The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

120 Steve James
give-and-take, then I don’t know what you’re going to get. He comes out of
that pure verité tradition where he goes in and documents an institution or
a situation and just films everything in sight for a period of months—whatever
happens in front of him. He gets terrific things out of that. Wiseman’s
films are not character-driven. Individual people aren’t at the center of those
stories. When people are, then you’ve got to build a relationship about trust.
It’s not coming in and saying, “I’m filming—yea or nay?”
Is this kind of film even possible anymore, given the changes in culture
and the presence of reality TV?
James: I thought about that as I was watching it. I think that we live in a culture
now in which there’s so much media savvy or media awareness. I don’t
know that people are more savvy about media, but they’re just much more
aware, and aware of this whole notion of performance. As a result people are
also more suspicious. It gets harder for people to be willing to let someone
come in and just film in the way that Harlan County U.S.A. films. People
want to know more these days, “What are you doing and why? What is this
going to say?” They ask some of those harder questions. Many years ago with
Harlan County U.S.A. and even when we were doing Hoop Dreams, there
was more general acceptance that if you were interested enough to come
and film, people would let you. If you seemed to be genuinely interested in
what was going on and could convey that, people were more trusting. That’s
changed a lot. This is not deeply symbolic, but it is symbolic. When I go to
the West Side of Chicago now to film, I can’t just go there and film people on
the streets without going up to those folks and explaining what I’m doing,
why, and what I want it for. Oftentimes they’ll be receptive; not always. But
if you try to just stop and film those things, people get angry. They don’t just
accept that the media has this right to tell their story and take their picture.
It’s really kind of an interesting shift that I’ve seen. It’s not necessarily a bad
thing. I think subjects are being much more aware of the media and what the
media can do and will often do.
Or even people just performing. They see that a camera’s on and—
James: It becomes a performance. I think it’s one of the reasons why a lot
of documentary filmmakers are shooting abroad. I’m sure a big part of it