All these wonderful things

Peter Richardson on Filming His Powerfully Quiet Prize-Winner, HOW TO DIE IN OREGON

Before I saw Peter Richardson's HOW TO DIE IN OREGON, I'd heard over and over that it was a incredibly difficult film to get through.  In our now-annual interview in December, Sundance programmers David Courier and Caroline Libresco described the film to me as "devastating". There were reports of walkouts at Sundance (where the film won the Grand Jury Prize) and HBO's Sheila Nevins, the film's Executive Producer, even told the New York Times that the film was so wrenching, that "half her staff...refused to watch the whole film".

“Nobody wants to stare death in the face, and that’s the reason nobody wants to see this film,” Ms. Nevins said over breakfast at the nearby Canyons Ski Resort. “Don’t get me wrong — it’s very harsh, a very hard watch. But ultimately it’s an important film about courage, about dignity, about compassion.”

So you might imagine my trepidation in watching the film, which I did for the jury at this year's Ashland Film Festival (we, too, awarded HOW TO DIE our Grand Jury Prize, and not because of the regional topicality).  I mean, watching people die?  Who wants to do that?

I won't lie to you and say that I wasn't affected by the film for hours afterward or that, more than two months later, images from the film don't continue to haunt me. 

But this film is not an impossible watch and you shouldn't shy away from it when it premieres on HBO tomorrow night.  For such a loud subject, HOW TO DIE IN OREGON is a quiet, sensitive, beautifully made film that reveals Richardson to be a tremendously gifted artist.  I'd go further than that: the relationship that Richardson formed with his key subject, Cody Curtis (and her family) is what making documentaries is all about.

The moments, late in the film, that Richardson and Curtis and the camera share are some of the most complex, moving shots I've seen this year.  Without words, they convey a range of emotion.  That we get to see them is due to one thing: Richardson knew to keep the camera on.

I had the chance to query Richardson as part of a panel discussion in Ashland and also through a few questions at him during The Soapbox open forum I hosted at Hot Docs.  I asked him last week if I could re-visit some of those questions via email.

All these wonderful things:  Can you talk a bit about the genesis of this project and any trepidation you might have felt at the onset?  Obviously you must have known that one of the keys to getting the film you wanted would be to find someone or multiple someones who agree to let you follow their death process.

Peter Richardson: The actual inspiration for the film came in a rather serendipitous moment.  It was 2006, the morning I was leaving for Sundance with my first film, CLEAR CUT: THE STORY OF PHILOMATH, OREGON.  I was leaving the airport hotel in Portland early that morning and as I opened my door and looked down I saw the USA Today that had been delivered.  The above-the-fold headline on the right-hand column (as I remember it) announced the US Supreme Court ruling upholding Oregon's Death with Dignity Law.  The law had been challenged by the Bush Administration, went all the way to the Supreme Court, and was ultimately upheld in a split decision.  And this happened to be the morning that decision was announced.  So I saw that headline and it was very clear to me in that moment that I should make this film. 

It was about a year later that I actually started production. During that time I was on the festival circuit with CLEAR CUT, so I had a lot of time to think about this film, read a lot and research.  And also really question whether I was up to the task of making it, knowing what a difficult journey it would be personally and emotionally, and also question in a way whether the film “should” be made – what would the people who appeared in the film ultimately gain from their participation, and how could the film be made in a compassionate and respectful manner when dealing with such an incredibly intimate, private and emotional subject.

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady on Making 12TH AND DELAWARE, How They Divide the Work & Collaborating with HBO

Note: This is the fourth in a series of interviews with the makers of some of my favorite nonfiction films of 2010...

One of my favorite surprises in a year of great filmmaking came when I sat down at Hot Docs in May to watch Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's 12TH AND DELAWARE.  A film positioned literally in the middle of the abortion debate could have easily been bombastic or one-sided in favor of a pro-choice position.  Instead their film is a subtle, stunningly crafted work that watches as characters on both sides of the divide deal with the women who come to them with unwanted pregnancies. 

