Having Steve James as a creator on a film is sure sign of great quality, which documentaries like Hoop Dreams and Stevie prove. Even when James is producing and editing like he did as with The War Tapes, which is directed by Deborah Scranton, the work is moving and unforgettable. The War Tapes is a documentary where three soldiers go off to fight in the Iraqi War taking video cameras along with them. The footage has been shaped and edited into an unforgettable journey, capturing camaraderie and humor along with the brutal and terrifying experiences they face.
Check out the official site for The War Tapes
Daniel Robert Epstein: The War Tapes is opening today, what are you doing?
Steve James: Actually I live in Chicago and Im teaching a production class up at Northwestern for journalism students to make a documentary. So Im on my way up there now to sit down with them and go through their latest edit of their little film and give them a lot of notes to make it better.
DRE: Did they come up with any good ideas?
SJ: Yeah. But we assigned the topic because this school is on a quarter system so we knew it would be a crazy thing for them to make a half hour film in ten weeks. Therefore we couldnt give them the luxury of going out and finding a subject that they wanted to do and then researching it and shooting it. We needed them to get started right away so we assigned a subject for them to do and gave them some limited choices about where to focus it. Theyve worked very hard to make a film.
DRE: Whats the topic?
SJ: The topic is that Chicago is tearing down all its high-rise public housing. Theyve been doing it for about seven years. Theyre replacing it with mixed income housing to revitalize these neighborhoods and also integrate these neighborhoods both racially and economically. Its a very passionate issue here in Chicago because what happens is that a lot of the public housing residents will never be able to come back. Theyre replacing them with townhouses and low-rise apartment buildings and things like that so there wont be as many units as there once was. So were showing what happens to the people who dont come back and what happens to the people who do come back and try to live in a very different neighborhood. Theyre focusing it on Cabrini Green because its a famous inner city neighborhood in Chicago.
I thought it would be a really good for the students at Northwestern because even though it is in the Big Ten its a very expensive school to attend. Im sure there are some scholarship students that come from poorer backgrounds, but by and large the students that go here come from very middle or higher class families. I thought it would be a really great experience for them to have to plunge themselves into a very different part of the world.
DRE: How did you get involved in The War Tapes?
SJ: I was approached by producer Robert May who was the executive producer of a film that I did called Stevie. He was the guy that made completing the film possible. He came in and acted as executive producer and principle partner of the film. For The War Tapes he came to me, not calling it a favor at all, because he was looking for recommendations for somebody to come in and edit. Then he eventually came back to me and said, How can I get you involved with this to help me produce and edit this movie? So I went and I looked at the material and I really responded to it. I havent edited another persons movie in a long time because Ive just been working on my own films. So it was not a decision that I took lightly but since I was really taken with the material and it was a chance to work with Robert again so I took the leap.
DRE: I was very surprised when I found out you were editing because it must have taken months.
SJ: This project took an entire year of my life. We edited the film for a solid year. Like a lot of these things, it started out to be a smaller commitment. The project mushroomed as these soldiers shot more and more so it turned into a monster, which was one of the reasons why I brought in another editor, Leslie Simmer, to work with me because I realized pretty quickly that there was no way we could deal with this film in a timely fashion. All together there was a 1000 hours of material.
DRE: At what point during editing did you figure out the story?
SJ: I think early on we pretty much figured out that Zack [Bazzi], Mike [Moriarity] and [Steve] Pink were going to be our main soldiers because of those that received cameras, there were five guys that really dedicated themselves to it. Those specific three were really interesting guys because Mike was a gung-ho guy that joined up after 9/11 but who also had very personal reasons of fulfillment that he was trying to work through, then Pink was interesting because he represented a certain type of soldier that I think most people expect soldiers to be, which is a real patriotic guy. We were all fascinated with Zacks footage because his stuff was amongst the funniest and most cynical of what we got. Hes behind the camera for what we call the knives and porn scene where theyre waiting to go over the pontoon bridge early in the film and theres people trying to sell them knives. Zack was fascinating because he was not born in America but in Lebanon so he is fluent in Arabic which was a fascinating aspect.
But for a while there we also tried to see if we couldnt juggle some other soldiers into the mix whose stories were very interesting. At a certain point Robert May stepped up during editing and said look, weve danced around this for quite a while as to whether we just want to just tell these three guys stories or whether we want to fit in other guys as well. So lets just make the decision to tell these three guys stories. That was an important breakthrough. Then the challenge throughout was how do we get the audience to experience this war as personally as possible.
DRE: What are the challenges to doing a documentary when youre giving the cameras to the subjects as opposed to you being there with a cameraman or holding the camera yourself?
