Gavin Fitzgerald on Million Dollar Pigeons

Courtesy of Venom Films / Dogwoof

After making biopic documentaries on Connor McGregor and Liam Gallagher, Gavin Fitzgerald follows it up with an idiosyncratic yet stunning snapshot of the pigeon racing industry in Million Dollar Pigeons. It is remarkable how the pigeon racing industry has garnered interest across several countries like South Africa, Ireland, and the United States. As there is a lot of lingo that comes to pigeon racing, Fitzgerald presents the importance, fun, and care in pigeons that happens in this sector.

When pigeon veterinarian Dr. Henk De Weerd is asked about the financial and livelihood stabilities of pigeons racing for their lives, he says “I think it is a very normal perfective." Though it is intriguing that Weerd is with a caged bird, nearly every interview has the participants being in the center of the frame with a lot of headroom. It creates a correlation between people’s little control they have in this industry, and the pigeons’ massive space to fly. 

Fitzgerald recently spoke with me via zoom before its World Premiere at Hot Docs about showing the many aspects of the pigeon racing industry, how COVID has affected this sector, and simplifying this specific world to a mass audience. 

- NOTE: This conversation is edited & condensed for clarity. -

EF: Thank you for bringing this beautiful movie to Hot Docs. I read in the press notes that your dad has a relationship with pigeon racing. Can you speak on that? 

GF: My father worked with a pigeon fancier. He came home and told me about him. And he'd say, you need to talk to this guy. They're very interesting characters. So he introduced me to the first pigeon fancier I ever talked to. And then once you talk to one, you talk to another and you just get sucked into the world. So that was kind of how the product project started. 

EF: It does seem a little unusual to go from Conor McGregor to Liam Gallagher to this. But there has been a mainstream headline, as mentioned in the press kit, where Lionel Messi is selling pigeons for 1.25 million euros. Why do you think it has gone to the mainstream?

GF: That's a catchy headline, you know, the Lionel Messi of pigeons. It certainly caught my attention. I mean, interestingly, when I started this project, the most expensive pigeon in the world was worth 300 grand [euros]. By the time I finished this project, it was upwards of 2 million. So the trajectory is certainly rising, in terms of the prices and these kinds of headlines capture filmmakers' attention. I wanted to find out who the hell in the right mind would spend 2 million on a pigeon or a million on a pigeon. It's crazy. There's so many facets to it as to why one would. But a lot of it has to do with China, and some very wealthy people out there have a lot of money, maybe too much money. They get into these bidding wars, and the price just inflates. But yeah it's a very exciting time for the sport. There's money in it now. It's something that was absent from the sport for many years.

EF: I want to segue into the International players involved like South Africa and China and Ireland. How do they cooperate to have many of these races?

GF: We wanted to really capture the international aspect of the pigeon racing world and it is because these one laugh phrases “these high stakes million dollar races” bring the international pigeon racing community together. So you have these events and they're popping up all over the world. South Africa was the gold standard. It was the Olympics of pigeon racing. But the success of that race brought competitors. There's races in Thailand. There's races in America. You name it, they have a race, and everybody wants to be number one. There's almost too many races now and the problem is there's not enough fanciers. They have to sell the dream. They have to get people to believe that they have the pigeons and they want to compete against the best pigeon fanciers in the world. It's the Champions League of pigeons.

EF: I didn't know how much training and medicine was involved because all the birds were coming from other countries. Do you sometimes worry about the health of the pigeons coming into these races?

GF: It's a big problem with these races in that you're taking pigeons from all over the world. When they get the birds they go into quarantine to avoid disease. It does happen that pigeons bring a certain type of disease. They're young pigeons, and it can sometimes kill a large amount of them. That is obviously sad for the sport but it's also money that's lost or taken away from the company. So it's a problem and you need to have expertise. You need to do it right and you need to have the space. It’s like social distancing.

EF: Speaking of social distancing, how has COVID affected positively or negatively to the pigeon racing industry?

GF: Probably, the biggest effect for these international races was transport being affected, just literally being able to get birds from A to B. I think that's all restored now. I mean, ultimately, the pigeons do the work. So it should all be able to go ahead. Obviously, COVID interrupted this movie. We had to shoot a lot of it remotely. We shot it in the middle of the midst of a pandemic. So it was really hard. But thanks to all the filmmakers around the world that helped me, we managed to get it made.

EF: Pigeon racing has its own set of languages like fancier. How do you make sure you simplify the jargon of pigeon racing to a mainstream audience?

You know, it's tricky. In our test screenings, a lot of the other questions that came back were just questions about how pigeon racing works. How does this happen? You could literally make a movie in itself about the science of pigeon racing and how it works. But we really wanted to lean in to the comedy of the world and the drama of the world. For that, we needed our audience to kind of roll with it a bit. I hope it gave them enough information that they can grasp the concept and the bare essentials. Once you start talking to pigeon fanciers, all you're gonna have is more questions, and I can answer them, but it wasn't that type of movie. So we tried to just put the bare essentials and information on how the sport works.

EF: As you have the bare essentials and how it works, why include the doctors and the other behind these people instead of focusing on the one pigeon trainer and a pigeon?

GF: Well, I wanted to really give a full picture of the pigeon racing industry. I think it's fascinating that there even is a pigeon vet and these guys specialize in specifically looking after really expensive pigeons. It's fascinating to me and it's very quirky as well. We wanted to bring in experts like that. We bought in auctioneers as well, whose occupation is to sell pigeons. A lot of this happens online now, as opposed to the kind of traditional auctions that we'd expect. It's a big business and we wanted to just capture all these different countries that bring different aspects of the sport and just show all of what’s happening in the world of pigeons. Through managing all these different characters and putting it all together, we managed to give viewers a good overview of the pigeon olympics.

EF: That's a great all around experience that you presented. Many of the interviews were centered with a little headroom. Why did you plan to shoot that way?

GF: It's a fun thing to shoot, you know, shooting pigeons and patient fanciers. It is also difficult because they're live animals and you can't tell them what to do. It was a fun and tricky thing to kind of bring the races alive. We even shot some pigeons in the studio. so that was fun. In general, I think the story is driven by the characters and we wanted to keep a very much a cinema verite approach because they're just naturally hilarious and things happen. Their life is surrounded by drama, phone calls come, people want to get out, they want to ask questions. All that stuff to me is comedy gold.

EF: As there's a lot of spontaneity in the business really, how do you plan for certain shots you want in the film?

GF: You definitely come in with the shot list of what you want to get in each territory and each day. I'm willing to throw that list out the window if something better comes up. So I'm rockin with it with a solid plan and sometimes I get all those shots. Other times, something better happens and we kind of roll with that. You shoot a lot of footage [in documentary filmmaking]. The story took many twists and turns and it had to change along the way. I could have made a series.There's so many subplots and subcultures of pigeons, but we need to try to stay the course and make this cohesive film which is about competition, high stakes pigeons and how money affects the world of sport. It was always a working class sport. So that image is changing and it causes a divide in the sport as well. I think that it's very hard to get two pigeon fanciers to agree on one thing.

EF: There's a lot of twists and turns. Is there a moment in your life that you maybe want to make another documentary about pigeon racing or about a different subculture of pigeon racing?

GF: Oh, God, I need a little break from the pigeon racing world to exercise different muscles. I really enjoyed it. They're fascinating people. Each person in the documentary, you know, almost deserves their own [movie]. We wanted to include as many characters as possible, just to give a broad idea of, and represent all the people that are involved in the sport. I think that's what the film does. I think I’ll be taking a little break from pigeons before I go dip my toes in that world again.