Edited by Sydney Lewis

• Download this document in PDF 
• About Errol Morris
• Errol Morris in Talk

  A Conversation w/ Errol Morris

  A Larger Story
  Barrett Golding – October 30, 2002 – #21
  i’ve wondered since seeing (several times) the amazing Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, at what point in filmmaking did you realize the stories of a lion tamer, mole-rat expert, topiary gardener and robot designer could become, in a sense, different versions of the same story? …it was a haunting moment of revelation when i began to understand you were not only painting a fascinating portrait of four individuals but also telling a single larger story about pursuit, passion, eccentricity and expertise.

  Vulnerable Absurdity
  Lisa Peakes – October 30, 2002 – #22
  I was struck by the vulnerability of your subjects in “Vernon, Fla.” and “Mr. Death” and by their seemingly absolute belief in the immutability of their worlds…I also have the feeling that many audience members who see your films are laughing at the absurdity of the subjects’ beliefs.
  You mentioned that people reveal themselves out of an innate need to “babble” – but I wonder whether these people know they will be fodder for laughter. It seems that, in order to retain the “purity” of their story, they MUST NOT know. How do you: approach them about being filmed, prevent them from censoring themselves, and protect them from hurt feelings? Is protecting them from hurt feelings even something that comes up, and, if it is, is it something you feel obligated to do?

  Extension Errol
  Chris Lydon – October 31, 2002 – #23
  So much of what Errol says here casts him as a sort of extension of the meticulous and thoughtful Tony Schwartz, the famous sound maven and advertising man, except that Tony focused on the audio track and Errol seems to give the same care to both aural and visual effects and their combination.
  Tony did the best-known-TV-commercial-that-ran-only-once, the “Girl with a Daisy” spot for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, in which the image of a child and a flower morphed into a mushroom cloud, warning people not to vote for Barry Goldwater. But in fact Tony has an explicit theory of political and other advertising:…The idea was to neutralize the eye and fly the message in under the radar to the ear…
  Question: On the matter of Errol’s dark and plausible observation that language is fundamentally about lying… how in the world does a man with this consciousness, to wit: Errol, use it in the advertising biz. What’s the truth in or about advertising, Errol?

  Fetishizing
  Errol Morris – November 6, 2002 – #26
  Maybe it’s just my nasty contrarian streak… But I see little difference between advertising and anything else. It is an effort to “sell” someone on an idea… on a conception of reality… And the people who do well at it – could I be one of them…? – usually have to put themselves in the state of mind of true believers… Yes, the “new blue crystals” have made all the difference…
  But come to think of it – what higher-calling is there than fetishizing inanimate reality…? Anybody can make a person interesting, but what about adult diapers…?

  Girl With Daisy Joins Cast
  Errol Morris – November 16, 2002 – #38
  Many thanks for reminding me of the LBJ spot from the ’64 campaign. Yes, it’s really great, and it captures – more than anything else I have seen – the true “spirit” of the times.
  (I know it’s fashionable to talk about the use of sound and image in media, but what is so striking about this commercial is the baldness of its message: vote for me or die. That’s what candidates want to say, but the message is usually hidden under a hundred thousand layers of prevarication.)
  I have dutifully incorporated the spot into my McNamara movie…

  Seeing The Good Light
  Dave Isay – November 6, 2002 – #24
  Thin Blue Line is, in my book, far-and-away best documentary ever made. When I first saw it in ’88 … I understood for the first time what a documentary could be- how you could break rules, push to the limits and make something totally outrageous and artistic and wonderful from real life… And, on top of that, actually do GOOD… Still what I aspire to every time I go out to do a piece…