SJ: Its a very different kind of challenge but having done a fair amount of documentaries and edited them as well, that challenge was one of the pleasures of working on this. Ill give [director] Deborah [Scranton] credit. She was very attentive to the guys during the process of their deployment via the internet and instant messaging. Theres no question that Deborahs guidance and encouragement helped them understand how they could go about telling their own story.
DRE: Have you ever shot a documentary and looked at all the footage and realized that there was nothing there and it never became a movie?
SJ: It hasnt happened to me yet. Knock wood [laughs]. Anytime youre doing a documentary of this nature, meaning not one thats scripted in which you know the outcome going in or where youre going to interview certain people who will talk about certain issues. In the films Ive been involved with over the years, hardly ever have I interviewed an expert. Theyve always been films that followed the lives of people at important junctures in their lives and I think that thats the key to this kind of filmmaking. If you follow people at a point in their lives thats very important to them you have a built in story right there. Then its up to your skill to manage to capture it as its unfolding and ultimately edit it together. The idea that you could be there at Fort Dix before they left and get a sense of them before theyve even set foot in Iraq and then follow them all the way through their deployment until they come back home. You raise your chances enormously that there will be an interesting story.
DRE: Would you ever do a documentary as personal as Stevie again?
SJ: I dont know that Ill ever do a film any more personal than Stevie. That may be it for me, although every film that I get involved with becomes personal in a way. As I said, Im interested in telling stories where people are facing some important juncture in their lives. Stevie became such a film. Hoop Dreams was that kind of film. Ive always been interested in detailing the personal lives of people and that have something to say about some larger context with the world we live in. Those are the stories that hook me. Thats one of the reasons why reality television has no appeal to me because reality television has trumped up artificial drama and is manipulated for dramatic reasons. Theres no greater canvas that its playing against that tells you anything about the world we live in. It only tells you about how desperate some people are to win a contest.
DRE: Obviously documentaries have taken a huge leap in the past six years or so. Whats the next big step?
SJ: I guess all I can hope is that documentaries can thrive in the way they have. I think that theres a feeling that traditional news media has become both timid to some extent and increasingly untrustworthy by people so more and more people look to documentary. I think the big story in recent years is that the documentary has become a certifiable entertainment commodity in the sense that people who fund them and distribute them believe that they can actually earn a profit. The only worry I have about the future documentary is that because its viewed increasingly as a form of entertainment that it may travel the same path as news traveled because when it became viewed more and more as entertainment, it also became less interesting. As long as documentaries can continue to provoke and take chances then the future is bright for documentary and I fully hope and expect it to be so.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Check out the official site for The War Tapes
Daniel Robert Epstein: The War Tapes is opening today, what are you doing?
Steve James: Actually I live in Chicago and Im teaching a production class up at Northwestern for journalism students to make a documentary. So Im on my way up there now to sit down with them and go through their latest edit of their little film and give them a lot of notes to make it better.
DRE: Did they come up with any good ideas?
SJ: Yeah. But we assigned the topic because this school is on a quarter system so we knew it would be a crazy thing for them to make a half hour film in ten weeks. Therefore we couldnt give them the luxury of going out and finding a subject that they wanted to do and then researching it and shooting it. We needed them to get started right away so we assigned a subject for them to do and gave them some limited choices about where to focus it. Theyve worked very hard to make a film.
DRE: Whats the topic?
SJ: The topic is that Chicago is tearing down all its high-rise public housing. Theyve been doing it for about seven years. Theyre replacing it with mixed income housing to revitalize these neighborhoods and also integrate these neighborhoods both racially and economically. Its a very passionate issue here in Chicago because what happens is that a lot of the public housing residents will never be able to come back. Theyre replacing them with townhouses and low-rise apartment buildings and things like that so there wont be as many units as there once was. So were showing what happens to the people who dont come back and what happens to the people who do come back and try to live in a very different neighborhood. Theyre focusing it on Cabrini Green because its a famous inner city neighborhood in Chicago.
I thought it would be a really good for the students at Northwestern because even though it is in the Big Ten its a very expensive school to attend. Im sure there are some scholarship students that come from poorer backgrounds, but by and large the students that go here come from very middle or higher class families. I thought it would be a really great experience for them to have to plunge themselves into a very different part of the world.
DRE: How did you get involved in The War Tapes?
SJ: I was approached by producer Robert May who was the executive producer of a film that I did called Stevie. He was the guy that made completing the film possible. He came in and acted as executive producer and principle partner of the film. For The War Tapes he came to me, not calling it a favor at all, because he was looking for recommendations for somebody to come in and edit. Then he eventually came back to me and said, How can I get you involved with this to help me produce and edit this movie? So I went and I looked at the material and I really responded to it. I havent edited another persons movie in a long time because Ive just been working on my own films. So it was not a decision that I took lightly but since I was really taken with the material and it was a chance to work with Robert again so I took the leap.
