Stranger Than Fiction - "Running Fence" - January 19, 2010

“Running Fence”

Stranger Than Fiction

January 19, 2010

IFC Center

New York, NY

Stranger Than Fiction's Thom Powers and "Running Fence" co-director Albert Maysles. Photo by Brian Geldin.

Fresh off last week’s Cinema Eye Honors, Thom Powers presented this week at Stranger Than Fiction David and Albert Maysles’ and Charlotte Zwerin’s 1978 documentary “Running Fence.” Albert Maysles, who was also at last week’s Cinema Eye Honors presenting an award, appeared at Stranger Than Fiction Tuesday night to speak after the screening of “Running Fence,” which was a beautiful portrait of artists Christo’s and the late Jeanne-Claude's white 
nylon fabric that stretched along 24 ½ miles of the California Pacific coastline that, like their last project The Gates in New York City, was originally met with opposition and skepticism by residents and local government, but their persistence paid off, and their art was displayed and gorgeously filmed by the legendary Maysles brothers.

Before asking questions, Powers noted how he saw in the credits the names of people who are doing such great work such as Robert Kenner (Food, Inc.) and Bruce Sinofsky (Brother’s Keeper). Maysles said he could understand why they’re making such good movies and while just watching again “Running Fence” on the screen there at Stranger Than Fiction, it reminded him why it is that he keeps doing it. “I’m 82 years old and I got 10 or 12 projects that I’d like to get going,” Maysles said. He recognizes the importance that so much is missing in mass media – “good people, doing good things…documentary has the power to capture that very directly, very deeply, and very truthfully.”

Thom’s first question to Maysles was, what his and his brother David’s origins were with Christo and Jeanne-Claude (as “Running Fence” was just one of many collaborations together). Maysles said around 1962 or '63 when he and his brother were making documentaries in France, they were doing something different by filming with cameras that didn’t need a tripod. It was a whole new thing called “direct cinema.” The French government invited them to Lyon where they met a guy who was designing a new camera, who they brought to Paris with them to show their first film, “Showman.” The guy brought two people along, Christo and Jeanne-Claude. “They were not just people working with a canvas, but they were out in the real world where art was made up of what’s actually going on,” Maysles said. It was perfect subject matter for the Maysles’ films. It did take a while for a film project to come along. Their first project together would be “Valley Curtain.”

Powers asked Maysles while watching the film again that night; did he have any memories of that period? Maysles said he thinks back to the words of Spinoza who said "All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare," which describes the nature of this project. He also was thinking about David (who passed away in 1987) and Jeanne-Claude (who passed away last November). “They’re gone, but there they are on the screen,” he said.

While watching Albert’s (and Antonio Ferrera’s) more recent film, “The Gates,” which is the only Christo and Jeanne-Claude project he’s seen in person, it had almost more meaning to him watching it on film than seeing The Gates in person. Maysles said, “That’s the strength of documentary,” Maysles said. “If the camerawork is good, it sees more than you would as a normal person. The viewer is given a better position to know what took place than having been there.” (For my 2007 film review and notes from the Antonio Ferrera Q&A at Silverdocs, go here.)

In visualizing “Running Fence,” how were they thinking through how to film it, Powers asked. Were they being conscious about their approach or more instinctive? Maysles said that each moment was instinctive. There was always something to be filmed, and a lot that shouldn’t be either, but they wanted to make sure they got the essentials.

A question from the audience to Maysles was where did they get the money to fund their film projects? “I don’t remember,” Maysles answered, generating a laugh from the audience. He remembered that some of his films like “Salesman” and “Grey Gardens” they paid for all by themselves. Powers interjected, asking if in the 1970s, they supplemented their films by making television commercials. “Thank g-d we don’t do that anymore,” Maysles replied. But it would have been tough without going with that income. He said he’d love to do another commercial someday if they allowed him to do them the way he likes to do them. He said he has an idea for a commercial for Kleenex where he’d go to a hospital where a woman is about to give birth. He’d start filming the moment the infant is being handed over to the mother. “It’s got to be a moment where there’s tears on her cheeks and she reaches for a Kleenex,” he said. Powers joked, “We may be able to arrange that.” (Referring to his expecting wife Raphaela sitting nearby).

