CHRIS NEUMER: I’ve never actually seen the Osbournes, I don’t know if this makes my standard either higher or lower —
STEVE JAMES: I haven’t seen them either.
CHRIS NEUMER: But I was curious to know, because someone talked to me about Survivor, and if they could make a documentary about Survivor, and I’d asked the question, well isn’t that sort of a documentary? And they said, no, it’s reality TV.
STEVE JAMES: Right. I think making a documentary about a reality television show would be very interesting. Looking at how they make that, and how they go about constructing their "reality." But, there were times that it struck me while we were making Reel Paradise that it could be a reality documentary. Because the premise itself, upper-middle-class, educated family goes and spends a year in Fiji, sounds like a reality TV premise, number one, and there were certain moments and times, like when Andrew, the landlord comes over, and they get into these pitch battles, or even some of the inter-family dynamics that were going on that sort of reminds you a little bit of some of the stuff you might’ve seen on television. I’m not a big reality television show fan, but I like to think that this film makes you think about that some, but it’s hard to think that, maybe this is what reality television really should be more of. That it still can be honest and nuanced and have some complexity to it, and not just pander. I don’t feel like this is a film that panders.
CHRIS NEUMER: I could ask if you’re talking about Fox’s wife swapping shows, but I’m going to steer clear of that for this.
STEVE JAMES: Well, I’ve seen a little of reality television, I mean, I think some of them, the premises for them are fine, in other words, even the wife-swapping one.
CHRIS NEUMER: Pull-quote.
STEVE JAMES: I don’t know which one of them is the good one, I saw one, and it was supposed to be the good one.
CHRIS NEUMER: Maybe like, Trading Spouses?
STEVE JAMES: I don’t know which one it is. I know there are two of them, and one of them is supposed to be good, and the other one is supposed to be bad. I don’t know, but I saw the one that’s supposed to be the good one, whichever that is, and the premise is fine. The idea of ripping someone out of their family, who have very different ideas about family, and parenting and switching places is an interesting concept. What the problem is is that in most of those shows they don’t have any faith in what can happen if you just set something in motion. In other words, they feel like it’s just not enough to do that and see what happens. They don’t have faith in that being interesting to viewers. They feel like they have to get in there and manipulate to make it even more "dramatic." That’s where I think reality television loses me. It’s not as a concept, it’s in their lack of faith in the inherent drama of people’s lives, especially when you do something like that. So, like the Piersons in Fiji, that’s inherently interesting to me because of who they are, where they’re going and what they’re trying to do.
CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah.
STEVE JAMES: I don’t feel like we have to get in there and play Svengali with their lives to make it more interesting to people.
CHRIS NEUMER: Just dealing with Fijian time, if you will, seemed to do that very, very nicely.
STEVE JAMES: (Laughs) Yeah.
CHRIS NEUMER: So, there was no sense of, like watching The Osbournes and making sure you didn’t use any of the same conventions or something like that?
STEVE JAMES: No. I mean, when we were going in to doing it, when they were trying to pitch the idea, to get funding, they said they saw themselves as the normal Osbourne’s. Now, I don’t know what that means.
CHRIS NEUMER: I’d call it an oxymoron, but even that doesn’t seem to be.
STEVE JAMES: No, I don’t know what that means, because I’ve never seen the Osbournes. But, I didn’t feel any obligation to do research on reality television beforehand, in order to make this film.
CHRIS NEUMER: I guess the thing is, some people have felt, and you probably didn’t get this question when you were doing Hoop Dreams or even Stevie, because I don’t think it was big then, but now, it seems like people who are behind reality TV group themselves with documentarians, and the documentarians that I’ve spoken to are like, oh, no, no, you just keep scooting that way, we’re doing something over here, you just keep do your little thing over there. And I was just curious if you had done any preparation so it wouldn’t seem, or appear to be that, but apparently not.
STEVE JAMES: No. Like I say, I have no great love for reality television, I really don’t watch it, I’ll check a show out once in a while if it’s really popular because I feel like I need to at least know what it is. I watched one episode of the original Survivor.
CHRIS NEUMER: See, it was that logic that got me to watch the movie Wild, Wild, West, and ever since then, never, ever again.