  Producing Uneasiness
  Errol Morris – November 6, 2002 – #28
  Yes, I got Randall Adams out of jail, etc. And, indeed, I am delighted to have actually changed something in the real world… But what is really, really nice to hear is that you liked the movie as a movie…
  There is a kind of irony for me here…
  I used to rail against what I called The-Mother-Theresa Principle. That any movie about Mother Theresa has to be a good movie (Christopher Hitchens notwithstanding) because Mother Theresa is such a good person… It’s the flip side of the same reasoning that tells us that Triumph of the Will is a bad movie because it was made in service of the Third Reich…
  Are documentaries to be evaluated on the basis of their social content…? Is there such a thing as a bad movie about a good person…? And are there good movies about bad people…? Do good things happen to bad movies…?
  Take movies that appear to be about good things but aren’t really… One of my favorite examples of this sort of thing is Scared Straight. It won an Academy Award for best documentary. It was about sending youthful offenders to a maximum security prison for a day… They spent a day with serial killers, pedophiles and God knows what else…
  And what happens…? They got “scared straight…”
  I despised this movie… OK. I more than despised it… I Ioathed it. Really, really loathed it. The movie claims to be presenting this social benefit. But it is deeply corrupt at its heart. It pontificates. We turned these youthful offenders into law abiding citizens… Look at us. We did good.
  It turns out that (a) the kids in the movie came from an upper middle class neighborhood where the recidivism rate was nil, so the argument in the film that they were turned away from crime was vacuous, if not specious… (b) the level of craft in the movie was beyond execrable… and (c) even if there had been a real social benefit – although there was none – is that the way we want to run our society, namely, by scaring people into submission…? Why not go and live in North Korea…?
  “Do-good-art” often gives me the willies.
  Another abomination is “Night and Fog,” but perhaps it’s best not to go on about it here…
  Yet, there is great art that tries to capture something real about the world, something that we might not be aware of, even something that we do not want to be aware of, something disturbing, alarming… Something that does not play into what we want to hear, but something that we might like to avoid hearing…
  Something that produces uneasiness.

  A Concentration of Surrealism
  Julia Barton – November 12, 2002 – #31
  Language = Lie (well, a lot of the time)
  That is the “truth” that I get from Errol Morris’s movies, though I didn’t realize it until he said so here.
  I’m working with radio journalists now in Vladivostok, in the Far East of Russia, and I know when I mention that insight to them tomorrow, they will laugh…I think about surrealism a lot in Russia, especially given recent awful events in Moscow. And I wonder, is there ever a point when a concentration of surrealism just turns into tragedy? Or is the surrealistic art a response to tragedy, a way to absorb it?
  I’m wondering if Errol Morris has ever hit that point in his investigative or film work when the weirdness became no longer fascinating, just awful. And then what do you do?

  Books Bad Copy
  Errol Morris – November 12, 2002 – #32
  Do things ever get too weird…? Well, yes.
  My glib answer has been: The only thing that makes the world tolerable is that it is unutterably insane…
  And to be sure, there is something immensely satisfying about finding out that things are just as bad – or even worse – than one might have thought and that people are not merely weird but they are maliciously insane.
  I asked Fred Leuchter – after I had more or less finished my movie with him – to watch it and tell me whether it had changed any of his views about the Holocaust… I also paid him the kindness of telling him in detail why I thought he was hopelessly wrong about everything. (I thought he should hear it from me before the movie came out.)
  You know, the whole deal. I told him: your tests have no scientific validity… There is compelling documentation in the Auschwitz archives… Etc., etc., etc.
  He responded to all this by reiterating his belief – no poison gas at Auschwitz – and by suggesting an alternative possibility – a thousand electric chairs under Berlin…
  So, let me give you a less glib answer…
  I think that most of literature is like bad ad copy for mankind. We have this sanitized picture of what we would like to be like… But the reality of who we are is Goddamn depressing…

  Cushioning
  Lisa Peakes – November 13, 2002 – #33
  …I’m gathering that you must feel some obligation to “soften the blow” for subjects. Perhaps, in addition to the preparatory kindness in your response to Fred, you also feel a need to change peoples’ views where the simple facts of the film fail to do that?

  Confessing
  Errol Morris – November 13, 2002 – #34
  You seem to imply that documentary filmmakers should be social workers… That I should be protecting my subjects from themselves, from me, from real or imagined audiences who might look at them critically at some unspecified time in the future.
  Well, I have a confession to make: I’m not a social worker nor do I ever want to become one.
  When I was speaking about “The Thin Blue Line,” shortly after its release, a Dallas journalist asked me if I had “Mirandized” my interview subjects. Yeah. I told them that they had a right to remain silent; they had a right to have an attorney present; and they should know that anything they said could and would be used against them in a court of law… Or public opinion…
  OK. No, I didn’t.
  However, I did point out to this journalist that I was a filmmaker and not a cop, not an agent of the State. And hence, was not required to issue Miranda warnings. When you talk to a journalist (or to another person for that matter) you are taking a risk.
  Perhaps before every conversation a warning should be issued. And I don’t mean just in journalism. I mean EVERY conversation.
  WARNING: I might think ill of you. You might reveal yourself to be a complete idiot. Be on your toes. That’s right. Watch out, buster.

