Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here. My admiration for the works of Errol Morris knows no bounds. Watching Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel on their old "Sneak Previews" show on PBS review Morris' first film, GATES OF HEAVEN, was probably the singular moment that made me curious about documentaries. Actually seeing the film, got me hooked on them. Since then, Morris has placed me in a constant state of awe at his works, his skills a visual artist, and his ability to peel away the layers of his subjects to get to the truth of every story they tell. Not content to simply show us talking heads looking slightly off camera, Morris invented a teleprompter-like interviewing system (affectionately known as the Interrotron) that allows his subjects to look directly into the camera and see Morris' face; in turn, Morris sees his subjects the same way on his monitor. By having these people look into the camera while they tell their tales, it's as if they are addressing audience members directly. It also feels creepily like we're eavesdropping on a confession. We aren't just hearing a story; we're being told the story directly. There's a reason that Morris' glorious television series was called "First Person."

Through the years, Morris has attempted to show us the human condition (VERNON, FLORIDA; FAST, CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL) and profile extraordinary or notorious humans (A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME; MR. DEATH; and his Oscar-winning THE FOG OF WAR). He also changed history in his own small way with THE THIN BLUE LINE, in which he solves a crime for which the wrong man was convicted. His latest work, STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE, is perhaps his most immediate and critical as deep a look into the horrors of Abu Ghraib. We've all seen the photos of the torture and humiliation that went on there, but do we now the whole story? Morris is guessing we don't. Morris never tries to convince us that what went on in that prison camp was justifiable or that the soldiers that carried out these actions deserve sympathy, he does demand that we get just a little pissed off that the blame for these behaviors stopped with the few low-level soldiers who went to prison.

Through no fault of his own, Errol Morris was one of my most difficult interviews, primarily because I respect Morris' abilities as an interviewer. We may not always hear his voice that much in his films, but it's there; and his ability to draw out his subjects is impressive. When I was conducting this face-to-face interview, I felt nervous about being judged by this master interrogator and was desperate to let Morris see that my limited skills as an interviewer would not be shut down due to nerves. He was a absolute gentleman and a joy to talk to. We begin as soon as I put down my digital recorder on the table in front of him…

Errol Morris: Do you like that recorder?

C: It’s fairly new to me, but I love it. Once I figured out all the bells and whistles…

EM: …all the doohickies.

C: Right. It’s actually pretty astonishing, and the quality is fantastic.

EM: I have one of them. I should use it more.

C: What would you use something like that for?

EM: I record stuff all the time. I interview people, believe it or not, on the phone. I’ve been writing a series of essays for The New York Times, and I use it for that stuff all the time.

C: What are they usually on?

EM: It’s online. It’s called “Zoom,” and I have a whole set of essays on photography.

C: How long have you been doing that?

EM: Since last fall. You should read it. It’s really pretty much on the meaning of photographs and the meaning of photography.

C: I shall. So, as someone who has been making documentary films as long as you have, what do you think of the current documentary film landscape? I guess it’s a good thing that there seems to be one coming out every week, as opposed to--not even that long ago--when you got, maybe, five in a year of any quality. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

EM: I think it’s a good thing, yeah. When GATES OF HEAVEN came out in 1978, it’s 30 years ago now, there was no theatrical distribution of documentaries. It was unheard of. Now, I don’t know how many documentaries are put into theatrical distribution in any given year, but it’s not a small number. There are a lot of them, and there are a lot of different kinds of documentaries.

When GATES OF HEAVEN came out, I think there was just simply this idea that documentary is supposed to be one thing. It’s supposed to be a kind of TV journalism or cinema verité, and this old tradition of documentary filmmaking that goes back really to the beginnings of film was lost--the idea of documentary being experimental, the idea of it being expressionistic. All of that has come back, you might even say, with a vengeance. There are all kinds of nonfiction films being made. It’s a mistake almost to think of it as one category, because the category is so incredibly diverse.

