CHRIS NEUMER: I was thinking about this — I watched the movie a couple days ago, I was just laughing throughout the whole thing.
STEVE JAMES: Oh yeah?
CHRIS NEUMER: I mean, I thought it was — well, it was definitely a comedy, I mean John yelling at people?
STEVE JAMES: Yeah, him and the landlord, I wished I had more of the landlord, because the two of them, they were quite a pair. I used everything I could with the landlord, but he eventually decided he didn’t want to be in it. We had a verbal release from him, but I could not get him to sign a release, which sometimes would happen. And it was a big trial and error just to get Miramax’s insurance carrier to finally get comfortable with the fact that we indeed did everything short of getting a signed release. We did everything you’re supposed to do, and it took them a while to come around, but thank god they came around, and said yeah, ok. I mean, I had to trim, cut little things out that were harmless, and then the guys recommended.
CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah, I thought this was like, some great seventies sitcom right here, with the landlord and the guy who doesn’t get along, who’s not afraid to tell you what he thinks.
STEVE JAMES: Yeah, they were obviously so — he even says pan, pan, pan as he walks into the room, telling us to pan with him. I mean he was obviously playing to the camera, very aware of the camera. And the thing the carriers tell you is to get a signed release obviously, but they want to know, did you really communicate with them what this film is and what you’re doing?
CHRIS NEUMER: Did you tell them, I don’t even know what this film is?
STEVE JAMES: (Laughs). Well, it’s true, but I did tell him everything that I could possibly tell him at that point in time, I told him it was an honest documentary about the Piersons, that it’s not going to be a vanity piece for them, so you don’t have to worry about me trying. I don’t know what’s going to happen in this film. I don’t know if it’ll be a theatrical documentary, it might. I don’t know what its future is going to be. I mean there were so many unknowns, but you know carriers, it’s not enough for them to say, well obviously the guy knew we were filming and approved it, and let us film, that’s not enough anymore. You have to be able to demonstrate to them, and if you don’t have it signed — I talked about the film with him, because I was trying to get him to sign a release, I answered all his questions, I did everything I could do to put him at ease enough to sign a release, but obviously he wouldn’t do it. There are just some people that don’t want to sign releases, because the idea of signing a legal document, in that situation, they just will not do it.
CHRIS NEUMER: I’d go the other way; I just wouldn’t want to be in it. I know what goes on in the editing room, who I could turn out to be. But now that you’ve got me thinking about it, I’ve been on a role interviewing documentarians. I think the last four people I’ve interviewed have all been documentary film makers, just like you.
STEVE JAMES: Right.
CHRIS NEUMER: And I keep going around, I’m just fascinated, I was looking over some of the questions this morning, and I thought, he’s either going to think I’m fascinating or I’ve been smoking way too much weed.
STEVE JAMES: (Laughs)
CHRIS NEUMER: Because some of these things, I talk about the truth, what is the truth? And you know this is that conversation in Animal House. But you know, watching these documentaries, and your films especially, I’ve become fascinated by sort of like, the truth of what it is, and you run into a lot more problems with the truth, because you at least, even though everything’s crafted, edited, put together and pieced together just like every other film, but since they’re documenting something, they have the air of the truth about them, and I thought, well that’s got to be a daunting task, going into it. You know, how do you create the truth?
STEVE JAMES: Right.
CHRIS NEUMER: So I figured I’d ask you how you approach the truth.
STEVE JAMES: Well, you know, one person’s truth is not, you know the whole Rash man thing, and I really do believe that, something can be true, and something can be the truth from my vantage point, and feel like it’s not the truth from another’s. Like, for instance on this film, the process of making this film with John Pierson as the subject, and his family as subjects was far different from any documentary that I’ve done. Each is unique in their own ways, in terms of wrestling in some way with the truth. But in this case, I went there for a month; I normally spend years off and on, filming. So right away, this was going to be more of a snapshot of a family in Fiji. This larger portrait —
CHRIS NEUMER: How many hours of material did you shoot while you were down there?
