back to indexSkye Fitzgerald: Hunger, War, and Human Suffering | Lex Fridman Podcast #278
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We would come up to these rafts and these boats
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that were in really dire shape and people would be pushed off
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and people would jump off and people would fall
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into the water and some of them couldn't swim.
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And so we found ourselves in this moment
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where we had a choice.
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We could film someone drowned in front of us
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or we could put our cameras down
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and pull them out of the water.
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The following is a conversation with Skyfus Gerald,
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a two time Oscar nominated documentary filmmaker
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who made the films Hunger Ward about the war in Yemen,
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Life Boat about the search and rescue operations
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off the coast of Libya and 50 feet from Syria
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about the war in Syria.
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This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors
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in the description.
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Now dear friends, here's Skyfus Gerald.
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Nearly 811 million people worldwide are hungry today
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and 45 million people are on the edge of famine
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across 43 countries.
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How do you make sense of that many people suffering
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from hunger and famine in the world today?
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I don't know if I can make sense of it, Lex.
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I mean, I think it's deeply disturbing to me
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that as a global community,
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we've allowed this number of people to go hungry
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when the food to feed them exists
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and the resources to feed them exists.
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I think the thing that disturbs me most
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about those figures is that many of those
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who are starving today or going hungry today
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are the net result of war and intentional acts
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by leaders to starve entire populations.
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And that's the most deeply disturbing part to me.
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You know your history and we all know that,
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deeply embedded in the Geneva Conventions post World War II,
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the intent of one of those articles
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was to ban the use of starvation as a weapon of war
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because of what Hitler did during World War II.
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That's been reiterated multiple times over the years
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in international humanitarian law,
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including in 2018 because of the Saudi blockade over Yemen.
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And yet to this day, starvation as a weapon of war
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continues to be used in Ethiopia,
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obviously in Ukraine right now,
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and in Yemen with the blockade over the country.
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And that disgusts me that the law is in place,
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but it won't be enforced by the international bodies
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and the nation states that make up the international community.
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So when the starvation is a result of human actions,
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human decisions that it's especially painful
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For me personally, yeah.
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I think that if you and I sit in here didn't eat
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for three days and had to lay our head on the sidewalk
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for a couple nights, I think we would take hunger
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and homelessness a lot more seriously.
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And I think that's, for some reason,
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that's missing at this moment in history tragically.
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And I think until that we can generate enough empathy
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that's immediate for all of us to understand
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what that means to go hungry,
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I'm not sure we're gonna sort of marshal
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the global community to solve it.
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I did just that, by the way, faster for three days recently.
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It's fundamentally different, I think,
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because the thing that would be terrifying to me
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is not the fasting, but the hopelessness
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at the end of the fast,
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like I wouldn't know when the next meal is coming.
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I always had the freedom to have the meal.
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The fear, not just your own ability to eat
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and survive, but your families, if there's loved ones,
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that's the other thing I don't have, I'm single.
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And so I feel like the worst suffering
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is watching somebody you love
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that you're supposed to be a caretaker of,
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and you can't take care of them.
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And if all of that is caused by leaders
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in, as a weapon of war,
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that is especially painful.
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So how can we help?
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What are the ways to help?
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How do we alleviate this suffering?
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Well, I think on the humanitarian front,
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we have to be aggressive and attentive
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and intervene in significant ways.
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And I think on the political front,
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we have to hold players accountable for their actions.
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So the leaders that start the war,
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so when you say, we have to speak up about the decisions
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and the humans making those decisions
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that lead to this situation.
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For example, let's make it concrete.
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So when I was, I don't wanna jump ahead,
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but when I was filming Hunger Ward in Yemen,
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I met a mother who when she gave birth weighed 70 pounds,
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the mother weighed 70 pounds.
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And so her daughter was starved in the womb, right?
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When she was born, she was born into a world
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with no breast milk, very little formula, right?
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So she was starved before birth.
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She was born into a world
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where she continued to be starved, right?
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By a mother who herself was starved.
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I watched that child, her name is Asila, die in front of me,
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Asila had no chance for all those things we hope for,
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for a child in this world.
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She didn't have a chance to grow up.
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She didn't have a chance to discover love.
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She didn't have a chance to have a career.
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She was robbed of all of those things
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because of the insidious nature of hunger
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that she was born into.
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She didn't have to die.
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She was not starving.
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She, her mother was being starved, right?
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Because of the blockade over the country.
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Now who instituted that blockade?
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MBS in Saudi Arabia with the reinforcement
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and sort of tacit approval of the United States,
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our own government here.
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And so there are people who are responsible
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for the starvation of children.
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And I think we need to hold them accountable.
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Now that's incredibly difficult to do.
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But just because it's difficult
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doesn't mean it ought not to be done.
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And we'll talk about many cases like these
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throughout history and going on today.
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Let's talk about hunger ward.
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You've been nominated for an Oscar twice.
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This is one of the times for a documentary.
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Can you please tell me what hunger ward,
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the last hope between war and starvation is about?
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Hunger ward is a short documentary
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that really is an attempt to illustrate the effects
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of the conflict on Yemen, specifically on civilians.
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And we document it in both the North
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and the South of the country
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because it's a bifurcated country.
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The South is held by the globally recognized government
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in the South, which up until last week
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was run by, at least on the surface by President Hadi,
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hold up in Riyadh.
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He was essentially removed from office last week
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by most people would agree,
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the Emiratis and the Saudis
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to put in place a presidential council.
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So we wanted to show that starvation was happening
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in very similar fashions, both in the South and the North.
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So, and we wanted to do this film
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because so few people in the West know anything
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about the conflict in Yemen,
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nor the US's complicity in it.
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And so my intent with the project
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was try to bring it to a larger Western audience
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as an attempt to intervene
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and change the political status quo,
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which allows the use of starvation in Yemen to continue.
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So US complicity, who are the bad guys?
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Now, the world unfortunately cannot be painted
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in black and white of good guys and bad guys.
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But for the purpose of conversation,
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who is doing, causing suffering in the world
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in this situation?
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Well, who started the war?
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And then of course, the roots of war go back in history.
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But let's start at the top.
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Well, there are bad actors and there are less bad actors,
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I mean, I think that's always the case in war, probably.
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And everybody loses in war.
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Yeah, I concur with that statement.
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In the case of sort of the status quo in Yemen right now,
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it's a completely asymmetrical war.
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And so the Saudi coalition,
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which is made up of primarily Saudi Arabia,
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the Emirates, United States, France, Britain,
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supplying weapons, but it's really driven
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and catalyzed by Saudi Arabia.
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And it's asymmetrical to a great extent
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just because of the incredible firepower by air
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that the Saudis use continuously
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to pummel northern Yemen.
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When I was there, the sheer volume of airstrikes
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is hard to describe.
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And we show the result of only one in the film, really.
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But it's an asymmetrical war,
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the de facto authorities of the north on Surallah,
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also known as the Houthi rebel group.
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They don't have an air force, right?
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They have a drone force, but they don't have an air force.
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And so it's a, from a military standpoint,
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it's completely asymmetrical.
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The Saudis really don't commit troops to the ground.
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They use only proxies to fight on the ground.
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What is the narrative they use to justify a war?
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So there's a story on every side in war.
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Some of it is grounded in truth.
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Some of it is not at all grounded in truth,
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also known as propaganda.
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What's the narrative used by the Saudis for this war?
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The Saudi line is essentially that
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the Houthis are an illegitimate government.
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And that it's really a proxy war
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between Iran, who supports the Houthis nominally.
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And the rest of the world.
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That's the Saudi narrative.
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The reality is something altogether different.
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While the Houthis do receive support from Iran,
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this is a war started by and sustained by MBS
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Muhammad bin Salman.
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He is the son of the ruler of Saudi Arabia.
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I'm asking basic dumb question.
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He's the de facto ruler.
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Of the military and the...
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Yes, he seized control of the country several years ago.
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Even though he, on the surface,
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is not the rule of Saudi Arabia, he is.
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He's the crown prince.
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And sorry to interrupt often,
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but who is he as a man?
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What's your sense of the...
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Yeah, so I've never met him.
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And I likely will never meet him, hopefully.
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But he is, I know a lot about him through his actions,
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sort of in the Mina region,
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Middle Eastern, North Africa region.
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And he is one of three, in my view,
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as an American sitting here in the US.
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Three people in the world that I think
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has caused such an incredible volume of misery
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and suffering and murder on this planet
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that I think if he weren't around,
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the world would be a lot better place.
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And I'm not a violent person by nature,
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but there are three human beings
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that I think the world would be better off without.
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Do you mind, before I ask other questions,
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mentioning the three?
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Oh yeah, Assad is one in Syria.
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And that comes out of an earlier project
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that I did in Syria and Turkey.
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And what I saw Assad as a ruler do to his own people,
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and Putin would be the third.
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Those three human beings are murderers on a scale
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On MBS, are you able to think as a documentary filmmaker,
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as a human beings, a scholar, as a thinker,
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with an open mind about a man like that
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who does evil onto the world?
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And what that must feel like
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to be inside the mind of that man.
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So basically, consider his worldview.
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With most evil people, with all people probably,
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but with people who do evil onto the world,
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they think they're doing good.
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They're the hero of their own story.
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Right, and so to be able to place yourself,
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I feel like, for me, to understand a person,
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I have to literally, like the way actors
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kind of have to live inside the body
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of the person they're trying to study.
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Inhabit the character.
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Inhabit the person.
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So are you able to do that, or because you
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are also studying the people who suffer
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as a result, as a consequence of their actions,
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you just, you put them in a box and you say,
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I hate the person in that box, I'm going to move on.
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This goes back to your black and white statement
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at the beginning, right?
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It's like, the world as a whole, of course,
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is every gradation of gray, right?
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My background is theater, Lex.
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And so I was trained long before I picked up a camera
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to inhabit other characters, right?
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I have two degrees in theater.
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And so that level of sort of like walking
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in other people's shoes and trying to understand
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and empathize with their world view
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is fundamental to how I live my life
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and how I do my work.
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So in the case of those three that I named,
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Assad, MBS and Putin, yeah, I can go there
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and think through how they came to be who they are, right?
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And after I go through that process,
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I still don't think there's any way
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that one can justify what they've done.
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We're going to talk about each of those people, for sure.
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Well, I'm not an expert on any of them.
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You're a human being, which makes you
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a partial expert on human nature,
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because nobody's an expert.
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You're just as good as anyone else.
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Anybody who actually cares a camera and listens
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and observe others isn't especially
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an expert of human nature.
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It's willing to take that leap
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and truly understand somebody of any level, not leaders.
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If you like to understand a leader,
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you have to first understand humans.
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And to understand humans, you have to see humans
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that they're worse than they're best,
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which is something that you've definitely done.
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So let's stick on hunger ward.
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This lens that you've chosen to look at this
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is through a single, maybe you can speak to that.
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You've mentioned the starvation as a result of war.
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What is the documentary?
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What is the lens you've chosen to give the world a peak
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at the results, at the suffering
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that's a result of this war?
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People a lot of times will ask me
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after they've seen hunger ward,
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they ask where the hope is, right?
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You read the byline earlier, The Last Hope.
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And what I try to focus on in many of my films,
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including hunger ward is in the very difficult context
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of war as the cases in hunger ward in Yemen,
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I look for hope and I look for inspiration
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and I do that through people who are doing incredible things
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under the most difficult circumstances.
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So when I set out to do a film about starvation in Yemen,
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right, I mean, just listen to that statement,
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where's the hope there, right?
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And yet what I found, what I discovered
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were human beings that we could tell the story through
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who are incredible, inspirational human beings
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doing amazing things every day.
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One of those is Makia Mahji,
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a nurse practitioner in the north of the country
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at a small rural clinic.
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And another is Dr. Ayed Al Sadiq,
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who is a pediatrician in the south of the country.
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And so we chose to tell the story sort of
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through their experiences as caregivers,
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devoting their lives to try to save this entire cohort,
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this entire generation of children
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that has been born into starvation.
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And that's an incredible, difficult task,
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but equally inspirational to watch these human beings
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devote every minute of every day to save a child.
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I mean, in my view, nothing is more important
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Maybe on that point real quick.
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So there is suffering at scale, starvation at scale,
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there's, I mean, the numbers, maybe you can mention in Yemen
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what are the numbers in terms of people in starvation,
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but from a perspective of a nurse practitioner or a doctor,
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you're always have, you're treating one person
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So how do you make sense of that calculus
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of like there's a huge number of people suffering,
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and then there's just the person in front of you?
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Is that all we can do as humans
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is just to help one person at a time?
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Is that the right way to think and to approach these problems
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or can you actually make sense of the numbers?
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Speaking just as a human being,
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I think the scale of suffering is so great in Yemen
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that I think I'd be overwhelmed, right?
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If I focused on that scale, you know,
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you've probably heard that, you know,
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a child dies every 75 seconds in Yemen from hunger, right?
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So we've been sitting here how long,
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you know, 35 minutes or so.
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That's a good handful of children
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that have already passed away.
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So to overcome sort of, I think that danger
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of psychic numbing, which can happen
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when you think about suffering on such a large scale,
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as a filmmaker, as a human being,
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I have to focus in on the individuals
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on those human beings in front of me.
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And I think that's exactly what Dr. Al Sadiq and Makia do
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to keep going each day.
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And one of the amazing things
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about these two healthcare providers
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that we showcase in the film
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is that they treat anyone who shows up, right?
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They don't have to have money.
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They don't have to have any resources.
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They just have to get to the clinic or the hospital.
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And it's incredibly moving to see sort of the flexibility
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of their thinking in terms of how they make that work.
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Makia, for example, I saw her in the north of the country.
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So incredibly rural clinic that she works at.
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And so it's like a magnet for all the cases
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in the north of the country.
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People come from hundreds of kilometers away sometimes
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for specialty treatment of pediatric malnutrition.
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And one time I saw a child come in
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and it was a male relative that brought this young girl in.
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And just because of sort of the gender dynamics in Yemen,
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there had to be a parent or a relative there
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to stay with the child while they're at the clinic.
