The Cinema Lounge

Adam: Q&A with the Director, Producer and Actors

By Anita Glick and Annette Graham, DC Film Society Members

Adam is the story of a young man with Asperger's syndrome whose sheltered life undergoes a few changes after the death of his father. Losing his job, meeting a new neighbor and looking for a new job are some of his challenges.

This Q&A took place at AMC's Georgetown Theater on July 16. After the screening, DC Film Society director Michael Kyrioglou moderated a discussion with director Max Mayer, producer Miranda de Pencier, and lead actors Hugh Dancy and Rose Byrne. Director Max Mayer has written three produced plays and directed episodes of network television. His second film, Adam, has won an a writing award. Miranda De Pencier is an independent producer who has worked in film, television and theatre for over 15 years. Hugh Dancy's recent film credits include Confessions of a Shopaholic, The Jane Austen Book Club, and Evening. He has appeared on television (nominated for an Emmy) and stage. Rose Byrne is an Australian native who has been nominated for an Emmy for her role in Damages. Her film credits include Knowing, Marie Antoinette and 28 Weeks Later.

Left to right: Michael Kyrioglou, Hugh Dancy, Rose Byrne, Max Mayer and Miranda de Pencier.

Michael Kyrioglou: What was the inspiration for the story? Did you start out with Asperger's as part of the story?
Max Mayer: I started with Asperger's. I was listening to an interview on NPR in my car. It was a young man being interviewed who had Asperger's syndrome and he was talking about his own sense of isolation. I was really moved by the way he was describing how life felt to him, so when I get moved like that I think, "I should check out what this is about." So I started doing some research on Asperger's and the more I learned about Asperger's the better a metaphor it seemed to me for human relations in general--in a sense that we all have this desire and need to connect with one other and at the same time we are all paradoxically caught up in our own brains and guessing at what's going on in the other.
MK: It was very relatable in terms of any of us meeting somebody of a different world in any sense--different creed, different race, different country, different state--what that jockying is to learn who the person is and what do I say--we have codes and rules to deal with each other. It's interesting the differences between the two characters--the blatant honesty from the one character and how Beth learns... Having seen the film last week and seeing it tonight--the buildup of the scene with the dad at the end was even more striking to me tonight because we aren't led by the nose to see that. It was more shocking to me tonight to see her finally blurt out what she really wanted to say to him.

MK: (to Hugh Dancy) Would you like to talk about the research you did for the character?
Hugh Dancy: I started from the point of not knowing anything about Asperger's at all. To be honest, almost the first time it entered my consciousness was when I read Max's script and that was without any awareness of what the script was about. So I talked to Max to start with and then I went on the internet and that lasted a long time, because not only does the internet have a lot about every subject under the sun, but it's an amazing venue for people with Asperger's to go to express themselves--it's an easy, safe, non-contact way. So there's an enormous amount of first-person descriptions on the internet that was very useful and daunting. I read several books; ultimately the point was to absorb as much fact as I could while going back to the script and reminding myself of the work Max had done to create a rounded character. So I was looking for little things that would trigger my own imagination and ultimately allow me to be "armed" to go and meet people who worked with people with Asperger's and also those people themselves, some of whom agreed to talk to me about their lives, their struggle and their day to day lives, their triumphs, etc. And before I could go any further, the movie started.

MK: For me, the most striking part was your eyes, the lack of eye contact was really remarkable for me to connect with the character on a certain level and then when she finally calls him out at some point when she's coaching him on the job interviews.
Hugh Dancy: It was quite hard to do that and be specific about it. It's very easy to just not look at somebody but it's hard to do that and also appear to be listening to that person and not just be roaming around. It took me quite a long time to get that right and Max helped me with that and everything else.

Question: How hard was it for both of you to learn American accents?
Hugh Dancy: It wasn't the hardest thing in the movie. It was much harder for me to figure out the character and particularly the condition. We had both done American accents before in other jobs so it wasn't hugely daunting. There wasn't enough budget for a dialect coach and I don't think we would have wanted one anyway because it can be distracting. It wasn't too bad, in fact it was good.

