“Death” is our only dirty word. And King Lear is about death and the approach of death, and about power and the loss of power, and about love. In our consumer society we are encouraged to forget that we will ever die, and old age can be postponed by the right face cream. And when it finally does come, we’re encouraged to look forward to a long and lovely sunset. – Orson Welles

I've included this clip of Orson's 1953 televised version of KING LEAR because it was one of the versions that Stu wanted me to watch before shooting our doc. It was an ordeal to get through it, but you've got to admire the chutzpah of a thirty-something year old Welles trying to pull off Lear. And because it was "made for television," this KING LEAR clocks in at 73 minutes.

Now, as Fred and I edit Getting Lear, I'm toying with the idea of using some of the 1953 clips (like this one - only shorter) in the doc -- to give the audience more information about how Lear has been filmed before -- in contrast to how we are intrepreting the text.

Who I am kidding? I just want to split screen my stuff next to Orson Welles (and come out on top!)

I know I won't run into any legal issues on the festival circuit, but outside of that I'm not sure of the ownership issues with the 1953 film, however I do believe, at one point, this version was in the public domain. I could be wrong.

One more quote to chew on:

An Ecstatic Truth is possible in documentaries and of course in my feature films - I've always striven for that. It is something deeply inherent, where you recognize yourself as a human being again, where you find images that have been dormant inside of you for so many years and all of a sudden it becomes visible and understandable for you -- you read the world differently, your perceptions change. – Werner Herzog


I know it might be hard to connect the Welles quote with the Herzog, but where these two thoughts converge is where Getting Lear lives – I pray.

Over and over again, I make the journey back to the footage with the new hope of discovering something I missed.

I guess I’m looking for the ecstatic truth, but I’m more than happy to settle for something interesting.

This week I’m shooting some SUPER SECRET scenes that will serve as connector-pieces – no actors involved. And as always, when I want it done right, I enlist Imran and Fred as my crew.

Also helping out this week will be John Vasquez.

And that concludes my shout-outs for today.

-Chris

...borne back ceaselessly into the past...

There are theories about why the very idea of documentary is impossible, why objectivity is impossible, why Photoshop has made documentary untenable, why everything pretending to be factual or fictional is but a discourse and all discourses are equally privileged, why all discourses are fictions, and all reality is social construction. - Henry Breitrose - Department of Communication, Stanford University.

And one more thing:

Poor man wanna be rich,
rich man wanna be king
And a king ain't satisfied
till he rules everything.
Bruce Springsteen – “Badlands”

Editing a doc is a lot like putting a puzzle together - a puzzle with all round pieces.

And yet, there is some real joy in the process, and "not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." (Thank you Emily).

I mean it’s not brain surgery, or rocket science, unless you are making a doc about brain surgery or rocket science (and you could be).

For so long, this process held no joy for me. It was a confrontation of my own mediocrity at the intersections of Piss and Moan. And I’ll tell you why (but maybe only Lisa will understand) – sitting on the FFF selection committee gives (encourages) the feeling of superiority over others – at least in the sense of other doc makers. It is easy, and good for the ego to say I just watched 200 really crappy docs -- a real suck-fest a-go-go.

But it is soul stomping, and ego murder to have to say I just watched 50 AMAZING docs – life transforming, important, compelling, and fucking flawless docs. Docs so outside of my natural ability and resources that they FORCE me to question why I would even bother.

I bother.

Chinese Democracy

Something to think about:

The phrase "representation of reality" is utterly mistaken as a definition of documentary, because the idea of film as mirroring is a false one and a very misleading ideal. - Henrik Juel

And now this:

The whole idea of my doc, as formulated by Stu Omans and Maurice O’Sullivan, was to explore issues of aging through the lens of King Lear.

A noble idea that was battered and bloodied by the machinations of documentary production.

Scratch that -- it was battered and bloodied -- by MY machinations.