  Respecting
  Anaheed Alani – November 18, 2002 – #47
  … isn’t there some notion of basic respect for people that we can agree is, like, “good”?…I mean giving people the simple dignity of being themselves. No matter how good or bad or stupid or silly or jerkoffy or wonderful they may be.
  … doesn’t it make stuff better and more interesting when people approach their subjects with some degree of respect? And: I know I’m naive, but leaving out all the highfalutin ideas about responsibility, etc., isn’t it just mean to sucker-punch someone just to make your film/piece/whatever better?

  Doubting
  Errol Morris – November 18, 2002 – #49
  You asked, “Isn’t there some notion of basic respect for people that we can agree is, like, “good”?
  It would be nice to think so, but I doubt it.
  I have a great deal of trouble interviewing anyone I don’t like. I won’t say I have to like them in order to interview them, but it certainly helps…
  And – something I get from my mother – I like to think I’m interested in people.
  You also wrote, “doesn’t it make stuff better and more interesting when people approach their subjects with some degree of respect?”
  I think it does, yes.
  For me, that means wanting to find out something about people. Wanting to learn about them. But in practice, who knows what really is going on…?

  Discreting
  Jay Allison – November 14, 2002 – #35

  We had a session at last week’s Third
  Coast Festival on “Trespassing” — documentarians as trespassers…
  At the end of the session Lawrence Weschler made the point that our responsibility is DISCRETION, the etymology of which he reduced to “knowing shit from food.” This implied that when we’re gathering interviews or images or sound that we’ll be scooping it all up, shit and food, and that our most potent opportunity for trespassing comes, of course, not when we’re on the scene, but later when we’re making choices, exercising discretion.
  Many of the people in your films are so consumed with their own worlds that I wonder if the trespass/discretion thing or the notion that they are “taking a risk” occurs to them. Do you think it does?

  …And Did You Know? Old Film Stock Makes Fabulous Room Dividers
  Errol Morris – November 16, 2002 – #39
  You wrote, “At the end of the session Lawrence Weschler made the point that our responsibility is DISCRETION…”
  What in God’s name was Ren (or you) talking about…?
  Don’t you know that Shakespeare has been misquoted…?
  The correct quotation is: Discretion is the better part of valor.
  And, while we’re at it, what’s so great about discretion? Jay’s comment – or whatever it is – seems to suggest that an interviewer is taken into a confidence by the interviewee, a confidence that he is duty bound to keep…?
  What…?
  Is this so-called discretion supposed to be synonymous with “good taste”? And what might that be…?
  In “The Journalist and the Murderer,” Janet Malcolm correctly pointed out that there is a power imbalance between a journalist and a subject. But she incorrectly seemed to imagine that that this was particularly true of journalists and their subjects.
  Well, I’ve got a secret. It’s true of all relationships.
  Sometimes a journalist is more powerful than the subject, sometimes vice versa. It’s the same in “real” life. Sometimes “A” is more powerful than “B,” and vice versa. Journalistic relationships exhibit certain familiar features – abusiveness, betrayal, smarminess, protectiveness, kindliness and so on…
  Is this so surprising…?
  But I have to vociferously object to the idea that there are limits to what you can show or express. Who decides…?
  Martha Stewart…?

  What Is Told
  Jay Allison – November 17, 2002 – #41
  I wasn’t talking about the “good taste” sort of discretion…
  sure, the journalist/subject relationship can have the attributes of any relationship, but ultimate power resides with the journalist. He takes home the tapes. He decides what is told, or not.
  In those choices there is responsibility, discretion…Maybe one qualifier here is the kind of work…the straight interview vs. the producer entering the daily lives of the subjects, permitted to trespass over time and in unpredictable ways.
  I’m trying to think of a documentary, of Errol’s or otherwise, where the interviewee held the power. He has the power — always counterable by the journalist — to lie, to charm, to be silent. What other power does he have? Certainly not the power of the last word.