STEVE JAMES: Well, and I watched one episode of whatever the good wife-swapping one was. I watched about ten minutes of the Apprentice, which was about all I could take, that was enough for me. But no, I feel like I went into this situation as, I’m just going to capture what I see happening, and experience it as myself as filmmaker, and make a film out of it, in whatever direction it takes me. It was only after we got there. It didn’t really dawn on me that this film could have some parallels to reality television until we got there, and then I just kind of saw some of the dynamics at work, and I thought, "This does seem a little bit like reality television." But it didn’t dissuade me. I thought, well this could be cool if it’s a film, if it’s a real documentary that actually deals with reality television situations in an authentic way. I mean, that’s different from reality television.
CHRIS NEUMER: Yes.
STEVE JAMES: As a friend of mine says, reality television is a documentary of unreal events.
CHRIS NEUMER: That’s a very telling, knowing statement.
STEVE JAMES: I think that’s the definition and this is not that. I mean, Ebert wrote a nice little piece about Reel Paradise from Sundance, that’s where he saw it. He said something like, "This is what reality television could be if it had a brain and a soul," which was great. And other people who have reviewed the film, like at South by Southwest, had said that it had certain echoes of reality television, thank goodness that so far, since that, they’ve gone on to say it’s far more interesting than that.
CHRIS NEUMER: It’s funny what happens when you put your faith into people you’re just filming as opposed to worrying.
STEVE JAMES: I think that it’s easy going into making any film, to just try to decide in advance what you’re going to make. I see films all the time that I feel like a filmmaker was playing with an idea and stuck to it, by God, no matter what.
CHRIS NEUMER: While you were talking, this is going to sound great — while you were talking I was thinking about — that seems to be what Michael Moore’s critics have complained the most about. He’ll give you the first version, he’ll give you the last version, but he’ll take out the middle chunk because it just doesn’t sound that good.
STEVE JAMES: Yeah, well Michael Moore is not the same kind of documentary filmmaker that I am, obviously. He’s funny, I mean even though I was in Stevie, I wasn’t Michael Moore in Stevie.
CHRIS NEUMER: I laughed.
STEVE JAMES: But this is a guy, a filmmaker who is an essayist and a diplomatist, not really —
CHRIS NEUMER: Sort of a modern day Mark Twain, without the verbiage.
STEVE JAMES: Yeah, and Mark Twain was the most brilliant humorist America has ever seen.
CHRIS NEUMER: Sort of. I have to say sort of.
STEVE JAMES: But I think that he’s after something different, in film he’s more of an essayist, or a diplomatist, and he makes no qualms about it. Yes, he sets out to argue a case, and my politics are pretty liberal, but —
CHRIS NEUMER: As evidenced by your coasters.
STEVE JAMES: Exactly. But I’m not that interested. In the work that I do, I’m more interested in the grey areas, politically, culturally and personally that people experience in their lives. And I’m interested in the contradictions that we all live with.
CHRIS NEUMER: They make the best stories.
STEVE JAMES: So, I think what he’s doing is very valuable, I also understand why with some people it infuriates them, because they want what they perceive to be fair and balanced, which doesn’t really exist, but they don’t want someone who is so stridently diplomical in his work, the way he is. Other people of course love it.
CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah.
STEVE JAMES: If he’s on your side, it’s quite a ride.
CHRIS NEUMER: See, I go the other way, which is, he is on my side, because my political leanings are much like yours, and yet to me, it’s so obvious that you don’t have to cut out the middle part, just show the whole thing, come on!
STEVE JAMES: Well, there are different approaches. He’s trying to entertain and argue passionately for a point. I like reading non-fiction over fiction. Because of the work I do, I just find it more interesting, more complicated and more real. There was this great book I read many years ago about the Indian Wars in the West, with Custer, called Son of the Morning Star. It’s a book that is my idea of how one goes about arguing a point of view. He does not pull any punches with the way Native Americans could be ruthless and vicious warriors, and the way American soldiers could [be also]. It’s not the noble savage versus the awful Europeans in his book. It’s everything, but by the end of that book, there’s no question that Native Americans were screwed, but he doesn’t have to pull any punches to get you there. If I’m making a film in that direction, that’s going to be more my approach.
CHRIS NEUMER: Now I know that you had mentioned, someone had asked you about the popularity of documentaries, and the fact that there was sort of a hidden backside, or hidden downside to the rising popularity, which was that the popularity all seems to be surrounding the same type of film, which is more of the essay, more of the agenda-esque documentary.
STEVE JAMES: Yeah, and I don’t know if it’s agenda as much. For instance, like when Hoop Dreams came out in 1994, it became like the real documentary, not like I-Max movie, and things like that. But I know people who make I-Max movies are going to be like, hey, I make real documentaries. But anyway, however you want to narrow that definition of documentary, it was the all-time box office, documentary champ, it just barely eclipsed Roger and Me.