Question: Did you set out with a structure in mind for the format of the screenplay to follow the classic hero's journey?
Max Mayer: I outlined it. I took 4-5 months to outline it so I was very sure about the story spark. It's the relationship story that I kept my eye on the most in terms of maintaining a balance of plus and minus, positives and negatives in terms of how is this going to work out or is this is a positive for the relationship or a negative for the relationship. And then keeping an eye on building Adam's arc in the last decision to go to California.

Question: (to Rose) What was the hardest part for you in playing your role?
Rose Byrne: Actually it was such a liberating role for me. I had played a lot of very serious roles--characters under siege, running from zombies, trying to save the world. So for me it was just a pleasure. The hardest part were the conditions. We only had 25 days to shoot the film so it was quite rough at times and a little cold. I saw a mouse once in the area where I was sitting. [everyone laughs].
Max Mayer: It was a rat!

MK: It was an amazing cast of characters. Were they your first choices?
Max Mayer: Frankie [Faison] and Peter [Gallagher] and Amy [Irving] were all people I had worked with in the theater and then we just got down to the bottom of the barrel for the leads [everyone laughs]. My casting director was a huge fan of Hugh's and I looked at his work, particularly his work in Elizabeth. At the time we were casting the movie, Evening came out and he really stood out in some very fast company. I thought that's a pretty neat trick to be in a movie with Meryl Streep and Vanessa Redgrave and to stand out. It was a lock on my part anyway and then it became a labor of love between us that I certainly will not forget. I have never had a more joyful time in terms of working on something.
Miranda de Pencier: We got really lucky with Rose, because she was in India at the time and when we sent the script to Rose's agency, they said, "Oh no no she won't do it. She just turned down this huge blockbuster for lots of millions of dollars and she's in India for a month, she's not coming home, you won't be able to get her. "Well, we want her." We sent her the script and her agent said, "I can't believe she's coming home to do your no-budget little movie but she loves it. We had a struggle getting the visa and we started shooting without her but she came in. We got very lucky.
MK: Let's congratulate Rose on her Emmy nomination. [applause]

MK: Do you want to talk a little about the marketing of the film?
Miranda de Pencier: The great thing about a company like Fox buying your film is that you don't have to do much.
MK: Did that process take time?
Miranda de Pencier: We got very lucky. We brought the film to Sundance. We had only shown it to a few friends in Los Angeles, just a few people. So when we brought it, it was like "here's our little baby and we hope Sundance likes it." We didn't really know what to expect. Truly Fox Searchlight has done an amazing job; they've taken it over, they really loved the film from the very beginning and they've been very thoughtful about it.

Question: Can you tell us a little about the scene where the characters were sitting across from each other in chairs in front of the fireplace?
Max Mayer: I really liked that scene. It's actually an exercise in the book that she gives him in which the person with Asperger's is supposed to mirror a half second later in a natural organic way the movements of the person across from them which apparently starts to look very much like a conversation between NTs [neuro-typicals] when it's done properly--so it's a kind of form for an interview. It's nice because it serves two purposes in that way. That's how it starts out and then the weight of the day's events start to crash in on Rose so she stops and he doesn't quite know that she stopped for a moment. Then he does know that she stopped but doesn't know what to do about that.
Hugh Dancy: It's one of the scenes that, before we filmed the movie, I thought if we get it right that's an amazing scene and amazingly written. It's one thing to write good dialogue which is rare enough but to be able to write an intelligent and complicated scene with several beats without any dialogue is really rare and remarkable.
Max Mayer: The other cool thing about it was that it was the only time in the 25 day shoot when we were going like mad that both the director of photography and the producer, after I said, "Okay move on to the next scene" said, "You're not going to do any closeups? What do you mean you're not going to do closeups?" So we did closeups.