Another member of the audience asked Maysles if he could clarify what he meant earlier as to which moments shouldn’t be filmed. Maysles said that he’s been making a film ("In Transit") about people that he meets on trains where there’s a story about to happen when they get off the train. (Maysles previously discussed this same scenario in some notes I took in 2007 when he spoke at BAM). He was about to film this woman who had a difficult story of a child that she couldn’t come to tell and be identified. He had to get it without offending her, so he filmed her hands. On the other hand, he said it’s so important not to go in the other direction and be so careful that you don’t get much value. It’s a matter of good taste and respect. He’s found over the years he’s filmed people with their vulnerabilities just as well as things that are positive traits done with love and understanding.

On being asked how he’s able to seem so invisible behind the camera while shooting his films, Maysles said that he’s been asked many times how he gets so close to the hearts and minds of the people he’s filming. “It’s because I have my heart and mind with them,” he said. His mother used to tell him that there’s good in everybody. With documentaries, that bridge can be gapped with good material that goes directly to the experience that people are having.

Lastly, Maysles talked about his Maysles Film Institute in Harlem. He said his original purpose to have it in Harlem was so that his four children would have enough space to have their own apartments and all be in the same neighborhood. One of the three buildings they were in houses the film company and a 60-seat movie theater. Unlike anywhere else in New York, they exclusively show documentaries. They also teach kids in the neighborhood how to make their own films. He added that only a few weeks earlier the most exciting moment in his life occurred when the kids showed their films to an audience and during the Q&A, one of the questions to them was if any of them are planning to make a career out of filmmaking, and everyone of them raised their hand.

2009 Tribeca Film Festival - 30 Years of Sports Filmmaking - April 24, 2009

The Big Time to the Big Screen: 30 Years of Sports Filmmaking
2009 Tribeca Film Festival
April 24, 2009

Moderator:
ESPN's Chris Connelly

Panelists:
Barbara Kopple (episode: The Steinbrenner Family Business)
Albert Maysles (episode: Muhammad and Larry)
Barry Levinson (episode: And the Band Marched On: The Colts Sneak Out of Baltimore)
Dan Klores (episode: King of the New York Streets)

Synopsis:
Whether played out on the field, in the ring, or on the court, every great sports drama is ultimately a human tale—of conflict, determination, passion, triumph, and loss. In honor of ESPN’s 30th anniversary, ESPN Films launches 30 for 30, an unprecedented documentary film series featuring 30 of today’s finest directors bringing to life 30 of the most remarkable sports stories from 1979 to 2009—the ESPN era. These films represent an extraordinary and diverse mosaic of the impact of sports on America and world culture.

Connelly began by getting a sense of what each of the filmmakers contributed to 30 for 30 starting with Kopple, who said she was really fortunate to do her film pointing out a woman in the audience named Nicole Renna who struggled to make this all possible as a friend of the Steinbrenner family to try get Kopple to interview them and get as much access as possible. Kopple said the Yankees are about heroes, traditions, and now the changing of the guard with the closing of the old stadium and the opening of the new. “For me, it was some of the best filming I’ve ever done in my life,” she said.

In contrast, Connelly joked with Levinson about being a long-time Baltimore Orioles fan. “I’ll tell you how terrible I was in Baltimore,” Levinson said. “I hated the Yankees.” But he did recollect a story of one time when the Yankees came to town, and he would not even get Mickey Mantle’s autograph. Levinson, who’s mostly known for his narrative fiction films such as Rain Man, Good Morning Vietnam, and Avalon, was asked by Connelly what his documentary piece is all about. He said he was fascinated when the Colts left town back in 1983 and to see that the band that used to march for the team continued to march for 12 years without the team, always in hopes of getting another team. The fanaticism of sports and sense of community and belonging would make for an interesting story to tell, he said.

Connelly next moved onto Maysles film about Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes, commenting that it has a genesis going back many years, “a kind of documentary archaeology.” Maysles said the film goes back more than the 30 years since it was made when he and his brother David film the two of them preparing for their fights. When someone is at his or her best in making a documentary, Maysles said something personal hearkens back to your childhood. When he was a kid growing up in a Jewish family in Boston surrounded by Irish anti-Semitists, there wasn’t hardly a day where a kid wouldn’t come up to him and tell him he’d meet him outside to fight. He recollected one particular fight when after there was a little boy five years younger standing there crying and he walked him home. It was his brother. Fighting was the only way he could get close to the Irish as a young kid, but many years later he fulfilled his dream of becoming friends with the Irish when he and his brother made the film Salesman.