C: Do you have a preference, do you have favorites? I mean, there’s the Fred Wiseman style--complete observational, no narration, no interviews--versus Morgan Spurlock, who is the focus of his documentaries. Do you think one is better than the other?

EM: There’s no technique that I prefer. It’s not an issue of, you know, I want to check ‘A’ and ‘B’ in the technique column as being good or bad. All of it is a set of techniques that you can use in telling a story.

Fred Wiseman is a friend of mine, and I have admired his films for as long as I myself have been interested in film. He’s one of my heroes, He’s a great example of someone who uses verité technique in service of the wackiest kind of expressionistic vision. I think people often make that mistake of thinking that because the films are “observational” that they aren’t personal, they aren’t unique. No, he’s one of my very, very favorite filmmakers. And, someone who comes out of the tradition of the Theater of the Absurd. I mean, I think of Beckett when I think of Fred Wiseman. There are all kinds of films out there. I’m also partial to the films of Ross McElwee.

C: …who’s another filmmaker who works his subject through his own life.

EM: That’s correct. He’s a central figure in all of his films, and in many ways, what Michael Moore and what Morgan Spurlock have done is an offshoot of [McElwee's] SHERMAN’S MARCH. The whole idea of a film being a diary or built around the experiences of one central individual who is commenting on them as he goes along.

C: As I've interviewed documentary filmmakers over the years, I've always gotten a sense that--certainly more than in any other segment of the filmmaking community-- there’s a network, a sense of family, and it’s much more closely knit. Is that the case? Certainly, when you won your Oscar, it seemed like there was general excitement among other documentary filmmakers, like, "Finally!" Do you get a sense of that, or are you outside?

EM: I think I’m pretty much an outsider….I’m in my own corner. Films are hard to make, and they’re labor intensive. I mean, you have this sort of picture of a hootenanny, which I don’t really think is true.

C: [Laughs] Not quite like that. It’s more a series of phone calls.

EM:…people getting together and singing “Kumbaya.”

C: A weekly gathering!

EM: Not in my experience.

C: In your films, do you enjoy editing the more chronologically based films more than, maybe, the more free-form things you’ve done, where it’s more an artist’s piecing together.

EM: It’s an artist piecing it together, regardless.

C: True. Does having a chronology make it easier?

EM: I think it actually makes it much harder. I think it’s much, much harder. I had a chronology in STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE. It was a way of structuring the story of these photographs, how they were taken, when they were taken. But, chronology never follows the dictates of drama. You’re left with the problem of actually turning something which is fact-based into something that works as a movie. And, the more restrictions that are placed on that, the harder it is, absolutely.

C: It may not be easier, but it’s something you enjoy more, putting something together however you feel like it, rather than having the structure?

EM: I don’t think it’s ‘A’ or ‘B’. I think they’re both challenging.

C: When did you decide that it was okay to hear your voice in your films?

EM: THE THIN BLUE LINE, because I was at the very end of the movie, talking to David Harris on that tape recording that was made of my final interview with him. It worked very powerfully, and from that point on, I put a little bit of myself in each one of the films.

C: Was that more out of necessity, or did you just decide to do it?

EM: That was a necessity in that particular instance, yes.

C: But, you thought that it worked well enough that you would continue doing it?

EM: Yeah, I thought it was very powerful.

C: You don’t do it excessively, ever, but when you do it I always wonder, Why is he doing it there? In STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE, I noticed there was this one burning question that I know everyone in the audience had--and you just asked it. And, it made me think that I needed to go back and look at your older films to see if you pull that out when everytime the burning question is right there.

EM; What was the question? Do you remember?

C: It was to one of the women. I don’t remember. I’m sure I even have it in my notes, because it might be one of the only times that we hear your voice. I don’t hear it that much in this film, maybe two or three times that I can remember.

EM: [laughs] It’s about 10 times, actually.

C: Is it really?! I never would have guessed that, which I guess is good, if I’m not noticing it. With STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE, you’re actually tackling a subject that is in a sense ongoing--not this particular incident or these incidents that you’re chronicling--but the war is still happening, the wounds are still fresh. It’s a little different than what you have done before.