Question: One thing about that scene that I thought was great was the end. You feel like they are merging. I would have loved them to be together at the end. How did you restrain yourself?
Max Mayer: Me too. I wrote it that way. At first I wrote a bleaker ending, but people said that I should try for all the reasons that everyone wants them to get together. And I did but didn't like it. I didn't like it for a couple of reasons: I didn't like it because it felt like just kidding about the rest of the movie and it felt too easy for this particular story. I love happy endings--I thought, Garden State had a happy ending, I could do that. I just didn't want Garden State.

Question: Did you have trouble finding information on Asperger's Syndrome?
Max Mayer: Not too much. As Hugh said, the internet is a major source. There is a wonderful publisher named Jessica Kingsley in Great Britain who puts out a full range of books about the autistic spectrum and I was one of her best customers for a few months. Miranda [de Pencier, producer] hooked us up to an organization in New York called Adaptations which is a socialization [organization]. They have meetings of people with Asperger's and they talk about challenges and what's going on with them. They were nice enough to invite us in.

Question: Could you talk about the science aspect? I found it interesting how much real science was in the movie. Are you an astronomer by hobby?
Max Mayer: No. I'm interested in physics right up until it involves math--which means not much. But it's a kind of hobby; I read books about it. One of the best books, if you're interested, is "The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene which reads like a novel. It's about going back about to the beginning of the universe and how our knowledge about that developed. It's also one of the categories of things that people with Asperger's tend to have--there are lists of things that are of special interest for people with Asperger's and astronomy is one of those things that's on the list. So I thought I was on firm ground there.

MK: Any upcoming projects you are working on? I know that this is your second feature and Rose has Damages coming up in the fall.
Max Mayer: I have no idea.
MK: (to Rose) Is there a Judd Apatow movie for you?
Max Mayer: She's working constantly.
Rose Byrne: No I'm not! I have a small role in a film called Getting Him to the Greek by the director of Forgetting Sarah Marshall [Nicholas Stoller] where I'm playing a pop star called Jackie Q.

Adam opens August 7 at Landmark's E Street Cinema.

The Cove: Q&A with Director Louie Psihoyos

From the press notes

The Cove is a cloak and dagger-like documentary about secretive hunting of dolphins in Japan. The director, Louie Psihoyos is one of the top photographers in the world and has contributed to National Geographic for 18 years. He teamed up with former dolphin trainer Ric O'Barry to make this perilous eco-adventure/investigation.

Question: What drew you to want to film Ric O’Barry and his work in Taiji?
Louie Psihoyos: I was curious at first about why he wasn’t allowed to talk at this conference. Then, when I found him, he explained that he was going to talk about this secret cove in Japan where the dolphin traffickers select most of the dolphins for dolphinariums and parks. He told me they were slaughtering the ones they didn’t choose and using them for school lunch programs. I couldn’t imagine any civilization killing dolphins and Richard invited me along the following week to see Taiji, the little town with this big secret.

Question: What was Taiji like?
Louis Psihoyos: The town was like out of a Steven King novel - outwardly the whole town was about the reverence and respect and love of dolphins and whales, but what was happening in the secret cove belied another story, one I was determined to get at. The secret cove is a natural fortress, protected on three sides by steep cliffs. The entrance on one side is protected by a series of high spiked gates with barbed wire and razor ribbons, and there are two tunnel entrances protected by guards and dogs. After a tour of the town with Richard, I contacted the Taiji mayor’s office and the dolphin hunters’ union – I wanted to get their side of the story and I wanted to do the story legally. I had noticed that I had picked up a tail; I had 24-hour police surveillance while I was in town. But the town was not interested in cooperating – they were making too much money with the captive dolphin industry to jeopardize it by having a journalist milling about. The mayor told me that I could get hurt or killed by getting too close to the dolphin hunters or the secret cove. The cove, oddly enough, is in the middle of a National Park right in the center of town, between city hall and the whale museum. Richard told me that to penetrate the secret cove you would need to get a Navy Seal team, and that is pretty much what I did, but my team was more of an “Ocean’s Eleven” team.