As I wrote about the film for Sheffield Doc/Fest:

 

"There is a moment in Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s new film where their protagonist – a staunchly pro-life woman who counsels pregnant women in hopes that they will decide to keep their babies – drops her cover.  In most of the conversations that Ewing and Grady capture, the woman proves masterful at masking her true intent – she seems almost motherly in offering the possibility that there are options other than abortion.  Their subject knows that if she reveals her true feelings, she risks alienating the very women she hopes to convince.  Her effort is all about the soft sell.

But one particular case proves stubborn.  And in trying to sway her, Ewing and Grady’s subject slips.  She pushes too hard, too dogmatically.  And in that moment, she loses her case – and, she fears, an innocent fetus will be sacrificed for her failure.

This moment proves that the power of nonfiction film remains as potent and as vital in 2010 as it has ever been. "

I emailed with Ewing and Grady about their characters, about the process of making 12TH AND DELAWARE - particularly their partnership with HBO Documentary Films, and how they divide up labor when they work together.

All these wonderful things: One of the things that I love about your films is that you tackle a subject that we think we know, one that might be easy to stereotype, and you give us a much deeper picture of that topic than one may expect going in.  I'll admit to wondering what you could bring to the abortion topic before I saw the film, but the truth is that you brought levels of shading that I've never seen before.  What was your process going into the film?

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady: We never set out really to make a film “about abortion,” as we didn’t think we had anything new to add to the discussion, which has become deafeningly loud by both extremes that hijacked the debate long ago. But thanks to the JESUS CAMP kids we had become aware of Crisis Pregnancy Centers, these low profile, anti-abortion centers that have quietly proliferated all over the United States. We had entered one during the making of that film and were confused as to what was happening here. There were ultrasound machines and ”medical” pamphlets but there was something else going on here.  But what? We are so glad we go the opportunity to go back to this subject and get to the bottom of it.

Banksy (Yes, Banksy) on Thierry, EXIT Skepticism & Documentary Filmmaking as Punk

Note - The second in a series of interviews with the directors of some of our favorite nonfiction features of 2010...

Whenever the subject of EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP has come up in casual or not-so-casual conversation over the past year, a vigorous discussion has followed.  I've seen master filmmakers, newcomers, film critics and non-pros all engage in excited, lengthy dissections of the film - sometimes about what's real, what they suspect is not - often about the film's profound take on art and commerce.  In the end, no matter what point of view the individual holds, the conclusion seems to always be that it's a major work in the nonfiction canon.

One would be forgiven for not expecting all this when Sundance announced EXIT as a late addition to the 2010 festival.  The debut film by Banksy - the anonymous British artist who gained notoriety and fame for his often-politically charged work that would turn up in some very unusual places (inside museum galleries, on the West Bank wall that separates Israelis and Palestinians) - EXIT would leave the festival spurring numerous distribution offers and go out on its own, working with sales agent John Sloss and distributor Richard Abramowitz to bring the film to theatres in the spring.  And after a somewhat surprising (relief was more like it) inclusion on the Academy's Documentary Feature shortlist, the film finds itself smack in the middle of Best-of-the-Year conversations.  It's nominated for the Documentary prize at the Film Independent Spirit Awards and it's up for 6 awards at next months Cinema Eye Honors, including Outstanding Feature and Outstanding Debut, not to mention the numerous film critics prizes its been garnering (yesterday, it was announced as the Best Documentary and Best First Feature on indieWIRE's annual critics poll).

Over the past month, we've had the opportunity to spend some time with the team behind EXIT - producer Jaimie D'Cruz and editor Chris King - including hosting the duo at a screening here in Los Angeles at Cinefamily earlier this month.  In their presence, I witnessed numerous others trying to find out what Banksy thinks of this or that. 

I had my own questions and Banksy and team were kind enough to get me his answers (via email, of course)...

