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Exclusively from Chicagofilm.com, watch the University of Chicago lecture by Errol Morris.
Errol Morris Lecture
Recorded: December 3, 2003
Best viewed with Quicktime
6.1+.
(Quicktime Progressive Download)
Running Time is 36:00 Minutes
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Documentary filmmaking's reigning king of experimentation talks about his latest fact-finding mission, "The Fog of War."
It is day three of a visit to Chicago by documentarian Errol Morris. The stay is to include interviews, screenings of his new film “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara,” and a series of lectures at the University of Chicago. In a couple of hours, the National Board of Review will announce that the film has won its newly created “Best Documentary” section for 2003. For now though, he’s been “kept out until one in the morning” the night before “being tortured with questions,” leading to a strangely concurrent set of “flu-like symptoms” and is in definite need of a hearty breakfast.
A self-confessed “obsessive/compulsive interviewer,” few filmmakers can compete with Morris in creativity, achievement and investigative tenacity. From literally saving a man from a Texas electric chair with “The Thin Blue Line” to successfully translating the astrophysical theories of a paralyzed genius (Stephen Hawking) into a surprisingly engaging film with “A Brief History of Time,” he has consistently taken great pains to mold the documentary into strange and beautiful forms.
With “Gates of Heaven” and “Vernon, Florida,” his experiments in setting a camera in front of people for hours and keeping his mouth shut proved that, if given a chance, human beings will most likely say something either profoundly interesting or borderline insane. In “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control,” Morris’ seemingly impossible non-linear non-fiction tapestry focuses on the vastly disparate stories of a lion tamer, robotics expert, topiary gardener and a naked mole rat expert, with fascinating and challenging results.
The director’s latest film, “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara” takes a laser focus to the Vietnam–era Secretary of Defense, relying on exhaustively long takes and interviewing technology of his own invention (the spooky sounding “Interrotron”) to create a painfully honest, unflinchingly subjective portrayal of one of American history’s most demonized figures. As in “Mr. Death,” the story of an execution device designer and Holocaust revisionist, Morris’ home-grown interviewing technology forces the interview subject to look the viewer squarely in the eye, casting a powerfully humanizing patina on an otherwise despicable human being.
As we get started, Morris fights off the accumulated damage of the night before with a plate of eggs, slowly warming to the concept of an interview.
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001: Errol Morris
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