And now, like Axl’s Chinese Democracy, I am the one holed up in my Smith Street fortress of solitude, with the shades pulled tight and a mini Berlin Wall of pizza boxes protecting me from … Chinese Democracy.

Sure, my doc is about Lear and aging in a general sense, but it’s really about aging and the actors who are performing King Lear. I used Stu and O’Sullivan’s idea as a jumping off point to get to where I wanted to go with Lear.

My point being and it’s a point that I make at my own risk, is that a documentary cannot be made by a committee. If a doc is anything – if it hopes to be anything – it must be unique in its vision and execution.

Easy, right?

Ha!

This little light of mine

More Heady Bullshit:

Henrik Juel, an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Roskilde University, working from some ideas borrowed from Eric Barnow’s contribution in Documentary - a History of the Non-Fiction Film (Oxford University Press, 1974) says:

A documentary film can be seen to function as a prophet - explorer - painter - advocate - bugler - prosecutor - observer - catalyst - guerrilla - performer - therapist - spin doctor. (I once misspelled "bugler" as "burglar," but perhaps that might be another possibility for the filmmaker.)

I like that.

I like that we as doc filmmakers have roles to perform, and also our films serve functions outside of our involvement.

And NONE of this should EVER be considered while making a doc.

Definition of a Doc

There are so many attempts to define what is meant by the term "documentary."

I spend a lot of time thinking about this topic. It consumes me.

So far, this is the best response I've found to define "documentary":

"A term with a wide latitude of meaning, basically used to refer to any film or program not wholly fictional in nature."--James Monaco, The Dictionary of New Media, p. 94.

At last, I can move on.

Baby Steps

Today, as I was editing the scene of Stu talking to the Winter Spring high school students, I couldn’t find a particular quote I remember Stu saying about how he never underestimates the intelligence of young people. I wanted to use the quote as a VO at the top of the scene.

I know he made this statement during an interview we did several months ago, but for some reason I didn’t ingest the footage.

After searching (for about twenty minutes) through various (unlabeled) tapes, I gave up looking for the clip, and it forced me to edit the scene without it. In the long run, the scene benefits from not having the quote because it obeys my golden rule of showing and not telling.

However, I did come across a piece of video of Stu, in an unguarded moment, talking on his cell phone to Sarah Jane and giving her directions to his house. This was the day Sarah Jane and Stu rehearsed their scenes while sitting at Stu’s kitchen table.

Now what is interesting is that in my edited footage, of their rehearsal, I begin the scene with a slightly flustered Sarah Jane entering Stu’s house saying that she is late because she got lost on the way over. Stu inquires if it is his directions that caused the problem and Sarah is quick to put the blame on herself

Now, I have the scene of him giving those directions. It might not seem like much, but just adding this little extra piece gives the entire scene more flavor, more texture, and more information.

Sometimes the hardest part is just turning the computer on.

I’ve been bad, unforgivably bad, and a sinner of the worst lot – a procrastinator.

It was as if the rock I had been rolling up the hill became too much, and I let it roll back.

Now, let me say this, it is alright: everything is alright. I’m OK, and you’re OK. We made it through the fog, and shall live another day to conquer higher mountains and bigger monsters. Taking time off to hate my film, and despise it like it was the root of all evil has given me a path to the finish line.

I can see clearly now.

I know what to do.

Rebuilding (P.1.1)

Ingesting all of the footage these last few weeks has been a mixed experience for me.

Sometimes I am thrilled about what I’ve shot, but most of the time I curse myself for not following up on an interesting answer to a standard question, or not rolling when it appears the subject is about to get “candid,” or not being more steady with my shot when a subject tells an interesting story.

Staying steady is an issue with the footage more times than I am comfortable saying – the DVX is a great camera (on so many levels), but it is too damn light to hold steady. Maybe this is my limited skills showing through, but a lesson I have learned (way too late for this project) is to stay on sticks.

Something I did learn from my last shooting experience (the 16mm “Blue Noir” shot in 1994!) was to get enough coverage for every scene.