All these wonderful things: One thing I've heard repeatedly from members of your team was that, early on, you were alone in your conviction that Thierry could and should be the narrative focus of the film - long before his show in LA that concludes the movie.  What drew you to Thierry as a film character and, aside from the fact that he had a lot of archival material about street art at his fingertips, why did you think that he could sustain the film's narrative arc?
 
Banksy: Thierry’s entertainment potential wasn’t difficult to spot - he actually walks into doors and falls down stairs. It was like hanging out with Groucho Marx but with funnier facial hair. Thierry arrived at a point when my world was becoming infested with hipsters and heavy irony, so his exuberant man-child innocence was fun to be around. Maybe I convinced myself Thierry was a good subject just because I liked him. I’d be lying if I told you the first time I met him I thought ‘this man’s life will deliver a good narrative arc’.
 
From the outset there are problems with any movie about graffiti because all the good artists refuse to show their face on camera. I needed the film to be fronted by a personality the audience could engage with. The producer Robert Evans said that ‘vulnerability’ is the most important quality in a movie star and that’s a hard thing to portray if all your interviewees have masks over their faces.
 
ATWT: It's clear in the film that you rely on a team of people to create your artwork.  What, if anything, was different about the filmmaking process, and the work you did with that team - Jaimie and Chris and others?  And how did you know when you'd found the right collaborators?
 
B: I paint my own pictures but I get a lot of help building stuff and installing it. I have a great little team, but I tell you what - they all hate this fucking film. They don’t care if its effective, they feel very strongly that Mr Brainwash is undeserving of all the attention. Most street artists feel the same. This film has made me extremely unpopular in my community.

Sundance Doc Programmers Libresco & Courier on 2011's Big Themes and How the "Three G's" Led to the Doc Premiere Section

Last December, we grabbed coffee with Sundance programmers Caroline Libresco and David Courier and forecasted the festival that would unveil one month later.  We all had such a good time, we decided to make it an annual event.  So, a week or so ago, we got together for breakfast and talked about this coming year's batch of films and remembered a portion of our conversation from last year that actually might have had an effect on Sundance's program for 2011.

All these wonderful things: So when you finish the selection process and you have that first day off to reflect on what you’ve chosen each year, do you think about themes?  Maybe you think about themes while you’re actually deciding the films, but do you think, “wow, this year there were a lot of these kinds of films” or “this year will leaning toward this or that direction”?

David Courier: We actually haven’t had a day off yet, so… (laughter) But yeah, we do start to think about themes.

Caroline Libresco: And there are things that start to emerge, things we start to notice along the way and after, for sure.  And it’s really actually fun to kind of step back – even just the other day, that was the first time I really stepped back – or the day we talk to our editorial colleagues about ideas, suddenly it was just there.  There were all these interesting connections between the films.

ATWT: Does it sometimes feel like there’s something in the water that leads filmmakers toward certain topics.

DC: Yes.  If you add all the films we didn’t select, oh my God, religion and cults and the fine line between them is so much in the consciousness.  It’s insane. 

CL: And that’s throughout the festival, not just in the docs.

ATWT: Can you pinpoint any specific reason why that is the case this year?  Did something happen two or three or four years ago?

CL: I do think it has something to do with the kind of mounting power over the last decade in this country of the Christian fundamentalist movement, which is now upwards of 60 million people, 1/5 of the country, and its hold on government in the last decade.  How can you ignore it?  But it’s a lot of the (narrative) feature films in the festival and there were lots more that we didn’t end up showing, too.  It’s just fascinating.  Films in the festival like HIGHER GROUND, SOUND OF MY VOICE, SALVATION BLVD…

DC: MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE, which I just like saying.

CL: THE LEDGE, just a ton of these.  People just trying to make sense of religiosity, of devout Christianity.

DC: Another big theme that’s emerged – a lot in docs, too – is the state of the media and journalism and basically the evaporation of good investigative journalism.  Journalism, the New York Times for instance, used to be “the word” and that’s no longer the case with 24 hour news and the internet and people are struggling to keep up and decide what’s real because there’s no such thing anymore as “the voice”.  So we got a lot of films that deal with that.