Question: It is a really eclectic group of characters. How did you put the team together?
Louis Psihoyos: I enlisted my friends Mandy Rae-Cruickshank and Kirk Krack to help us set underwater cameras and hydrophones. Mandy is an eight-time world champion freediver. She can hold her breath for 6 and a half minutes and dive down to almost to 300 feet and back on her own power. Her husband, Kirk, is also a freediver. A former photo assistant of mine went on to become the head mold maker at ILM, Industrial Light and Magic, Lucas’ 3-D division and they helped us make fake rocks to hide high definition cameras and microphones. An electronics expert formerly with the Canadian Air Force helped us hot rod the hard drive cameras with larger drives powered by expedition batteries used for climbers on Mount Everest. He also helped us make unmanned drones so we had aerial support and video - a remote controlled helicopter with a gyro-stabilized high definition camera below it as well as a blimp with a remote controlled camera. Some pirate friends from the islands helped me place the cameras and many nights we were in blinds in full camouflage and face paint.  We foiled the guards and police many nights by the use of high-definition military grade thermal cameras to scan the hills for movement, and an assortment of other diversionary techniques.

Question: What were your biggest challenges during filming?
Louis Psihoyos: The Cove was definitely not your normal film production.  Most of our work happened in the middle of the night, under cover, and our biggest challenge of all was simply trying to avoid being killed or arrested and put in jail for months if we were caught. There were other challenges, too. Early on in the formation of our non-profit film company, I met Steven Spielberg and he advised me from his work on Jaws to never work on boats or with animals because of the unpredictability and high cost. Well, we used a lot of boats in the making of The Cove and we had to work with a lot of large uncooperative animals. It was a first-time director’s nightmare.

Question: Did making The Cove change you?
Louis Psihoyos: I have been a vegetarian, or rather a pescatarian, for 20 years. I eat fish but nothing that walks. Now, I don’t eat any fish very high up on the food chain because I learned from the making of this movie that I have mercury poisoning - very high levels of mercury from eating apex predators, fish at the top of the food chain like tuna, marlin, striped bass and grouper. My attitudes about animals have changed considerably since making this film. My sensitivity to all animal life has been heightened because once you have your eyes open to their plight it’s difficult to close your heart up again. Dolphins have larger brains than us, there are more folds for neurons, they have an extra sense – sonar - and they are the only wild animals known to come to the rescue of humans. They have been legendary for extraordinary feats of compassion since man had the ability to write. They have always come to our rescue and I feel that it is about time somebody tried to rescue them.

Question: What is the most surprising thing you discovered while making this film?
Louis Psihoyos: There is a systematic cover-up of mercury and dolphin hunting issues in Japan. The Japanese trust their government. But the government does not want them to know basic information that would affect their health, especially that dolphin meat is many more times toxic than their own country’s health standards allow. Corruption is rampant and people are profiting from misinformation.

Question: Have there been any new developments since you left Taiji?
Louis Psihoyos: Dolphin meat used to be part of school lunch programs there. That stopped this year. Ric O’Barry and our organization, the Oceanic Preservation Society, had a hand in that. Our work with a toxicity expert there eventually reached several Taiji town council members, who had their own children in the school system, and who did their own tests on dolphin meat. These confirmed our findings. School children across Wakamaya prefecture are no longer fed toxic dolphin meat for school lunch programs. As a result, the head of the fisheries, Hideki Moronuki, who had set the quotas for dolphins and porpoises and whales, has been fired. But the hunt for dolphins is still going on. We hope awareness will shut the dolphin drive down by next year, once the Japanese people learn about it.

