FILM: Beyond the Camera: Interview with Errol Morris

Errol Morris Interview

WP: What project are you working on now?

EM: At the moment I'm so involved in trying to figure out what I'm doing with this new film and how I'm putting it together, that it's occupied a lot of my thinking. And a lot of it-- there are pieces of old movies, and I've taken it one step further from my youth of old movies, which are really part of every film I've made recently. I think it's taken even a step further in this current film. I guess the tentative working title is Mr. Death. There are three people that are sort of known as "Dr. Death." There's Grigson in Texas, there's of course Jack Kevorkian in Michigan, and in Massachusetts there's a guy named Fred Leuchter, who is the subject of my movie, who became famous as a self-styled execution technologist, a designer of capital punishment equipment, lethal injection machines, gas chambers, electric chairs.

WP: How far along are you with that?

EM: I have a two-hour rough cut. And I'm still shooting. The movie is gradually taking form, and I would say it's pretty far along. My hope is that this thing could be ready at the end of the year.

WP: I gather that it will include clips from early films as your other films have.

EM: Yes. In this case it's capital punishment movies, or movies that involve themes of capital punishment. From I Want to Live to In Cold Blood to Daniel.

WP: As a filmmaker, what do you gain from watching other people's films?

EM: I believe this line comes from Godard, but the real university of film is the movie theater. If you want to learn about film, the best place to do it is by going to see movies. I certainly know that's how I have learned about film. When I was a graduate student at Berkeley, there was a specific film archive [Pacific Film Archive] where I programmed movies and I went to see movies slavishly, two to three to four movies a day for the good part of a year. I guess it becomes a kind of obsession. You know, I still have this affection for I guess what would be known as art cinema. There are people's work that I try to go and see. I like to be aware of what's going on.

WP: Do you watch films on video much, or do you go to the theater?

EM: A combination of both really. Because even though I've never been nominated for an Academy Award, I am a member of the Academy [of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the group of filmmakers that gives the Academy Awards]. I became a member of the Academy after The Thin Blue Line. Members of the Academy were so outraged that I wasn't nominated that they made me a member anyway. So every Academy member gets videotapes at the end of the year. The studios send you piles of videotapes in hopes that you will watch them and nominate their films for awards. So yes, I do see a lot of stuff on videotape, and I see a lot of stuff in theaters, too.

WP: Of course, by not having been nominated by the Academy you belong to a very esteemed group. So many great documentaries are never nominated by the Academy.

EM: Well, you know Janet Maslin. I just saw a preprint of this article, this huge article written for the Sunday [New York] Times this week it comes out, I guess, the day after tomorrow, in which she talks about Fast, Cheap in particular and in general the whole history of Academy slights to really great documentary filmmakers, pointing out that Maysles and Fred Wiseman have never been nominated nor won for any featured documentary.

WP: So we could go on and on with that. I don't think that Les Blank has been nominated for an Academy Award either, has he?

EM: I don't think so.

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