EM: Absolutely, yes.

C: Is there anything you have to do differently, then? I mean, there was just something in the paper yesterday or the day before about Dick Cheney maybe knew more or approved of these things more than he'd admitted in the past. I mean, it’s still something that’s very critical.

EM: It’s still very much a news story, as we speak.

C: Right. Do you approach something that’s timely like this in a different manner?

EM: No, but I think it’s harder, because people have so many opinions about what’s going on. Even the attempt to look at a story that people are more than familiar with--these photographs have been seen more than any other photographs in history. And, it’s telling people there’s a side to a story that they think they know, but they might not know.

That is different, that’s tricky. THIN BLUE LINE, no one knew, no one cared. I could just wander into the story. It wasn’t as if I was fighting against someone. Yes, the police had their version of what had happened, but it wasn’t as if hundreds of millions of people were invested in seeing the war one way or another. And, that’s what’s happened in this country. It’s happened really throughout the world. This war, among other things, has deeply polarized this country, horribly polarized this country.

C: The photos, as you’ve said, we’ve all seen them. I know you’ve talked before about your job being to always find the truth. Here, you seem just as intent on placing those photos in their context, which is the thing that most people do not understand.

EM: Yes.

C: Why do think that’s important?

EM: Because I think we don’t understand Abu Ghraib, and I don’t think we understand the role that these soldiers played in taking the photographs, I think that the photographs are misunderstood. To me, it’s important that we confront and we deal with what has happened in Iraq.

C: You’re talking about this particular thing or the whole situation?

EM: This thing is one small piece of a gigantic puzzle, but it’s an important piece. It’s the only way I know of starting. I look at something very specific, I try to learn something new and unexpected, and I think some of the things that I learned are deeply resonant with respect to the whole conflict.

C: The two women, I think they were the most demonized in the mainstream media as a result of these photos. How did you approach them to do this? Why would they ever agree to have this picked apart in this much detail, and be the ones who were actually picking it apart?

EM: I wanted to listen to their stories, I’m a good listener. I think people talk to me because no one else has talked to them in that way. In the past, I believe, they’ve just been approached for sound bites. People consider them to be monsters, and that’s it. And, I was quite interested in telling quite a different kind of story about them. I hope they like it!

C: Have you heard? I know The New Yorker just ran your big piece on the Middle East in the context of your film.

EM: Yes. It’s written by me and Philip Gourevitch.

C: So, have they seen it? Do they have an opinion on it?

EM: They liked it, yes.

C: Have you been accused yet of trying to look at people like this too sympathetically?

EM: Of course it has. I don’t think I am too sympathetic. Yeah, I’m interested in all of them. I don’t see them as lily white. I don’t see them as blameless, but I certainly don’t see them as the heart of the problem.

C: If there’s one thing you learn from the film, it’s certainly that they’re in the photos, but it’s the people outside the photos who are at least as culpable for what’s going on there.

Let me shift gears here. I was a huge follower of “First Person”…

EM: Oh, really!

C: Oh, yeah. I got the DVDs, the whole thing…What I remember most about it when it ran originally was…

EM: I thought no one saw it when it first ran.

C: Oh, no, no. And, I’ll prove that I saw it, because I remember that the episode about the plane crash, it was two parts…

EM: Yeah, they divided it in half.

C:…the first part ran either on or right around, I mean, right before or after September 11, and then I never saw the second part. They didn’t run it, that I remember, at least not when it was supposed to run, and I had to wait for the DVD.

EM: They screwed up the whole…

C: Am I remembering that right?

EM: I think there was some massive screwup in so many different ways. They didn’t really promote it. They didn’t seem to be terribly interested in it. And, I’m anxious to do it again, actually. I kind of like that format, the half-hour, one-hour format.