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And it was a male relative.
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And so what many doctors in that instance would do
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would just turn them away.
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And instead what Makia did is she walked into one of the rooms,
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talked to one of the other mothers
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and convinced them to become the temporary guardian,
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essentially of this child until a female relative could arrive.
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So, you know, she's flexible.
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She finds solutions rather than allowing the problems
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to deter solutions.
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One child at a time.
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Yeah, yeah, one child at a time.
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You mentioned that you saw a child die in front of you.
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So when you're filming this as a filmmaker, what's that like?
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Psychologically, philosophically, creatively as a filmmaker,
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What do you do there?
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As a human and as a filmmaker?
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Well, what's that whole experience like?
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Because you get to, like you said,
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you take it through the whole journey
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of a starving mother giving birth to a starving child.
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It's not something I want to film.
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It's not something that I certainly wanted to happen
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or seek out, but it happened.
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And the sad truth is that it happens every week
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And so when it happened in this instance,
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I felt an incredible responsibility to do justice
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to that reality, to acknowledge that a child
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had just died of starvation related causes.
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And to find some way, if the parents wanted us to,
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to integrate that into this story,
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we'd bring back to a Western audience.
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And I've filmed many difficult things over the years.
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And usually I really love filming.
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And I didn't love filming Hunger Ward.
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It was not a process that I enjoyed
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on any way to perform, sadly, because of the content.
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Because who wants to watch a child die in front of them?
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I don't, but I did.
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And when that happened,
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I felt an incredible responsibility again to go deep, right?
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To go deep with that family,
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to tell the story of this hospital
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with every ounce of focus and talent
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that I could bring to the story,
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because people should know that children
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are dying of starvation right now as we sit here.
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And that that doesn't have to happen.
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And it is happening because of political dynamics
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that we can intervene on.
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Is there times you wanted to walk away,
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quit the telling of the story,
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come back to the United States,
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where you can just appreciate the wonderful comfort
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you can have just sitting there and having food.
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And freedom to do whatever you want,
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those kinds of things.
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Doesn't have to be United States,
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in a lot of places in the world.
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Well, that dynamic of sort of like survivor's guilt,
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you know, on some level definitely exists.
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One of the hardest things,
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well, from Hungry Ward actually was eating, right?
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Because we were in these malnutrition clinics,
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they're called TFCs, therapeutic feeding centers,
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where, you know, over a long period of time,
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children lost the ability to eat normal food, right?
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And couldn't digest it.
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And just, you know, we're literally starving
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and the practitioners were trying to bring them back
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to a state of thriving.
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But to leave those clinics, right?
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And to go to our camp or to go to our hotel.
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And then to have access to food, right?
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Because we could buy food on the streets
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and in the hotels.
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I mean, it was a very intentional act
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throughout the course of the shoot
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to look at a piece of bread, right?
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Or to look at a bowl of rice and think about that child
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in the TFC and think about how the privilege of having
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that bowl of rice that I could eat and digest.
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So it certainly every day helped me appreciate, right?
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The privilege I had.
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Every bite you take.
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With every bite, absolutely.
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And so I wouldn't call it guilt.
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It wasn't exactly guilt,
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but it was definitely mindfulness, right?
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Just like meditate on the suffering of people who can't.
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That's right, exactly.
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So that knowledge sort of, it was catalytic in some ways.
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It sort of moved us forward,
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really wanting to shape the most powerful story we could
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because we were surrounded by so much suffering every day.
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How did that film in that movie change you as a man?
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You filmed a few difficult documentaries.
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That one is a heavy one.
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When you think of the person you wore before you filmed it,
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and now when you wake up every morning,
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you look yourself in the mirror.
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How's that person different?
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Every documentary I do changes me in a different way.
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I am not static in that sense, right?
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It's like I change with every project
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because so many of them are difficult and challenging, right?
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And so in order to do them,
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I have to allow myself to change and be changed by them.
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In the case of Hunger Ward,
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you may remember the girl Omeima,
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who's the 10 year old girl who we showcase
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in Odin, in the south of the country.
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And we were there when she was admitted to the hospital.
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And when she was admitted,
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this 10 year old girl weighed 24 pounds
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and she could barely stand up.
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And we started with the permission of the family
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to start to document her treatment
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and to see what would happen with this young girl
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who is so severely malnourished.
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And we watched her be treated by the nurses and the doctors
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in Sadaka Hospital.
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And slowly over the course of a couple of weeks,
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we saw her change.
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We saw her start to sort of gain strength
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and start to recover.
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And she also watched the caregivers very carefully.
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And I watched her watch them.
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And I'll never forget there was a moment
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where about two and a half weeks,
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I think into her treatment, we walked into her room
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and I saw her offering a cap full of water
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to another younger child who was also starving, right?
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The shot's actually in the film.
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And so to see Omeima, this child who's starving,
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giving sustenance to a younger, more vulnerable child
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who was also starving, moved me deeply, right?
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So I saw her learn from the caregivers around her, right?
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And as a human being, as a filmmaker,
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I was incredibly inspired by Omeima.
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That capacity for compassion is there.
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Even within a 10 year old girl who's starving, right?
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And so you asked what changed me, that's one moment, right?
link |
I rather than being crushed by such heavy content,
link |
it was actually the opposite,
link |
where I came away inspired by a 10 year old girl.
link |
And I didn't anticipate that,
link |
I didn't think that's what this content would do,
link |
but it's what it did.
link |
It reinforced for me sort of this incredible capacity
link |
we all have as human beings, right?
link |
To do good, right?
link |
To even within the most difficult of circumstances,
link |
to choose who we become and what we do.
link |
And a 10 year old girl taught me that
link |
or reinforced that for me.
link |
Were you able to feel the culture of the people?
link |
So the language barrier,
link |
were you able to break through the language barrier
link |
or the culture barrier to understand the people?
link |
Because even suffering has a language of sorts
link |
depending on where you are.
link |
The way people joke about things, the way they cry,
link |
the way, this is an interesting thing I actually wanna ask you.
link |
Sorry, I'm asking a million questions.
link |
I find that the people,
link |
I've been talking to people in Ukraine and Russia,
link |
but in general, I've gotten a chance to talk to people
link |
who've been through trauma in their life and there's a humor
link |
they have about trauma and hard times.
link |
It depends on the culture, of course.
link |
Certainly Russian speaking folk.
link |
I mean, the more suffering you've experienced
link |
for some reason, the more they joke about it.
link |
It's almost like they're able to see something deep
link |
about humanity now that they have suffered
link |
and they're able to laugh at the absurdity,
link |
the injustice of it all.
link |
And you could also say it's a way for them to deal with it.
link |
But that humor has a kind of profound understanding
link |
within it about what it means to be human.
link |
That I just, and then you,
link |
to really understand it, you have to know the language.
link |
I guess I'm asking, were you able to really feel
link |
the humans in the other side of the language?
link |
I'd like to think so.
link |
I mean, as you noted, there are universals in life
link |
that transcend language, right?
link |
I mean, suffering is suffering.
link |
Compassion doesn't take place only through language, right?
link |
It's through actions.
link |
And so, was there a language barrier?
link |
Absolutely, right?
link |
Did we try to bridge that through other means
link |
and sort of universal emotions and experiences?
link |
Absolutely, that's one of the things I always think about
link |
when I'm filming is how do we distill down to universals,
link |
right, through imagery, right?
link |
Through the vocabulary of cinema, right?
link |
Cause I believe so deeply that that vocabulary
link |
should be visual, right?
link |
So the words, what's the most powerful way
link |
to express the universal?
link |
Is it visual or is it language, words?
link |
I think it's visual.
link |
And we're talking about the human face
link |
or human face, human body, everything.
link |
Through actions as well.
link |
Actions, the dynamic.
link |
I'm thinking about a woman named Salha in the film.
link |
Who isn't named, but she's,
link |
you see her multiple times throughout the film
link |
and she's basically the matron of the ward in the south.
link |
And she's the gatekeeper for the ward.
link |
So no one enters that ward without her permission.
link |
She's literally the gatekeeper at the door.
link |
So no one comes in unless Salha allows them to come in, right?
link |
But then she also is sort of like
link |
the first point of contact for compassion in the ward.
link |
So when mothers and families are admitted,
link |
she forms relationships between the moms
link |
and the grandmothers, for example,
link |
who are admitted and who are living there on the ward.
link |
And she does it through hugging, right?
link |
She does it through bringing them food, right?
link |
And she forms these really rather quickly
link |
deep relationships of compassion with the families.
link |
And so it's amazing to watch
link |
and no language is needed, right?
link |
To bear witness to this.
link |
And she also suffers because of that, right?
link |
And so near the end of the film, if you recall,
link |
when another child dies and the mother is wailing,
link |
we actually cut away to Salha, who's in the hallway,
link |
who walks into another room and begins sobbing.
link |
She's not a family member,
link |
but she has a deep relationship with that family
link |
that she forged as soon as they stepped into the ward.
link |
So that's universal, right?
link |
To see a woman weep because a child has died,
link |
even if they're not related to that,
link |
that's a universal sort of emotional experience
link |
we can all relate to.
link |
So that's what I mean by visual vocabulary.
link |
And it's especially powerful
link |
because she has seen much of this kind of suffering
link |
and she's still, maybe she has built up some callus
link |
to be able to work day to day,
link |
but it's still, there's still an ocean underneath the ice.
link |
She's kept her heart open despite all the pain
link |
that she sees and feels every day.
link |
Somehow she's a human being who's able to do that,
link |
which is a very difficult thing to do, right?
link |
She still allows herself to be vulnerable.
link |
And maybe that's why she can do what she does.
link |
What lessons do you draw from other families in history?
link |
So for me personally, one that's touched my family
link |
and one of the great famines in history is in Ukraine,
link |
Haldemur in the 30s.
link |
32, 33 with Stalin.
link |
Maybe you could speak to the universals
link |
of the suffering here.
link |
What lessons do you draw from those other famines
link |
if you've looked at them?
link |
Or in general about famine that are manufactured
link |
by the decisions of, let's say, authoritarian leaders?
link |
Famine doesn't have to exist.
link |
Or the bulk of famines on this planet,
link |
I believe don't have to exist.
link |
And most of them, or at least a good number of them,
link |
are manufactured by the leaders
link |
that choose to use famine as a weapon, right?
link |
And Ukraine is one of the obvious examples right now
link |
with siege tactics that are happening
link |
in different parts of the country.
link |
And we built international humanitarian law
link |
for a reason, right?
link |
And it continues to be written to this day.
link |
And it's there to prevent what's happening
link |
in Ukraine right now.
link |
It's there to prevent what's been happening
link |
in Yemen for seven years.
link |
And yet there hasn't been any teeth behind it.
link |
And that's what disturbs me,
link |
is that we can see how these famines
link |
are being used as weapons in war.
link |
And yet we aren't sort of using the levers
link |
of power that exist in order to,
link |
I think, to call out in important and powerful ways
link |
those who are causing them
link |
and to make sure that we hold them accountable
link |
on the global stage.
link |
Now, to some extent that seems to be happening in Ukraine
link |
in a way that hasn't happened for a long time.
link |
And that gives me hope, right?
link |
And yet I don't believe we've done enough.
link |
And I think the international community needs to do far more
link |
than we are both in Yemen, in Ethiopia,
link |
and in Ukraine right now.
link |
There are certain kinds of things
link |
that captivate the global attention.
link |
And it seems like starvation is not always one of them.
link |
For some reason, murder and destruction
link |
gets people attention more.
link |
The death, of course, is easy to enumerate,
link |
but it's the suffering that's the problem.
link |
You know, when we went to film Hungerward,
link |
that was one of the creative questions
link |
that I was really concerned about
link |
because starvation, you know, it's not a quick action, right?
link |
It's a long, slow, insidious process, right?
link |
Just like hunger, right?
link |
And yet when you're hungry, right?
link |
It takes you over.
link |
It becomes the most important thing, right?
link |
It's just absolutely fundamental to life.
link |
It's like drawing breath.
link |
And so I really, before I filmed Hungerward,
link |
I struggled to sort of answer
link |
how we could creatively approach that
link |
because someone's sitting in a clinic, right?
link |
Starving or being treated for starvation, you know?
link |
That's a pretty static scene, right?
link |
And what we found was that because of the volume of cases
link |
and because of the nature of sort of how quickly
link |
people were coming and going,
link |
is that it was more dynamic than we anticipated.
link |
And there's something also about starvation.
link |
It's almost like it's a quiet suffering.
link |
Like, and by the way, there's something about,
link |
when I think about dog times,
link |
I mean, you'll hear me chuckle, for example.
link |
I don't know what that is.
link |
That's almost like,
link |
it's almost like you have to kind of laugh at,
link |
you can't help but laugh at like the injustice
link |
and the cruelty in the world,
link |
somehow that helps your mind deal with it.
link |
I mean, I see this all the time.
link |
Like, when you're struggling,
link |
you can't feed your family.
link |
You lost your home.
link |
The last thing you have is jokes about.
link |
It's like, ah, the fucking man, fuck me over again.
link |
And there's jokes all around that.
link |
And then you laugh and you drink vodka
link |
and you play music.
link |
I don't know what that is.
link |
I don't know what that is.
link |
It's Gallo's humor, right?
link |
It's a way of, I think, simultaneously acknowledging
link |
and allowing yourself to move forward, right?
link |
Beyond the pain and the suffering.
link |
So you mentioned Ukraine and you mentioned Putin.
link |
What are your thoughts about the humanitarian crisis
link |
and generally the suffering that's resulting
link |
from the war in Ukraine?
link |
Well, first off, I think the conflict
link |
is just gonna exacerbate, you know,
link |
sort of the global challenge we have with displacement.
link |
The last entire trilogy I did was about displacement
link |
to a great extent, did a war.
link |
And, you know, this is a huge displacement of human beings
link |
regardless of the cause.
link |
And that is gonna sort of have a ripple effect
link |
across the globe for many, many years to come,
link |
regardless of even if the conflict ended today.