DRE: I was very surprised when I found out you were editing because it must have taken months.
SJ: This project took an entire year of my life. We edited the film for a solid year. Like a lot of these things, it started out to be a smaller commitment. The project mushroomed as these soldiers shot more and more so it turned into a monster, which was one of the reasons why I brought in another editor, Leslie Simmer, to work with me because I realized pretty quickly that there was no way we could deal with this film in a timely fashion. All together there was a 1000 hours of material.
DRE: At what point during editing did you figure out the story?
SJ: I think early on we pretty much figured out that Zack [Bazzi], Mike [Moriarity] and [Steve] Pink were going to be our main soldiers because of those that received cameras, there were five guys that really dedicated themselves to it. Those specific three were really interesting guys because Mike was a gung-ho guy that joined up after 9/11 but who also had very personal reasons of fulfillment that he was trying to work through, then Pink was interesting because he represented a certain type of soldier that I think most people expect soldiers to be, which is a real patriotic guy. We were all fascinated with Zacks footage because his stuff was amongst the funniest and most cynical of what we got. Hes behind the camera for what we call the knives and porn scene where theyre waiting to go over the pontoon bridge early in the film and theres people trying to sell them knives. Zack was fascinating because he was not born in America but in Lebanon so he is fluent in Arabic which was a fascinating aspect.
But for a while there we also tried to see if we couldnt juggle some other soldiers into the mix whose stories were very interesting. At a certain point Robert May stepped up during editing and said look, weve danced around this for quite a while as to whether we just want to just tell these three guys stories or whether we want to fit in other guys as well. So lets just make the decision to tell these three guys stories. That was an important breakthrough. Then the challenge throughout was how do we get the audience to experience this war as personally as possible.
DRE: What are the challenges to doing a documentary when youre giving the cameras to the subjects as opposed to you being there with a cameraman or holding the camera yourself?
SJ: Its a very different kind of challenge but having done a fair amount of documentaries and edited them as well, that challenge was one of the pleasures of working on this. Ill give [director] Deborah [Scranton] credit. She was very attentive to the guys during the process of their deployment via the internet and instant messaging. Theres no question that Deborahs guidance and encouragement helped them understand how they could go about telling their own story.
DRE: Have you ever shot a documentary and looked at all the footage and realized that there was nothing there and it never became a movie?
SJ: It hasnt happened to me yet. Knock wood [laughs]. Anytime youre doing a documentary of this nature, meaning not one thats scripted in which you know the outcome going in or where youre going to interview certain people who will talk about certain issues. In the films Ive been involved with over the years, hardly ever have I interviewed an expert. Theyve always been films that followed the lives of people at important junctures in their lives and I think that thats the key to this kind of filmmaking. If you follow people at a point in their lives thats very important to them you have a built in story right there. Then its up to your skill to manage to capture it as its unfolding and ultimately edit it together. The idea that you could be there at Fort Dix before they left and get a sense of them before theyve even set foot in Iraq and then follow them all the way through their deployment until they come back home. You raise your chances enormously that there will be an interesting story.
DRE: Would you ever do a documentary as personal as Stevie again?
SJ: I dont know that Ill ever do a film any more personal than Stevie. That may be it for me, although every film that I get involved with becomes personal in a way. As I said, Im interested in telling stories where people are facing some important juncture in their lives. Stevie became such a film. Hoop Dreams was that kind of film. Ive always been interested in detailing the personal lives of people and that have something to say about some larger context with the world we live in. Those are the stories that hook me. Thats one of the reasons why reality television has no appeal to me because reality television has trumped up artificial drama and is manipulated for dramatic reasons. Theres no greater canvas that its playing against that tells you anything about the world we live in. It only tells you about how desperate some people are to win a contest.
DRE: Obviously documentaries have taken a huge leap in the past six years or so. Whats the next big step?
SJ: I guess all I can hope is that documentaries can thrive in the way they have. I think that theres a feeling that traditional news media has become both timid to some extent and increasingly untrustworthy by people so more and more people look to documentary. I think the big story in recent years is that the documentary has become a certifiable entertainment commodity in the sense that people who fund them and distribute them believe that they can actually earn a profit. The only worry I have about the future documentary is that because its viewed increasingly as a form of entertainment that it may travel the same path as news traveled because when it became viewed more and more as entertainment, it also became less interesting. As long as documentaries can continue to provoke and take chances then the future is bright for documentary and I fully hope and expect it to be so.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
courtneyriot:
Having Steve James as a creator on a film is sure sign of great quality, which documentaries like Hoop Dreams and Stevie prove. Even when James is producing and editing like he did as with The War Tapes, which is directed by Deborah Scranton, the work is moving and unforgettable. The War Tapes is...