STEVE JAMES: Oh god, well, we shot about 150 hours of material in a month, but still, even though we shot a lot of material, and we had a lot of material to work with, there were a lot of really interesting scenes that didn’t make it into the movie. It was still a short period of time that we were there, capturing them, and part of the conceit of the film is to go, (snaps his fingers), bingo, he doesn’t want that. Part of the conceit of the film was that this is their last month in Fiji, yet during their last month we’re going to look back over their experience of Fiji. But the spine is this last month. But because it’s a snapshot, more than the other films, and because of the savviness of the subjects, with media, John, you know.
CHRIS NEUMER: Yes.
STEVE JAMES: With his background and level of expertise and experience, same is true of Janet, she’s worked in the film industry with John for many, many years; they met in the film industry business, and their kids are very media savvy.
CHRIS NEUMER: The conversations between John and his son about what can be boring, who made it through the Yanks of New York, I thought, I shouldn’t be identifying with the son as much, but strangely [I did].
STEVE JAMES: Yeah, I mean this was a very different group of subjects to deal with, and so at a certain point when I showed them a cut of the film, which I do to every subject before it’s done, to allow them to weigh in, the process with the Piersons was far more complicated and lengthy, in terms of dealing with their feelings about what the film was becoming, and how they felt about it, than I’ve had with any other subjects.
CHRIS NEUMER: That seems almost worthy of some comedy set in Hollywood, where the subjects asking for a do over, or a master shot with the two cameras, and you’re like, oh, no, no.
STEVE JAMES: Well, they were respectful of the process; they were respectful of the fact that John was very clear from the start, because he was the one who brought me into this film, to do it. That this was basically going to be my film, and it was my film to make. So they were very respectful of the process, and then, on the other hand they have a lot of feelings and views about their portrayal, and they articulate them a lot more than other subjects I’ve dealt with. So the truth that I was coming up with of that experience of the month in Fiji at times clashed with their own feelings about that experience. They were there for a year and I was there for a month, so we’re going to see things differently. I go in and I sort of look at their experience through this one month, and experience it as making a film. Some of the differences between dealing with them and making a film and dealing with, say, well I couldn’t show Steve this because he was somewhere else right now, but I showed other people that were a part in that film a cut before it was done, other principal characters. And it’s not like they don’t have some of those same feelings, maybe some of those same concerns, but they’re not as forward, perhaps, in articulating some of them.
CHRIS NEUMER: It seems like John would also have a certain - he would actually be able to communicate in terms that you’d be like, oh, ok.
STEVE JAMES: Yeah, he was able to do that, on the other hand, I think he would tell you, that he was not prepared at all, he thought he was more prepared to be the subject of a documentary than in fact, he was. But who can be? I mean, you’re basically having someone come in, however sensitive they might be, however well they might know you, you’re basically asking them to come in and do a portrait of you that is on some level from the outside looking in at you and your life. And so the truth that I witness and feel very passionate about and very strong about doesn’t always conform with the truth of the subject.
CHRIS NEUMER: Well, it seems almost like what you’re describing too, that it might be sort of like classroom philosophy, that once you have a good idea, you sort of do a little research on how you can do it, find a subject and then just don’t think about it all. It’s just like, I’m going to go, I’m going to grab my camera or have the camera guy grab his camera, and he’s going to shoot it, and then I’m going to figure it all out in the editing room later.
STEVE JAMES: Well, it’s a little bit of that, there’s absolutely truth to that. I mean, my approach to documentary, which is a lot of people’s approach, is that you go in with an idea, you go in with a concept, and you go in with an understanding about what it is that interests you and why you want to make a film on this subject. And I knew, in the case of other films, in the case of Reel Paradise, I knew I was interested in the family. I didn’t know the family, I knew John, I knew Janet only minimally, and I didn’t know the kids at all.
CHRIS NEUMER: Well, and I’m sure shooting in Fiji for a month, that doesn’t hurt.
STEVE JAMES: I knew that being in Fiji would be interesting; I knew that it would also be resplendent, that was appealing.
CHRIS NEUMER: The little things.
