The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

Harlan County U.S.A.
117
Can you give me an example? Was somebody in the middle of one of
your films getting cold feet? How do you work through that?
James: The example that springs to mind was when on Hoop Dreams
Arthur was kicked out of Saint Joe’s. That was a point in time where he
felt very embarrassed that he was kicked out of school—that his family
couldn’t afford to pay their part of the tuition. That he’d been rejected by
the school in a sense, and he was sent back to the public school in Chicago
at Marshall. It wasn’t that they at that point said, “I don’t want you to film
anymore,” but there was this belief that we wouldn’t be interested anymore
once he was no longer at Saint Joe’s—that he was a failure. And since he was
a failure, why would we be interested? The fact that we remained interested
and committed to the film, but also the story, meant something to them.
It happened again with that family, when Arthur’s dad was out of the
home, running the streets and getting in trouble. They went on welfare and
got their power turned off. These were moments when I remember I talked
to Sheila, Arthur’s mother, at some length about what we were doing at
that point—how I thought and hoped people would perceive them—and
about allowing us to continue to film in the midst of that. There was a lot of
embarrassment, a lot of feeling. She said on the phone and then later in the
film, “I’ve never been on welfare before, so people are going to look at this
and think that’s the kind of person I am and think bad of us.” It’s at those
moments where if you have a good foundation with your subjects, then it
allows you to move on. I think with Barbara—perfect example—she had
been in the trenches with those folks. She had put herself on the line with
those folks. I’m sure that was in their thoughts, too, and trust allowed them
to go on because they knew how committed she was to telling their story
and to telling the real story. I’m sure it deepened her relationship to the
subjects as a result. It’s an unfortunate tragedy. You don’t wish for anything
like that to happen. But just like it can deepen relationships in real life, it
can deepen relationships between filmmakers and subjects.
Some journalists have said that reporting a story is like a romance, but
once the story is published, often the honeymoon is over. I get the sense
from documentary filmmakers that this is not the case—that after the
film is done, you become part of their lives.