about someone’s life. I would make a different film about my dad if I were 10 years younger or 10 years older. All of my siblings range in age. My oldest sister’s eight years older than me. My youngest brother is 16. While we do share many memories, we also have very different experiences of my dad. I always had that in the back of my mind that this would become the dominant narrative, and that weighed on me a lot. I tried to bring them along the process as much as I could, but I had to explain that this was my personal take on our dad’s life.
So I did show the film to them. I let them all watch it individually because I just wanted them to have their own reactions to it. I was just so grateful, happy and relieved that they all really loved the film. I think one of my brothers said he didn’t want it to stop, that it’s just like watching all of our home movies again and reliving that experience with my dad. They were all very touched and moved by the film. Actually, one of my sisters is gonna be coming to the premiere.
Filmmaker: Are you also planning on sharing the film with your children?
Murthy: They’re gonna be coming to the premiere. I’ve shown them clips. I mean, having them be a part of the film was important to me. My younger son is sort of the stand in for my father, and that intentional because now they’re inheriting these stories. My husband’s family is from Lebanon and fled the civil war in the ‘70s, and he also has the story of coming here with one suitcase and a couple of hundred dollars. I look at my kids and they are the manifestation of all of those hopes, dreams and the risks that they took of leaving their homes. But I’m a little nervous because I also reveal things about myself and the mistakes I made, so we’ll see how that goes. I know they’re gonna be like, “Mom, I can’t believe you did that!”
Filmmaker: Do you still remain open to you collaboration as an editor and producer? Are there other filmic ventures of your own that you’re hoping to get made?
Murthy: Yeah, I have a film that’s in development right now that I can’t talk a lot about, but it’s based in Houston and I’m calling it 1986. It’s gonna be an archival film that I’m very excited about, kind of capturing that time in Houston. Then I have another short film that I’m working on right now with a terrestrial ecologist and what the forest can teach us about how to be better humans, how there’s less competition and more cooperation in the ways that natural systems work.
Filmmaker: Is there anything else about the film that you think is important to highlight?
Murthy: There’s one thing about the music that I’d love to mention. Bobak Lotfipour is the composer, and he actually composed the music for my first film. He also did the soundtrack also King Coal. When he did my first film, I told him about this idea that I had. He also grew up in Texas and is mixed ethnically, but he’s Iranian and Mexican. He told me his dad worked in a gas station, too. I was like, “Okay, if I ever make this film, you have to make the music.” It’s been such an amazing collaboration. We like really leaned into the Filipino side of my family, so a lot of the music references the Southern part of Philippines, which is Mindanao and has a more Gamelan, kind of Indonesian feel. There’s this boat music that sounds more like bells and uses more like gongs. I wanted him to bring a lot of himself into the soundtrack as well. He uses a lot of the santur, which is a Persian instrument that also happens to be the precursor to the piano. We actually delayed production so that he could move into his new house with his toddler and his partner in Altadena, California. His house ended up burning down and it was just really horrible, but he was able to save his santur and a couple of instruments.