What does it take to become a man? For filmmaker David Sampliner, this became a question that haunted him after one of his close friends proclaimed that he was “afraid of his own masculinity”, having grown up in a home with a surgeon father, and a brother who can squat while on top of an exercise ball, David was always the “sensitive” one, sort of “a wuss” like he puts it. Terrified by the idea that he wouldn’t be able to teach his unborn son how to become a man, Sampliner embarked on a journey in search of what he thought he’d lost. Out of it came My Own Man, a tender, revealing documentary that might not be necessarily a guide to becoming Tom Selleck, but more of an introspective essay on how it’s “manlier” to own up to who you are, instead of abiding to the world’s clichés.

The documentary is available on Netflix and we had the chance to talk to the filmmaker who shared with us how he gave the documentary structure, some of the surprises he found along the way, and how his dear friend Edward Norton became involved in the film.

You were shooting your life for more than six years, how much footage did you end up with after all that time?

The first four and a half years I shot on film, using super 16mm, so after about all this time I had maybe 30 hours of footage which is unheard of today because how we shoot now, but once I started shooting on video the ratio of course ballooned, and I shot over 60 more hours.

Was it easy to structure the film with all the footage?

I had an idea about what I thought the film was going to be, and then it changed pretty dramatically, the biggest shift that happened for me in the course of making the film, was that I thought it would be about the things I would do to find my own manhood, my path to masculinity, and that I would also film my father’s parallel path. The biggest surprise ended up becoming so much about my relationship with my father, which I thought would be a small element and really turned out to be the emotional center of the film. That was something I hadn’t planned at all.

He’s quite the character too, was he comfortable around the cameras?

My father, and all my family members, were remarkably open throughout the process. It’s an amazing testament of their love for me, my father took the biggest risk, he was aware of the difficulties between us, and he knew he was taking a risk by exposing our relationship with audiences, and I’m eternally grateful with him for having done that. It also required very little coaching, when I asked my dad if I could film him, he said yes. My dad is not a performer in any other way.

Would you say that discovering you were having a son in any way altered the path of the film as well?

When we first found out I was having a son I thought it was amazing, I was very ambivalent about having a son, but I also had that filmmaker feeling of “wow, that’s such great news for someone making a movie about his manhood!” I had a sense that this was juicy and relevant, but I guess I didn’t understand from the beginning that I’d be making a film to learn about manhood for his son. I didn’t fully understand how this would alter the story until I got to the editing room.

In Dirty Work you show men whose jobs in a way emasculate them, would you say that this idea of finding out what manhood was all about, had been with you for a while now, at least unconsciously?

Yeah, that’s a great question...I really do feel like these projects are connected, and it was a connection I didn’t immediately make. I think I did have this fascination with men who in a way seemed to fit the idea of masculinity more than I did. I see what you mean when you say these men had emasculating jobs, on some level people can see their jobs and see these people are doing something “you shouldn’t have to do”, but because they all work with their hands I thought they were manly men, they were handy. They all in some way fit that so I was attracted to them, they were also in some ways versions of my father. My dad is a surgeon, he works with his hands, which was something I never thought of until I made the film, his work is certainly very intellectual but also very manual.

Do you think people in the arts get a “free pass” on this idea of masculinity? For example Hugh Jackman is a sensitive actor who does musical theatre, but he’s also Wolverine and can kick anyone’s ass…

I think actors and lead singers, those people in particular, people like Mick Jagger and David Bowie, culturally exist in this space where people can imagine the boundaries of gender being wider, they get permission to be fully emotional beings. It’s interesting, my brother in the course of making the film told me he was attracted to really moody, angry female singers and he said it was because they allowed him to tap into this part of himself he couldn’t tap into in any other way. I think that’s true about actors and singers, people give them permission to explore this territory, and at least in the sense of making this film I thought I would be giving other men permission to explore this part of themselves, even if they’re not famous (laughs).

When Edward Norton came along, did you see the parallels between what you wanted to achieve, and what his character in Fight Club sets out to do as well?

Because we were always close friends while he was making these movies, including Fight Club, making this movie wasn’t the first time I thought he might be interested in this topic. We talked about these topics throughout the years as friends, I think it’s no accident that he’s explored these themes himself in films like American History X. In some way I’m exploring them because these elements connect us, there was never a calculation on my part. I actually thought I shouldn’t show him because he’s a celebrity and wouldn’t belong in the film, it was a friend of mine who got me to see how our friendship was relevant to the film, because Ed is a person with whom, for better or for worse, I measure myself against. Talking to Ed was a way of me to explore these feelings I was having, so I had to make sure his role in the film was narrative.

After the process of making this film how would you define masculinity now?

I think that initially, when I started making the film I thought that being a man meant you had to embody masculine qualities, and that I had to embody more masculine qualities to feel like I was a man. When I finished the film I came to understand that my one job was to get out of any box that was called masculinity, that my job was to find out who I was and to be that person. In fact, while making the film, one of the reasons why I was trying to explore masculinity, was that I knew I’d made being a man into this negative caricature and that I had to come to a more balanced view of what it was to come to a more balanced view of me, so in the end becoming a man didn’t mean becoming more masculine, but becoming more me. And maybe being more me, meant I was being more masculine. If anything I came to a greater sense of acceptance with the more sensitive parts of myself, more than I came to recognize that there was this “inner cave man” inside me. Ironically I think my journey led me more to embrace what people thought was my more feminine side, than it was about harnessing the more masculine parts of myself.

My Own Man is now available on Netflix.