RESTREPO's Tim Hetherington & Sebastian Junger on Their Unlikely Partnership and What They Learned From Each Other

Note - This is the first in a series of interviews with the directors of some of our favorite nonfiction films from 2010.

How to describe the journey that famed journalist and writer (The Perfect Storm) Sebastian Junger and noted photog and sometime documentary cinematographer (THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK) Tim Hetherington have been on the past few years?  First, they were put together, shotgun marriage-style by Vanity Fair to work in Afghanistan on assignment for the magazine, later realizing that they may indeed have the footage to make a documentary.  Then came surviving an edit, premiering and winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (where it was described as a nonfiction HURT LOCKER) and now a whirlwind trip on the Oscar shortlist.

Earlier this year, I wrote briefly about seeing their film, RESTREPO, projected over a river in Kosovo, the sounds of machine gun fire echoing off the sides of the mountains and buildings.  What struck me then was the film's refusal to advance an overt political message, although it's not hard to finish the film with some sense of mission futility. 

We met a couple weeks ago as the duo were prepping to launch the DVD of RESPTREPO.  The conversation was lively and genuine – they are comfortable enough with one another to rib each other in front of another writer/filmmaker – and you get the sense that they’re still wondering just how they ended up here, in this situation, together.

All these wonderful things: How did you guys meet? Or how did this project come that you guys worked on it together?

Sebastian Junger: I convinced Vanity Fair to let me follow a platoon for a whole deployment and I needed a good person to work with, a photographer, but also someone who could shoot video, because I had this sort of crazy idea that, if I shot a lot of video, if we shot a lot of video, maybe we could make a documentary.  I just had no idea… It was an incredibly naïve thought, but luckily Tim sort of knew about that world and so, the first trip I was by myself – I was with another photographer that was a friend of mine, but essentially I was on my own – and the project really started on the second trip, when I went out there with Tim.  Tim and I immediately just synched up really well together, he saw the potential in the film and in the project and that was when the project really began.  Ultimately, he was put on the assignment by Vanity Fair.

Tim Hetherington: We met in the airport lounge in Heathrow.  He was changing planes and I was coming…

SJ: I talked with him on the phone and just asked him some questions because I knew how hard it was out there and I wanted to make sure he had his shit together and was fit.

ATWT: And did you guys have any idea that you would still – it’s a long journey to take together.

SJ: No, no. (laughter)

TH: (laughter) No, absolutely no idea.  Absolutely no idea. Yeah, everything just grew organically.  You know, as Sebastian points out, we got on really well straight away.  If we hadn’t got on well, we wouldn’t have been able to have done it.  You know what I mean?  Because the whole process is so super intense – not just being together in Afghanistan in very extreme situations but also being together in the edit, just making decisions together.  I mean, that really, in some ways, there were parts of the edit that really stretched our relationship in ways…

SJ: Yeah, it was hard.

Interview: THE COVE Director Louie Psihoyos on His Process, His Love of Gear and Being Inspired by Bond and Cousteau

This Sunday, THE COVE's Louie Psihoyos is the odds-on favorite to take to the Kodak Theatre stage and accept the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.  A couple of months ago, we had the chance to sit down and talk to the first-time feature director and we had a terrific and expansive chat that touched on the reasons he made THE COVE, how he fought to keep the film complex and even suggested why you might not want to be responsible for his luggage.  So expansive was our talk that it seemed daunting to tackle the transcription.  Our apologies for the delay.

Much has happened to THE COVE's Oscar prospects since we talked.  At the time, FOOD, INC. was on a roll and seemed to be the odds-on favorite, but THE COVE was about to begin a streak of critics prizes, would win three honors at Cinema Eye (including Outstanding Nonfiction Feature) and go on to become the first documentary to sweep all four guild awards.  Recently, the filmmakers announced that the film had secured Japanese distribution.  All of this, combined with a smart and steady Oscar campaign, pushed the film to front-runner status. 