And yet there are those who make my 45 hours of footage look inadequate:

Hank Rogerson shot 160 hours of footage for “Shakespeare Behind Bars,” and Nanette Burstein shot over 1000 hours for “American Teen” just to name two.

In the doc world size might not matter, but quantity does.

Maybe quality matters, also.

-Chris

Rebuilding

Just wanted to let everyone know that as of today (08/04/08), I have about 75% of the footage lost from the old drive back on the new drive.

Slow and steady.

Behind the scenes in-fighting reached a fever pitch last month, and I need a break from such nonsense.

Chris

How to make a doc (P.6)

The reshooting of the second Lear scene was a pivotal event in the making of the doc.

This was the first time we approached the material with both a deeper understanding of the text, and a better understanding of how this scene related to what we wanted to accomplish with the entire film.

It raised the bar and tightened our focus.

Here is the e-mail I sent Stu right before the shoot:


Stu,

I would like to drive (with you) over to the location, so I can film (and interview you) on the way.

I think I mentioned this before, and if not, I will mention it here; I envision this version of the Lear/Goneril scene to be an exercise in restrained rage. Instead of loud, I see you, instead, exploding with a raspy whisper -- in close (uncomfortably close) -- to Goneril's face.

The scene will begin with Goneril coming down the stairs to berate you, and she will stop mid way, and you will be at the bottom of the staircase. As the scene progresses, and your rage increases, you will walk up the stairs. What I am going for here is a visualization of who is in control (first Goneril, and then Lear).

Since this is a two camera shoot, I want to get the rehearsal footage also, and any conversations you and Peg might have to better understand this scene. So, from the car ride to "cut" you are in a documentary!

Also, let's not be shy about what we are doing here when you discuss this on camera, we are cutting out the Fool. And we are not doing this because we don't like Ben; we are doing this to tighten our focus on Lear and Goneril. Maybe mention Nahum Tate's 1681 redaction of a Fool-less Lear. Worth mentioning.

In the finished film, I want to show both versions of this scene, or at least some of the old, some of the table read version, and all of the new.

Lastly, let's start thinking about getting Marion sometime in December. Maybe a scrabble game with the Trubys, Omans... Let's talk about this after we finish on Saturday.

There is a very organic connection to aging within this group of actors (you w/ Marion, Peg and her dad, Adrian and his mother, and I believe Ben mentioned that he was in a care-giving role with his mother. I would like to get footage of all of these relationships if possible.

Talk to you soon.

Chris

How to make a doc (P.5.4)

Behind the scenes tensions were running pretty high at the start of this year.

I was six months into a film and only felt good about one of the three Lear scenes, and I was completely unhappy with all of the interviews I had conducted up to this point. This was a very difficult, and frustrating time because I could feel the weight of the project on my shoulders, but had little idea what the project was about.

It was only after some serious soul searching, and a lot of e-mails back-and-forth between the cast members and myself that I started to get a sense about the real life characters in this movie. Their stories were variations of the Lear story. I was floored by this.

Perhaps the life lesson I have learned from this entire project is the importance of listening. I believe you have to listen to a story (about a hundred times) before you can tell the story like it's your own.

At the moment the project became a film about people -- people who happen to be play-acting King Lear as we enter their lives -- that was when the film found it's story.

The next task, for me, was to convince the Executive Producer of the film that this was the right path to follow.

The following e-mail was his response:



January 20, 2008

Chris and Stu,

After our talk on Thursday and reading through everything, I think we’re now on the same page. As I understand the current concept of the film, it focuses on a group of actors (i.e., Peg, Adrian, Stu, and Sara Jane) who are dealing with issues of aging (or ill) parents while exploring Shakespeare’s vision of aging and family in King Lear. The explicit theme of the film will be to suggest that Shakespeare’s insights have value and relevance in our world by offering us a safe way to talk about issues that profoundly concern us. The more we understand Lear and his daughters, the better we can understand ourselves.

