While on a road trip, Greg Grano said one phrase multiple times in his sleep, awaking his girlfriend, Sarah Sellman. ‘We have to go to Bear, Colorado.’ Grano couldn’t remember the dream or why he uttered the words. Instead, the couple saw it as a sign.

Although Bear, Colo. didn’t exist, the couple found five other Bears in Washington, Idaho, Arizona, Arkansas and Delaware. The cities created a horseshoe around the United States. In the summer of 2010, Grano and Sellman, both Syracuse residents, decided to embark on a 60-day trip across the country to visit each one.

Their mission was to explore the kindness of Americans by relying on the hospitality of strangers to house them for each night of their journey.

Sellman said she grew up in a bed-and-breakfast, so interacting with strangers didn’t seem strange.

‘We were excited about it as an adventure,’ she said. ‘But we were also really excited about the idea of helping people connect and changing people’s minds about the idea of the stranger and really hoping people see that we can be nice to each other.’

This adventure became a documentary called ‘American Bear.’ The two Syracuse residents captured their experiences on film with just a camera, a light and some microphones.

The idea for the documentary came while Grano and Sellman were walking around Manhattan about 10 months after they started dating. They met at New York University, where they both worked in film. In July 2011, the couple moved to Syracuse when Grano got a job as an assistant resident director at Syracuse University. While they’re here, they plan on doing community outreach activities.

Grano and Sellman also started a campaign on kickstarter.com to help raise money for post-production and distribution costs of the film. People can pledge to donate a certain amount of money and will be charged their payment if the goal is met by Jan 21. Once the goal is met, Sellman said they plan to finish editing and to distribute it to festivals and friends.

‘We’re just really excited about our film and about sharing our good messages with anyone who wants to listen,’ Sellman said.

On the first night of their trip, the couple stayed in Roscoe, N.Y., with Joe Modica. At the time, Modica was running a Reiki studio where he practiced a Japanese form of spiritual healing. When the couple started talking to him, he felt a jolt of energy.

‘I just felt a good energy with them,’ said Modica. ‘I felt comfortable and I wanted to help them. There was no doubt in my mind. It just came out.’

When Grano and Sellman slept over, Modica said they didn’t feel like strangers. He thought their story was incredible and wanted to be a part of it.

Sellman compared the experience to catching up with a relative she hadn’t seen in a long time.

‘You’re getting to know them again, and you’re asking a lot of questions, but they’re also offering to feed you,’ she said. ‘It’s very much like interacting with someone you know through someone else. So it’s a stranger, but it doesn’t feel strange.’

On Day 39 of the trip, Sellman pulled into an oncoming car while visiting Bear, Ark. They were fine, but their vehicle was totaled. The camera captured everything and they ended up using it in the film.

Of the many great experiences the couple had, Grano said one of the most interesting was on Day 15 in Lame Deer, Mont., on a Cheyenne Indian Reservation, where they met Jolene Walkslast.

That night, Walkslast hosted a small family reunion. Grano said that everybody who came was interested in their story. Grano played with the kids in the kitchen while the women made jewelry. He said he thinks some of their most charming footage is of the kids playing with the camera.

But Grano said Walkslast had a heartbreaking story. She had lost her son several years ago and her husband that year.

When Grano and Sellman left, Walkslast gave them a pair of necklaces her husband made before he died. Each one featured a turtle made of bone, a symbol of courage in her culture, Grano said.

She also taught them some Cheyenne language, including ‘little bear’ and ‘see you later.’ There is no word for goodbye in the language, Sellman said.

Many of their hosts gave parting gifts after only a 24-hour period, Sellman said. The presents included a whistle carved from a branch from Idaho and a dinosaur bone from South Dakota. To the couple, the souvenirs have become symbols of their experiences.

By the end of Grano and Sellman’s journey, they had visited 30 states and stayed in 39 homes. Including gas, food and emergency money, the total cost for production was about $10,000.

To get other people involved, the American Bear website also features a section called Your Voice, where people can share their stories about kindness, Sellman said.

One story Sellman liked was about an old woman who tried to return a package of expired pudding to a grocery store customer service line. Instead of rejecting the old pudding, the employee smiled and gave the woman $5.

The film’s head editor, Danny Ledonne, was one of Sellman’s high school teachers and longtime friends. He said Sellman had discussed the film with him many times before finally hiring him in October.

Ledonne decided to work with the footage because he wanted to see it all. He said he had never been on the kind of road trip the couple had taken on and the adventure interested him.

Ledonne also said he thought the film was a great snapshot of a country that was questioning its identity. With the BP oil spill and concerns about the economy, people realized that helping one another was an important step to rebuilding the country.

‘The underlying idea is that it’s worth taking a chance on another person,’ he said, ‘that you both gain when you open your heart or when you open yourself up to someone else.’

Since the trip, Sellman said that she and Grano went from being hopeful about their journey to having that hope actualized and from having hypothetical faith in people to having real faith.

Modica, their first host, said that meeting Grano and Sellman was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that will be hard to replicate.

‘If someone like Greg and Sarah came by again, I would do it all over again,’ he said. ‘And if I can help them in any way I can, I will. I guess they’re like family now.’

mjberner@syr.edu

Published on January 17, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Maddy: mjberner@syr.edu