I wasn't sure what to expect when I met Psihoyos.  I knew he'd had a remarkable career as a photographer before he entered the documentary world, but what was his intention here?  Make this one film and go back to his day job?

But Psihoyos seems to be in for the long haul - already talking about his next film.  And while he may be, at the time at least, disappointed with THE COVE's theatrical performance, he was also still hopeful for its prospects on DVD and television and he was eager to understand more about the documentary community and figuring out his place in it.

All these wonderful things:  How did this even come about that you ended up making this film.  Obviously you had a great photography career, but how did you end up, not only making a documentary but making a documentary on this subject?

Louie Psihoyos: Well, my dive buddy is Jim Clark, the guy who started Netscape, Silicon Graphics, WebMD.  He said the third billion dollar company he created - WebMD - was to prove the first two weren't a fluke.  Really lucky to have him as a buddy because we've been diving all over the world for over ten years together.  Every time we go back to the same dive spot, you sort of witness the degradation of the oceans.  There's less fish, we can hear dynamiting going on - cause sound travels really far underwater, so you're in Indonesia, you hear dynamiting going on.  I've seen (shark) finning in marine sanctuaries.  The third time we were in the Galápagos, we saw a league of longline finsherman in a marine sanctuary, and he said, "somebody should do something about this," and I said, "how 'bout you and I?"  The idea was, I was shooting shorts of our dive trips, just a memento really, and they were pretty decent, people liked them.  It was Jim's idea to come up with a nonprofit organization that would do films and try to create awareness and inspire change.  I like to put that context - I don't mention Jim just because he's got a lot of money and a big name.  He's was really kind of an inspirational hero to me to begin with.  I had read "The New New Thing" and he's a guy who's sort of a Robin Hood, in a way, in that world, that (venture capital) world.  He gave most of his money to the VC's so that he could have enough money to do Silicon Graphics.  When they sold the company, they made all the money and he didn't make anything.  He reversed that with Netscape, so he gave these Indian engineers, he made them worth hundreds of millions of dollars.  You know, he's a guy that when he starts a business, it's not just a business to make money, he creates an industry where there wasn't one before. 

Silicon Graphics was a 3-D graphics engine, it was the way you could do JURASSIC PARK in three dimensions.  That's his computer.  You know, Steven Spielberg couldn't do it without Jim's computer chips.  The day he quit that he started Netscape - that was the first, commercial internet browser.  You know, the guy's a visionary, he's not just a businessman.  And so when he gave me the money to make this movie, he just said, "make a difference".  And that was my intention, to make a difference and make him proud, make myself proud.  And to have that guy as a buddy - one reason we found each other is we're both really tenacious, we're very passionate about the oceans and we don't stop until we get what we want.  And he set the bar really high.  When Jim Clark's says, "just make a difference," and you know that he's changed the way that the world works, three times, he expects great things.  And he basically financed the operation for the last almost five years.  Now we're on our own, using my own money now and some other friends.  Hoping that with the DVD release there will be some money.  We're licensed in about 32 countries right now but it's not a lot of money.  If you're in the doc world for money, it's the wrong business.

ATWT: You missed one of the memos, I think.  (laughter)  One of the things that I really love about your film and that people talk about in your film a lot is obviously the element of it being an espionage thriller.  And I'm wondering if that was part of your original concept going in or if it was just the natural thing that started happening once you were in the process and realized, oh, we're going to have to come up with all these ways to film this and we're going to have to sneak around and it is going to be difficult and part of the film is going to be about getting this footage.

LP: Yes and no.  Charles Hamilton, who was my director of covert operations, of clandestine affairs, he worked for me for about ten years.  He's my best friend and assistant.  He left me to go work for Gore Verbinski on PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN.  He was the sail master on THE BLACK PEARL.  At the time, he was teaching Hollywood pirates how to look like real pirates and I called him up and said, "look, I need a real pirate to help me get into the cove.  Can you help me?"