link |
That's gonna set up a whole other strain
link |
on sort of the global sort of resources
link |
that come into play to deal with refugees.
link |
You know, there were 79 million displaced people
link |
on this globe prior to the Ukrainian conflict, right?
link |
You probably know the numbers better than I do
link |
in terms of what the current estimates are
link |
for displacement from Ukraine.
link |
Four to six million.
link |
So what are we up to now?
link |
73, 74 million individuals on this planet now
link |
who are displaced.
link |
That's a significant bump.
link |
I wish that the levers of power were used differently
link |
in situations like Ukraine and Syria, for example.
link |
So what are the levers of power?
link |
Well, military might.
link |
Let's take that for one, right?
link |
So I have always felt after working in Syria and Turkey
link |
that we completely missed our opportunity as a player
link |
on the global stage with military capability
link |
to prevent the killing of hundreds of thousands
link |
of civilians in Syria.
link |
We had the ability and we didn't leverage that ability.
link |
You know, the fact that I talked with so many Syrians
link |
during the course of doing that project
link |
who told me their stories of living in their house, right?
link |
And having a Syrian helicopter fly over their house
link |
and drop a 55 gallon drum full of explosives and shrapnel
link |
in their neighborhood over and over and over again.
link |
Not focused on any military targets,
link |
only meant to kill and so fear, right?
link |
And early in the conflict, we could have stopped that, right?
link |
Before Russia got involved,
link |
we could have intervened and created a no fly zone.
link |
We, the United States, we, the United States
link |
or a coalition that we were a part of, yeah.
link |
And we didn't do it and we could have,
link |
and I think that's an example where we have
link |
the military capable ability to actually do good
link |
in a situation like that.
link |
And we don't usually use it for those purposes.
link |
And I think that's what a military ought to be used for
link |
beyond just defending our borders
link |
is to save others with the privilege that that power affords.
link |
What do you think about the power of the military
link |
versus the power of sanctions
link |
versus the power of conversation?
link |
They're all different tools, right?
link |
To be used at different moments.
link |
But if words fail, if sanctions fail, right?
link |
I think there are moments in history
link |
where power is justified, right?
link |
And I think Syria was one of them.
link |
I think when barrel bombs were dropping
link |
on civilian neighborhoods for months and months and months
link |
with no intent to do anything other than to kill
link |
Syrian civilians, that's an instant.
link |
I think where might is justified
link |
to shoot those helicopters out of the sky.
link |
Here's the difficult thing, we talked about Yemen.
link |
Where's the line between good and evil
link |
for US intervention in different countries
link |
and conflicts in the world?
link |
It's easy to look back 10, 20, 30 years to know what was
link |
and wasn't a quote unquote just war.
link |
In the moment, how do we know?
link |
I think it's incredibly difficult to answer that, right?
link |
And I think that's why leaders make the wrong choices
link |
As they second guess themselves.
link |
I think you take all the data at your fingertips,
link |
all the intelligence that you have, right?
link |
And you look at it all very carefully
link |
and you make a decision, right?
link |
There are some instances though
link |
where it's very clear what's happening, right?
link |
And leaders still don't act, right?
link |
In Yemen right now, for example,
link |
it's very clear what's happening, right?
link |
Children are being starved because of a blockade.
link |
All the US would have to do is ensure that blockade,
link |
now there's a two month ceasefire in place now,
link |
but remains lifted beyond the ceasefire
link |
and children will stop starving.
link |
That's pretty simple.
link |
You can trace, it's a direct connection.
link |
And we haven't had the sort of the more aware with all
link |
to make that decision because we're too interested
link |
in maintaining positive ties with Saudi Arabia
link |
where oil flows from and so much influence
link |
because Saudi Arabia has so much influence
link |
throughout the MENA region.
link |
We want to keep that relationship tight
link |
despite sort of the more wounds that come from that.
link |
About half the world is under authoritarian regimes.
link |
Everybody operates under narratives
link |
and there's a narrative in the United States
link |
that freedom is good, democracy is good.
link |
I have fallen victim to this narrative.
link |
I'm saying this jokingly, but not really
link |
because who knows the truth of anything in this world?
link |
I eat meat, factory farm meat,
link |
and I seem to not be intellectually and philosophically
link |
tortured by this and I should be.
link |
There's a lot of suffering there.
link |
What do we do to lessen the suffering
link |
of the people under authoritarian regimes?
link |
Again, the same question.
link |
Military conflict, diplomacy, sanctions,
link |
all those kinds of things.
link |
Does that lessen suffering or increase the suffering
link |
from what you see in Yemen?
link |
Is it something that has to be healed across generations
link |
or can be healed on a scale of months and years?
link |
I'm just a guy with camera, Alex, you know?
link |
But as a guy with a camera,
link |
I've seen a lot of things in a lot of places
link |
and I've seen the effects these decisions
link |
made by authoritarian leaders have on their own citizens.
link |
And that's what drives my thinking on this.
link |
And that's what drives and motivates me each day
link |
to raise the red flag through my films
link |
and say, listen, Biden, you campaigned for president,
link |
in part on a platform that said
link |
that we would regain our prominence
link |
on the moral stage of the world, right?
link |
And that we would prioritize sort of a moral paradigm
link |
over relationships with authoritarian regimes,
link |
Saudi Arabia being one, right?
link |
And yet when the CIA report came out
link |
that clearly articulated in detail
link |
that MBS was responsible for Khashoggi's murder
link |
and for cutting his body into pieces
link |
and probably burning it in the backyard of the embassy,
link |
what did Biden do?
link |
He didn't really make a pariah out of MBS
link |
like he said he was going to, right?
link |
What if he'd done something else
link |
and actually done what he said he was gonna do,
link |
which was make MBS?
link |
What if he would remove the ability for MBS
link |
to fly to the United States, for example?
link |
Now that's a sanction, right?
link |
That's a sanction that's individual and concrete
link |
and would be hugely embarrassing for MBS.
link |
That would have been Biden saying,
link |
this is unacceptable behavior, right?
link |
This is something which because you executed
link |
such a horrendous act on someone living in the United States,
link |
We are not going to give you a stage here at least, right?
link |
Within the borders of our country.
link |
Those are the things that leaders can do
link |
that I don't think they do often enough.
link |
And certainly our leader right now
link |
isn't doing it in the way I wish you were.
link |
He certainly has taken a different stand on Ukraine
link |
and been very vocal,
link |
but there's so many instances we could talk about
link |
where I feel like the political game and ship, right?
link |
Often falls into maintaining relationships
link |
like with MBS and Saudi Arabia,
link |
rather than doing the right thing,
link |
rather than as a nation, a leader of a nation saying,
link |
this is unacceptable, we have a higher standard than this.
link |
Cause I think when leaders do that,
link |
it becomes aspirational, right?
link |
It becomes aspirational for other leaders
link |
in the progressive world at least.
link |
And also it rings the alarm bells
link |
for other authoritarian leaders and says,
link |
you know what, there are lines, right?
link |
There are things that can't be done
link |
or there will be significant consequences,
link |
like you will not be able to fly into our airspace anymore.
link |
And sanctions I think need to be concrete and individual
link |
to some, in addition to the larger scope,
link |
but when they're concrete and individual,
link |
I think often they're felt in a different way.
link |
You mean felt obviously by the individuals
link |
and so the ripple effects of that
link |
might have the power to steer the direction of nations.
link |
Because of the nature of authoritarian regimes, right?
link |
Individuals have so much power.
link |
So, you know, if Putin is, you know,
link |
put on trial in the Hague at some point
link |
or at least there's the threat of that, right?
link |
Now that's likely never to happen, of course,
link |
because someone has to be in custody to go on trial, right?
link |
And he's never gonna allow that to happen.
link |
But just knowing that that danger exists
link |
is going to change his travel plans in the future, right?
link |
MBS not being able to fly to the US,
link |
he's gonna feel that and be embarrassed by that.
link |
So I think they have a special meaning
link |
and consequence in authoritarian regimes because of that.
link |
So you said you're just a guy with a camera?
link |
I would say you're a brilliant guy with a camera.
link |
I'm also a kind of guy with a camera.
link |
You're a guy with a couple cameras.
link |
I've worked multiple times.
link |
A couple mics too.
link |
You got a couple mics, a couple cameras, robot over here.
link |
When you can't beat them with quality,
link |
you bring the quantity.
link |
So to me, that's also an interest partially
link |
because I also speak Russian and a bit Ukrainian.
link |
I wanna study that part of the world.
link |
I wanna talk to a lot of people.
link |
I wanna talk to the leaders.
link |
I wanna talk to regular people.
link |
To be honest, and I would love to get your comments on this.
link |
The regular quote unquote people
link |
are way more fascinating to me.
link |
As a filmmaker, how do you figure out
link |
how to tell this story?
link |
I'm sure a guy with a camera,
link |
you're looking at war in Ukraine,
link |
but also what's going on in Yemen and Syria
link |
and other places in the world.
link |
I mentioned North Korea.
link |
That's a super interesting one.
link |
Hard to bring cameras along.
link |
China, like in Canada, the truckers,
link |
there's all kinds of fascinating things happening
link |
So you as a scholar of human suffering
link |
and human flourishing,
link |
how do you choose how to tell the story?
link |
How do I choose a story?
link |
How do I choose how to tell a story?
link |
Both the story and how, I assume those are coupled.
link |
So how do you choose which story to tell?
link |
And how do you choose how to tell that story?
link |
Well, in terms of how to choose which story,
link |
you know, it's a bit of a mystery potion for me, frankly.
link |
I go off and on instinct,
link |
but there's also a highly intentional piece of it
link |
And the intentional piece is,
link |
I guess I'd call it the do I care threshold,
link |
you know, or the so what threshold.
link |
You personally, just something in your heart
link |
just kind of gets excited or hurts
link |
or just feels something.
link |
So one of the things that disturbs the amount
link |
of American culture, Lex, is that, you know,
link |
we seem to be a people that's fascinated
link |
by reality television, for example,
link |
like look at how many of us here in America
link |
watch reality television, right?
link |
That deeply disturbs me.
link |
Not that I've never watched an episode,
link |
I've shot a whole season of it once to make a living, right?
link |
So it's like, I know it, right?
link |
But I feel like the things we should be paying attention to
link |
are the things, personally,
link |
are the things I choose to film, right?
link |
As a human being, as a dad, as a filmmaker,
link |
I think we should be paying attention
link |
to the fact that children are being starved in Yemen.
link |
I think we should be paying attention to the fact
link |
that Ukrainians are being displaced by the millions.
link |
So there's this so what threshold that I use.
link |
And I feel like it has to be a topic
link |
that if we don't cover
link |
and we don't put out in the world
link |
in the largest possible way,
link |
in the hope of intervening,
link |
in the hope of marshaling maximum resources
link |
and attention to solving the problem,
link |
that's what I'm dedicated to as a filmmaker.
link |
Because I didn't pick up a camera initially
link |
to film puppy dogs, right?
link |
To make people smile.
link |
I believe the camera is a tool for change.
link |
I believe the camera is a powerful tool
link |
that we can use to raise awareness and marshal resources
link |
and help people understand the impact
link |
that these geopolitical decisions have
link |
on real people's lives.
link |
And that's the intent I create each film with.
link |
Now, how I choose each story,
link |
that's the magic potion piece of it, right?
link |
And often one flows rather organically
link |
into another, frankly.
link |
So you just kind of, like you said,
link |
you go with instinct a little bit.
link |
To some extent, but oftentimes,
link |
I choose the next project based on relationships
link |
I've developed in the last film, right?
link |
And so one often flows into another
link |
through relationships I develop
link |
and then a colleague will share a detail
link |
about something that's happening in a certain place
link |
and I'll go, hmm, really, I didn't know that, right?
link |
And usually it's before it's hit the world stage
link |
And so I start to do due diligence
link |
and often that it reveals it to be a much bigger
link |
and more pressing topic that I want to learn more about.
link |
Before I talk to you about Syria and lifeboat,
link |
you mentioned a camera is the best weapon.
link |
Well, I can't take out a tank, right?
link |
But it's a good weapon.
link |
Second, top three.
link |
I love the humor throughout this.
link |
I really appreciate it.
link |
We were talking about such dark topics and it resets the mind
link |
in a way that allows me to think.
link |
As a filmmaker, almost want to talk about
link |
the technical details.
link |
How do you choose to shoot stuff?
link |
Again, so maybe you can explain to me,
link |
I work with incredible folks that care about lenses
link |
and equipment and so on.
link |
I tend to be somebody that just wants to kind of go
link |
as like a gorilla shooting.
link |
Like not plan too much, just go with gritty.
link |
I'm trying to come up with words that sound positive.
link |
Do a positive spin on what I try to do,
link |
but like gritty, don't over plan, use...
link |
Like we had a big discussion if you see this light.
link |
It's on a stand that's a very ghetto stand.
link |
You need a sandbag on that, man.
link |
So no sandbag and like the stand is actually bending
link |
under the weight of that thing.
link |
It could fall on us.
link |
It probably won't reach us, but it could fall.
link |
But the danger live under that danger
link |
and embrace that danger.
link |
Because that thing is easier to transport
link |
than a heavier one.
link |
Sandbag, that's extra weight.
link |
So if you keep, like people tell me,
link |
there's the right way to do stuff.
link |
Like here's these giant cases
link |
with all the kinds of padding for transporting stuff.
link |
I transport most of the equipment in a garbage bag.
link |
So that's just a preference
link |
because that's somehow that chaos allows me
link |
to ignore all the stupidity of loving the equipment
link |
and focusing on the story.
link |
So that said, I've never shot anything like worthwhile.
link |
Like there is power to the visual.
link |
And so finding a certain angle, a certain light,
link |
whether it's natural light
link |
or additional artificial lighting,
link |
just capturing a tear.
link |
Capturing when the person forgets themselves for a moment
link |
and looks out into the distance, missing somebody,
link |
thinking about somebody.
link |
All of those like moments you can capture,
link |
a lens, a camera can do magic with that.
