Carpet Cowboys Review | Scraps and Remainders of the American Dream

Emily MacKenzie and Noah Collier’s documentary Carpet Cowboys takes an inspired look at how the American dream has been trampled and walked over in recent years, both literally and figuratively. MacKenzie and Collier travel to a once booming town that had cornered the market in a very specific industry, only to see corporations take ahold of the manufacturing sector and redefine success in the marketplace. Carpet Cowboys examines an inherent shift in small town economics from the point of view of people witnessing these changes, and although they are virtually powerless to stop the march of corporate capitalism, they still find new ways to persist, even if it means following their dreams elsewhere.

Dalton, Georgia is known as “the carpet capitol of the world,” a major point of pride among town officials and locals. 85% of all carpeting in the United States and up to 50% of worldwide exports come from Dalton. In the boom periods of Dalton’s history, the town was home to more millionaires per capita than most other places in the world. But in the modern era – one where large portions of the general public already don’t particularly enjoy performing the sort of upkeep and cleaning carpeting requires – those independent manufacturers turned millionaires have virtually disappeared in favour of large corporate owned assembly lines funded by billionaires who don’t live anywhere near Dalton.

MacKenzie and Collier follow a few different designers, manufacturers, and salespeople throughout their film, but the primary focus of Carpet Cowboys falls upon Roderick James, a Scottish ex-pat who came over to Dalton in 1985 and never looked back. A designer with several divorces under his belt, James takes inspiration from natural wonders that remind him of home and a deep admiration and affinity for cowboy culture. James had experienced hard times in the past, but now he seems desperate to make a career pivot. Selling his designs to mega-companies is virtually impossible, his menswear idea is still more of a concept than a reality, and he’s been reduced to writing potential commercial jingles with his country musician roommate for a tween who hit it big on Shark Tank with a new form of glue. Roderick loves Georgia, the people, and the culture, but with a girlfriend in the Philippines and more job opportunities available to him in China, it might be time to leave his dreams behind.

Executive produced by John Wilson, Carpet Cowboys depicts the everyday struggles of people trying to make it on their own in Dalton not only as a vanishing way of life, but also as a blow to the local art community by proxy. The people MacKenzie and Collier speak with take their jobs – some that have stretched through generations of families – with a great degree of seriousness and attention to detail. Sometimes they’ll joke about how a bunch of self-professed hillbillies were ever able to make it in the industry as long as they did, but amid all the self-deprecation there’s a clear amount of intelligence. Their livelihoods and all that came with them aren’t vanishing because they aren’t trying hard enough. They’re going away with the “march of progress” and corporations that are able to muscle the traditional American dream out of the way.

Those corporations remain largely out of sight and on the periphery of Carpet Cowboys in favour of focusing on Roderick and other townspeople. It’s a choice that doesn’t always pay off for MacKenzie and Collier because there’s little visual counterpoint on which to hang the narrative they want to convey. By treating the advancing invaders like an existential threat, Carpet Cowboys sometimes endangers its own subtextual points. But even without an obvious counterpoint, MacKenzie and Collier are still able to get to the beating heart of the matter, and offer a eulogy for the myth of the prosperity gospel.

Homes and families have been pushed out to make way for offices, larger production facilities, and creature comforts that arrive when big business comes to town. The environmental impact was already massive, but how does that change when things get even bigger and go more widely unreported? Is it better to get out while one still can or to wait and see what comes next and potentially be left behind, or worse, become just another cog in a larger machine? Carpet Cowboys looks at the place where the desire for stability in life often runs afoul of personal and professional passions, ultimately building to some unexpectedly moving and poignant moments and reflections. It would’ve been easy for lesser filmmakers to turn Carpet Cowboys into a quirky comedy about outsiders, but it takes real talents like MacKenzie and Collier to make it into something resonant and soulful.

Carpet Cowboys opens at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema on Thursday, October 26, 2023, with every screening opening with a recorded intro from executive producer John Wilson, and a pre-recorded Q&A with filmmakers Emily MacKenzie and Noah Collier following select screenings (October 26 at 4:00pm, October 28 at 1:00pm, October 29 at 6:30pm, and October 30 at 6:30pm). It also opens at VIFF Centre in Vancouver on Friday, November 3.