A little bit of Charles' background.  He's a little bit of a pirate himself.  He's a real activist.  In my community, Boulder, Colorado, he was arrested twice in the same day for protesting Rocky Flats, which made plutonium triggers.  We shut that plant down, not because they were making nuclear bombs, not because of the ethics of dropping bombs on people, but because they were polluting the atmosphere with plutonium.  It was leaking out.  He jumped the fence, got arrested, got let back out on the street, went back out, got arrested the same day for the same thing.  He's the kind of guy that you want watching out for you, but he's really, really clever.  He said, "OK, we're going to get into the cove, we need a military grade thermal camera, mainly for surveillance to see where the cops are and the guards...

ATWT: And when he says that, does that start sounding exciting to you?

LP: Oh yeah!

Interview: Part Two of our Conversation with Sundance Doc Programmers Courier and Libresco

On Monday, we posted part one of our lengthy conversation with Sundance programmers (and Documentary team leaders) David Courier and Caroline Libresco.

Today, we dive into the nuts and bolts of the new Spotlight section - and how the programming team decided which films would go into Spotlight and which would go into competition.  I also raise a couple of my issues with last year's festival - the isolated Temple Theatre as a main venue for documentaries and what I felt was an imbalance between issue docs (what we call "bleeding heart docs") and those that are character-driven or built for entertainment.

In having that latter discussion, Libresco and Courier raise a point that I don't know if anyone caught about last year's slate: the overwhelming number of films that featured activists as main characters.

Here's part two of our conversation:
 

All These Wonderful Things:  So one of my grumbles from last year was the Temple (Theatre).

Caroline Libresco:  Oh really?

ATWT:  And I’m curious if that’s going to be back.

CL:  Tell us why, why was it your grumble?

ATWT:  Well, it was really hard to get to, mostly because there was no dedicated shuttle from Main Street.  So you had to switch shuttles I think at the Yarrow and so I found a bunch of folks who were up on Main Street who would, at the last minute, say, “I’m not going to go see x or y film at the Temple because it’s just too much of a hassle and it’s going to take me 25-30 minutes to get there.  And when I went to something at the Temple it was never sold out.  There were always seats available and this was for doc competition films.

CL:  Oh really?  I only was at sold out films.

ATWT:  It wasn’t opening weekend, it was Monday – Tuesday.

CL:  You know what, thank you for that feedback and that is something we both will (talk about).  Actually, I didn’t realize that.  

David Courier:  I didn’t realize the shuttle situation.

ATWT:  And people were calling it the “doc ghetto”.

CL:  Cause our impression was that it's actually the most elegant space we have and so we think of it as the Temple of Docs.

DC:  Exactly.  And the filmmakers’ reaction, just from a technological aspect, the sound is amazing in there, the screen is brilliant…

CL:  There’s a fireplace in the lobby.

DC:  We love that venue.

CL:  We like the sacred idea.

DC:  Yeah, I guess we need to work on making it easier for people to get to.

ATWT:  I think if there was a dedicated shuttle, it was the switching of shuttles that really – and last year was warm, it was balmy for the festival.  If it was freezing…

CL:  That seems like maybe the only glitch is transportation, because once you get there…

ATWT:  And the other thing was that there was nothing really around there so if you were seeing three in a row you were stranded.  You didn’t have enough time to get up to the Yarrow to get a coffee or food.

CL: There's a cafe in the lobby, so you can get coffee and food there.

DC:  I do want to stress that it’s not out of town.  People spread rumors that the Temple was out of town.  It is very much in town.  But it’s like five minutes away from headquarters.  

CL:  I think people tend to think of us as a behemoth with endless amounts of funds and I do want to reiterate to your readers that we are a not-for-profit organization and we actually work on a shoestring believe it or not.  And a shoestring staff who work really, really, really hard.  I think every year we try to address things and make it better and it’s our responsibility to do that and thanks for the feedback but I do want people to know that it’s a process for us and not only do we have the limited financial resources but the limited resources of Park City and where we can show films.  So we were really delighted when this new space came up that was architect-designed, that was being offered to us by the Jewish community with a lot of enlightenment.  They were like, “you can show anything you want here, you can show whatever you want.”