link |
I don't even know the question I'm asking you,
link |
but how do both technical and philosophical,
link |
how do you capture the visual power that you're after?
link |
So many of my films, I think,
link |
are built on the premise of access, right?
link |
Built on this notion that
link |
the biggest hurdle to the story is getting there,
link |
being there in the room
link |
or being there on the boat while the crisis is unfolding.
link |
And that access typically is really nuanced
link |
and difficult to gain.
link |
And then trust flows from that, right?
link |
Cause usually it takes a long time to gain that access.
link |
Because that access is so hard fought,
link |
it necessarily informs how we film, right?
link |
To be in a room at Sadaka Hospital in Southern Yemen.
link |
I can't have five people in that room, right?
link |
I can't have a boom mic over a scene.
link |
I want creatively the opposite of that as well.
link |
So it's not just a logistical question,
link |
it's also a creative question
link |
to capture intimate moments
link |
where families are dealing with suffering children
link |
and dying children and caretaking
link |
is active and ongoing all the time.
link |
You don't wanna interrupt that moment.
link |
And so that informs how I do things.
link |
So we go fleet and nimble and small.
link |
Those are all really good words for...
link |
But it's so it's logistical on the one hand
link |
but it's also a creative choice, right?
link |
So when we filmed Hunger Ward,
link |
it's two people were filming the entire film, right?
link |
Me and my director of photography.
link |
That was the two people in the room?
link |
Two people in the room.
link |
Yeah, that's it, the whole film, right?
link |
We had a field producer as well in each part of the country
link |
but in terms of camera, it's just two people.
link |
And we're doing everything
link |
and we have lenses that are long enough
link |
that we don't have to move to capture the film.
link |
So we can tuck into a corner sometimes, right?
link |
So just what's long mean?
link |
That means they're standing farther away
link |
and they can... Zoom lens, it's not a prime lens.
link |
So it's not a fixed focal length, right?
link |
Because a fixed focal length,
link |
you have to move a lot more in order to capture action.
link |
With a zoom lens, maybe a 105 at the long end,
link |
I can tuck into a corner
link |
and just film from 15 feet away
link |
instead of having to get right up on someone, right?
link |
So you'd less like to interrupt the scene
link |
and you can kind of become the fly on the wall sometimes.
link |
So I'm very intentional about that piece of it
link |
so that we can capture those vulnerable moments
link |
and not interrupt them.
link |
That's really fascinating too, because the access...
link |
I don't often think about this
link |
but that's probably true for me as well.
link |
Part of the storytelling is to be in the room.
link |
And that's the hard part.
link |
For me, most of my films, that's the hardest part.
link |
Actually, as hard as Hunger Ward and Lifeboat were to film
link |
and 15 feet from Syria,
link |
the getting their piece of it for the last two
link |
Yeah, and it's also... It's a creative act.
link |
It's... I don't know if it is for you,
link |
but it's the kind of people you talk to.
link |
It's like how you live your life.
link |
Like the kind of people I talk to right now,
link |
they steer the direction of my life
link |
and steer the direction of things that I'll film.
link |
So it's not just like you're trying to get access.
link |
It's like, it's everything.
link |
It builds and builds and builds.
link |
It builds on itself.
link |
I mean, part of the thing, even saying,
link |
talking about some of these leaders
link |
and conversations with them,
link |
it's almost like steering your life
link |
into the direction of the difficult,
link |
of like taking the leap
link |
and if you're a good human being
link |
and a lot of people know who you are as a human,
link |
like not as a name, but as really who you are,
link |
that like putting that attention out there,
link |
it's somehow the world opens doors
link |
where the access that was once seemed impossible
link |
becomes possible and then all of that
link |
is a creative journey to be in the room.
link |
I think that probably is,
link |
I mean, it's true even for fiction films, probably,
link |
is like everything that led to that,
link |
like to be in the room, the journey to be in the room
link |
and to shoot the scene is maybe more important
link |
than the scene itself and like really
link |
focus on the creative act of that.
link |
Yeah, that's really fascinating
link |
and especially, I mean, with a documentary,
link |
Yeah, you can't say, hey, reset, right?
link |
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
link |
God, that is so interesting.
link |
As you were in some of the most difficult parts
link |
of the world in the room
link |
with some of the most difficult stories to be told.
link |
And yet, I think that's why I keep doing these stories,
link |
right, because once you have that lived experience,
link |
for me, it's moving.
link |
It moves me to bear witness to these inspiring people
link |
under difficult circumstances.
link |
And I can't come back to the US afterwards
link |
and walk down the grocery aisle
link |
where there's 50 different choices for canned peas, right?
link |
And not sort of feel that lived tension, right?
link |
That lived tension of the privilege
link |
that I have here in the US.
link |
And then I have a choice about what to do
link |
with that privilege, right?
link |
And the last thing I wanna do is start, you know,
link |
doing stories about dandelions, right?
link |
There's far more important things to do
link |
on this very limited time that I have on the planet.
link |
And, you know, I think that's catalytic for me.
link |
Like, I feel that mortality each day.
link |
And my goal is to tell as many of these stories
link |
Could you speak to the getting access?
link |
Is this just, you know, is there interesting stories
link |
of how a weird or funny or profound ways
link |
that led you to get access to a room?
link |
Each one is a different adventure.
link |
And it's definitely an adventure.
link |
Everyone's an adventure, yeah.
link |
Probably one of the easiest ones I ever had
link |
in the recent past was for 50 feet from Syria
link |
where, you know, I literally broke my hand
link |
in a bicycle race and after many months
link |
of trying to get an appointment
link |
with an orthopedic hand surgeon, you know, a specialist,
link |
I finally did and he was Syrian American.
link |
And the Syrian conflict had just begun
link |
and we'd started talking about it.
link |
And after, you know, he looked at my hand
link |
in the first five minutes, he's like,
link |
yeah, you need surgery, right?
link |
But then somehow we started talking about Syria.
link |
And like five minutes in, he just stood up
link |
and like put the privacy curtain around us.
link |
It's supposed to be a 15 minute appointment or so.
link |
And we talked for an hour, right?
link |
So, you know, those moments of sort
link |
of mysterious confluence happen, right?
link |
And I think you have to be open to them when they do happen.
link |
Because I'm a storyteller, I'm always looking as well, right?
link |
So because he then contacted me later
link |
and said, sky, I am going back to the Syrian border
link |
to volunteer as a surgeon.
link |
Do you want to come with me?
link |
That was an easy one.
link |
That's probably the easiest one I could give you.
link |
But it came out of this interesting moment,
link |
very personal moment, right?
link |
Lifeboat and hunger ward were completely different.
link |
And I had to really work hard to gain access to those stories.
link |
So you intentionally thought like what,
link |
I want to get access to the story.
link |
And then what are the different ideas?
link |
And they often might involve a doctor or a dentist
link |
or just being maybe intentionally and aggressively open
link |
to experiences that lead you into the room.
link |
So like, it's funny you mentioned the doctor
link |
because I have similar experiences now.
link |
I've just gotten access to all kinds of fascinating people
link |
They're all around us.
link |
They're all around us.
link |
You just have to look, right?
link |
It's like, there's fascinating people everywhere
link |
who are doing incredible things,
link |
but we have to be open and keep our eyes open
link |
and realize that there are amazing human beings everywhere.
link |
There's networks that connect people just through life.
link |
You meet people, you share a beer or a drink
link |
or just fall in love or you share trauma together.
link |
You go through a hard time to get in those little sticky
link |
things, connects us humans.
link |
And if you just keep yourself open
link |
and embrace the curiosity
link |
and then also the persistence, I suppose.
link |
Like how long have you chased access?
link |
Does it take days, weeks, months, years?
link |
Lex, I'm not the most talented filmmaker in the world.
link |
I'm not the smartest guy in the world.
link |
I think if there's qualities that have served me well
link |
in my career, it's persistence and tenacity, right?
link |
I've always been sort of a slow burn human being.
link |
Like I would never hit a home run,
link |
but I hit a first, right?
link |
A single to first and then I'd hit another single to first.
link |
So, I ran a marathon when I was 18
link |
and I think that is illustrative of sort of
link |
how my career has been.
link |
I just keep going and I believe in this notion
link |
of incremental evolution that with each project,
link |
I try to learn from it and take away lessons learned
link |
and improve my craft, right?
link |
And improve how I leverage that craft
link |
and improve how I tell the story
link |
from a narrative standpoint each time
link |
so that on the next project, it's a little bit better.
link |
And that's the arc of my career is learning,
link |
learning, evolving, evolving
link |
so that I can make a little better film the next time.
link |
How do you gain people's trust?
link |
Like for example, there's a line between journalists
link |
and documentary filmmakers.
link |
Nobody really trusts journalists.
link |
Yeah, right, exactly.
link |
But a documentary filmmaker, of course I'm joking,
link |
half joking, I don't know which percentage joking,
link |
But documentary filmmaker is a kind of storyteller
link |
and artist that somehow that's more trustworthy
link |
because you're on the same side in some way.
link |
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
link |
Is there something to be said
link |
how you gain the trust of people to gain access?
link |
Are you just trying to be a good human being?
link |
Is there something to be said there?
link |
Well, so I do draw a distinction
link |
between journalism and filmmaking
link |
because I think you're right, they're different.
link |
And there are some filmmakers who do hue to sort of
link |
the journalistic tenets of who, what, where, when, why,
link |
fair and balanced on both sides, right?
link |
Make sure everyone has a voice.
link |
If you say fair and balanced,
link |
you're rarely either fair or balanced.
link |
I've seen that with journalists.
link |
Journalists often, unfortunately, in my perspective,
link |
sorry to interrupt you rudely and go on a rant,
link |
but they seem to have an agenda,
link |
as opposed to seeking to truly tell a story
link |
or to truly understand,
link |
especially when they're talking to people
link |
who have some degree of evil on them.
link |
Well, we all have an agenda, right?
link |
I think in anything we do,
link |
whether it's like to seek truth
link |
or some larger principle.
link |
I always have an agenda.
link |
Like I chose to work with civilians and caretakers
link |
in Yemen on hunger ward rather than to go interview MBS, right?
link |
That's what I'm interested in,
link |
is bringing that to the world, right?
link |
But in terms of building relationships and trust,
link |
it's really, I think about transparency
link |
as much as anything else
link |
and going in in a collaborative sense.
link |
So I don't think of the people that I film with as subjects,
link |
for example, I think of them as collaborators.
link |
So it's a different mindset that I go into projects with.
link |
And it's based on relationships, right?
link |
You have to build relationships with other human beings,
link |
And that takes time and it takes listening and it's active.
link |
So I've talked about the notion of consent before,
link |
which is so important in nonfiction film.
link |
And I hew to this idea that you don't just slide a piece
link |
of paper in front of someone,
link |
have a lease form and have them sign it, right?
link |
And then you're done.
link |
That's not the nature of true consent in my mind.
link |
It's you have to work on a foundation of active consent
link |
every single day that you're working with someone.
link |
And that's based on relationship, right?
link |
And it's based on dialogue.
link |
So it's trust that I'm always aiming for.
link |
It's the building of relationships
link |
which I'm always aiming for,
link |
which is why yesterday I got a bunch of photos
link |
from Dr. Al Sadiq in the south of Yemen.
link |
And she sends me photos all the time of the children
link |
that she's currently treating
link |
because we have an active relationship that continues on
link |
and probably will for many years to come.
link |
So that it's going to continue.
link |
And that's the only way that I can do these kinds of films.
link |
Let me ask you about silly little details of filming.
link |
Before we go to the big picture stories,
link |
cameras, lenses, how much do those matter?
link |
You mentioned director of photography.
link |
What's your, how much do you love the feel,
link |
the smell of equipment that does the visual filming?
link |
You know, there's some people, they're just like,
link |
oh, they love lenses.
link |
How much do you love that?
link |
Or versus how much do you focus on the story
link |
or the access and all those kinds of things?
link |
I'm not a tech geek,
link |
but because during the bulk of my career,
link |
I've worked as a director of photography myself
link |
for other people in order to pay the bills over the years.
link |
You know, I know the technical side of it
link |
because I've had to know it
link |
and I've had to train myself and learn it.
link |
So I see them as necessary tools.
link |
And again, because I believe, you know,
link |
film and cinema is and should be visually driven
link |
and not verbally driven.
link |
I want the best tools possible within my means, right?
link |
And within the logistical ability of the project
link |
because we have to go so small, right?
link |
I can't afford nor can I bring a huge $100,000 lens.
link |
So if I give you a trillion dollars.
link |
A trillion dollars?
link |
There's still huge constraints
link |
that have nothing to do with money, like you just said.
link |
So what cameras would you use?
link |
You know what I'd do with the trillion dollars?
link |
I could do a lot with the trillion dollars.
link |
You're only allowed to fund the film
link |
and no corrupt stuff where you like use the film
link |
to actually help children.
link |
No, you're not allowed to do any of that.
link |
What I would do with the trillion is I wouldn't invest in it.
link |
Well, I guess I would invest in current.
link |
I would increase capacity to do more films, what I would do.
link |
So I would buy basically the perfect little,
link |
you know, mini equipment set, right?
link |
But then I would train three teams maybe
link |
to do the same thing that I've been doing
link |
so we could multiply and scale up.
link |
More and more stories.
link |
Yeah, that's what I would do with the money.
link |
But the actual setup.
link |
Would remain small and nimble, yeah.
link |
And what about lighting?
link |
Do you usually use natural light?
link |
I mean, sorry for the technical questions here,
link |
but highlighting the drama of the human face,
link |
that's the visual, that's art.
link |
That's like to reveal reality at its deepest
link |
at its deepest is art.
link |
And do you use lighting?
link |
The lighting is such a big part of that.
link |
Do you ever do artificial lighting?
link |
Do you try to do natural always?
link |
You know, the best lighting instrument in the world
link |
is the sun at the right moment of the day.
link |
And so I predominantly use natural light
link |
at certain moments and just shape natural light
link |
during the course of these small human ride stocks.
