As most commentators agree, the political discourse
in America has risen to levels of paranoid partisan disdain not seen in a many
a generation. The level of anti-Obama
rhetoric coming out of the Republican party is pretty worrying (if not
hilarious in it’s inarticulate nature) and the Democrats are being pretty timid
in trying to combat it – relying mostly on talk show hosts and comedians to
highlight the cracks in right-wing talking points. It is interesting then to see a film released
that looks back at an earlier time of political anger, perhaps indeed the
moment when politics became indelibly ugly…
A new film from the filmmakers Penny Lane
(Director) and Brian Frye (Producer) has used unseen footage filmed by Nixon’s
political advisors to create a fascinating insight into the people that were at
the heart of the Nixon white house. The
very people that obsessively recorded themselves and their surroundings on 8mm
film were the very same people that were drawn into a historic global scandal
based on recorded material – the infamous Watergate recording scandal.
Penny and Brian were kind to answer a few of my
pretentious questions – (I think Brian specifically had had a long day of
questions…)
1. The intro of the
film with the music feels like a ‘70s family sitcom. I assume that is
done on purpose. What did you want to achieve with this introduction of
the film?
Penny
Lane: We wanted to
do a few things with the opening credits. We wanted to establish that this film
was going to look and feel very different from most historical documentaries.
We wanted to establish to the viewer that it was okay to laugh. But we weren't
just being flip in that sequence; Tracey Ullman's rendition of "They Dont
Know" might be kitschy, but it's also a genuinely great song that
resonates on multiple levels, emotionally. We were also trying to represent
something of the excitement and vigor and spirit -- and yes, perhaps some
naivete -- of the early days at the White House.
2. The Nixon
administration has a terrible reputation (obviously). Are you in any way
trying to change that by telling the story of his advisors literally through
their own words?
Brian
L. Frye: Absolutely!
The terrible reputation of the Nixon administration is totally
undeserved. It's not like they broke the law or anything. Luckily,
everyone loves Nixon's aides - especially Haldeman & Ehrlichman - so
allowing them to speak for themselves wins everyone over right away.
3. The film
moves from the relative highs of the china visit and the moon landing down to
the Watergate scandal and interviews. How did you craft the narrative and
how long did the process take?
Penny
Lane: It took about two years all
told to finish the film, which isn't very long, I don't think. Brian and I
edited for about a year on our own, just working through what kind of story the
home movies seemed to want to tell. I think Brian and I knew that the story
was always the same, because it was the story that the Super 8 home movies just
so clearly wanted to tell: we knew it would be about the three cameramen, and
how they got from young idealists walking into the White House in 1969 to men
who went to prison for their involvement in one of America's greatest political
scandals. The trick was figuring out how to actually communicate that story,
which took time. We slowly added elements, like the news clips and TV
interviews, which helped a lot. We brought in our editor, Francisco Bello,
for the last six months of the edit, who just took the whole thing out of our
heads and really brought it out into the world.
4. I kept watching
the film and being reminded of the Zapruder film, surely the most famous super
8 film of all time. Is there something about the colouring or the detail
of the film that you’re drawn to? I assume that it was all digitized and
edited at home.
Brian L. Frye: You bet. 8mm is great
because it is so easy to manipulate. And this was a piece of work!
Just like the CIA erased the other two gunmen from the Zapruder film, we
had to optically alter every frame to hide Nixon's third eye.
5. How did you hear
about / collect the footage?
Penny
Lane: All originating credit has
to go to Brian. He had known about the home movies long before we even met and
had wanted to do something with them for quite some time. When he told me
about them, what sparked my interest was 1, the fact that hadn't really been seen,
and 2, the sort of implicit juxtaposition of the banality and silliness of home
movies and the darker, much more serious image many people have of the Nixon
administration. We both figured there would be something interesting in
that. Brian had orignally heard about the films from a friend named Bill
Brand, who had been hired to preserve the material by the National Archives
about a decade ago. Because the material is public domain, anyone could have
done what we did, which was to make high resolution scans (using a Kinetta
scanner) of the Super 8 films.
6. Do you fear that
in a hyper-partisan American climate this film will be misunderstood? Do
you believe in the conventional wisdom about the modern death of
bipartisanship?
Brian
L. Frye: No way! The message of "slack" is
pretty hard to misunderstand. And in any case, bipartisanship isn't dead,
it's just resting.
7. The film is
currently touring the indie film circuit – what do you think will be the place
for this film in years to come?
Penny
Lane: We are still
playing film festivals at the moment, which is just a ton of fun and super
rewarding. Later this year, the film will be broadcast on CNN and will be
released theatrically, digitally and DVD by Cinedigm across North America.
Internationally, Autlook Filmsales is doing a bang-up job placing it in film
festivals and on television (many of those sales are all pending, so I can't
quite announce them yet; suffice to say, it will be seen all over the world!).
In years to come, who knows? I hope the fact that it's not a "ripped from
the headlines" kind of film might mean it has some staying power. I don't
sense any waning interest in Richard Nixon, that's for sure.
8. The film is
entirely made as a collage. Was there ever any temptation to secretly
film original material to include in the film?! If you could have had a
recent revelation or contemporary riposte – what would it be?
Brian L. Frye: It's more about what we had
to leave out! Unfortunately, the tapes of Nixon talking to his alien commander
just didn't fit into the story.
Thanks
to Penny and Brian for talking to me – the film is a fascinating insight into Richard Milhous Nixon, a true political bogeyman...
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