  The Complexity of Discretion
  Errol Morris – November 17, 2002 – #42
  Sometimes it is may-the-best-man win.
  When Claude Lanzman was interviewing Nazis he surreptitiously recorded them, and then put the material in the film.
  Of course, this became controversial. Should he do such a thing…? Is such a thing ethical…?
  …After two years of investigating I finally put David Harris on film. (David Harris is the “kid” who I believed was the killer of Dallas Police Officer Robert Wood.)
  During the interview, he confessed to the murder. (By the way, parts of the confession did not have an audio counterpart. For example, I asked him the question, “Where you alone in the car when you were stopped by the Dallas police officer…? He smiled and nodded his head. )
  Should I use his confession…? Maybe I should be “protecting” him. Is that the nature of our relationship…? He incriminates himself, and I protect him, by keeping it to myself…?
  I mention all of this because – and I may be misinterpreting you here – it seems as though you have a guilty conscience about interviewing or reporting. And so, in order to go on with it all, you imagine the following, “Well, I’m a good guy… And I have standards… I know where to draw-the-line… Whatever that line might be… I’m a responsible journalist…”
  I also would respectfully submit the following view.
  THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A STRAIGHT INTERVIEW. (Although I would admit there are good and bad interviews.)
  Interviews are human relationships in a “laboratory” setting. They allow us to scrutinize the nature of how one person relates to another and vice versa… As such, all the things that are common features of the “ordinary” relationships appear in the interviews – deceit, coyness, misdirection, sincerity, honesty, dishonesty, confusion, etc.
  In some instances – I dare say – there is the powerful impulse to protect a subject from himself or to show him in the best possible light. I have a lot of these kinds of impulses. I actually like people to look good, and I attempt – even if I don’t succeed – to capture their complexity in the interview and in the film I eventually produce.
  But let me provide a couple of definitions of a good interview.
  A GOOD INTERVIEW CAPTURES THE COMPLEXITY OF THE SUBJECT.
  and
  A GOOD INTERVIEW CAPTURES THE COMPLEXITY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE INTERVIEWER AND THE SUBJECT.
  Sometimes it is a matter of “discretion,” sometimes it is “let the best man win…” But, it’s usually a lot more complex than that.

  Responsibility Gets Dizzy
  Errol Morris – November 17, 2002 – #44
  [Jay] wrote, “…sure, the journalist/subject relationship can have the attributes of any relationship, but ultimate power resides with the journalist. He takes home the tapes. He decides what is told, or not…”
  It has become fashionable since Janet Malcom wrote “The Journalist and the Murderer” to imagine that the ultimate power in “the journalist/subject relationship” resides with the journalist. But there are many counterexamples.
  One, for example — political reporting that depends on access. The reporter knows that he needs (for his employment, self-esteem, whatever) to have access to certain political figures. He needs to be coy. He needs to be careful. He needs to express the point of view of the people he is covering in ways that will not alienate or antagonize them…
  And then there are journalists who are knowingly told lies by their subjects — that’s right, they are manipulated by their subjects — and then uncritically report these lies as the truth…?
  You go on to write, “In those choices there is responsibility, discretion…” Responsibility to whom…? To the public…? To the subject…? To oneself…?
  Discretion…?
  I would suggest there is a responsibility to the truth…

  Perception, Detection, And A Whole Lot Of Eyes
  Jay Allison – November 18, 2002 – #45
  In a may-the-best-man-win dynamic, direct contact makes things clear. If punches are thrown, they’re out in the open. We see the contest.
  In your interviews and in your Interrotron work, sometimes your voice jumps out from behind the camera — calling a question, expressing surprise. In those moments we get a clear sense of the interview dynamic… as you said, “the complexity of the relationship.” The eye-to-eye contact does that too. And the hot seat is obviously hot. Rules of engagement are clear. The technique addresses these questions of discretion in an open, formal, visually arresting way.
  This is different from entering someone’s life, over time, tagging along invisibly with a microphone or camera. I think I’ve seen most of your work, and I can’t recall you using this approach…
  There may be times a sucker punch is necessary — when the stakes are high or when the power dynamic is way off: government corruption, hidden criminal behavior, flat out lying — but it’s tricky to control and can undermine the audience’s acceptance of the result. Our production tools and the right of final cut are incredibly powerful. If we’re any good we can manipulate perception without detection, and we can hide. If we sucker punch, the audience doesn’t get a sense of the dynamic in the way they do with the Interrotron, for instance, of who really is the “best man.” It’s like the part in the film Decasia where the boxer fights with the dissolving film emulsion. Who’s in that blur, what punches did he throw, did he fight fair?
  Fairness. To correct your impression, I never feel guilty about my own work as a journalist/producer/interviewer; on the contrary I’m proud and happy about it. I am always concerned, however, about being fair. Most of my work is not with the powerful, but with the relatively powerless. You’re right that trying to be a “good guy” can obscure goals, and truth. One measure of truth and responsibility and fairness is to imagine playing the finished piece looking into the eyes of the interviewees, but that’s not enough. You have to look the audience in the eyes too. If something is true, and it’s important, you tell it. That’s all.