link |
That's not to say we don't bring instruments sometimes,
link |
but when we do, they're very small and again compact.
link |
So for example, I have this small little tube kit.
link |
That's just three instruments, right?
link |
That you can charge with the USB
link |
because electricity is often a major issue where we go.
link |
So there's just three little tube lights
link |
with magnetic backs that if we find in a situation
link |
where we can't get enough exposure
link |
for a hallway or something and we have the time
link |
to throw it up, we'll throw it up if people are walking,
link |
if collaborators are walking down that hallway a lot,
link |
for example, at night, just so we can see them, right?
link |
So it's instances like that or if we do do an interview
link |
which we don't do very often, but if we do,
link |
just so we have a key light on the face, right?
link |
And I always bring a reflector or two,
link |
just to shape natural light as well in ways.
link |
But it's about shaping rather than producing light for us.
link |
As we sit surrounded by black curtains
link |
in complete natural light.
link |
So just so you know, this room is like a violation
link |
of the basic principles of using the sun.
link |
So behind the large curtains are giant windows.
link |
Should I rip them open, or should I rip off the curtains?
link |
How much of the work is done in the edit?
link |
That's another question I'm curious about.
link |
And how much do you sort of anticipate that?
link |
Like when you're actually shooting,
link |
are you thinking of the final story
link |
as it appears on screen,
link |
or are you just collecting as a human,
link |
collecting little bits of story here and there
link |
and in the edit is where most of the storytelling happens?
link |
I've developed this sort of mental paradigm for myself
link |
over the years that speaks to that.
link |
And I call it the three creations, right?
link |
And so when I'm doing a film,
link |
the first creation for me is, you know,
link |
my preconception or visualization
link |
of what the film is going to be before I shoot it, right?
link |
So I have this entire vision of what a film is going to be.
link |
And sometimes it can be pretty specific,
link |
like I'll think through the scenes,
link |
if I know the locations and everything,
link |
and I'll have this idea of what I'm going to create, right?
link |
And then I'm there filming, right?
link |
And always without fail,
link |
reality is something altogether different
link |
than what I thought it would be.
link |
But it's still good to have the original idea.
link |
Yeah, yeah, but if I tried to hold
link |
to that original vision, right?
link |
And to create a film out of that idea, they'd be crap.
link |
All the films would be crap.
link |
So I have to adapt, I have to evolve my approach
link |
and then embrace what is actually occurring
link |
with the people who are actually doing it,
link |
and then reenvision.
link |
So that reenvision is very active
link |
during the entire filming process.
link |
And so that's the second creation.
link |
That's the rethinking and revisualizing
link |
based on what we're actually experiencing and seeing
link |
what this film is going to be.
link |
And then I finish filming, right?
link |
And we bring the hard drives back
link |
and we plug in the hard drives in the edit bay.
link |
And oftentimes, because it's two of us filming
link |
most of the time, I haven't seen all the footage.
link |
Because in the field, it's all about just filming, right?
link |
And then just transferring the footage
link |
and getting on safely cloned to multiple drives.
link |
I don't have a chance to review everything.
link |
I can't do rushes like you do on a large feature.
link |
So because I'm filming half of it,
link |
I know what I've filmed, right?
link |
But I haven't seen everything
link |
the director photography has filmed, right?
link |
So the next stage for me is reviewing
link |
every single frame of what's been filmed.
link |
And that's where discovery happens the third time, right?
link |
Or second time, rather, is, wow,
link |
now I thought we'd filmed this,
link |
but actually there's this over here.
link |
And then I have to open up this second vision
link |
and turn it and transform it into a third vision
link |
for the film based on what's actually on the hard drive.
link |
So is this like a daily process?
link |
So what I do, my process is that once,
link |
if it's a really difficult project,
link |
I'll take a break before I go through this.
link |
Just for healing and some space away and fresh eyes.
link |
And usually that's about a month.
link |
And then once I reengage, I reengage whole hog.
link |
I reengage fully and I review every single frame.
link |
And as I do that, I create a spreadsheet.
link |
And for Hunger War, that spreadsheet was,
link |
I don't know, 1500 lines long or something
link |
where it's basically log notes.
link |
And I watch every scene and I take notes
link |
and I know really what we have.
link |
And once I've gone through that process
link |
that takes about a month
link |
and I really know what we came back with,
link |
I create an outline for the film from that.
link |
And that's the third visioning, right?
link |
That's usually completely different
link |
than my original vision for the film to some extent, right?
link |
But I have to stay open to that entire process
link |
or I'd be trying to create something
link |
that I can't really create.
link |
So I think that those are the three creations for me.
link |
That's so cool to know what we have.
link |
Just to lay it all out and to load it in into your mind.
link |
Cause like this is the capture of reality we have.
link |
It's a very kind of scientific process too.
link |
Cause you know, in science,
link |
you collect a bunch of data about a phenomena.
link |
And now you have to like analyze that data.
link |
But now your phenomena is long gone.
link |
Yeah, yeah, right, right.
link |
Now you just have the data.
link |
Just the data and you have to write a paper
link |
about it, like analyze the data.
link |
It's the similar things.
link |
You have to like load it all in.
link |
Where's the story?
link |
How, how do you, that last probably profound piece
link |
of doing the editing like in your mind?
link |
Like what, how to lay those things out?
link |
Well, it's almost like the scientific process, right?
link |
I have a hypothesis, a creative hypothesis, right?
link |
Not a scientific one.
link |
But then I'm testing the hypothesis
link |
during the course of filming, right?
link |
And I have to stay true to what the data tells me
link |
in the end, creatively.
link |
So it's very similar to the scientific processes.
link |
I don't know what we should, we should probably coin that.
link |
Yeah, that's pretty good.
link |
Creative scientific process or something like that.
link |
But then you actually do the edit and then you watch,
link |
that's also iterative in a sense.
link |
Cause maybe when you have a film,
link |
that's 20, 30, 40 minutes, or if it's feature line,
link |
like, do you ever have it where it sucks?
link |
Like it's not at all.
link |
Is there a stage where it sucks?
link |
Like a stage where it's like, no, this is not hot.
link |
This is not what I was.
link |
Like when it's all put together in this way,
link |
this doesn't, this is not working right.
link |
This is not right.
link |
Or do you, is it always like an incremental step
link |
towards better and better?
link |
Yeah, it's incremental.
link |
Yeah, and there's always some moment
link |
in the editing process where there's a breakthrough,
link |
where suddenly I understand how it fits together more fully.
link |
And you have to be, like you said, resilient.
link |
You have to be patient that that moment will come.
link |
Are you ultra self critical?
link |
Or are you generally optimistic and patient?
link |
I don't think those are mutually exclusive.
link |
Right, so you just oscillate?
link |
Or you, are there like dance partners or something?
link |
No, dance partners, yeah.
link |
Definitely dance, all the way through the process.
link |
By way of advice, to young filmmakers,
link |
how to film something that is recognized by the world
link |
I would say, first off, learn your craft.
link |
Because I think craft is incredibly foundational
link |
to creating a powerful story.
link |
And sorry to interrupt, but when you say craft,
link |
do you mean just the raw technical,
link |
the director of photography, the filming aspect?
link |
Is it the storytelling, is it the acts, is the whole thing?
link |
I think craft is more than just knowing
link |
how to push record on a camera or what lens to use.
link |
That's part of it, right?
link |
But I think, at least in nonfiction,
link |
I'm a product to some extent of having
link |
to know how to do it all, having to teach myself how
link |
Because I didn't go to film school,
link |
but I became so enamored of telling stories through a camera.
link |
What was the leap, by the way, from theater to storyteller?
link |
Oh, I just needed an extra class in grad school.
link |
I was in a MFA directing class, and I needed an extra class.
link |
And I just talked my way into a television directing class.
link |
And fell in love with it.
link |
And the actor became the director.
link |
I mean, I wasn't an actor, but I had to act.
link |
I had to know the craft of acting because I was in the theater.
link |
Did you love it, though?
link |
Did you love acting?
link |
The first, yeah, as an undergraduate, yeah.
link |
But then I learned pretty quickly that I was pretty bad at it,
link |
or at least not very good, and that my skills lay elsewhere.
link |
And more behind the scenes and shaping a story.
link |
When you started taking a class, but also telling stories
link |
as a director, did you quickly realize that you're pretty good at this,
link |
or was it a grind?
link |
That's a good question, Alex.
link |
I think I definitely knew right away that it was more my wheelhouse.
link |
And I think part of that was because I grew up
link |
in sort of a world of imagination.
link |
And I think that act of imagination as a child really
link |
lent itself well to the skill set that a director needs, right?
link |
To shape story, to shape narrative, to shape performances.
link |
So I think it was a much more natural fit for me.
link |
Was I excellent at the beginning?
link |
I think few people are.
link |
Where was the biggest struggle for you?
link |
So your imagination clearly was something that you worked on for a lifetime.
link |
So I'm sure that was pretty strong.
link |
Books, came from books.
link |
But the actual conversion of the, you said shape the story.
link |
Where was the skill most lacking in the shaping of the story initially?
link |
Just technical side.
link |
Yeah, you know, because I taught myself everything.
link |
What kind of microphone should I use, right?
link |
What kind of camera?
link |
What does this lens do?
link |
What's that lens do?
link |
I didn't know any of that.
link |
And so I essentially was, I have been self taught technically.
link |
How do you get good technically?
link |
Would you say when you're self taught?
link |
Just doing it over and over again.
link |
And what kind of stories were you telling?
link |
I began shooting local commercials for.
link |
So you're doing professional projects.
link |
And so I kind of learned on the job as I did it.
link |
How many hobby projects did you do just for the hell of it?
link |
Were you trying to focus on the professional?
link |
Well, I was trying to make money, right?
link |
Right out of grad school, just to pay the rent.
link |
And then that, you know, that's a forcing function to.
link |
I mean, I, I personally love having my back to the wall
link |
or financially you're screwed to succeed.
link |
I mean, I lived out the trunk of my car for a couple of years
link |
after grad school, just freelancing.
link |
You know, just like, but, but that couple of years really helped me
link |
learn fast because I had to learn fast, you know.
link |
So I did a couple, I did a couple of voyages around the world
link |
for this group called Semester at Sea that has a floating
link |
university that where they go out three and a half months
link |
at a time with the, with about 500 college level students
link |
and about 35 professors.
link |
And so you're shooting every day for three and a half months
link |
in like nine different countries.
link |
And so that really was like instrumental to me becoming
link |
a pretty good camera person pretty quickly.
link |
And you're doing most of the work yourself.
link |
One man, one man bad.
link |
The second, the second voyage, I at least had an editor with me.
link |
Yeah, but I was shooting everything.
link |
What's the perfect team?
link |
Is it two people for the, for nonfiction, asking for a friend?
link |
Some kind of interest in some storytelling, not of the level
link |
and the sophistication that you're doing, but more.
link |
I think you have to allow the story to dictate what the size
link |
of the film should be.
link |
For these small human rights docs I do, I think two or three,
link |
you know, it means you work your butt off, right?
link |
Cause you're doing everything, right?
link |
But it allows you to tell intimate stories
link |
and have that access.
link |
I'm doing a film this summer that's a scripted piece
link |
where we'll probably have 25 crew people.
link |
You know, so it's completely different,
link |
different endeavor all together.
link |
But doing it yourself, what do you think about that?
link |
Even though you, you have that trillion dollars.
link |
Oh, I have that trillion dollars again?
link |
You can write that check before I leave, Brian.
link |
I've never seen a check for that big.
link |
It's gonna be interesting.
link |
How many zeros is that?
link |
I've read them so often I've lost track
link |
or the United States government sure as heck writes them often.
link |
Okay, anyway, I mean, like, is there an argument?
link |
Can you steal man the case for a single person?
link |
You know, not for me, not for me.
link |
What I found is that by being a team of two filming
link |
with a field producer, by two people filming,
link |
it allows us to double our footage first off, right?
link |
So we have twice as much footage in the time
link |
we're filming to come back with
link |
as opposed to one person filming.
link |
So you're each manning a camera?
link |
And how much, how much, sorry to keep interrupting,
link |
but how much interaction and interplay there?
link |
Sometimes the director of photography is in another room.
link |
Filming at a different scene, if it makes sense.
link |
Sometimes we're cross shooting in the same room, right?
link |
It just depends on the needs of the moment.
link |
So we come back with double footage is one thing.
link |
But as a director, so that's, you know,
link |
and given how access is sometimes shaped by the events
link |
so that we can only, something, you know, in lifeboat,
link |
for example, you know, a rescue operation
link |
may only happen three days, right?
link |
So you want as much footage of that as you can.
link |
But the other piece of it that's really critical for me,
link |
I found is that by having another human being
link |
I'm filming with, who I'm co shooting with,
link |
it frees me up as a director
link |
to not always have to be shooting either.
link |
I can do all the other work to build relationships, right?
link |
To have side conversations with people,
link |
to sort out the right way to tell a story, right?
link |
Or to transfer footage, knowing that
link |
the director of photography is still filming
link |
So it frees me up to think of it as a director
link |
rather than just an image acquirer.
link |
Yeah, cause there's also, I don't know how distracting
link |
is you've obviously done it for years,
link |
but setting stuff up, it preoccupies your mind.
link |
Like pressing the record button.
link |
And like framing stuff and all that,
link |
that's still, that takes up some part of your mind
link |
where you can't think freely.
link |
That's my choice, right?
link |
That's how I work best.
link |
That said, the caveat there would be,
link |
that's not the only way to do it obviously, right?
link |
Like one of my favorite documentary time,
link |
documentaries of all time is a documentary
link |
called A Woman Captured Shot in Hungary
link |
by a single filmmaker with a single camera,
link |
with a single lens, right?
link |
And it's brilliant and powerful and moving
link |
and interventional.
link |
It's incredible filmmaking.
link |
And it was a single human being who created that film
link |
with a collaborator or subject.
link |
So it can be done, it's just not how I work best.
link |
Yeah, how much personally with the other person,
link |
how important is the relationship with them
link |
outside of the filming?