Interview: Previewing Sundance 2010 with Doc Programmers David Courier and Caroline Libresco

Last week I sat down with David Courier and Caroline Libresco, Sundance's team leaders for the documentary line-up.  We talked at length about this year's amazing slate of films, changes brought about by the departure of Geoffrey Gilmore and the ascension of John Cooper & Trevor Groth, and look back on a breakthrough decade for documentary and Sundance's role in creating an environment for that breakthrough.

Perhaps most interesting to filmmakers (or to me at least) is the discussion of the thin line between getting into Sundance and not getting in to Sundance.  

It was a great conversation with a lot of laughter - I'm going to run it in two parts because it got fairly extensive.

All These Wonderful Things:  First I want to ask, because the list is so amazing on paper – did you know you were going to get submissions from that caliber of A-list directors, did you know they were coming or were you like, “oh my God, here’s another great film from another great filmmaker”?

David Courier:  Yeah, we kind of did.  We’d been tracking them for a while.  In the case of certain ones like (Alex Gibney’s) CASINO JACK, he’s been working on that for years, and we knew he was ready so it was likely, I mean we were hoping it was going to come our way and not go elsewhere.  And sure enough, it’s what he wanted to do.  Laura Poitras’ film, same thing.

Caroline Libresco:  Totally, and Davis Guggenheim and Amir (Bar-Lev), we'd been tracking.  Those I feel were in our consciousness already.

DC:  A couple of those – CASINO JACK and (Bar-Lev’s PAT) TILLMAN film – we were hoping to get last year.

ATWT:  Yeah, I think Amir had said that one point they thought they might have been ready…

CL: Yeah, I remember that.

DC:  Glad they waited.  It’s really exciting.

CL:  But I think that it’s a really tough competition, that’s kind of the underlying question under your question, because there are so many consummate American documentarians.  And if each of them has a film every 3 or 4 years, there’s a lot of great films out there.

ATWT:  We just did the new film festival survey and Sundance is number one, not surprisingly.  But one thing I noticed, I kind of have this theory that Sundance is that its almost like the Cannes of documentary to the extent that the list of people – Oscar winners, Oscar nominees, the crème de la crème of the American documentary scene – that when these people are making films they want to come to Sundance, in the way that if the Coen Brothers make a film or if Soderburgh makes a film, maybe they’re aiming for Cannes as a premiere.  Do you think that’s because Sundance offers a good Oscar platform?  Is it because the distributors are expecting to find the great docs there?  Why has Sundance stepped in to fill that position in a way that it doesn’t really do on the narrative side?

DC:  Well, I think partly because Sundance, years ago, elevated documentaries to be on a par with narrative films which is unlike so many festivals.  In fact, not only “on a par”, they’re first in our catalog.  They get so much attention.  We just have given documentary filmmakers the respect that they’re due and not that many festivals do.  I mean, it’s always like, if you’re at another festival, it’s like "the other".

The Two Women in Row 23 Have Just Been Nominated for an Academy Award (and other true tales from this year's Oscar doc hopefuls)

Somewhere in the air en route to Denver, a United pilot came on the PA and said, "I have a very important announcement for the passengers.  The women in row 23 have just been nominated for an Academy Award for their film Jesus Camp."  And with that, co-directors and Oscar nominees Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing began screaming, hugging flight attendants and basking in the applause of the plane.

Since then, they've found what this year's other documentary nominees have also discovered:  while nonfiction filmmakers often work in veritable anonymity, there's nothing like an Oscar nomination to change that reality entirely.

"It’s different from anything else that can happen to you," Grady told me today.  "Everyone gets married and everyone graduates from college, but i had no context for this experience in which everyone in the world gets to hear about something that happened to you at the same time.  I had no context for it but, damn, its a good one."