STEVE JAMES: But I also knew what John was doing, showing Hollywood movies, I’d read the articles he’d written for the LA Times, and obviously I knew how provocative John could be as a person. And I expected that there would be some interesting cultural issues in this experience, with him being there showing movies, and a lot of Hollywood movies, so all of that I kind of anticipated going in. The degree to which the film became as much about the inner workings of his family, in Fiji, I hadn’t anticipated.
CHRIS NEUMER: With the movies, were there any unanticipated consequences that you’ve spoken of? Sort of like you’re on it, on it, and then something comes up over here, and you’re like, Oh! Wow!
STEVE JAMES: Yeah.
CHRIS NEUMER: Didn’t see that one coming.
STEVE JAMES: Well yeah, and those are the kinds of things, the degree to which the film would frankly not be about the impact of the movies on the culture was not something I could’ve anticipated. I wanted it to be more about that, but when I got there John found out that it’s really hard to articulate, it’s hard for them to articulate, it’s hard for anyone to articulate.
CHRIS NEUMER: Whenever you find people who enjoy Bringing Down the House, you say that’s hard to articulate.
STEVE JAMES: (Laughs) Yeah.
CHRIS NEUMER: That’s like point C, D, E and F on today’s list.
STEVE JAMES: Yeah. But anyway, so I do think you go in with certain ideas, because if you go in with no concept you can really get lost.
CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah.
STEVE JAMES: But I hate going in with a rigid idea of how the film is going to be and what we’re going to get and take away from it, because what’s the point of making a documentary if it’s not an act of discovery on some level.
CHRIS NEUMER: I was sort of amusing myself, thinking of a documentarians director’s cut, which is just like a window, walking around holding up a window, like, that’s my director’s cut, and cutting it down from that. So, what strands did you, and this is something I’m always curious, any project, and feel free to talk about Hoop Dreams, and Stevie. Even if you’re talking about your fiction, what are you, dramatic?
STEVE JAMES: Yeah, dramatic films.
CHRIS NEUMER: With actors. Now, you have all the footage, obviously when you have the script ahead of time it has more of a spine to go, but when you’re doing your documentaries and you think you’ve finished all the filming, how do start weeding through it? What’s the first to go, what’s the first to stay?
STEVE JAMES: Well, I’m not quite sure how to answer that. I think the editing is such an important part of documentary filmmaking, the kind that I do, which is one of the reasons I have been involved in editing in all the films I’ve done; I love that part of the process. That’s the writing process of dramatic film.
CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah, the editing process is a lot different in dramatic film.
STEVE JAMES: In dramatic film you start with the script, and you shoot all the way through. You often shoot other things, because you get inspired with things and you shoot. You get into editing, you’re basically taking the idea that you had and trying to either make it work or find a different idea that works better than the one you have, when the one you have didn’t quite work. And that’s an interesting process, and you know, editors in dramatic film have to be wily and fast on their feet, to figure out things because they have finite things to work with, even more finite than a typical documentary that I might do. But I think in documentary, you’re telling yourself the story while you’re shooting, and you’re constantly re-appraising that story that you’re telling, constantly recasting the story as things develop, kind of like, I thought I’d do the film like this, but now like this, and now like this. In Hoop Dreams we started out really thinking at first that we were making a film about the basketball dreams of these inner city kids, but part way through the film we realized we had a much bigger story we were trying to tell. We were really trying to tell the story of an American dream, as it were, through these two families and not through these two kids. And just how tenuous it is and how hard it is to achieve for kids, the basketball dream became sort of a metaphor for the American dream. Now that’s sort of a nice theme to articulate, but we were experiencing it in very real and practical ways, through the lives of these kids and these families, so the film became much more about that. So, in the same way in Reel Paradise, the film became more a film about the different ways in which Americans interact with the world. Each of the family members almost came to represent different ways in which you do that, from the proselyter John to Janet, the one who’s trying to be more accommodating, to Georgia and Wyatt, who fit in some ways, but also, in the case of Georgia, represent a certain kind of Americanism, American attitude. There’s this great variety of ways in which Americans fit in and don’t fit in, they kind of emerge. And I think that when you get to the editing, after having gone through that shooting process, in the process of thinking about what you’ve gotten and then watching what you’ve gotten, you begin to formulate, yeah, what is this story that we’re actually trying to tell here, not that we’ve got the material what’s the story we’re trying to tell? I think the stuff that goes away - I did a lot of interviews about Fiji culture and history, while I was there, because I thought, maybe I can fit some of that in - most of that went away, because there was just no way I could see it fit into the story that wanted to be told in my view. So, you cut out big slots of things that you thought you might like to try and do, but then you wrestle with all that stuff you have, and what I’ve tried to do is to construct it in a story. Sometimes the story is more self-evident than other times. On Stevie, the story became this kid I go back to reconnect with, and I think at first that I’m doing a portrait of a kid I once knew and was a big brother to, and that’s what this is about.