And finally, Connelly went to Klores about his film. While Maysles film takes in so many years of history, Klores’ film is focused on only “18 unbelievable seconds,” Connelly said. Klores said the film is on Reggie Miller who purchased the New York Knicks in 1994/95. What captured his interest was when he received a photo of Miller taking a big shot in Madison Square Garden. But it wasn’t the shot that interested him most, but the horror on everyone’s faces in the background. Connelly asked how he took a historical event that happened on TV and brought new life to it in a way that heightens the moment and makes us take notice again. Klores said the 30 or 35 people he interviewed all have different interpretations of the same exact thing.

30 for 30 is slated to air on ESPN this fall.

Silverdocs 2007 - "The Gates" (Companion notes from June 10th's Maysles Films Program at BAM)

Following up on my notes from June 10th's Maysles Film Program at BAM with Albert Maysles (Grey Gardens), I would like to include the below notes from a Silverdocs Q and A with Antonio Ferrera, co-director of The Gates, as a companion piece. I was so moved by the presentation at BAM last week that I just had to see "The Gates" at Silverdocs. I missed it when it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. But before I present my notes, here's my review:

The Gates is an incredibly engaging, dramatic work of documentary filmmaking with footage spanning more than 25 years of artists Christo's and Jeanne-Claude's struggle and ultimate victory to display their work of art entitled "The Gates" in New York City's Central Park from filmmakers Antonio Ferrera and Albert Maysles. A most dramatic and clever edit occurs at the beginning of the film when we see Christo and Jeanne-Claude as they were in 2005 and all of a sudden, they're back in 1979 as they prepare to talk with the then Parks Department Commissioner Gordon Davis, who turns their exhibition down. The duo take their presentation to various communities throughout New York City from Harlem to NYU, each time getting dissent from skeptical residents where a major argument was that they were going to destroy a piece of natural art by putting their own art over it. Christo's and Jeanne-Claude's response was that Central Park is man-made. Finally, in 2005, mayor Michael Bloomberg approved their exhibition, and in February of that year, "The Gates" went up for two weeks. I happened to see "The Gates" in person, and I personally didn't know what to make of them at the time. Whether or not one agrees that they were a beautiful work of art, one can't help but to admire how they brought an entire city together. Perhaps that is what the art really is, and that is exactly what is captured in the documentary The Gates. The last half-hour of the film shows the two weeks in 2005 when people came to Central Park. The filmmakers capture their natural reactions, excitement and confusion so beautifully.

Photo courtesy of Silverdocs.

The Gates - Q and A with co-director Antonio Ferrera
SILVERDOCS AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival 2007
June 16, 2007

Q: Can you talk about the editing decisions? How much footage was there?

A: 400 hours of the actual event [the two weeks in 2005], about 200 hours from the preceding year, and 30 to 40 hours from 1979. We had access to a lot of great sensibilities. Captured the journey for the audience. Spent two years editing the film from 2005-2007, myself and Matthew Prinzing. I lived in the park for 16-17 hours a day. The story is all about the light.

Q: Did you find the original people who were against "The Gates" in 1979?

A: We hung out with Gordon Davis, who originally turned it down, but turned out to be one of its greatest advocates.

Q: Did Christo and Jeanne-Claude make any money from "The Gates"?

A: The drawings go toward the final work of art.

Q: Did Christo and Jeanne-Claude adjust the opening of "The Gates" because of the snow?

A: What ever happened, happened. It was incredible. It was just mother nature and our discipline to capture it.

Q: Will Christo and Jeanne-Claude do any art exhibitions in the Washington, D.C., area?

A: As soon as you tell them an idea, they don't do it.

Q: What are your thoughts on David and Albert starting the shooting and you finishing it?

A: It's a long story. It was a whole archaeological job.

Q: What was your decision not to showcase Christo and Jeanne-Claude once "The Gates" were fertile.

A: At a certain point, the expression has to take the foreground. I was scared I wouldn't be able to pull it off. We don't interview subjects. An example is the scene with the Trinidadian kids sitting on a rock in Central Park just talking about "The Gates." You can't interview shit like that. You just listen. I remember 9/11 when everyone looked up in horror. At "The Gates," everyone looked up in delight.

Q: What was the decision behind not showing in the film the taking down of "The Gates" in Central Park ?

A: We wanted to capture that feeling when you left the park.

Sundance at BAM - Maysles Films Program

I went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) on Sunday for the Maysles Films Program, a special showcase curated just for Sundance Institute at BAM. Documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles presented clips from his and his late brother David’s archive spanning from the 1950s to a sneak peak of Albert’s latest project In Transit.