  The Balancing Act
  Errol Morris – November 18, 2002 – #48
  You wrote… “I never feel guilty about my own work as a journalist/producer/ interviewer; on the contrary I’m proud and happy about it…”
  Oh, really.
  I have a slightly different belief.
  It is as follows:
  Anybody who says that they have never felt guilty about their own work is either…
  (a) incapable of guilt
  (b) self-deceived
  or
  (c) lying.
  You also wrote, “There may be times a sucker punch is necessary… but it’s tricky to control and can undermine the audience’s acceptance of the result.”
  You are correct in your assessment that often there is a balancing act.
  I often ask myself:
  Am I manipulating my subject…?
  Do I look like I’m manipulating my subject…?
  Will I get caught…?
  Have I overstated my case in such a way that I, myself, will end up looking bad…?
  In fact, this entire email may be an example of just that sort of thing.
  But isn’t your answer about manipulation. That is, how you can better manipulate your audience and get away with it…?

  Slipping Past
  bw – November 19, 2002 – #53
  …in the end…a good interview is one where you don’t get ‘caught’ and its one thing to slip something past the audience – but what about the subject?
  I am curious about what happens (and what you do) when a subject becomes aware that he or she is being manipulated or set up -

  Slipping Up
  Errol Morris – November 19, 2002 – #54
  What about slipping something past oneself…?
  Gitta Sereny wrote an entire book about trying to convince her subject — Albert Speer — that he knew about the Holocaust. By the end, she clearly believes that Speer has admitted (to her) that he knew about the Holocaust. But I don’t think Speer ever admits anything of the sort — to Sereny or anyone else, including himself… After all, Speer’s “defense” is to admit responsibility for things he claims to know nothing about. It’s an idea he developed at Nuremberg and never had occasion to modify.
  So, whose self-deception are we talking about here…? Sereny’s…? Speer’s…? Mine…?
  There is the wonderful assumption that we are in control of our relationships with other people – in interview situations or otherwise, that we know what we’re doing much of the time and have a clear idea of our motivations and purpose.
  It’s a wonderful assumption.
  It suffers, however, from one minor infirmity.
  It’s false.

  Part, Not Goal
  Errol Morris – November 19, 2002 – #55
  I am disturbed about being misrepresented and misquoted.
  A good interview is not about “not getting caught” or “slipping something by past the audience.” It is about trying to discover something about another person.
  As for manipulation. To say that “manipulation” is part of every relationship is not to say that “manipulation” is the goal of every relationship.

  Muscles, Dance Shoes, And The Flow Of Words
  Chris Lydon – November 21, 2002 – #58
  First…Most interviews are power struggles, and many are righteously stacked and blatantly unfair…
  Errol makes the key point that a great interview is not one in which the investigator ferrets out the truth. No, the great interview is a dance in which both partners lead and follow; both educate each other; both are revealed, both are changed…
  Second, I just rejoice in Errol’s saga of transcribing interviews–not looking for the bite, really, but listening for subtleties in vocal sound, puzzling about what’s really going on, tuning in on patterns and subtexts, noticing evasions and euphemisms, waiting for the defenses to go down, or for the skeleton to pop out of hiding…It becomes a treasure hunt, in which all the little evidences of accent and pitch and tempo and feeling tell you something! …
  Third…I want to hear more about Robert McNamara. But my question is not about why Errol is doing McNamara. My question is: what is McNamara doing with brother Morris…

  Endless Investigation Fascinates
  Errol Morris – November 24, 2002 – #63
  You wrote, “Errol makes the key point that a great interview is not one in which the investigator ferrets out the truth…”
  I’m not sure I said any of these things. But I do like the part about leading and following…
  I have to thank you again for your kindness to me on these pages. In particular, pointing out my obsession with spoken language. Listening, reading, transcribing an interview is properly considered, an investigation. And like most investigations doesn’t really have an end.
  There is something endlessly fascinating about how people use language… What it reveals… What it hides…
  There have been several questions about my McNamara movie. I’m sorry, but I would prefer to wait until the movie is finished to talk about it and/or McNamara.