CHRIS NEUMER: And you planned it as a short.
STEVE JAMES: Yeah.
CHRIS NEUMER: Hoop Dreams too, right?
STEVE JAMES: Yeah, I’ve got a problem with that. And then once he was arrested [in Stevie], and once we continued on with filming, then it became much bigger, then suddenly there was a story to tell, an unfolding story. What was going to happen to him? How did he find himself in this situation, and what is the dynamic within the family, and will his family survive this or not? All those kinds of things emerge, because of what happened to him and that became the story we were telling. So, the other thing about editing is that you gravitate towards scenes that really speak to you, and those become the anchors that the film gets organized around.
CHRIS NEUMER: So let me ask you this, as a guy who’s done hundreds of interviews, I know when someone says something, and it doesn’t have to be necessarily provocative, someone just says something that is interesting, it’s like I have a little red flag that goes up in my head, pull quote, pull quote. Like Tom Jane talking about how all directors are screwing things up, pull quote.
STEVE JAMES: You know that’s going to be in there.
CHRIS NEUMER: I’m assuming you have a similar thing with scenes?
STEVE JAMES: Oh yeah. Well you have it with scenes, you also have it with interviews. I do a lot of interviews in the films that I do, and yes, there are certain scenes that you know when it happens that it’s going to be in the film.
CHRIS NEUMER: Can you give specifics again.
STEVE JAMES: Yeah sure. In Hoop Dreams when Arthur’s dad played one on one, what we called the "Great Santini" scene at the end of the movie, because it reminded us of the scene from the Great Santini, where Robert Duvall plays Robbie Benson, I think.
CHRIS NEUMER: I haven’t seen it, so I’m nodding.
STEVE JAMES: It’s sort of THE scene in the Great Santini. This overbearing father plays the son one on one, and he’s really abusive to him. In Arthur’s case, they went out to play one on one before Arthur was about to head off to college, and going into it I thought, oh this will be a cute little end. Because when we started the film, and we first found Arthur there was a scene very early on, and it’s in the film, of Arthur playing his dad one on one, and it’s very sweet. He was like 14 years old, and it was a very sweet scene. Well, the stuff that had happened in between with Bo, Arthur’s dad, drugs, and being out of the house, and all of that stuff that we found out about their relationship. So here at the end of four and a half years of filming, and Arthur is about to go off to college, he’s got a scholarship, and they want to go play a little one on one, and I thought, oh, that will be sweet, the same kind of sweet as before only now he’s 18. And it started out to be that, and it was frankly boring. And then suddenly it became this scene from the Great Santini, where Arthur was basically asserting his manhood, and saying to his father, the game’s up. His dad tries to cheat during the game to win, Arthur’s not having it, Arthur sort of humiliates him on the court by beating him, and basically it becomes this contentious scene of Arthur’s rite of passage, or Arthur basically says I’m a man now, you can’t do that to me anymore. And of course, when that is happening, I thought, oh god, that’s in the movie, no question. You know.
CHRIS NEUMER: I honestly don’t know this, and I feel it could be one of those questions, like me asking how to turn a camera on, but how often are you the camera operator on these things?
