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1. Introduction

[1.1]This is the start of a new series for Transformative Works and Cultures that interviews directors of fan documentaries about their films and experiences with their respective fan communities. We do this in the hope of making the academic and fan communities more aware of fan documentaries as a mode of fandom experience, cultural production, and even classroom resources.

[1.2] Brannon Carty was eager to talk about his experiences making the film and within the fandom itself. He also provided clips to share here within the interview. Carty's documentary started as a class project in 2019 and grew to become a feature-length film. He used Kickstarter to fund the production of the film, which was released in November 2023. The film focuses on the adult fandom of the children's program Thomas & Friends, a British show released by the BBC and rebroadcast in the US by PBS from 1984 to 2021, developed by Britt Allcroft based on the book series The Railway Series by Wilbert Awdry (often credited as Rev. W. Awdry). The documentary, An Unlikely Fandom, features interviews with fans from around the world and production crew for the show.

2. An unlikely interview

[2.1] Kelsey Wildman Stokes: I have a couple of questions for you regarding your documentary, An Unlikely Fandom: The Impact of Thomas the Tank Engine. How did you come to work on this project? Why did you decide to create a film about Thomas the Tank Engine?

[2.2] Brannon Carty: I'm in the fandom, which is a fun little tidbit. Honestly, because of that fact it was kind of hard to stay objective with the whole thing. I thought like, "Well, these are my friends. I don't want to make them look stupid, and I don't want to make myself look stupid." It all started when I was about to graduate from college, and I decided to take a class on documentary filmmaking. My professor said, "Just make a documentary for your final semester here, and we'll pass you." So, I did that. Unfortunately, that also collided with COVID. That kind of made things difficult, to say the least. I couldn't really finish it the way I would have wished because I only got to shoot, like, a small little bit up in rural Pennsylvania.

[2.3] KWS: Where in Pennsylvania?

[2.4] BC: Huntington, Huntington mountains. Which was, um, weird? I guess it wasn't weird. It was just like, "Oh my god, this is in the middle of nowhere," you know? But it's such a neat little community. And I knew these guys had been organizing meetups with Thomas fans. I'd never gone to one, though, kind of kept to myself. But they had this whole gymnasium rented out, and it was just Thomas stuff all over the place. When my professor said, you know, make a documentary, I was trying to think, like, "Well, what should I do?" You know, I wasn't super interested in sociopolitical things. That wasn't necessarily my thing. I wanted to do something either about a film, or something tied to media or entertainment.

[2.5] So then I realized, wait a minute, I have all these people in my back pocket, because I know of this community. I'm in it, so I pitched it to my professor, and he said, "Yeah, that sounds crazy." Also, I knew it might be possible because there was a documentary on the Bronies, I think five years prior, that I hadn't seen but heard about. It's not really my scene. But I thought, if the Bronies can have a documentary, and it apparently did really well, why not Thomas? Why not these people? It's very similar, I guess. And then that snowballed into this.

[2.6] KWS: How long did this filmmaking process take you?

[2.7] BC: We started, I think, in July 2019. That was when the first footage was shot, and then the last piece of footage was shot November 2022. Which took a minute because in the background of the whole thing, we were trying to get the creator of the show, which we did end up getting, thank God. I didn't want to wrap or edit until I got her, because we'd been talking for years, and she's a very private person. She was very nervous about the whole thing. So once we got her, we were like, "All right, we're done. We can do this."

[2.8] KWS: Wow. That's great you were able to have her contribution to the film. Was there anyone else besides her that you were maybe hoping to get for the film that was maybe dragging their feet a little bit?

[2.9] BC: We wanted to get some more. We wanted to get a lot of crew members to talk about their experiences because all the crew members know about the fandom. A lot of them have talked publicly about it online. We wanted to get as many crew as possible and as many fans as possible. If we'd had it our way, we would have gotten Alec Baldwin. But unfortunately, when we reached out the Rust incident had just happened, so we were like, "Nope." That was the one person we tried, but the timing was bad. I took that as a sign. This was not meant to be.

[2.10] KWS: No, no, that was smart. That was very smart to just keep moving forward. Besides having been a part of the fandom yourself prior, was there anything that you learned about the fandom through the filmmaking process?

[2.11] BC: I learned that a good chunk of people [in the fandom] are on the autism spectrum. That was something we explored. We realized you were in one of the two corners of the fandom. You either were on the spectrum, and you never grew out of [the fandom] for that reason, which is fine. Or you kind of had a rougher childhood for whatever reason, and you stayed into it as a comfort thing. I found that it was really just one of those two. There was maybe the odd person that was just like, what the hell, life is tough. Why not? Why not enjoy this thing? You've got Disney adults who are still into that, which is great. At times, this felt like an extension of that. I mostly didn't realize before that there is such a tie between autism and Thomas, but it's huge. That was really eye opening.

[2.12] KWS: That's beautiful to have a safe space and to feel comfortable sharing a love for Thomas within this community. How do you hope for future scholars, librarians, and other fans to possibly use this archived material that you've now created? What do you hope people will take away from your film?

[2.13] BC: I just hope it sort of demystifies the whole thing, because I think people on the surface see this thing that's a little weird, that's offbeat. However, when you get down to it, it's a bunch of men and women who are super chill and breaking that "weird" stigma. I know the Bronies documentary did the same thing. Also, it's just nice for people to see that if you do have that thing that in your childhood that was super important to you, it's okay. It's okay to still like it. And yeah, it's a great way to preserve a little moment in time, who knows what this fandom is going to be like in ten years? We have this little time capsule of what it looked like at this time.

[2.14] KWS: Amazing, and very true. This has been really great; I want to thank you for sharing your experience. Is there anything else about your documentary that you would hope for people to know?

[2.15] BC: The biggest point I've always tried to get across to people is that this started off with me thinking, "What the hell, the sky's the limit." Maybe one day this could be an official branded thing with the Thomas the Tank Engine brand. Then it ended up becoming that, because we got Mattel, who owns Thomas. They became involved at the end of the day, so they let us use Thomas footage without paying a cent, which was great. They signed off on all the footage, and said "Hey, go crazy." I thought this is amazing because we would have had to spend thousands of dollars on licensing the footage, but it all worked out.

[2.16] My thought process was if a schmuck like me can make that happen, anyone can do it. It's also great for them, for this series to be revived, for people to see it again. I would like to think they saw it and thought, "If we shut this down, it's going to look really bad." The film is free publicity. And being able to say I worked with Mattel, even though it was so small, has been a nice little thing to put on the resume.

3. Stay unlikely, a conclusion

[3.1] When I began this series of interviews focused on directors of fan documentaries, something drew me to An Unlikely Fandom in particular. It was the title that first struck me, as it gets to the heart of why this series is so important. The study of fandoms in general, but the unlikely fandoms in particular, is valuable for what can be learned about their role in the cultural present. The fact that Brannon Carty was part of the fandom himself played a big role in his direction of this film. He has a sensitivity for his fellow fans, and a level of care that a nonfan might not have been able to produce. This interview makes it very clear that every fandom deserves its own place; fandoms create safe spaces for open discourse and for fans to gather and relate to one another in a shared love, no matter how unlikely the fandom.

[3.2] The film is currently going through the film festival circuit, and more information will become available at the website: https://www.unlikelyfandom.com.