link |
With the director of photography?
link |
The director of photography, say.
link |
Like, how much drinking and if you don't drink
link |
whatever the equivalent of that is,
link |
they have to do together.
link |
How much soul searching or is it more
link |
like two surgeons getting together?
link |
Is it surgeons or is it a jazz band?
link |
Well, it could be either, right?
link |
Hopefully not at the same time though,
link |
because I don't think surgeons and jazz bands
link |
They're both good with fingers I suppose.
link |
Exactly, but I'd rather maybe not play in jazz
link |
while they operate on me.
link |
But I think for me, I think there are moments of both
link |
but usually not at the same time, right?
link |
There are surgical moments where the moment is so pressing
link |
you really have to be that task driven, right?
link |
To capture as thoroughly as possible
link |
whatever's unfolding, right?
link |
But I think there's other times where you do improvise
link |
And where you have a lot of choices ahead of you
link |
and you're doing it maybe a dance
link |
with the other camera person, right?
link |
In order to capture a scene as creatively
link |
and fully as possible during a fixed duration.
link |
How much you said shaping?
link |
Because it is nonfiction.
link |
But I feel like there's so many ways
link |
to tell the same nonfiction
link |
that it's bordering on fiction.
link |
Well, it's storytelling and how much shaping
link |
do you see yourself as doing?
link |
Like how important is your role?
link |
How you tell the story?
link |
I suppose the question I'm asking is
link |
how many ways can you really screw this up?
link |
Every day you can screw it up.
link |
I mean, that's really what I think what you're asking about
link |
is actually the ethos of documentary filmmaking, right?
link |
I allow a lot of things to guide my choices.
link |
One of them being, am I being fair, right?
link |
Not balanced, right?
link |
But am I being fair to what I'm witnessing?
link |
There's a camera capturing in a fair way
link |
the truth of the reality.
link |
Some fundamentals.
link |
And it also speaks to consent, right?
link |
Am I being fair in a sense of consent?
link |
Do I have active consent in this moment, right?
link |
Regardless of whether I have a signed piece of paper.
link |
I always find some way to document it,
link |
whether it's just direct address to camera
link |
or a translated release.
link |
So there's, actually that's an interesting little,
link |
so they say something to the camera that they consent
link |
or they sign the thing.
link |
Yeah, so for example, the large broadcast companies
link |
have this formalized process
link |
where they present a piece of paper, right?
link |
The subject reads it and they sign it
link |
and then you have permission.
link |
And that's irrevocable, right?
link |
So it'll hold up in court.
link |
That's not how I'll operate, right?
link |
And so it's just, for example,
link |
that doesn't work if someone's illiterate
link |
and can't read that piece of paper, right?
link |
What if they don't know how to sign their name, right?
link |
So instead you have to have a conversation,
link |
ask questions, have them ask questions,
link |
come to a complete understanding
link |
before you even know whether they understand
link |
what you're asking, right?
link |
And then in that case, if someone's illiterate,
link |
then you have that conversation,
link |
you just sit down and it takes a long time sometimes,
link |
but you have to do it.
link |
And then if they still wanna participate
link |
and they give you their consent,
link |
they can't sign a piece of paper, right?
link |
So then you just do in their native language, right?
link |
Direct consent to camera in their language.
link |
But also you're speaking to the consent
link |
that's just a human placing trust in you.
link |
You make a connection like this.
link |
That's the most important consent, yeah.
link |
I hate papers and lawyers
link |
because they did exactly for that reason.
link |
Yeah, okay, great.
link |
But you should be focusing on the human connection
link |
that leads to the trust, to the real consent
link |
and consent day to day, minute to minute
link |
because that can change.
link |
And it does change.
link |
You mentioned a woman captured.
link |
I'm sure you can't answer that, but I will force you.
link |
What are the top three documentaries of all time?
link |
Short or feature length?
link |
This is not your opinion.
link |
This is objective truth.
link |
Maybe the top one was the greatest.
link |
We got, let's see, March of the Penguins
link |
that's probably number one for me.
link |
No, I'm just kidding.
link |
I don't know, I do seem to,
link |
the metaphor of penguins huddling together
link |
in a hard, cold, like in the harsh conditions of nature
link |
that that's something that's kind of beautiful.
link |
I don't love all nature documentaries,
link |
but like something about March of the Penguins,
link |
I think Morgan Freeman.
link |
Yeah, he narrated it.
link |
Narrates it, so maybe everything,
link |
just any documentary with Morgan Freeman,
link |
Mama Sucker for that, Warner Herzog,
link |
The Life in the Tyga, The Simple People.
link |
I love Grizzly Man.
link |
I love Grizzly Man.
link |
I think that's one of his best works, you know?
link |
Yes, I think that's Joe Rogan's favorite documentary.
link |
It's both comedy and I mean it's...
link |
Tragic comedy, yeah.
link |
Is there something that stands out to you?
link |
I mean, I'm joking about like best,
link |
something that was impactful to you.
link |
Just to put it out there,
link |
I don't think there's any way to say
link |
that they're objectively the best three documentaries
link |
all the time, but for me,
link |
and you may find this interesting given your background,
link |
is that I think my top three
link |
are all from the Eastern Bloc, actually.
link |
So Aquarella by Kosokovsky,
link |
Victor Kosokovsky is one of my favorite,
link |
and he's a couple of years old now,
link |
which is sort of a meditation on the place water has
link |
on our planet and on our lives.
link |
I think a woman captured that I mentioned,
link |
which was shot in Hungary.
link |
Is a feature length one, right?
link |
Both are feature lengths, yeah.
link |
It is just brilliant,
link |
and it I think has yet to find distribution here in the US,
link |
but it's the perfect example of what they call,
link |
you know, verite or direct nonfiction filmmaking.
link |
A European woman, this is the synopsis,
link |
a European woman has been kept by families,
link |
a domestic slave for 10 years,
link |
drawn courage from the filmmaker's presence.
link |
She decides to escape the unbearable oppression
link |
and become a free person.
link |
Wow, so the filmmaker is part of the story.
link |
Part of the story becomes,
link |
and it didn't start that way,
link |
but during the course of the story,
link |
the filmmaker comes to understand
link |
that this is actually modern day slavery.
link |
And rather than just allow it to be,
link |
actually enables and assists this woman
link |
to free herself from slavery and become a free woman.
link |
I wonder, I'm sorry, on a small tangent
link |
before we get to number three,
link |
like, Icarus is interesting too.
link |
How often do you become part of the story?
link |
Or the story is different because of your presence?
link |
Like you changed the tide of history.
link |
Yeah, well, back to just like one person at a time
link |
that we keep coming back to that theme on some level.
link |
So this could tie in,
link |
interestingly, into one of my favorite films, actually.
link |
So the last two films that I would mention
link |
for my top four list would be,
link |
the third Eastern block one would be a film
link |
called Immortal in 2019,
link |
which was shot in Russia by a Russian woman
link |
that sort of, you know, examines the place of the state
link |
in shaping individuals to be vehicles for the state.
link |
I mean, that's my own synopsis,
link |
but that's one of my takeaways from the brilliant
link |
60 minute doc or so.
link |
Again, Russian filmmaking is really quite good and powerful.
link |
The fourth one would be a Frederick Wiseman film,
link |
Titicott Follies, which was filmed in the US decades ago,
link |
inside basically the bowels of an insane asylum
link |
or a mental health institution.
link |
And I bring up Wiseman because, you know,
link |
he is really the godfather, so to speak,
link |
of direct cinema or cinema verite.
link |
And when early in my career,
link |
I really believed in what he expressed as the place
link |
of the verite filmmaker,
link |
which is simply fly on the wall,
link |
which is only observational in nature, right?
link |
And I believe that that's how I should be
link |
as a nonfiction filmmaker,
link |
that I was there only to bear witness to observe
link |
and not to intervene in any way, shape or form.
link |
And that was the sort of foundation
link |
for how I operate for many, many years.
link |
And then some things happened.
link |
So one of those things that happened was I film lifeboat.
link |
And during the course of filming lifeboat,
link |
which, you know, covered rescue operations
link |
in the Mediterranean off the coast of Libya,
link |
in the first three days of that rescue mission,
link |
you know, we came upon over 3,000 people,
link |
asylum seekers, floating in flimsy rafts in the water.
link |
And we were on the Zodiacs and we were filming.
link |
And within the first couple hours, you know,
link |
we would come up to these rafts and these boats
link |
that were in really dire shape
link |
and people would be pushed off and people would jump off
link |
and people would fall into the water.
link |
And some of them couldn't swim.
link |
And so we found ourselves in this moment
link |
where we had a choice.
link |
We could film someone drowned in front of us,
link |
or we could put our cameras down
link |
and pull them out of the water.
link |
And so that's what we did.
link |
We put our cameras in the bottom of the Zodiac
link |
and just started pulling people out of the water.
link |
And, you know, if I was Wiseman, right,
link |
according to his paradigm, then we should have just filmed.
link |
And I didn't anticipate that moment beforehand.
link |
I had no sort of foreknowledge
link |
that I was gonna find myself faced with that dilemma
link |
of the moment as a documentarian.
link |
But there was no question in my mind
link |
that I had to put my camera down
link |
and pull that fellow human being out of the water.
link |
And I don't regret it at all.
link |
So I've come to a different place.
link |
I've evolved to what I believe
link |
for the kind of film that I do is more appropriate, right?
link |
Like I can go to sleep at night knowing that
link |
regardless of how the film would have been different
link |
if I hadn't made that choice,
link |
I made the right choice as a human being.
link |
So I think of it as being a human being first
link |
and a filmmaker second in moments like that.
link |
That's beautifully, beautifully put.
link |
But I also think you could be a human being in small ways,
link |
too, like silly ways,
link |
and put a little bit of yourself in documentaries.
link |
I tend to see that as really beautiful.
link |
Like the meta piece of it?
link |
Yeah, just put yourself into the movie a little bit
link |
because break that third, fourth, whatever the wall is
link |
is realize that there's a human behind the camera too.
link |
For some reason, me as a fan, as a viewer,
link |
that's enjoyable too.
link |
I think there's a real authenticity there behind the,
link |
especially with these hard stories that you're doing
link |
that there's a human being struggling to,
link |
like observing the suffering
link |
and having to bear the burden
link |
that this kind of suffering exists in the world
link |
and you're behind that camera living that struggle.
link |
And there's small ways to show yourself in that way.
link |
As you know, I don't do that in a big way.
link |
But I actually, there are subtle moments
link |
where I allow that presence to live just for a second.
link |
Like, I hate belly button docs.
link |
That's what I call them.
link |
I don't know what it is.
link |
What's a belly button?
link |
A belly button doc is naval gazing, right?
link |
Where it's sort of a narcissistic filmmaking
link |
where someone just studies their own place in the world, right?
link |
I think my, I'm more concerned with how I can intervene, right?
link |
Well, you're trying to really deeply empathize.
link |
So like, if you empathize, who am I?
link |
I don't want to center myself in these stories.
link |
It's not about me, right?
link |
I am so unimportant.
link |
What is important is what's happening.
link |
What's unfolding in the world that we need to act upon.
link |
And I think it's selfish and narcissistic
link |
to push myself into these stories unnecessarily.
link |
Now that said, I think there is some small value
link |
in what you're saying, just to remind viewers
link |
that there's obviously a filmmaker at play.
link |
So sometimes the way that I do that
link |
is just like through a question on camera.
link |
I'd all allow the audio to live of a question
link |
or during a conversation I'm having with someone
link |
so they can just hear how it's posed, for example, right?
link |
And to me, that's enough.
link |
I do like moments when people recognize that you exist.
link |
They look at the filmmaker past the camera.
link |
And yeah, so you ask the question in the interview
link |
or something like that, and they respond to that.
link |
Like they respond to this like new perturbation
link |
into their reality that was created by this other human.
link |
And I especially like when those questions
link |
or those perturbations are like a little bit absurd
link |
and like add something very novel to their situation
link |
and that novelties reveal something about them.
link |
So as opposed to capturing the day to day reality
link |
of their life, you do that plus the perturbations
link |
of like something novel.
link |
But of course, there's all kinds of ways to do this.
link |
Let me, what was number five, by the way?
link |
Only I only gave you four.
link |
There's a short doc I like, I mentioned,
link |
they're called the toxic pigs of Fukushima.
link |
It's a great title though, right?
link |
It's a great title.
link |
It's no one's seen it, but it's great.
link |
It says what it sounds like.
link |
Yeah, yeah, it's exactly what it sounds like,
link |
but really brilliantly executed.
link |
Well, let me ask you about Lifebook
link |
because it's extremely, I don't,
link |
it's a really moving idea, just the fact that this exists
link |
in the world, that there's, as a metaphor, as a reality,
link |
that there is a set of people trying to flee desperately.
link |
It's the desperation of it.
link |
And now there's refugees, the desperation of that,
link |
of trying to escape towards a world
link |
that's full of mystery, uncertainty,
link |
doubt, could be hopeless at times.
link |
And you're willing to do a lot
link |
to free your own survival and the survival of your family
link |
and all those kinds of things.
link |
That's kind of the human spirit.
link |
And you just capture it in Lifebook.
link |
Can you tell me the story behind this film
link |
as you started to already tell?
link |
Can you tell me what is it about?
link |
So Lifebook really seeks to sort of lift up
link |
and showcase the asylum seeker crisis in the Mediterranean
link |
when it was at its height in 2016.
link |
And it came to be for many reasons,
link |
but one of those reasons is colleagues
link |
in the NGO community really shared with me
link |
that when the borders between Greece and Turkey
link |
were shut down, that the flow of Syrian asylum seekers
link |
that was initially going across from Turkey to Greece
link |
was going to shift westward across the Mediterranean.
link |
So I started to research that
link |
and discovered that was exactly the case.
link |
And then further stumbled upon the fact
link |
that nation states hadn't really stepped up to address it
link |
and that there were hundreds of asylum seekers
link |
often drowning in these flimsy crafts
link |
that were pushed off from the shores of Libya
link |
because the EU wasn't doing its duty
link |
to patrol those waters from a humanitarian standpoint.
