Making a documentary is hard.
After beginning to write a book about notable wildfires in Arizona history, Gilbert resident Scott Briggs decided those stories would be better served by making a film.
"Prisoners of Fire," which was released in theaters in March and is now available on Amazon Prime, is the story of the 1990 Dude Fire that burned over 24,000 acres in the Tonto National Forest outside of Payson.
The Dude Fire, which was named for a creek in the area, took the lives of six Perryville prison firefighters, destroyed over 50 homes, including the original Zane Grey cabin (which has since been rebuilt and can be visited), and helped to change the face of fighting wildfires in the Southwest.
It wasn’t the easiest path to get the film made, Briggs says.
“I was in the music business for a lot of years, and I knew a lot of film people. I started pitching the (Dude Fire) idea to them and they ended up turning the tables on me when I would ask them to be involved. They would say, ‘We’re not the right people,’ and when I asked who was, they said, ‘You,’” he recalls.
Briggs had been involved with a couple of short films but had never made a feature-length film before. But after a talk with a filmmaker, he saw the light.
“One of my film friends is a pretty big Hollywood director I won't name, but he's got some really good movies to his credit. He listened to me for an hour and then he asked me a couple questions. ‘Do you want to tell the truth?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, that's all I care about. I just want the real story to come out.' He said, ‘Well, whoever does this has to do everything themselves. You have to do the interviews and, most importantly, you have to do the editing.' I've never edited anything in my life,” says Briggs.
Filmmaker Scott Briggs addresses the crowd at the Dude Fire memorial in Bonita Creek, Arizona.
Scott Briggs
For Briggs, it was challenge accepted, and he set out to make his film in 2023. With a budget of $30,000 and countless hours of time sourcing material, doing interviews and working hand in hand with the men and women who fought the Dude Fire, "Prisoners of Fire" came to life. It was eventually screened in Tempe in March and has been accepted to several film festivals.
Using news footage, interviews with the survivors and location footage shot by Briggs, "Prisoners of Fire" is an emotional 90-minute ride and well worth the price of a rental or purchase. The documentary is a mixture of celebration and sadness in what ultimately becomes a stunning and evocative cautionary tale. Though it's only his first feature-length documentary, Briggs shows a real knack for compelling storytelling and an unflinching eye for the truth through an empathetic lens.
This area of Arizona was important to Briggs, even as a young person.
“I mean, I grew up here. I'm an avid outdoorsman, and that area underneath the rim is a really dear place to me as well. I had fished on Dude Creek and Weber Creek. I went to scout camp as a boy at Camp Geronimo, which isn't very far away from there. I knew the area well,” Briggs says.
He even remembers a trip to the area in 1991, a year after the Dude Fire.
“Just seeing the devastation of that beautiful ponderosa pine forest, it absolutely looked like a moonscape, you know. I think it was really the first big fire we had in Arizona. (The Dude Fire) was the first time we lost a whole subdivision (Bonita Creek), and to lose, you know, six lives was just an awful thing,” Briggs says.
Briggs was so moved by what he learned in researching wildfires that he became a co-founder of the Sano Unda Foundation to help provide support and access to mental health services for firefighters.
"(Sano Unda) is Latin for healing waters. So we want to be the 'water that puts out the fire' kind of thing. We're focusing on mental wellness programs and retreats, and eventually, hopefully, we will get our own camp that we can put the firefighters through to help support them," he says.
In fact, one of the biggest challenges Briggs faced was how personal the subject matter became to him.
“I originally was just going to do a little film, and it was really just going to be for Bill (Davenport, a key figure in the film) to be able to share his story. I did know quite a bit about the Dude Fire already, and I knew the other people that really did know what happened, but we just dug in with the interviews. I heard these things (that happened) and I knew how important this story really is,” says Briggs.
Although "Prisoners of Fire" is full of handwringing moments full of remorse, frustration (especially where the Arizona Department of Corrections is concerned) and sadness, it's respectful to those who helped make sure the fire did not consume even more lives than it ultimately did. Briggs even found a way to skillfully weave the words of Zane Grey into the film.
For the five men and one woman who lost their lives quite unnecessarily, though, "Prisoners of Fire" proves to be a beautiful eulogy for six people the world barely got to know.
"Prisoners of Fire" is currently available to rent for $2.99 or buy for $9.99 on Amazon Prime.