  The Proper Relation of Poop
  Lawrence (Ren) Weschler – November 21, 2002 – #59
  … Donald Nicholl, a marvelous English historian…offered the following gloss, that the word “discretio” derives from the Latin, to wit, “dis-excretio,” which is to say, “to be able to discern the difference between food and shit,” to know, precisely, that shit is something you ought not eat–or serve–and yet to know as well that shit has its uses, worthy uses at that, as in manure, for example. It is all a question of proper relation.
  … These issues of course also came up on the occasion of the release of Janet Malcolm’s “The Journalist and the Murderer.” At the time, the Columbia Journalism Review convened a vast print-conclave on the scandal (see their issue of August 1989), and some of what I wrote then might also be pertinent to this discussion….

  Elaborate Theories Spellbind
  Lawrence (Ren) Weschler – November 21, 2002 – #60

  CJR Piece, Aug. 1989

  … the piece being called “The Journalist and the Murderer”? Well, I was
  telling someone you could have called the piece Les Jouissances MeurtrieresÑDeadly
  Pleasures or Murderous OrgasmsÑbecause the rhetorical tone of the piece is straight
  out of Les Liaisons Dangereuse …

  The marquise in Les Liaisons Dangereuses has all these elaborate theories
  about the complicated power relationships in love, and she looks down on the
  ordinary people who think of love as something really quite simple…

  The marquise’s analysis is spellbinding. But in Les Liaisons Dangereuses
  it falls apart the minute real love enters the scene. Janet’s thesis is spellbinding,
  too, and I want to emphasize that I think it’s a remarkable piece of writing
  but it falls apart in the same way. While the dynamic she describes is potential
  everywhere in journalism, it doesn’t inevitably have to materialize. There are
  journalistic equivalents of loveÑcompassion, engagement, conscience.
  …My ideal for a profile is that I want it to be as if you were meeting this person. The highest thing that I aspire to is fairness and transparency. Even when I do a profile of someone I am critical of I aspire to do it so fairly that he or she will say, “Yes, that’s me.”…
  Let’s say, for example, that I am describing someone who, as I get to know him, I realize is an alcoholic. I don’t think I need to say the guy is an alcoholic. I can portray him in bars, talking about being thirsty, or do other things that will provide a kind of feeling about that but not a label. Later on, if someone says, “God, you know, he’s an alcoholic. You didn’t say that.” I can say, “Well, go back and read the piece, it’s in there.”
  To label is in some cases to betray. Whereas if you show things I think you are being fair.

  Crude Device Deceives
  Errol Morris – November 24, 2002 – #64
  I don’t want to get into the business of attacking or defending Janet Malcolm. [Although I must confess I am an admirer. Even a fan. She is the only true Chekovian journalist.]
  But I do believe that she has been endlessly criticized because it is assumed she was talking about conscious mendacity, conscious journalistic ill-will.
  In such a view, the journalist imagines himself (or we imagine the journalist) to be in control of an interview and can manipulate it to his own advantage.
  The point I wish to make. Is that we often have the idea that we are in control of what we’re doing when we are not…
  Call it self-deception.
  Perhaps consciousness, itself, is nothing more than a crude device that allows us to deceive ourselves about our own motivations…
  Perhaps that’s the only purpose of consciousness.
  Ren (as usual) makes the unassailable point that the Marquise does not take love into account…
  I would recast this in a different form.
  The Marquise fails to realize that despite his own tortured, convoluted explanations Ð none of them may be correct.
  Ultimately, it may be that our conscious explanations do not take into account the hidden layers of motivation, intention and belief that determine what we do.
  We observe at best one percent of ourselves. Maybe zero percent.
  I have always wanted to recast the Cartesian cogito… How about, “I think therefore I think I am…”
  Allow me to fall back on one of my favorite quotations. It is from the last living member of Zoar, a failed utopian community in Ohio. In her nineties and on her death-bed, she said,
  “THINK OF IT… ALL THOSE RELIGIONS… THEY CAN’T ALL BE RIGHT…
  (This is where I imagine a death-rattle. She summons up all her strength for one last line…)
  …BUT THEY CAN ALL BE WRONG.”]
  Why do I like this quotation…? Because I believe that we should always entertain the possibility that everything we think is wrong.
  Yours analysis presumes that we are completely aware of what is going on… Conscious of what is going on. And can plan accordingly. And you believe that by faithfully recording the nature of the transaction that you avoid falling into a trap. But the best traps are those that we are not even aware of…