link |
And so the net result of that was that this whole
link |
sort of like humanitarian community sprung up.
link |
And it was civil society based
link |
that tried to meet the needs of those asylum seekers
link |
to just ensure that fellow human beings
link |
weren't drowning, simply put.
link |
And one of those was this small little NGO called SeaWatch
link |
which when they discovered what was happening
link |
just cobbled together a coalition of volunteers,
link |
bought a research vessel, retrofitted it
link |
and motored down off the coast of Libya
link |
to start pulling people out of the water.
link |
And again, I found that inspiring, right?
link |
I found that inspiring that this group of volunteers
link |
was doing something that our leaders wouldn't, right?
link |
And it was something as basic and simple
link |
as saving human beings.
link |
And I thought there was an inspiring story there.
link |
And as it turned out, there was.
link |
Have you ever saved someone's life?
link |
As part of making these documentaries directly?
link |
And directly, I think you probably have countless lives
link |
but directly, were you put in that position?
link |
I don't wanna, I mean, I certainly poured people
link |
out of the water who couldn't swim, I did that.
link |
And that's again, speaking to the basic humanity.
link |
Put down the camera and help.
link |
So this is people coming from Libya,
link |
trying to make it across the Mediterranean Sea
link |
on a crappy, tiny boat.
link |
From a filmmaker perspective, how do you film that?
link |
Was there decisions to capture the desperation?
link |
Well, we were going back to this idea of access
link |
and how that's so fundamental to my approach.
link |
You know, we were bound by the strictures
link |
of the rescue operation on this sea watch vessel,
link |
which was 30 meters long.
link |
And we were two of a crew of 15, right?
link |
So we had to multitask all the time
link |
because the only reason we were on that boat
link |
was by agreeing that if needed,
link |
we would do whatever necessary, right?
link |
And so it was very active on multiple levels
link |
and we were making decisions each and every day
link |
that were not only filmmaking and creative decisions,
link |
but also decisions about how to live that duality, right?
link |
Of being a humanitarian and a filmmaker simultaneously.
link |
And the greatest example I can share of that was,
link |
well, with my director of photography
link |
on that project, Kenny Allen,
link |
Kenny's a big guy.
link |
It's like, he's got like arms, like tree trunks and,
link |
and he, because he was so physically able and strong,
link |
the head of mission really tasked him to be on the Zodiacs
link |
to pull people out of the water.
link |
Cause he could literally with one arm reach down
link |
and just oftentimes pull someone out, right?
link |
Whereas usually it would take two or three people, right?
link |
And so when we were at the height of triage
link |
and there were people in the water all over
link |
and rafts were sinking,
link |
Kenny was out pulling people out of the water
link |
and this went on for like 24 hours, right?
link |
And at the end of that first day,
link |
I remember like looking over on the deck
link |
and seeing Kenny like help people up from the ladders
link |
to walk them back, right?
link |
And his camera was nowhere to be seen.
link |
And so I walked over to him
link |
and I just grabbed him by the shoulders and said,
link |
Kenny, where's your camera?
link |
And he didn't know.
link |
He had no idea where his camera was, right?
link |
And so I just said, Kenny,
link |
we're here to do what you're doing,
link |
but we're also here to film it, right?
link |
To make sure that we document
link |
what is unfolding in front of us
link |
so that we have a record of it, right?
link |
So we can bring it to a larger audience.
link |
So you need to go find your camera
link |
so we can also document it.
link |
And that kind of pulled him out
link |
and he went and got his camera and started filming again,
link |
but that gives you a sense of sort of this world
link |
that we had to live in in order to get the story done.
link |
But I think to be a great director of photography,
link |
to be a great director,
link |
you have to lose yourself like that in the story too.
link |
But usually with a camera in your hand, right?
link |
But sometimes you forget the camera.
link |
I mean, there's, I feel like
link |
if you're obsessed with the camera too much,
link |
you can lose the humanity of it.
link |
You get obsessed with the film and the story.
link |
It can become clinical.
link |
Yes, it can become clinical.
link |
Yeah, absolutely, and it's, you know, yeah, absolutely.
link |
And we don't want to become,
link |
I don't want to become clinical in my film, certainly.
link |
Let me ask you a strange and perhaps edgy question.
link |
So some filmmakers believe it's justified
link |
to break the rules in order to tell a powerful story.
link |
Warner Herzog, I read this somewhere,
link |
teaches young filmmakers to pick locks
link |
and forge documents and so on.
link |
Oh, I didn't know that, interesting.
link |
What do you think about that?
link |
Bending the rules in service of telling a story.
link |
You would of course never break the law,
link |
but is there, does that just generally speaking
link |
be speaking, bending the rules and so on?
link |
You know, just to elaborate on this question,
link |
perhaps I'm distinctly aware
link |
that there's parts in the world where the rule of law
link |
is not enforced as cleanly as it is in the United States,
link |
as fairly as it is in the United States,
link |
that there's a kind of, there's a lot of bribery,
link |
there's a lot of, like you don't really know to trust,
link |
you don't know if you can trust the cops
link |
or basically anybody.
link |
So like the rules are very hazy kind of concept.
link |
And a lot of them, especially like it's funny,
link |
but authoritarian regimes often have
link |
a giant bureaucracy buildup that's full of rules.
link |
There's more rules than you know what to deal with.
link |
And you can't actually live life unless you break the rules.
link |
Anyway, laying that all out on the table,
link |
do you ever contend with that
link |
on what are the rules I can break or should break
link |
to keep to the spirit of the story?
link |
I think you have to ask yourself,
link |
are the rules just and why are they're in place, right?
link |
So for example, coming into the airport
link |
in Southern Yemen, right?
link |
If I just tried to walk through the airport
link |
with all my equipment,
link |
even with all the permissions beforehand, like we had,
link |
without having a fixer at the airport beforehand
link |
to make sure we didn't go through the standard line, right?
link |
We would have been caught up for three hours at least
link |
negotiating over our equipment
link |
and eventually paying a bribe to get it through, right?
link |
That's just reality in a place like Yemen.
link |
And so of course, knowing that, right?
link |
Having talked to colleagues
link |
who had taken that path previously,
link |
I took a different path, right?
link |
Well, we hire a fixer beforehand
link |
to sort it out beforehand, right?
link |
Rather than spending three hours of our time
link |
and paying a series of bribes.
link |
Instead, we're going to get it fixed beforehand
link |
so that we can walk through a different line
link |
and have no one look at any of our equipment.
link |
That's a pretty good trade off in my mind.
link |
What about security when you're traveling in these places?
link |
Do you ever have bodyguards?
link |
Well, several questions around that.
link |
Are you ever afraid for your life?
link |
When you're filming in a war zone,
link |
is there any way to lessen the probability of death?
link |
I don't have a death wish.
link |
I try to mitigate risk however I can, however I can.
link |
But one of the ways I can't do it in a conflict zone
link |
is by having armed security with me.
link |
And the reason for that is because,
link |
especially in a place like Yemen, right?
link |
If you have armed security, you become a target
link |
in a way that if you're operating under sort of
link |
the auspices of international humanitarian law,
link |
I actually have more protection.
link |
So I don't bring security.
link |
If you're working in Northern Yemen, for example,
link |
you're gonna have someone from the de facto authorities
link |
with you anyway the entire time you're there.
link |
So the authorities are with you in form anyway.
link |
Regarding fear, yeah, of course.
link |
I mean, fear is a natural human emotion, right?
link |
And I think we have a weird mindset,
link |
this sort of heroic mindset surrounding fear in the US
link |
which I don't pay tribute to.
link |
I believe as a natural human emotion,
link |
it's an alarm bell that I need to pay attention to.
link |
And I think rather than pretending to be brave,
link |
I think you have to just acknowledge
link |
that fear has a place to keep you alive.
link |
And I think it's a matter of not letting the fear arrest you
link |
and allowing the fear to live and then acting anyway.
link |
So what you think as a documentary filmmaker, the fear
link |
is a really good signal for potentially a good thing to do
link |
because there's a story there.
link |
So is fear as an indicator that you shouldn't do it
link |
or is it an indicator that you should do it?
link |
It's probably an indication you should do it, right?
link |
And strangely that I think that's why I think that's,
link |
if there's something unusual about the work I do
link |
in some part, it's because of these types of stories, right?
link |
They're hard to access,
link |
but you also have to have a threshold of willingness
link |
to do them when you can't,
link |
there is no guarantee of physical safety, right?
link |
And maybe that's why you should do them.
link |
I'm very much motivated by the things that scare me.
link |
They seem to direct the things that are worth doing
link |
in this all too short life.
link |
How often do you interact with our friendly friends
link |
at the police departments of various locations?
link |
Like, because of the humanitarian nature of your work,
link |
are you able to avoid all such friendly conversations
link |
or are you often in making friends with our?
link |
I try to avoid the friendly police people
link |
all over the world as much as possible,
link |
but in some instances it's important to be proactive, right?
link |
And make sure that they know what you're doing
link |
So it's all about the context and the situation.
link |
For example, working in Northern Yemen,
link |
you couldn't film for five minutes if you didn't have
link |
paperwork, because you'd be taken away.
link |
So you have to make sure you have all those permissions
link |
50 feet from Syria, I would love to talk
link |
at least a little bit about this film.
link |
First, can you, high level,
link |
can you tell what this documentary is about?
link |
Yeah, it was early in the Syrian uprising,
link |
and we returned to the Syrian Turkish border
link |
with a Syrian American orthopedic surgeon
link |
who was volunteering, operating on refugees
link |
as they flowed across the border from Syrian to Turkey.
link |
And it was an attempt at the time
link |
before a lot of films had come out about the conflict
link |
to really show again the effects of the war on civilians.
link |
You've heard me echo that sentiment multiple times now,
link |
but people knew there was a major conflict in Syria,
link |
but didn't really understand the form that that was taking
link |
and the impact it was having.
link |
And so we embedded into the,
link |
at the time it was the only clinic in Turkey
link |
that was sanctioned by the Turkish government
link |
to treat Syrian refugees.
link |
And so we filmed there with surgeons
link |
as they operated on more victims.
link |
And we also went into Syria into some of the camps as well.
link |
So in this film, there's a man who crosses the border
link |
every day to retrieve the wounded
link |
and fare them safety and care.
link |
And you also mentioned about heroism in the United States.
link |
Can you tell me about this man and just people like him?
link |
Like, what's the heroic action
link |
in some of these places that you've visited?
link |
So in that instance, you know,
link |
I thought of him as the Turkish Schindler, right?
link |
Because he was human being who, of his own volition,
link |
volition, no one was paying him to do this,
link |
but he was spending much of his time.
link |
He was just a local businessman
link |
who really saw the need in the camps
link |
right across the border, 10K away.
link |
And he saw the medical need in particular
link |
and how hard it was to get people
link |
in desperate medical conditions across the border
link |
where there was a clinic just right across the border.
link |
But because of the security and the layers of security,
link |
they couldn't get out by themselves.
link |
So he took it upon himself as a Turkish person
link |
to build relationships with the Turkish guards,
link |
which was relatively easy.
link |
And then he built relationships
link |
with sort of the guards in the no man's land
link |
between the Syrian guards
link |
and sort of those who lived in the middle area.
link |
And then also with the Syrian guards at the camp.
link |
And he would drive out there daily and bring them food, right?
link |
Talk them up and build relationships.
link |
And every day he would bring these guards food
link |
and build relationships with them.
link |
And what that meant was eventually, right,
link |
he had this avenue of access to and from the camps.
link |
And so he started using it.
link |
And he would drive this avenue of access
link |
through the three layers of guards each day.
link |
And then they would open the gates for him
link |
because he had made himself trustworthy in their eyes.
link |
And he would receive the most desperate medical cases
link |
that were coming from all over northern Syria, right?
link |
To receive medical treatment.
link |
And he would, as you see in the film,
link |
he would ferry them into the back of his car, right?
link |
And then drive them to the hospital
link |
where they would receive operations.
link |
And then he would bring them back if they wanted
link |
after they'd healed and recovered back to Syria
link |
if they wanted to return out post recovery.
link |
And he didn't get paid for that.
link |
He was spending his own money to do it
link |
because he saw other human beings in need.
link |
And it's like we were talking about earlier.
link |
That's heroic, right?
link |
That's aspirational for me, right?
link |
Here's someone who is spending their time on the planet
link |
doing something of value and good to other human beings.
link |
I mean, if you draw a parallel to Schindler,
link |
I feel like the fascinating thing about Schindler
link |
is that he's kind of a flawed human
link |
and he's not the kind of human
link |
that does these things usually,
link |
but he just can't help it.
link |
And that's like the basic humanity,
link |
despite who you are,
link |
the basic humanity shines through.
link |
I think the whims of war test people in those ways, right?
link |
things that you may not even know
link |
were going to be asked of you.
link |
And then it speaks to who you are
link |
fundamentally as a human being.
link |
They reveal who you are as a human being,
link |
Let me ask a kind of stupid technical question
link |
about publications and movies and so on.
link |
I've been recently becoming good friends with Thomas Tull,
link |
who was the producer.
link |
His company Legendary funded some of the big
link |
sort of blockbuster films and so on.
link |
And so obviously money is part of filmmaking.
link |
It's interesting, but also the release of movies.
link |
And me as a consumer, with Netflix, with YouTube,
link |
that's one of the reasons I'm a huge fan of YouTube
link |
is it's like out in the open.
link |
Access, especially historical access.
link |
Like over time, you can look back years later.
link |
If you pay some money,
link |
you can watch some of the great films ever made.
link |
YouTube, Hulu, Netflix,
link |
I don't know what other services there are.
link |
Paramount Plus. Paramount Plus.
link |
Anyway, there's all these platforms.
link |
It's, I understand they want to create paywalls and so on.
link |
It makes sense, but I'm a huge fan of openness
link |
and I'm really kind of torn by this whole thing.