C: I always believed that the series was sort of a clearinghouse for subjects you were interested in that, maybe, you didn’t think would warrant the full-length feature treatment. You always structured each episode like little mysteries, and I always wondered why am I supposed to care about this person, and, of course, you eventually reveal it, in your own way. That particular episode I remember, because I never saw the second part until I got the DVD.

EM: It’s a particularly good one, I think.

C: It’s great! It’s probably my favorite one, not just because of that, but it really had a level of suspense that I don’t remember the other ones having quite as much.

EM: It’s a pretty amazing story. Denny Fitch.

C: And, you used that guy in commercials that you did for…

EM: Well, I was…where was I? I was at this little-known airport, O’Hare, scheduled to do commercials for United Airlines. They had a scripted commercial. The lines were all written out. Various different employees at United are going to say the lines. We’re scouting at O’Hare. Bush comes on television, announcing the beginning of the war in Afghanistan. And, the airport’s closed. All of our locations have been thrown out.

Now, there’s a deal in commercials. If they tell you too late, and they have to send you home, they have to pay you anyway. So, this was very late in the game. They were going to send us home. I was going to get paid anyway. And, I actually wanted, for whatever reason, I wanted to interview the United Airlines employees and to create commercials. So, I talked them at the last minute into renting a studio. And, we set up right here, right outside of O’Hare, we set up. We got all of these…across the board--pilots, copilots, navigators, flight attendants, customer service representatives, on and on and on and on.

And, I insisted…part of the reason I did it, I think, is because I had just, not so long ago, interviewed Denny Fitch. And, so I insisted that they bring Denny in as one of the United pilots. And, they said, “Oh, no, no, no, no. We can’t do that. He crashed an airplane.” I said, “No, no…no, no, no. Wait a second here. He did not ‘Crash. An. Airplane’. Denny Fitch ‘comma’ Hero! Denny Fitch landed an airplane that under any other circumstances would have been totally destroyed, killing everybody on board.”

Would I get into an airplane with Denny Fitch? Are you kidding me? Any day of the year! So, finally, they relented, and he came in. And, he’s part of those commercials, and it was an honor to see him again. And, I remember--I’ll never forget this--I wanted to interview United employees, because I thought this is a company that has been really directly touched by 9/11. It was one of their airplanes that went into the World Trade Center. There can’t be a single person who works for this company who doesn’t have very strong feelings about what happened, and I want to be there to listen to them.

Denny Fitch was very moving, and I remember him telling me--I think it’s on camera, I can’t remember, it’s a while back now--but I remember him telling me, “They were able to pull that trick once, ’cause people didn’t know what to expect. “They had no way of knowing what would happen,” he said. “But, that’s never going to happen again, and it’s never going to happen on my watch.”

C: Wow…And, so you were actually able to construct a commercial using that.

EM: Oh, there were many. They were very, very successful and very popular. They were very moving. There’s the example of getting a New Yorker cartoon out of the series of ads: There’s a guy, his wife is saying to him, “Dear, you can stop crying. It’s just a United commercial.”

C: When you were talking before about interviewing all those employees, it reminded me of what you did for last year’s Oscars, the opening film you did.

EM: Sure.

C: I had no confirmation other than my own knowledge of your films that that was your doing, that film. I think even at one point, I heard your voice pop up in the film, and that was my confirmation. What was that like?

EM: Four days. Three or four days of nonstop stuff.

C: …Just being star-struck every so often? Did you get a little overwhelmed?

EM: I don’t think star-struck so much as just overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of material that I had to produce. I had to do all the nominees. And, I was in the middle of shooting STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE. So, I went from Abu Ghraib to the Academy Award film and then back again.

C: Were there people that you talked to who were fans, that knew who you were instantly?

EM: Oh, yeah. I think lots of them. Not that I really can remember, but it was a lot of fun to do. It was really interesting.

C: We were talking before about capturing truth. Do you have to be objective to capture the truth in a film? Or, can you just have truth be the initiative?