  Just A Jealous Guy
  Robert Krulwich – November 23, 2002 – #62
  Funny, when I watch an Errol Morris movie, I don’t brood about who’s manipulating whom or how’d Errol get the guy to say that, or is it true or what is truth or any of those things. I just sit there being jealous.
  I get this sense (I may be imagining this; I don’t know the man, just his work) that Morris loves, really loves, what he’s doing. Ferreting into people’s heads suits him. And when he gets deep, deep inside and his person begins to undress, I imagine Morris getting happier and happier unbuttoning each button, not just for the ‘kill’ as so many of these postings suggest, but for the chance to know more, to get, as the poet Paul Celan has written, “all the way to each other.”
  Is Errol a manipulator? Sure.
  But is there an excitement, a joy, an athlete’s pride being the fox chasing down the hare? There’s gotta be, and in Errol’s films, the joy trickles out…I can sense it. especially when the hare is a weird tangle of strangeness like Dr. Death or Robert McNamara. With hares like them, who wouldn’t want to be the fox?
  I would.
  I don’t have the moves, or the patience, or that odd-ball camera thingy that Errol has, but I can sit there and be jealous that he’s having such a good time.

  Question, Application, Answer
  william warner – November 25, 2002 – #65
  I was thinking about the Morris films I’ve seen, and I started to see them in a bit of a progression, kind of the way Chuck Close uses an image over and over as a way of developing an idea that has nothing to do with the image. Mr. Morris has a way of making a movie and especially a way of interviewing people, and applies it in a rather detached scientific way to different subjects. It’s as if Mr. Morris poses a question and applies his technique to produce an answer. “A story of small significance to most of its characters?” — Heaven’s Gate. “A story of great significance to it characters?” — Thin Blue Line. “A story of great significance?” — Mr. Death…

  The Consumer Looks Hunted…
  chelsea merz – December 2, 2002 – #72
  How does your perception of the viewer shift when you make films from when you make commercials? Or does it? Does the filmgoer differ from the potential consumer? And if so, how? And if not, why?

  A Crazy Kind Of Dialogue
  Errol Morris – December 4, 2002 – #75
  I like the question. And I’m not sure this is a simple answer… Although there might be.
  How about this…?
  Do I look at the viewers of my commercials in some different way than the viewers of my films…?
  I’m still thinking about it.
  But I don’t think I do. I think a viewer is a viewer is a viewer. I think the goal is to create something interesting in the time available — even if it’s only 30 seconds.
  I sometimes think of commercials as “American haiku”… Expressing ideas in a very short span of time.
  For example, I directed a series of commercials for United Airlines. This was shortly after 9.11… It seemed that task was not about advertising a product but expressing something real about that historical moment…
  I could argue that there is no clear line between advertising and anything else, but this is not the point I want to make here.
  Simply, I try to do good work. Interesting work. No matter whether it’s advertising or anything else. And part of that is not pandering to a client or an audience. But trying to create interesting things… No matter what.
  And, yes, I imagine that I am in a crazy kind of dialogue with my viewers.

  You Look At You Look…
  gasolina – December 5, 2002 – #77
  has the director in you ever interviewed the subject matter in you? in other words, have you ever turned the camera on yourself and done a personal exploration on some theme in your life for a documentary? even as an exercise? …

  Subjected
  Jay Allison – December 5, 2002 – #78
  Yes, I turn the mic around sometimes. Not too often, but enough to remind myself what it feels like to be out there. Of course, I’m only subjecting myself to my own authorship, which is quite different from being in someone else’s hands…
  For instance, last month I did a piece about my marital separation and new house and relationship to my kids (it’s the last piece in This American Life show, “Classifieds”). It’s personal, my kids’ voices are in it. Sure, I have control over what I included, so there’s some safety in that, but there is still risk. I tried to be “honest” in what I said, but obviously didn’t say everything…
  Much of my work demands that others reveal themselves, either to the tape recorders I loan them or when they let me into their lives. Then I put them on stage. Doing it to myself occasionally seems important, like a self-portrait–marking a given time, going on record. I even like doing it. And hate it. And fear it.