Implicitly, the film will show that as the actors get to know each other better and understand Lear better, they do a better job in bringing the scenes to life. Thus, the second scene is far more powerful than the first and the third (ideally) even better.

While the three scenes offer an obvious structure for a three-part film, I think the key issue now is to identify the scenes that show progression. For example, would seeing Peg taking care of her father be strong at the beginning and seeing him giving her away at the wedding near the end be the direction (i.e., beginning with the challenges and moving towards the underlying affection)?

I believe a film like this will be better as a film than the one we originally planned. But the two clear constraints are that we devoted most of the budget to filming the first and we still need to make the final product something which can be used by various groups as a tool in discussing aging in America.

Socky

How to make a doc (P. 5.3)

Again, I will attempt to show (through an e-mail) how one of "Getting Lear's" most thematically important and poignant scenes happened.

For months I had been making a movie about daughters who didn't take care of their aged father, and right in front of me was a story unfolding about a daughter (Peg) who was taking care of her aged father.

Between takes the actors would talk about what was going on in their lives. These off camera conversations were better than the interviews I had conducted with them because these conversations were candid, natural, and very real.

This was a HUGE revelation to me. They were THEMSELVES when I wasn't rolling. Believe it or not this was when I started to think like a documentary filmmaker.


January 14, 2008


Peg,


Thanks for your continued support and involvement with our little Lear project.

Not only has the project evolved into something much tighter, and much richer (in the narrative sense) than I had first imagined, but I feel like I've evolved along with it (well, Lear and watching 300 docs has been a crash course in doc making!)

Anywhoo, your conversation, during Friday's lunch, about getting your dad into the assisted care facility (and out of the nursing home) struck me as something I would like to capture in the film. It seems like there is a series of (bureaucratic) hoops and maneuvers you and your brother need to do in order to make the deal go down. The good part of the story is that if all goes right, your dad will be in a much better situation than the nursing home. This is so relevant to the "Getting Lear" thesis.

Let me know if you (and your father and brother) would be OK documenting this process, and then we can start communicating on how to capture it on tape.

Let me know your thoughts.

All my best.

Chris

How to make a doc (P.5.2)

Stu wrote this essay on why he decided to play Lear. I found it very useful for my own inspiration and would refer back to it often when I needed to be reminded why I was making this film.


My playing Lear happened as a result of several decisions and conditions.

At first, when we thought about this project it seemed relatively easy. We would do three scenes, interview people we respected who were growing old and have them respond to the scenes we portrayed, alternating the interviews and scenes using overlaid questions as a narrative to unite the piece. The more we did this, the more incoherent, and pedantic the results seemed.

And even as simple as the idea was, the thinness of our original budget seemed to tell us we could not accomplish even this goal. We wanted a valuable and dramatic provocative piece and this was not it.

Then as we put together our small acting company of five we realized that the story we wanted to tell was contained in the lives of the actors themselves. All but one were middle aged or older, all finding themselves dealing in their own ways and lives with the issues of aging and family. The relevance we were looking for was them.

I was semi-retired, having just turned sixty seven, having just experienced a bout of a semi serious illness that comes mostly with age and with the growing need and pressures to help my wife take care of her aging mother. Another member of the cast was caring for his 96 year old mother and still another was trying to move her father from one nursing facility to a better one and along the way becoming an expert on the health system in America for the elderly.

As a teacher of Shakespeare, I had always insisted with my students that the only way for them to really even begin to know a character was to inhabit him or her, making an honest effort to discover what the character was feeling by speaking and feeling the words, the emotions evoked by those words and the physical actions compelled by them.

I needed to heed my own advice. If we were to make an honest and hopefully helpful film we would make a documentary drama that intertwined the lives of our actors as people, artists and the questions raised by this great play that touched on aging, decision making and the impact of these on family and friends.

