Where I’m Writing From: Sarge
By Eli Cranor
Feb 1, 2026
I’m writing from the third floor of the Ross-Pendergraft Library on the campus of Arkansas Tech University.
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There’s a former Wonder Boy named Andy Sarjahani with me, and we’re here to screen his autobiographical documentary “Wild Hogs and Saffron.”
Andy grew up in Russellville. He played fullback for the ATU football team back in the early 2000s. Since then, he’s lived quite the life.
After earning multiple degrees, Andy left the world of academia behind to become a filmmaker. For eight long years, he worked nuclear plant outages—ten weeks in the fall, ten weeks in the spring—and then spent every other waking minute honing his craft.
Sarge; image courtesy of courtesy of Angela Black, ATU
Fast forward to 2026, and Andy is an Oscar-nominated cinematographer. A quick Google search will reveal all the other accolades he’s garnered over the course of his impressive career, but I’d like to tell you what you can’t find on the Internet.
Andy spent the last two nights at Layla’s Landing. We drank beer and stayed up way past my bedtime, but it was worth it. We spoke of our careers, the different trajectories that led both of us back to Russ-Vegas, back to where it all began.
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In many ways, we were doing what Andy did in “Wild Hogs and Saffron.”
If you haven’t seen his documentary, please remedy that now. Just type the title into your search bar and watch it from beginning to end (it’s free and streaming on PBS). It will cost you 19 minutes of your life, but every second will be worth it.
In the film, Andy does the one thing we all need to do so desperately right now: he talks honestly and openly with someone who holds views different from his own.
Andy listens to his former high school classmate, a man who’s referred to only as “Bubba” in the film, as they hunt wild hogs in the Ozarks. All of this is intercut with scenes from another hog hunt in Iran, the country where Andy’s father was born and his family still lives.
Andy and Bubba drink Busch Lights and smoke celebratory cigarettes as they unpack reductionist narratives associated with Iranian and Ozark culture. It’s beautiful and moving in a way that I cannot properly portray in the next couple hundred words. Just watch it. You’ll see. And, hopefully, you’ll learn something too.
I know I did.
My short time with Andy was a masterclass in making genuine, human connection. That’s his superpower. When you’re with Andy, there’s no judgement. Just love.
And that’s what it’s going to take for us to heal. All of us. We must have the hard talks. We must be vulnerable like Andy and Bubba are in the film. Their conversation is a blueprint, a bridge that is tall enough, strong enough, to carry us forward.
The lights in the library are dimming now. The screen flickers to life. There are close to 80 people in attendance. Old friends and family. Students from all walks of life. And two guys from Russellville, Arkansas.
A novelist, a filmmaker.
A quarterback, a fullback.
And Bubba too.
We can’t forget Bubba.
We won’t.
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