link |
Anyway, that's a discussion for perhaps another time.
link |
But the short question is,
link |
why is it so hard to watch your documentaries
link |
and other films, other incredible films on the internet?
link |
If I want to pay unlimited amount of money,
link |
I want to pay a lot of money to watch it.
link |
Why is it so hard?
link |
Well, Lifeboat is streaming free on the New Yorker.
link |
Yes, I saw that, but it's still, which is interesting.
link |
That doesn't make any sense.
link |
And then also, Hunger Ward is on Paramount Plus,
link |
but also, Pluto TV.
link |
It's also streaming free.
link |
So you can either go through a paywall
link |
or you can watch it with ads,
link |
with Big Macs interspersed.
link |
Big Macs. Sometimes.
link |
Yeah, the contrast is tough.
link |
Well, it really reveals the power of the documentary.
link |
No, but like, it's still not, even those platforms are,
link |
I mean, they're not as easily accessible.
link |
Because you have to like, you have to use,
link |
you have to think and you have to chase a particular movie.
link |
You have to chase it, yeah, yeah.
link |
I guess from an economics standpoint,
link |
the answer to that is pretty clear, right?
link |
It may not be what people want to watch.
link |
Maybe people want to watch reality.
link |
Maybe people want to watch animal rescue shows,
link |
right, here in the US.
link |
Which is exactly why in part,
link |
I think it's so vital that we continue to do stories
link |
on things that aren't about flowers and puppy dogs, right?
link |
I would push back on that.
link |
So, there's TikTok.
link |
And you could say, well, look,
link |
humans just want to watch really short content
link |
because they seem to be addicted to that kind of thing.
link |
That's partially true.
link |
But they also watch two, three, four, five hour podcasts.
link |
No, there's different platforms for that.
link |
This is a place called YouTube.
link |
I'll teach you about it some day.
link |
Okay, yeah, I've never heard of it.
link |
It's a good place to publish documentaries, I think.
link |
Humans are interested in a lot of things.
link |
And I've seen many times,
link |
a thing that you think is a niche thing
link |
become a very big thing.
link |
But for them to become mainstream,
link |
they have to have a platform
link |
that allows for the mainstream to happen.
link |
The access, the dumb, simple, frictionless access.
link |
The frictionless access is a really important thing.
link |
Paywalls create friction.
link |
And not just because of the money, it can be free.
link |
But if you have to click on a thing,
link |
or maybe sign up, or put your email,
link |
It prevents you to enjoy the thing you would really enjoy
link |
and you know you would enjoy.
link |
But your baser human nature prevents you from enjoying
link |
because you can just open up TikTok and keep scrolling.
link |
So that's just something to say about platforms
link |
because I think the things that need platforms
link |
the most are things like your films.
link |
The things that I think a lot of people would love watching.
link |
They're very important and they can have viral impact
link |
on the world that is fundamentally positive.
link |
You know, it's just, it makes me sad
link |
that there's not a machine for celebrating those films.
link |
There are lots of machines to celebrate them,
link |
but they're just not as always accessible as YouTube, right?
link |
I mean, as soon as you write me that check
link |
for a trillion dollars when I walk out of here,
link |
then I'm gonna put all my films on YouTube
link |
because then I won't have to worry about selling them
link |
in order so I can make the next film
link |
because film is not just an art.
link |
It's also an industry, right?
link |
And that tension between the two is a constant interplay
link |
that is a reality for me.
link |
So I always have to think about
link |
how can I access the largest audience,
link |
but also, right, go out and shoot the next film, right?
link |
So that longevity question is also an issue
link |
and the finances are part of that sort of equation
link |
that I constantly have to rewrite over and over again.
link |
How often, as a creative mind,
link |
do you feel the constraints, the financial constraints?
link |
I wish I could do a lot more films
link |
that I can't always because of financial constraints.
link |
So it's the number of films.
link |
And is a film that you do currently,
link |
is a film that you do at any one time
link |
as you're filming it already funded
link |
or is it the funding from previous stuff
link |
that you're trying to use?
link |
Before Hunger Ward,
link |
I would just take a flyer on my films, right?
link |
Where I would just say, this meets the so what threshold.
link |
This is a story that has to be told
link |
and I want to tell it.
link |
And then I could just go shoot it.
link |
And usually on credit, usually on a credit card, right?
link |
So based on a belief that lifeboat was done that way.
link |
50 feet from Syria was done that way.
link |
So you're on a boat, broke.
link |
Yeah, yeah, but it's free food, right?
link |
And free lodging because there's a bunk on the boat.
link |
But I do that, not intending to stay broke, right?
link |
But based on a foundational belief
link |
that if I bring to bear all of my sort of quiver
link |
of creative arrows to it, right?
link |
That I can create something of value, right?
link |
In the world, but hopefully also financially
link |
that then I can sell to someone.
link |
And you know, every time I've done that, Lex,
link |
I've gotten into the black.
link |
And I have to have a certain risk threshold
link |
financially to do that.
link |
But I believe so deeply in these stories
link |
that I'm willing to do that.
link |
I didn't have to do that with Hungarward.
link |
Luckily I had funders for that film.
link |
Yeah, take risks in this life.
link |
It's gonna pay off.
link |
Which reminds me of, let me ask you,
link |
I already asked you for advice about,
link |
for a filmmaker, how to win an Oscar.
link |
Well, I haven't won an Oscar.
link |
How to get nominated for an Oscar.
link |
Or just how to make great documentaries,
link |
how to make great film.
link |
But let me ask, even zoom out bigger.
link |
You mentioned some of these things,
link |
doing the things that you think matters.
link |
What advice would you give to young people,
link |
high school, college, dreaming of living a life worth living?
link |
What advice would you give them about career
link |
or maybe just life in general?
link |
How do I have a life they can be proud of?
link |
Yeah, I don't know how you're gonna react to this,
link |
given sort of your expertise.
link |
But I would say, put down the smartphone.
link |
Step away from the monitor, right?
link |
Because real life is not a screen, right?
link |
I believe that sort of the foundational skills
link |
which are conducive and important to success
link |
aren't necessarily those technical skills
link |
which we're going to learn in trade schools or university.
link |
I think they're more foundational than that.
link |
They're learning how to interact and listen.
link |
With humans, yeah, to really see and listen, right?
link |
And observe, right? And how to step out of your door
link |
and if the electricity goes out, right?
link |
And you're five miles away from your house,
link |
you don't need a smartphone to get home
link |
because you've set visual markers for yourself
link |
on how to get back to where you live, right?
link |
I think we're in danger right now
link |
of living in a world where if the satellites
link |
stop functioning, right?
link |
Then a whole lot of people have become completely dysfunctional,
link |
Because we're so reliant upon the screens in our lives.
link |
So I think there's a lot of foundational skills
link |
that have nothing to do with technology
link |
that we need to learn and everything rests upon those.
link |
So I would say learn those foundations,
link |
learn how to write well, read a lot, right?
link |
There's a different kind of knowledge and wisdom
link |
that comes out of that.
link |
So reading is kind of the equivalent of listening,
link |
observing and writing is kind of integration
link |
of all of that that you've observed and listened to
link |
and tried to express something with that.
link |
So I think my training in the theater
link |
has served me so well in the documentary world, right?
link |
Because it's all about interaction
link |
and listening and talking and dialogue, right?
link |
And that's what I do in documentaries, right?
link |
Yeah, we mentioned fear, being an introvert,
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I'm very afraid of people, but I'm drawn to them.
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I've been fascinated by them because of that.
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Enjoy listening to them.
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And observing them, and you mentioned reading,
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you mentioned books as a catalyst,
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as a stimulator of your imagination.
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Is there books in your life, a couple, one, two, three,
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that kind of left an impact
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or a little bit of a spark of inspiration early on in life
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that stand out from your memory?
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I was given The Prophet by Khalil Debron
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when I, as a graduation president
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from my eight, from my high school English teacher.
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And I still have that book in a special place
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on my bookshelf, because I think it speaks
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to the nature of human experience, right?
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And I return to it all the time,
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because there's wisdom there, you know?
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But there's many, many books.
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Fiction and nonfiction, what connects with you usually?
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In the past, when the, for the past?
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No, I read mostly nonfiction, most of the time.
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Ten Points is a book I love a lot.
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What is it, what is Ten Points?
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Ten Points is, I think his name is Bill Strickland.
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He was the editor of I think Bicycle Magazine.
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And it's sort of his personal memoir of his experience
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growing up with a lot of abuse
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and how that transformed him as a human being.
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You know, one instrumental book for me
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that I bumped into in my early 20s.
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Boy, these are all nonfiction.
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Except for The Princess Bride.
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I have to mention, it's an outlier.
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No, no, the seven habits of highly effective people.
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I read that in my early 20s.
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And I found so many of the principles in that book.
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What are the habits from that one?
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Seek first to understand and to be understood
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is one of them, you know.
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The notion of proactivity is one of them.
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It's really, and so I've held onto some of those principles
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through my life as well, for sure.
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What have been, you've observed suffering, darker aspects
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of human nature in your own personal life.
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What has been some of the darkest moments in your life,
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darkest times in your life?
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Is there something that you went through
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and then perhaps you carry it through your work?
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Probably one of the darkest moments
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was an experience that I had again in my early 20s.
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And I was living in Southern California.
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And I, you know, the Pacific Coast Highway
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that goes north and south along the beach.
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And there's that little concrete path
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that people jog and ride their bikes.
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And I was riding my bike on the PCH.
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And I was coming up to a corner on it
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and I heard this tremendous crash and it was really loud.
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And I came across the, around the corner
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and it was a car accident, a car crash.
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It was a multiple, multiple vehicle crash.
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And what had happened is that a Volvo had hit another car
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and then when it hit it, it went over the top of the car
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and hit a Volkswagen van and it peeled away
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the top of the Volkswagen van when it hit it
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So three vehicles and it just happened.
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And lying in the middle of the road
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was a body decapitated.
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And there was another person from one of the cars
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lying in the middle of the road, still alive.
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And then on the hood of the Volvo
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was this woman who had come through the windshield,
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just a mess, blood everywhere, moaning back and forth.
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And a bystander ran into the middle of the road
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and started administering first aid
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to the person lying in the road.
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And I stood there watching the scene
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and every fiber of my being wanted to run to the woman
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on the hood of the Volvo and do something, anything, right?
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And it was obvious to me that she was gonna die.
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But I felt like at least if I ran there,
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I could offer some comfort for her last moment.
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And right then, the siren started to blare
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and I knew that there'd be paramedics there
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within minutes that people would come to help.
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And I froze and I was scared and I didn't do anything.
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And I watched while this woman died on the hood of the Volvo.
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And that experience is sort of seared into my consciousness.
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The fact that I watched and didn't act,
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I feel as one of the great failures of my life
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that I wasn't able to act in a moment of need,
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no matter how small.
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And from that, I made a decision out of that experience
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that if I ever found myself in a situation where I had the ability
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to act and I could act to help another human being
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in such need that I would act,
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that I wouldn't let fear freeze me.
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Instead, I would allow that fear to catalyze me
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into action and do something and intervene
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in whatever way I could,
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even if I didn't have the skillset.
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And in some ways, all of that echoes in your documentaries.
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You're not gonna let fear stop you from trying to help.
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I think that experience, that experience of failure,
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what I framed as just human failure on my part
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is foundational, probably, to my work.
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Like, I don't want that to happen again, legs.
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Like, I don't want to be that person
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who watches, I want to do what I can when I can.
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you were just one human that witnessed that, that trauma.
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You, one human that witnessed so much suffering
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in different parts of the world.
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And as we zoom out across space and time and look at Earth,
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why do you think we're here?
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Why do you think we're here on this Earth?
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What's the meaning of human civilization?
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What's the meaning of your life, of individual human life?
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And broadly speaking, what is the meaning of life?
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This guy, this child.
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For me, I can speak personally on that only.
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And that's that I believe that the meaning of my life
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is to try to make the world a little bit better before I go.
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When I was in theater in grad school,
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I directed a play called Shadowlands by C.S. Lewis.
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And there's a quote from that.
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It goes like this.
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We are like blocks of stone out of which the sculptor
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carves the forms of men.
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The blows of his chisel, which hurt us so much,
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are what make us perfect.
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Now, I would take away the perfect part, right?
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But I think I've remembered that quote for so many years
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because I believe in the underlying notion
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that the blows of the chisel,
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which are the experiences that we go through,
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And hopefully shape us into a better human being.
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And in my case, a human being that I hope
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can make the world a little better, you know,
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through those blows.
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Yeah, before it's over.
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Before you go, as you said, do you think about that?
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You think about the going part?
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You ever think about that?
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You said you don't have a death wish.
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You tried to minimize risk.
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But eventually it's going to be over.
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Yeah, for all of us.
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Well, speak for yourself.
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Well, you've got other plans or something.
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I'm going to merge with robots.
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Yes, for all of us.
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Unfortunately, you're fortunately or who the heck knows.
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But do you ponder your mortality?
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Are you afraid of it?
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I live with my mortality knowing that it's fleeting,
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that my life is fleeting and that I'm going to go into the ground
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just like everyone else or maybe as ashes, you know.
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So I live with that knowledge every day,
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but I don't allow it to stop me or hold me up
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rather I really, it drives me.
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It drives me to try to get as much done as I can before I go.
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Yeah, so the knowledge of your death is a kind of dance partner.
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And you try to dance beautifully.
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Scott, you're an incredible human.
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Incredible artist and filmmaker.
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And it's a huge honor that you would sit
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and spend your really valuable time with me today.
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I really, really enjoy this conversation.
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Thanks for having me, Lex.
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And thanks for doing what you do.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation with Skye Fitzgerald.
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To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now, let me leave you with some words from Elie Wiesel.
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The opposite of love is not hate.
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It's indifference.
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The opposite of art is not ugliness.
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It's indifference.
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The opposite of faith is not heresy.
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It's indifference.
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And the opposite of life is not death.
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It's indifference.
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Thank you for listening.
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I hope to see you next time.