Too, I would have to make a big leap of faith and take on myself the role of Lear. I had acted and directed my whole career, but had never done any role that even approached him. There isn’t any. It took my colleague in this project, Maurice O’Sullivan, to convince me to try. And, of course, as with all under funded arts projects by my doing this, assuming I could do so successfully, we would save the salary we’d budgeted for the role and use the funds for something else. And we would have to raise more funding.

It was a huge gamble. But at 67 when would I ever have an opportunity like this again?

How to make a doc (P.5.1)

*This is an e-mail I sent to Fred Zara about six months ago. I am sharing it now, because it represents an important turning point for me on this project. It was the point when I realized that the doc needed a story.

As it turned out, the story I was trying to create back then is not the story I am editing today. Funny how certain forced ideas, re-created scenes, and all out artifice on my part were the first casualties of the editing process.

Having said that, I should also say that it is my belief that this was the right track for me to be on. Filmmakers need to always be thinking about the story they are telling.

Fred,

Hope all went well in Tampa.

I've been shooting a lot for Lear and would like to ingest the footage (maybe on the new hard-drive) at some point. Maybe I could come over some evening, for an hour or two and just ingest -- and you can pretend that I am not even there.

I had several thoughts about how this project is going, and how it might possibly come together.

Before I bring up my new thoughts, I think this might be a good place for me to tell you to stop editing -- for now -- until the new footage is at your disposal.


THE STORY:

About a week ago, I think I realized my "Getting Lear" storyline. I think all good docs should have a storyline - a journey from point A to B. For the longest time, I didn't think this doc would have one, but now I do. Well, I did have a story -- we put it on the first page of the web site -- but I didn't know how to tell that story.

I want the doc to join Stu and the gang as they plan, rehearse and eventually shoot the last scene (the "on my knees" scene). The drama will come from the fact that the production has run out of money (true) and needs Marion (95 years old!) to provide the money for the last shoot. Stu will pursue the money as the troupe moves forward with the rehearsal of the scene.

That is the story, and interspliced into this story are the stories of the individual actors.

(Interestingly, Peg is in the process of taking her 85 year old father out of a nursing home, and putting him in an assisted care facility -- a much better situation -- I REALLY want this "sub-plot" in the doc.)

Future shooting plans:

I had a flash of dread, and then resolution this week

It all started (bad) when I was shooting the group scene on Friday. It was too much of the same talky shit (about how smart and wonderful the project was).

So, I told the group (Peg, Stu, Adrian and Sarah Jane) that this was a production meeting (for fuck sake!) and as such Stu would begin the meeting by saying that the film was (only) half way shot, and a major scene needed to be re-shot, and they needed money... etc.

I wanted them to seem like a connected group -- a united front -- that were all working together on this project. I also had them discuss the title, or what "Getting Lear" meant to them.

Perhaps this scene could come early in the doc.

What I realized during this group interview session was that I was going to have to actually DIRECT the doc -- by either telling them what I needed -- or putting them in situations that would force them to REACT.

Otherwise, I'm not going to get the stuff I need to make this a narrative story. Hybrid filmmaking – we have talked about this before.

My e-mails are always way too long!


Chris

How to make a doc (P.4)

Wednesday, July 16, 2008


This week brought disaster, heartache, and frustration to the "Getting Lear" family.

All the clips I ingested, and the hour-plus timeline I assembled, were lost when my Lacie hard drive melted down. First came smoke, then hopes that it was just the power supply and not the drive itself, and lastly came the realization that the hard drive was fucked.

Lacie has a reputation for this kind of thing, but yet I ignored the warnings and threw caution to the wind by not backing my work up.

This type of occurrence might make a lesser man cry, or curse the gods, but rather I stay serene and recognize this for the learning experience that it is, and yet another chance to spend some intimate time with my footage (as I ingest it on to a new hard drive).

This time there will be back-ups, I tell ya.

There is an old I.T. saying that goes like this: "There are two types of people in the world: people who lose data, and people who WILL lose data.