CHRIS NEUMER: Like $8 million?
STEVE JAMES: Right, it grossed $8 million in theatrical in the States. That record stood for almost ten years.
CHRIS NEUMER: Ten years?
STEVE JAMES: It stood until Bowling for Columbine.
CHRIS NEUMER: That was in 2001.
STEVE JAMES: Was that in 2001 or 2002? Anyway.
CHRIS NEUMER: You had a good reign.
STEVE JAMES: Yeah, we had a good reign, now here’s the thing.
CHRIS NEUMER: Was that at the top of your letterhead? I’m just kidding, but just for once I’d like to see someone put something like that on their letterhead.
STEVE JAMES: (Laughs) Yeah right. But when I was a location scout I was responsible for one of the worst all-time buyers of a movie. I found the location that we burned down for Poltergeist 3, did major structural damage. That I almost put in my resume for a while.
CHRIS NEUMER: I can’t tell, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
STEVE JAMES: No, that’s a bad thing, but it was such a great distinction at that time, I didn’t have any others. I found the location that we basically destroyed, that was my claim to fame. It got into Variety, and it was considered a huge catastrophe.
CHRIS NEUMER: Really?
STEVE JAMES: Yeah, but my point is that for about eight years that record stood. Then Bowling for Columbine smashed it, did like $24 million. Bowling for Columbine, and then the Wings of Migration did like $11 million. Supersize Me did $11 million. And then, of course, Fahrenheit just completely exceeded anyone’s wildest expectations. So, it is a different world now, and three of those four films are what you might say are in the Michael Moore mode; two of them are his, and the other is sort of inspired by him, you might say. Winged Migration, that’s like an I-Max movie, I haven’t seen it, but that’s what I understand.
CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah, it’s just like, birds flying. It’s cool, it’s nice, interesting.
STEVE JAMES: Right, right. So I don’t know, I think what it is, is that documentaries, to some degree, even ones like Spellbound, which didn’t surpass at the box office Hoop Dreams, but came pretty close, that’s a very different film from the others. So there have been some really popular films. The key, the connection between them is the entertainment value. These are films that audiences find really entertaining, touching, or moving in some way, and that makes them commercial. Michael Moore has to build an audience, and no matter what his next film will be, you know it will do well.
CHRIS NEUMER: People from the left are going to see it because they like it, and people from the right will see it, because they don’t want to like it.
STEVE JAMES: So, he’s a name brand, he’s a major name brand. But there are all these other films that are popping up that are not, and they’re becoming very successful, and I think it’s the entertainment value, as much as anything, that’s responsible. People now don’t have a problem with going to see a documentary because they think it’s just going to be boring medicine, it’s good for them, they actually think it’s going to be fun and entertaining, or moving and entertaining, or powerful and entertaining.
CHRIS NEUMER: Well, I think you could even say that with something like, The Kid Stays in the Picture. Instead of just showing the picture, you’ve taken the elements of the picture and started separating them.
STEVE JAMES: Yeah, there’s all kind of production stuff going on now that they didn’t do in documentaries before. I think documentary has always had quite a range of approaches, but I think it’s exploded. There are personal films, there are essay films, and there are these analytical films, like Why We Fight, which was at Sundance this year. There’s quite a spectrum of approaches now of documentary, that are perceived as ok, possibly entertaining, and commercial. It’s pretty amazing.
CHRIS NEUMER: As soon as Hans Zimmer does the score to the documentary of his past, it’ll reach another milestone.
STEVE JAMES: Exactly.
CHRIS NEUMER: Is there anything else you want to add? Anything else you particularly want to get out there, anything like that?
STEVE JAMES: I don’t know…
CHRIS NEUMER: Otherwise, I just have one minor thing that doesn’t have to do with anything. I was thinking about this in terms of, you did the pre-con thing, and I had this idea, and I don’t know how it would work, but I had this idea where the first half hour of the movie would be an honest to god picture, like a biopic of somebody’s life, take Jim Carrey. It would be about Jim Carrey, and Jim Carrey would play Jim Carrey. Then about a half hour into the movie, you’d hit present day, and they’d show Jim Carrey working on this biopic about Jim Carrey. Then, as soon as the movie would end, then you’d be into the future, you could have these other things, like how other biopics are made, and an older Jim Carrey standing around, saying "What’s going on? This isn’t what I thought." I thought this would be very interesting — Charlie Kaufman would have to write it, because it’s giving me a headache just trying to explain it.
STEVE JAMES: I was just going to say, it sounds like something he would do.