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, co-directors of Jesus Camp

My Country, My Country director Laura Poitras started her day with an early yoga session.  When she got home, she checked her email, "there was nothing, which is not necessarily good news.  Then I checked online and everything was on there except for the documentaries, so I just thought, I’m going to work.  And then I got a phone call from (publicist) Ann (Stulz)."

Poitras is the only one of this year's Oscar nominees to also be up for Best Documentary at the Film Independent Spirit Awards (she was previously nominated for the Truer Than Fiction Award for Flag Wars).  "I was completely shocked by both (nominations) when I got the word so its really exciting.  When I heard on Tuesday, when I got the call, I was incredibly moved to be nominated for the Oscar, but also moved by the company I was in.  To be there with James’ film (Iraq in Fragments) and Jesus Camp and Inconvenient Truth.  These are all films that I love and all films that send an important message."  (Poitras has yet to see the fifth nominee - Amy Berg's Deliver Us From Evil.)

My Country, My Country director Laura Poitras

The Jesus Camp directors had long thought that the Academy might only select one film that dealt with religion and they thought Deliver Us would probably be that film.  "I was worried they were going to choose one (film about) Iraq, one (film about) religion, but they just chose the films they liked," Heidi Ewing said.

Iraq in Fragments director James Longley told me that he was very happy to see his film and Poitras' nominated for the prize - both deal with the war in Iraq by looking at the affects of the war on Iraqi citizens.

"We were covering the subject in very different ways, both stylistic and by looking at different layers of society," Longley said.  "I think (My Country, My Country) is really great.  The thing her film does that mine doesn't do is that it shows the more educated, intellectual Iraqis, the Iraqi family who’s more easy to identify with for westerners and that’s something really important.  There’s a layer of society in a place like Baghdad that is of professional, multi-lingual people.  Having that kind of perspective is really important and she did that, she humanized it and made it accessible for a western audience."

Poitras agrees:  "I think it says something about the importance of this war.  Not just that they are Iraq films, but that they are looking at the Iraqis and what they want for their country.  It’s just really moving that both films are nominated.  It’s not the films that made the most money at the box office.  but it says, this is important."

All three directors I spoke to expressed excitement for their fellow nominees.

"I was so rooting for Jesus Camp," Poitras said.  "It’s one of the those movies where you go, damn, now that’s a good movie.  If you look at Iraq in Fragments, it has production value that studio movies don't have.  And in terms of cinema, these are all well-crafted films.  They aren’t just message films, driven by content.  They are really driven by craft."

"We are so happy for Laura," Ewing said.  "We love, love her film.  It could easily be ignored because it wasn't this huge theatrical release, but it was so finely done and I’m so happy for her."

I asked Longley about the craziness of the awards season and James, who has won the top prize at the IDAs and the Gothams - and is nominated for the Directors Guild prize - displayed his typical relaxed demeanor:

Iraq in Fragments director James Longley

"Obviously it’s amazing and it really is an honor.  But, it is what it is also, and there was as much a chance that I would get nominated as that I wouldn't.  It's great to be nominated but if I wasn’t I wouldn’t have wanted to build it up as a huge failure of myself or my film or my work and be incapacitated by it.  It's amazing to me that it made it as far as it did.  Who knows if a film I make now or in the future will ever go this far again."

"If it wins, that's amazing but what's important is making a film you care about and that you are happy with.  If you allow (awards) to matter then its great when you're successful but most of the time you arent going to be successful."

Some Truly Indie Answers

There was a great deal of speculation here [and here and here and, of course, here] and elsewhere late last week with the announcement that Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner were starting up a new self-distribution model called Truly Indie.

Over the weekend, I traded emails with Truly Indie's Kelly Sanders in an effort to get more specifics on the program. Herewith, 7 questions, 7 answers:

   1. Indiewire reported that 100% of the box office
   take will be returned to the filmmakers, but the
   Variety article quoted Mark Cuban as saying "most
   of a pic's box office profits will usually go to a
   project's producers, though each deal will vary".
   Can you give us a general idea of the breakdown
   of a typical deal?

   KS: 100% of the box office is the standard.