TO BE CONTINUED…

How to make a doc (P.3)

Monday, July 14, 2008


Something I knew going into making "Getting Lear" was that I would have to interview members of the cast multiple times, and sometimes ask them the same questions during different interview sessions. The objective behind interviewing the cast members more than once was based on my desire to have them comfortable -- being themselves -- in front of the camera.

My first attempts at creating a comfortable environment were undone by my insistence that they answer every question by re-stating the question and then proceeding with their answer. This was both awkward and a conversation killer.

My reasons for making them repeat the question was to create the illusion that the filmmaker was not in the room and make each answer a clear response to a particular question asked by no one in particular.

This gigantic misstep grew out of my not wanting to inject myself into my own film.

After recently having sat on a film festival selection committee, I was very familiar with the "filmmaker as subject" genre of documentary that is pervasive among novice doc filmmakers.

More times than I can count I encountered docs about the filmmaker confronting some family issue, or crisis, or demon, with a camera being used as the tool for healing. More often than not, the results are self-indulgent and the opportunity to tell an interesting story is missed.

Personal doc filmmaking, like good memoir writing, requires a strong voice and an even stronger sense of story.

Perhaps the blame for these personal films falls evenly on the shoulders of Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock, but the origins of this type of doc goes back to Ross McElwee's 1986 masterpiece "Sherman's March."

All three of these filmmakers are masters of their own voice, and are more than willing to play the fool in their own films.

Having said that, I should also add that Fred's film "Average Community" (that I'm co-producing) is (in my biased opinion) a film that succeeds at allowing the filmmaker to be a part of the story because it is from his VHS footage of twenty years ago that he unravels the mysteries of time and uncovers the truth -- by reconciling the fuzzy VHS images of his youth with the reality of today -- powerful stuff.


TO BE CONTINUED...

How to make a doc (P.2)

Sunday, July 13, 2008


Docs, as much as I love them, are creatures of convention.

More often than not a doc will use:

1. Interview
2. Voice over
3. Montage

Documentary drinking games can be based around this holy trinity of non fiction storytelling.

And each of these three conventions has their own subcategories and in some cases the subcategories have subcategories.

Take, for example, the INTERVIEW. It would be hard going to find a doc that doesn't use some form of interviewing technique as a means of unfolding the story. A doc without interviews would be a very interesting idea if it didn't come off as a surveillance video.

(Can you list any documentary that doesn't use interviews? I can't come up with any right now.)

Last week, when I was shooting my fourth interview with Peg O'Keef for "Getting Lear," Peg mentioned how frequently the "car interview" is used in docs.

The "moving vehicle interview" would fall into an interview subcategory, but that doesn't diminish its importance as a form and/or technique of interviewing.

Peg felt that people were much more apt to be confessional while they were driving because they didn't have to make eye contact.

I would agree, but would add that the moving vehicle interview works well in documentary because it gives the interviewee something to do (drive) and someplace to go (the destination) while talking.


To Be Continued...

How to make a doc (P.1)

Sunday, June 29, 2008


They Shoot Horses....


After more than a year of shooting it looks like "Getting Lear" is finally taking form and coming together as a cohesive piece. It is not the film we set out to make (thank god), but rather something much looser and quirkier.

I still don't know if it will amount to anything, or if anyone will want to see it, but my pointed efforts, on this project, have all been aimed at attempting to capture something – something elusive – and show that failure, fear, and learning are all a part of the creative process.

I've spent thousands of dollars, and hundreds of hours on this project. I've sacrificed friendships, relationships, vacation time, and a graduate degree to see this project move from pre-production to post-production.

I say this not for sympathy or credit, but because it is the truth.

Every step of the way, I've questioned if it all was worth it.

I have no answer.

However, I must give praise where praise is due, and say that Fred Zara has been my rock (and my producer/editor). The film would not have happened without him.

"Getting Lear" will be finished this summer.