Paul Willerton is someone I’ve known of since he burst onto the international road cycling scene in 1991, racing alongside three-time Tour de France winner and two-times world champion Greg LeMond on Team Z. We collaborated on Greg’s LeMond Bicycles relaunch in late 2013, and have stayed in touch.

His latest project is a documentary about the grit and determination of a Flandrien, a hardy soul who makes a living racing the cobbles in northwestern Belgium. The movie is aptly called Flandrien, and Paul was generous to answer my questions.

First, wonderful job on the film. Made me want to flog myself on the Flandrien cobbles and visit my ancestral Belgian grounds. How and when did the project begin?

I’m glad the film had that effect on you. Don’t punish yourself too much, Gary. I suppose the roots of this film go back to when I was a kid, barely double digits in age, and I started down the cycling rabbit hole. Coincidentally, this was also the exact time I became fascinated by cameras and shooting

I got hold of any cycling print publication I could. Most were not in English, but if they had color photos, I’d do anything to gain ownership. I traded my BB gun for three ragged issues of Mirror du Cyclisme. When Winning magazine came out in the early 80’s and we could finally put words to the images, it was ‘on’. That was when I started learning about Belgium and studying the different races and regions, including Flanders.

My partner at DeFeet, Shane Cooper, had always wanted to do a brand film in Belgium. We both wanted to ‘plant a flag’ in Belgium because we saw it as Ground Zero for the DeFeet brand. In the early 90’s I had hand carried DeFeet socks to Belgium, seeded the market and got them onto the feet of a lot of riders. We debated for years and eventually decided not to do a brand film but rather do a film, supported by DeFeet, that told the story of Flanders. We wanted to celebrate it through art that passed through our own hands. I directed the film, Shane became the producer, and we created this as a gift to Flanders for the world to see. It showcases the region in a production that was not available to me when I was a kid.

When was your first trip to Europe? I remember that you lived in Kortrijk at one point. How much time did you spend in Belgium as a racer and since then?

My first trip to Europe was when I was 1. My Mom emigrated from Switzerland when she was 20, so we spent time there on occasion. The first time I spent an extended period in Belgium was 1988. I was 19. I had raced with Belgians in other parts of Europe in earlier years and felt like I knew some fundamental things about them. As a bicycle racer you pick up certain things about people that, were you not competing with them on two wheels you may otherwise have no interest in. Their culture, physical attributes, tenacity, humor, tolerance of others, diet, and how they respond to things like weather conditions, terrain and road surfaces. 

When I turned professional in 1991, I made Kortrijk, Belgium my ‘home away from home’. This was mostly because Greg LeMond lived there. He brought me into the French ‘Z’ Team and he suggested Kortrijk would be a good fit for me because you can race there just about every day if you want. I kept an apartment there with an old BMW 3 series for some years. The late Miguel Arroyo was my roommate, along with the famous Mexican soigneur, Otto Jacome.

Describe how you enlisted the on-screen talent to participate, including Allan Peiper, Thomas Ameye, Katrijn de Clercq, Laurenzo Lapage, Nicky Degrendele, Eefje Brandt, Eric De Clerq, Johan Museeuw, Erik Zabel, Stuart O’Grady, Mieke Docx, Victor Campenaerts, Tim Wellens, Frederik Backelandt, and Lotte Kopecky. That’s a mighty wallop of star power…

It is a powerful cast and they were very generous with their time and willingness to participate. DeFeet is a supporter of the Belgium-based Lotto team, and in addition to riders like Victor Campanaerts they have a strong women’s program we were able to include. Johan Museeuw has worn DeFeet since the mid-90’s, well before he became World Road Race Champion in 1996 in Lugano, Switzerland. Lotte Kopecky was easy to find mid-week during Classics season going 35 mph behind a derny at the Eddy Merckx velodrome in Ghent.

I’d be remiss not to mention Jaime Anderson and Bernard Moerman who own the Flandrien Hotel, which we used as a base of operations during filming. The image of Allan Peiper adorns an outside wall in the courtyard of the hotel, next to a similar rendering of the Belgian legend and indisputable, prototypical ‘Flandrien’, Briek Schotte. Jaime is an Australian and a mate of Peiper's. I spent plenty of days pinned against the gutter, often at the mercy of Museeuw, Peiper, Zabel and others in the film, but when I put on a filmmaker hat their story is all that matters. In the producer role, Shane did a great job lining folks up. 

You make a nice detour into beer and its regional characters. How did you find them?

Beer of course is a big part of the story in Belgium. DeFeet works with a lot of breweries in our custom shop, knitting branded socks for them. Cycling and beer go together quite well at times, so even if we are rude enough to show up unannounced, sometimes people are willing to pop some caps and oblige.

History lesson on war-torn Flanders was eye opening. You tied in its citizens’ grit nicely, especially with the 86-year-old farmer Roland Denauw. How did you find that gentlemanly gem?

We were told about Roland Denauw by Jaime and Bernard at the Hotel Flandrien. I really wanted to film Roland on his old Peugeot riding toward his fields, but he was nursing an injury at the time. So, one evening we just walked over to his house carrying our camera and sound equipment. He lives just a couple blocks away. I’m really glad we did that, and he was also willing, because to me he plays an important part of the story. He is a living testament and he alone tied together war time Belgium, the work ethic and mindset of a Flandrien and how and why that all meshed with the sport of cycling.