Excerpts screened included: Russia, Moscow (1955-57), Yanki No! (1961), Untitled (1959), Showman [Outtakes] (1963), Carl Sandburg (1963), Anastasia (1962), What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. (1964), With Love From Truman (1966)/Meet Marlon Brando [Outtakes] (1965), Off to War [Vietnam] (1965), Salvador Dali’s Fantastic Dream (1966), MGM Showreel (1966), Mother (1966), Gimme Shelter [Outtakes] (1969), McGovern (1972), Muhammad Ali in Zaire (1974), Grey Gardens [Outtakes] (1976), Maysles For Hire (1980’s and 90’s) and In Transit (work-in-progress).

Watching these excerpts play one after the other was like being a fly on the wall in a time machine of popular culture and politics in the 20th Century, but it’s not the history that you learn in school or see on the news. It’s unparalleled access to the little behind-the-scenes, candid moments from the lives of everyday people to celebrities. And how’s this for DVD commentary, without actually needing a DVD player: During the segment from Yanki No!, Albert spoke out, “I’ve taken most of the narration out because it was so full of propaganda.” If you were not lucky enough to view the program live and in person with Albert yesterday, it would be great if an actual DVD of the program was released, or perhaps an airing on PBS.

Before and after the presentation, Albert said a few words. Below are my notes from his talk.

Albert Maysles. Photo courtesy of BAM.

Maysles Films Program
Sundance Institute at BAM
June 10, 2007

Before the Program:

Albert began before the program saying that this is the most exciting time of our lives for documentaries. Suddenly, documentaries are emerging as more popular. It’s inevitable that it would happen. There’s a place for both fiction and non-fiction. There is a potential for cameras to pick up real life with out commercial people from Hollywood. It’s surprising that TV networks’ policies simply don’t take the work of independent filmmakers. Albert’s films are different because of the access. Most of his and his brother’s feature films are available through the Criterion Collection.

Albert pointed out that in 1955, he departed a career in psychology and got a visa to go to Russia to film the people there. It was important to know who these other people were that we might have engaged in warfare with. You get to see bits and pieces of impressions of the people.

Other clips Albert was about to show include a film about Anastasia from the Bolshoi Ballet. Excerpts from films of Truman Capote and Salvador Dali. A taste of his autobiography with a glimpse of his mother being sworn in as the president of Jewish women’s organization. A glimpse of George McGovern, the candidate for President of the U.S. in 1972. Albert said he might be the perfect guy to go with the perfect candidate to reveal his real character. Albert said, “Damn it! Why isn’t mass media working this way?” And finally, a glimpse of “In Transit,” where Albert traveled on several different trains in several different countries recording stories of the people traveling on them.


After the Program:

Albert told the audience that now they’ve had a glimpse into the past and the future. The image that touched him most was of his mother.

He then spoke of a friend who made a film about the war experience and showed it to The History Channel, but they didn’t accept it because it was too personal. Albert said we have to break through this nonsense. It’s about time we witness life like it is. There’s a whole world around us and lots to film.

Albert mentioned that when he shows his films to the subjects in them, they’ve had surprising reactions. He once he mad a film of a poor family in the South. It was a very loving and true story. He showed it to the grandmother of the family in the film who said, “well, that’s the truth,” but then asked, “can you make it longer?” And when Capote watched his own film, he came out crying.

In documentary filmmaking, Albert said there’s a wonderful word called “random.” That’s what goes on. He and his brother were a two-camera crew. You have to be interested to do a heart-to-heart story and ask yourself, can you really tell the truth? “I believe it,” he said. You might not be able to capture it all, but when you see something on the screen, it becomes your experience. That’s why he wanted to make his new film “In Transit.” One of the stories of a woman who travels to Philadelphia to see her mother in nearly 20 years.

“As you might have guessed, I’m excited about what I do,” Albert said. Albert’s family now lives in Harlem, where the Maysles Institute teaches kids 8 to twelve years old how to use cameras. Some of the children’s parents are in jail and send their films to their parents. This has taught them self respect.

There was only time for one question from the audience. The question asked: What made you make the transition from psychology to documentary filmmaking? Albert’s answer: Psychology is a kind of science that you everything until you find a truth. Before he started filming in Russia, he was given two pieces of advice that he didn’t follow: 1) Use a tripod and 2) follow a point of view. “Thank goodness I didn’t follow them,” he said.