EM: You have opinions, you inevitably have opinions about everything. You pursue the truth, you don’t hand the truth over to people. You don’t hand objectivity over to people. You strive for certain kinds of things: you try to come up with new evidence, new facts, new material.

C: When you entered into STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE, was it--I’m trying to think of all the subjects you’ve tackled in the past--was this one of the more difficult ones to get past the public perception? Was your mind altered by the discussions with these soldiers?

EM: Of course it was, yes.

C: Radically?

EM: I mean, just think of how Lynndie England has been represented in the press. She’s been called a moron, retarded, a hillbilly, this, that and the other thing. She comes into the studio, she’s perfectly articulate. She is telling a story that is very powerful. I mean, everybody was amazed, everybody was shocked.

C: Honestly, I didn’t even recognize her at first …That’s how much of a shock it was for me, seeing her. Her hair is longer, she looks softer than she does in those photos. I guess that’s one of the things you’re going for.

EM: I guess. It’s certainly part of it.

C: When you’re conducting an interview I’ve noticed that at the end of an answer you don’t jump right in when there’s a silence. And, that’s an old interviewer’s trick, I’ve seen it done many times. And, sometimes, it’s in that silence that the subject tries to fill that space, and you get these great nuggets of information.

EM: Yes, often it is.

C: Where did you learn that?

EM: I think I just learned it by doing it. I don’t think there’s a school you go to that is going to say…You just go out there, and you do it. I was interviewing people even before I became a filmmaker. It’s something that fascinates me. It still fascinates me after all these years and after all these interviews. I’m engaged by it.

C: Has anyone ever kind of done a ‘stare-down’ with you, just silence for a very long time?

EM: Maybe.

C: I figured [Robert] McNamara [subject of THE FOG OF WAR] would be a little more schooled.

EM: McNamara scared me, because I never knew when he was just going to get up and bolt. But, thank goodness, he stayed.

C: I thought I heard somewhere that that actually had started out as one of your “First Person” episodes.

EM: I interviewed him, because I knew we had already done enough interviews for “First Person” to satisfy our contract requirement. But, we were set up to do more interviews, so I thought, Well, let’s bring McNamara in and see what happens. And then, Bam! there was a movie. Surprise!

C: Do you still use the…

EM: Interrotron. I still use it.

C: What’s the thinking behind it? I know you want them looking at the camera, I guess…

EM: …and at me, at the same time.

C: What does that look like from your end?

EM: The same deal, symmetrical. Prompters, video images, half-silvered mirror--same deal.

C: Why not just face to face? Because they won’t be able to look right at the camera?

EM: Correct. Doesn’t preserve eye contact.

C: That’s something you invented?

EM: Yes, I did.

C: I love that. I actually saw it once, but I don’t really think I ever saw how it worked.

I asked you before about whether “First Person” was actually a clearinghouse for ideas that you didn’t think would pan out as full-fledged features.

EM: I think it is accurate. I would describe it slightly differently. I would say, ‘Look, I have lots and lots and lots of ideas. If I sit around and wait to make a feature film and get the money to make a feature film, they're never going to happen. Let’s see what we can do. Let’s see what we can make out of this.” Probably, my favorite of all of them is “One in a Million Trillion,” the story of Rick Rosner, and I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. It’s the guy from "Who wants to be a millionaire?", who was the guy with I.Q. over 200. He was going back to high school many, many, many times.

C: Do your films make money?

EM: For somebody. [laughs]

C: I guess what I’m asking is, Do you make money off your films?

EM: No, I make money from directing commercials. That is my livelihood. But, I believe, THE FOG OF WAR did quite well.

C: I’m assuming it must have if any of them did. [I get the sign to wrap things up.] I have to say that it was because of the old, old Siskel & Ebert show that I ever saw GATES OF HEAVEN.

EM: Ah. They were great for me, both of those guys.

C: They were certainly the ones constantly touting your name and your work. So, I’ve been a great admirer of your films ever since. Thanks for sitting down with us.

EM: Thank you so much, absolutely.

Capone