Sadly, I hadn’t heard of Briek Schotte. The two Rik Vans (Looy and Steenbergen) plus Merckx overshadowed him apparently. Peiper and Museeuw were in awe. How hard was it finding archival film footage?

Learning about someone like Briek Schotte is a passage into the deeper chapters in Belgian cycling. I’m glad to hear that, actually, because you know a lot about the sport and the country and you discovered something in the film. As a filmmaker, one of the things you aim for is to peel back new layers, uncover something that wasn’t necessarily known to everyone, already. That’s why we go back and forth through time so much in films, weaving and winding.

Old footage is easier than ever to find. We didn’t obsess with the resolution of the older footage, but I did want it to be highly accurate. The Library of Congress is a treasure trove with regard to archival war material. Seeing that material, after we had filmed on location in Belgium, holy cow. Talk about stirring. Like, when you walk a cemetery and see the exact position where a German machine gun held the high ground for months, where hundreds of thousands of lives were lost and so many unrecovered remains were pressed into the soil you’re standing on, it really registers full circle when you see the footage. That is what the town of Ypres, Belgium honors every night of the year with the playing of The Last Note. That was an honor to film and something we had to ask permission for on-the-spot. 

Bar Gidon co-owner Else Penne was one of your diamonds in the cobbled rough, and the Flandrien Hotel looks inviting. Is this indicative of what visitors find?

Else was great. That was another one of those days where you pull out the camera, start shooting and one thing after another keeps unfolding. We didn’t use much footage of Else’s husband, Fredje. Fredje was actually a professional cyclist, himself. He’s cast from the generation of riders who opened a bar after they stopped racing, God bless him. He speaks in a combination of Flemish and English, which is interesting but it can be challenging for an edit. 

If you visit the Bar Gidon, make sure you have a pint or four of their own brewed and branded beer. I forget the name, but you can see Else holding one up in the film. It’s just fantastic. 

The Flandrien Hotel is a great spot to rest your head, particularly if your interests involve the sport of cycling. If there is an equivalent in the motorcycle world, I’d like to know about it. 

Tell me about the camera and sound equipment you chose.

Before traveling to Belgium I invested in a Black Magic Cinema 6K Pro. I had a bunch of old glass in my collection that fit on it. It could have easily turned out to be a really bad decision but it ended up working out great. The camera comes with a copy of Davinci Resolve editing software, and that’s what was used throughout the editing process. Sound collection was handled by Shane Cooper. He had a plethora of mics. We fought incessantly with each through each day of filming. If he was daydreaming during important moments, stuffing down a waffle or standing in my way while I was filming, it could get irritating. Some of the things I thought were a disaster actually turned out great, so I had to give myself some attitude adjustments in hindsight. 

Skillsets like cinematography and sound capture are not exactly part of our ‘day jobs’. This is something, to me anyway, that makes this project special. I am not aware of another feature film project, not about a brand, that was created by the executives at a company and has made the rounds and had success on the International film festival circuit. If there has been, I want to know about it. 

How long did the editing take, and how was the process securing soundtrack music?

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but the whole thing took a lot longer than we imagined it would. It was quite a distraction. I have to give more props to Shane in a couple of important areas where he stepped up in the producer role. One, I had spent some months doing the editing myself. I had built out timelines, cut up interviews and had the building blocks of the story. Then I hit a wall. My wife was in film school herself at The Second City in Chicago and I was learning whatever I could through osmosis from what she was going through. I realized what was happening to me was common, particularly in documentary film making.

Because I had done so much of the shooting, I wasn’t able to leave enough on the cutting room floor, basically. I was too close, too attached. Shane and I talked about it, and we made the decision to onboard Joel Sandvos in North Carolina. It was a major turning point, just a really important audible. I am grateful to Shane for understanding, and I’m grateful to have been able to work with Joel. He has a very bright future in the film industry. The lesson for me, you don’t do something like this on your own. Put down the ego and back away, slowly.

The other area Shane punched well above his weight class was calling on musician friends who share a love of cycling to build out our soundtrack. Triggerfinger is a band from Belgium and they love cycling. So fitting for this film. Pendulum, super high level, also cyclists. Michael Ward is a cyclist with a long list of achievements in music. He came in with the School of Fish soundtrack, he played in that band. The music from these great artists really injected power into our imagery to become the celebration of cycling we had envisioned. 

What are the next steps for Flandrien?

Flandrien is currently being shown as part of the global Bicycle Film Festival virtual tour that runs through February 29th. Anyone who wants to view it can get a ticket here. Flandrien is also available in a double feature with one other film, I believe it’s Program 9. Tickets are on a sliding scale, I think $12 is the lowest price ticket. 

I’m not sure what’s next but I do love to make films. Shooting is very physical, similar to riding a bike. It is also totally engaging, requiring your full attention and participation, much like riding a motorcycle. You didn’t ask me about motorcycles, perhaps another time I will have a chance to wax poetic on that subject. In the meantime, I will just keep riding, writing and shooting my way through life.