  Stripping An Oxymoron
  Errol Morris – December 6, 2002 – #82
  I have been interviewed for a number of programs… And, yes, I have tried several times to “interview” myself.
  For example, I tried to interview myself for “The Thin Blue Line”. I was having trouble editing the movie, and I thought if I introduce myself as one of the characters (after all, I was involved in the investigation), then maybe it could help make sense of the narrative.
  It really didn’t work. And I ended up stripping it out of the movie…
  I tried to pretend as though I was talking to another person… That it wasn’t me talking to myself… But it didn’t work. Try as hard as I might I was always aware that it was “I” interviewing me…
  But, I’m not sure this is what you mean by “interviewing” myself…
  OK. There are these various parts of my personality involved in some crazy internal dialogue… But I’m not sure they’re interviewing each other. (Is this the difference between a true psychosis and a mere neurosis…? That is, if I really had multiple personality disorder, my personalities would be truly interviewing each other; whereas if I was just neurotic they would be involved in an internal dialogue…?
  But isn’t that different from an “interview,” as well…?
  Isn’t “interviewing myself” an oxymoron…?
  Doesn’t the idea of an interview contain the idea of one person talking to another person…? I think it does.
  But there is something else in your remarks that I find really interesting. This idea that people are being put on the spot, that they are taking a risk… I suppose in some sense, yes, every time you talk to another person you are taking a risk. You may be misinterpreted. Your words may be taken out of context… But it is a risk that we all repeatedly take — as social animals…

  An Honest Viewing
  gasolina – December 6, 2002 – #84
  …it’s my perception that every story you receive from a subject must be a gift… they’ve opened up to you, and allowed you to “view” the parts of them that are damaged, deranged or wonderful. that’s kind of an honor, right?
  it is my understanding (because i just googled it) “interview” is derived from the french word, “entrevous.” meaning to enter and view. that can be a powerful moment when two strangers come together and an honest viewing takes place.
  i sometimes wonder if the character’s story is just a reflection of the author’s story (in some hidden recess). a shared story. but, of course, the author has the opportunity to reshape her/his contribution in the safe confines of the edit room. reissue it — and then the story becomes the author’s gift, albeit a safer one, to offer others.
  in that sense, does the final storytelling reveal more about the author’s psych and pathos than the subjects? …

  A Scintilla Of Spontaneity
  Viki Merrick – December 6, 2002 – #85
  I’m thinking interviewing oneself is probably bullshit. Because you ALREADY KNOW. …what you’re scared to say, want to say, don’t want to say, would or wouldn’t say. The view is FROM the INSIDE. That’s just a sort of exposing oneself, allowing revealment on one’s own pre-determined terms. Altogether different view from the OUTSIDE viewing IN. You can see things a “subject” hasn’t thought about in years…
  Good interviews, when they’re working, contain a scintilla of spontaneity which I don’t believe we have…”interviewing ourselves”.

  Awakening Connectedness
  gasolina – December 7, 2002 – #86
  if good interviews contain spontaneity then i’m left wondering why most journalists strip themselves out of that dynamic? why do they choose to write narrative V/O for themselves while leaving their subject in the raw light? …
  …aren’t they (journalists) just processing what they view in me (subject ) through their own perspective of the world? and aren’t i still in control as to what i reveal to them? …
  being latina i have a difficult time buying that “another” can tell my story or my communities because they have “perspective” or “distance.”… no one can tell my story no matter how insightful his/her interview questions are. they can only tell their story about me…
  …maybe i should say instead, at times take stock of yourself in the form of questions and tell your own story? let your own voice loose once in awhile. embrace its spontaneity and humanness outside of your constructed V/O’s. it might be a great awakening in regards to all of our connectedness.

  Morris In The Mirror
  Errol Morris – December 8, 2002 – #87
  You asked: Does the final storytelling reveal more about the author’s psychology and pathos than the subject’s? An important question.
  Are interviews just projection and transference…? Do we really see the world, or are we just holding up a mirror to ourselves…?
  And if there’s something more, where does all that projection and transference end and reality begin. Or if you prefer, where does the “self” end and the “other” begin…?
  I’m not sure.

   

  << part 1 Nubar Alexanian Interviews Errol Morris

  part 3 >> Errol Morris Photo Gallery