STEVE JAMES: Rarely. On Hoop Dreams I shot on maybe two or three occasions, tops, out of 180 days. Someone else ran the camera, shot the movie. I shot a couple when he just wasn’t around and I couldn’t get anyone else. The funny thing is, on New Americans I did a lot of shooting, because the New Americans was a new series, a mini series, and from a budget standpoint, it became a necessity, so I shot quite a bit on that. I don’t like to shoot. I mean I like to shoot, but I don’t like to shoot if I’m directing, because I feel like shooting is the hardest thing to do and direct a documentary, because you are really confined by what you’re seeing, essentially, through the camera, through the viewfinder. I’ve done a lot more sound on documentaries if I want to go small, because by doing sound, I can do my job and I can be checking everything else out, and I can hear everything else really well because I’m doing sound. In a loud environment I can hear what the subjects are saying because I’m doing the sound, and that’s a much better craft.
CHRIS NEUMER: So you’re standing next to the camera.
STEVE JAMES: Yeah. It’s a much better craft position to occupy if you’re directing a documentary and you’re trying to work small, to do sound, I think, than camera. But generally speaking, when I can, I have a camera person, a sound person and myself, and I don’t have to do anything except pay attention, and ask questions.
CHRIS NEUMER: And in rare occasions poke subjects with sticks.
STEVE JAMES: Yes, and think about what it is we want to film and don’t want to film. Have the camera man film over here, or go over here, let’s get this, let’s get that. I mean, a lot of people don’t realize that you actually do direct in a documentary. It’s not exactly the same thing as when you do dramatic films.
CHRIS NEUMER: Probably less yelling involved.
STEVE JAMES: Yeah, exactly. But, you know, on each of the films there’s been scenes like that.
CHRIS NEUMER: On Reel Paradise for example, were there?
STEVE JAMES: Well, I knew for example that when they were robbed, and when the landlord came over, that was going to be in the movie.
CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah.
STEVE JAMES: There was no question. But you know, sometimes even in an interview I’ll hear lines, and oh, that’s got to be in the movie. Like on Hoop Dreams, and you’re not always right about this, but I ended up being right about it, like essentially what the last line of the movie was going to be, which was an interview with William when he went up to Marquette, and he was sitting there, and I asked him about the dream. He said you know, something like, a lot of guys see me and say, don’t forget about me when you make the NBA, and I want to say to them, don’t forget about me if I don’t. And when he said that, it was just like, oh God, that’s the last line of the movie, that’s got to be the last line of the movie. And it was, essentially.
CHRIS NEUMER: There’s also, and it seems like there’s also something non-verbal about it, hard to put into words how it just sort of is, it just, well why was that good, well, because it just sort of bookends what I’m trying to say. But it’s always interesting to just find out what those things are that sort of stand up. Obviously, how to talk about that you went on a date with Paris Hilton, you can’t really tie in with John Pierson very often.
STEVE JAMES: Well, even in Stevie, with Tanya at the end when she’s cleaning out his trailer when he’s taken away to prison, she said a line which I thought would end up being the last line of the film and it ended up being not the last line, but very close to the last line, when she said, no one should have to be lonely. And all of us filming, we were just like, sigh. Because she was talking about how she was going to move on with her life, because she can’t just wait for him, because no one should have to be lonely. We knew that would be the movie.
CHRIS NEUMER: Now, with the scene in Reel Paradise with the landlord where he shows up, and I was laughing hysterically about it. I’m telling you, the thing with him doing the little thing with his hair really sets the scene, and I was primed. But then they got into it and John is just sort of like — if he was from LA I wouldn’t buy it, but you know he’s from New York - and I thought, I know this guy! I live down in Riverside, and they were just shooting some movie down there, and apparently it’s a big movie. So this one guy comes out, and it reminded me of something that happened in New York, the guy just started yelling, I just want to get to my house! It’s right over there, I don’t care what you’re filming, I’m walking through! And they kept saying, no, no sir! You’ve got to wait, you’ve got to wait! So then they called "Cut!", and then the guy was just storming through, and that’s what I like to see. I like to see that guy, who’s just like, I don’t care what you’re doing, my house is there, I’m going. And John had that, but I was enjoying it, and I was laughing so much at that sequence with the landlord. I started wondering, how does this border on reality TV?
STEVE JAMES: Right.