CHRIS NEUMER: But I’ve had this idea just in the back of my head for a long time. I think it would be hysterical. I think seven people would see it, I think seven people would love it, but I think it would be absolutely hysterical if you could get the right guy doing it. So then I started thinking about how you could apply this to documentary film making, and I thought, what about a guy making a documentary about they very guy who’s making the documentary? And then, and this is the point where you’re going to start to wonder how much weed I was smoking, this is pure sober right here, and I thought, wow, that would be bazaar, how would you make a documentary about a guy making a documentary? And then I started thinking about putting specifics, like a documentary about you making Hoop Dreams, and then, it reminded me of this movie called Where's Marlowe? which was a very small film that came out five years ago; Mos Def was in it too. It started out as a documentary, the guys doing the camera operator and the sound guy started getting involved in it because of the fact that they were filming it. Then someone else started filming them, and I thought to myself, "What is the next frontier of documentary filmmaking?" Is it something like this, just crazy, where you’re documenting some guy making a documentary? Is it something where it’s just blatantly commercial, like the history of the world’s most famous porn star, they actually did that with Ron Jeremy, but where does documentary go from here?
STEVE JAMES: Well, I don’t know, I mean, that kind of Paul Revere, self-reflective stuff, I’m sure someone will, or has, done something like that, but I don’t think it would constitute a big trend. Experimental film, for decades, has been as much about the making of itself as whatever subject might be in front of the camera. So, it’s just not something that’s been in the mainstream. I think that the more preoccupied with the media we become, and media conscious we become, and saturated, certainly that has, and will continue, to find its way into the making of documentaries. That’s why I think there’ll be decades where there are probably more personal documentaries, and filmmakers in them, filmmakers reflecting on what they’re doing by making this film. I think that’s something that increasingly —
CHRIS NEUMER: Sort of like you and Stevie?
STEVE JAMES: Yeah.
CHRIS NEUMER: You got a lot of, I don’t want to say guff, but you got a lot of criticism on both sides for that maneuver.
STEVE JAMES: Yes, I think for some people it worked, and for other people it most decidedly did not. And like with Stevie, I don’t regret at all putting that in the film.
CHRIS NEUMER: Well, you make people think, and that’s not a bad thing.
STEVE JAMES: Right and I think the people who got it basically said that. Otherwise, it’s just a portrait of this kid, and it raises all those questions. That seemed like a film that organically, I needed to deal with those things within my film. You never see me, and I shouldn’t say never, but I doubt you’ll ever see me in another one of my films, because it’s not the kind of filmmaker I am, but in that film it seemed like the only honest way to make it. But anyways, I do think those issues of self-reflectivity, or whatever, seem more viable and important today than they used to in the mainstream. They’ve always been a part of experimental film, but as to what the next frontier is, I don’t know. What I hope doesn’t happen is that documentaries become so caught up that our expectations of documentaries being commercial and entertaining don’t prevent a lot of really interesting and challenging work from getting out there, and being made because it’s not entertaining enough, it’s not funny enough. You know it’s great to have this breakthrough of documentaries, that documentaries can be commercial, that they can attract an audience, that documentaries are not medicine. That’s a great breakthrough, but I don’t want it to become the only thing that they become.
CHRIS NEUMER: Well, as long as you have Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary running around out there, I don’t think you need to worry about that.
STEVE JAMES: No, that’s true, but I think that we are entering a phase in documentary in the public eye which it’s never had before, it’s never had this kind of support and I hope you’re right, but I think there is always that danger in a market-driven economy and business like this, that once the people who distribute documentaries have seen that documentaries can make a lot of money, can make decent money, that they’ll be less likely to take chances on things that are not commercial. Think about all the indie-dramatic films, I don’t know, what’s happened to the indie-dramatic films? You think the work is as strong as it was ten years ago? I don’t know that it is.
CHRIS NEUMER: It’s tough, because my knowledge of film ten years ago was, you know, I was a freshman in college, what I was watching back then, I mean, a good-looking girl at that point in time was enough for me to be like, "Hey, all right!" But five years ago, I don’t know, it’s an interesting question to think about, I’ll give it that.
STEVE JAMES: Yeah, I mean I’m not trying to be a doomsayer or anything, I think it’s great what’s happened with documentaries, I just hope that this explosion is not a shift in an emphasis of what documentaries should be, just more the sense that there’s room for a lot more, that the commercial demands don’t drive everything.
CHRIS NEUMER: Much to the chagrin of the producers of the Pamela Anderson documentary.
