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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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(Continued from Page One)
You seem a little worse for wear, so we’ll start with a softball. What are you looking for in an interview - both giving and receiving?
I don’t know, it’s like a conversation, you should be engaged. There should be something interesting going on. You’re connecting in some way with a person.
Which is what it sounds like you’re trying to do with the Interrotron. The Interrotron – it sounds like such a very ominous thing...
It’s not really ominous, it’s actually perhaps one of the few smart ideas I’ve ever had. It works just fine. People have never really objected to it and I don’t think they even know it, they just love it. I mean look how it worked with McNamara. He turned out to be a really interesting, really personable human being and also really dramatic. Everybody was struck in that first interview with his ability to recall stuff and how much he’s there – I mean he’s completely there, he’s overwhelmingly there at 85 years of age.
A lot of your films - “Mr. Death,” “Brief History of Time,” “Heaven’s Gate,” “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control” – all tend to focus at some point in time around cycles of life and death. Do you consider filmmaking to be your religion?
Well, no, but I do like it and filmmaking has definitely been a godsend. I also think its bizarre – I mean I’ve had a very odd career. I’m a person who actually continues to work despite a lot of obstacles.
This film was very odd to me because I had Sony’s support from the early on. Not at the very beginning, but after I had done the first interview with McNamara, I had their support. Most of the things I’ve done, I’ve had very little support and I’ve had to really struggle to find the money just to finish the film. That was certainly the case with “The Thin Blue Line,” true of “Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control.” With “Mr. Death,” I had IFC behind me and with this one I had Sony. It was much easier as a result.
It’s odd – people ask me if I’d recommend being this kind of a filmmaker and I’m not sure. I can’t make a living doing it.
Would you ever want to make a living doing it?
Of course I would.
Even if that meant sacrificing certain aspects of what you wanted to be doing?
I think not probably. I had one experience a long time ago dealing with Hollywood on a Hollywood movie (“Dark Wind”). The only reason I can see doing this is because you get to make something that’s connected to you. And to just simply do something to be a director for hire or to do work for hire – I can do commercials. They’re very lucrative and they can be done relatively quickly and it leaves me time to do other things. But I would like to do bigger pictures.
You make the vast majority of your money doing commercial work, much of which, lately, has used the Interrotron. I was wondering if you had been approached by anyone looking to use the technology without your involvement.
Yes, of course. Usually I’m not interested. I mean I suppose if people want to do it they’ll go ahead and do it. I did these commercials for Apple last year – I did their whole campaign. And all of that was done on the Interrotron. I’d also done this movie for the Academy, which Steve Jobs had seen at the Academy Awards, so he hired me. Since that campaign, I don’t know how many people have approached me looking to do the same white site work with the Interrotron commercials and there have been I don’t know how many campaigns (at least half a dozen or more) that I’ve turned down. It’s just not the Interrotron, though I’d like to think maybe it is. There is some sort of directing involved. There is a reason for me to be there.
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001: Errol Morris
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