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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 Three)
You’re there...
Well, the other thing is there are lenses that I work with all the time with 35. They're these Lyca lenses, these long lenses that have been retrofitted for film. Am I a lens freak? I'm definitely a lens freak. They're these wonderful lenses for 35 and the minute they start building a Hi-Def a camera that can take 35 size lenses, that has a 35 size chip, I thing everything is going to change even more rapidly.
The first time “Fog of War” was screened, which was at Cannes, we didn’t have a print. We were racing to get the film ready for the screening and they’ve got digital projection at Cannes, and so we digitally projected the film. And that’s clear, it’s very, very clear to me that digital projection will take over because it’s just an improvement. Just a clear improvement and the question when you do something like that is why can’t we just do something like that all the time.
What are you working on now, besides promoting your film?
Lots of things. I’ve already started another film, but so as not to jinx it, I try not to talk about it.
In your lecture, you mentioned that you were focused on film as a form of self-expression, that you were always trying to “re-invent the film” with your work. Is re-invention a keyword in your latest work?
It is actually. It’s trying to figure out how to do something different. I mean, it’s not like all of my films have been radically different. I think “Fast, Cheap” is very different – it’s hard to point to another film that’s really quite like it. I think this film, although it may not be obviously, stylistically evident -- this film is also very different. I can’t think of a film that tries to create this subjective portrait of one person through speech. I think my films are all an honest attempt to do something novel.
In "Fast, Cheap..." you managed to combine so many disparate subjects into one documentary...
We had so much trouble editing that film, for many of the reasons why movies usually have one story instead of four. How do you make them into one story and preserve the uniqueness of each of the four stories and make some sort of drama that was really still watchable? It was a very, very hard movie to edit. I remember one of my editor friends said while we were making the film they didn’t think it was ever going to work. Now, much to his surprise, that when people talk about editing they talk about how to take a “Fast, Cheap” approach to it.
In the past you actually worked as a private investigator. How’d you get into that racket?
Just a need to make a living.
And you’re still doing it right?
No, not recently. I guess I am doing it in a way. I got the money to make “The Thin Blue Line” and I said “thank God, I don’t have to be an investigator any more. And that, of course, turned out not to be true.”
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Written by Richard Sharp
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001: Errol Morris
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