Question: Can you tell us more about the Oceanic Preservation Society and how it was created?
Louis Psihoyos: The founder of the Oceanic Preservation Society is the inventor and venture capitalist Jim Clark, a modern day Zelig who built three groundbreaking industries from scratch. He worked himself out of poverty and in college he helped set up the computer systems that sent man to the moon. As a professor at Stanford, he invented the first 3-D graphics engine computer chip with Silicon Graphics, the first commercial internet browser with Netscape. After he discovered he had a rare blood disease, he created WebMd, a portal that connects doctors and patients with the most recent medical and health information. At the forefront of innovation his whole life, he has also been an avid diver and sailor, traveling to the world’s best preserved reefs but also witnessing the collapse of the oceans in his lifetime. He founded OPS to create films and stills to raise awareness of the plight of the oceans, a demise that also jeopardizes humanity, as we derive 70% of our protein from seafood, a diminishing and increasingly and polluted resource.

Question: What do you hope audiences will take away from The Cove?
Louis Psihoyos: First, I hope people stop taking their children to dolphin amusement parks and swim with dolphin programs – having intelligent sentient animals perform stupid tricks for our amusement is a form of bad education for our children. Secondly, I hope the Japanese people stop killing dolphins for food because, ethical reasons aside, all dolphin meat is toxic and not fit for human or animal consumption. Third, dolphins and whales are polluted mainly because of the dumping in the ocean of toxins from man’s activities. The burning of fossil fuels, particularly coal, contributes to most of the build-up of mercury in the environment so getting us off coal is important in saving the oceans. So, at the OPS headquarters we have 117 solar panels that now generate 140% of our energy needs; and we have two electric cars that are totally powered from energy generated from the sun. Everybody can help in these ways.

The Cove opens at Landmark's E Street Cinema on August 7.

The 63rd Edinburgh International Film Festival

Adam's Rib Tackles the Oscars' Big Change

Albert Maysles Honored at Silverdocs

By Annette Graham and Anita Glick, DC Film Society Members

The Guggenheim Symposium honors a filmmaker whose work captures current events, frames history and inspires audiences. This year's honoree was legendary documentarian Albert Maysles who has directed more than 35 films and photographed 64. On June 18 artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude and filmmaker Barbara Kopple made statements in tribute to Maysles, the audience saw clips of several Maysles films, then a conversation took place between Maysles and Entertainment Weekly film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: Please help me welcome the 2009 Guggenheim honoree Albert Maysles. [sustained applause]
Albert Maysles: It's not really fair. You saw some of the very best of what I've shot over the years but you weren't told of the best scene of all that I missed. I was 10 years old. It was 1936. It was at a time when misbehavior was met with a strap. My father would never use a strap on me, but it was an occasion where I must have done something terribly wrong. And he hit me with the strap. It didn't hurt but as I left that scene and walked through the apartment, I happened to pass through his bedroom and I looked back and there he was with his head against the wall, crying. And I stood there in utter amazement. He could have told me so many many times how much he loved me but it still wouldn't have matched the love that I felt for my father at that time and which I still feel for him even though he's long gone.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: But that was your documentarian's eye at the age of 10 seeing the extra scene. We could not begin this conversation in any better way. You saw what put the scene in context which is really what all of your work has been about. And I wanted to start our conversation by reading from your beautiful Maysles films website. You have some dos and don'ts and I wanted to read two particular things you have to get us started. You say, (1) "Remember as a documentarian you are an observer, an author, but not a director; a discoverer, not a controller." and (2) "Don't worry that your presence with the camera will change things. Not if you're confident you belong there. And understand that in your favor is that of the two instincts--to disclose or keep a secret--the stronger is to disclose." I want to start out talking about feeling the right to be with the people that you choose to film. And what brings you to these subjects that you feel that comfort and that you establish a relationship with them?
Albert Maysles: I think the most important thing in life as it is in filming is that you love people. And with that love you get to understand them. Or it could be the other way around: in your attempt at understanding people you get to love them. But love is what it's all about. The perfect example of mishandling the camera is the television commercial where there's no love whatsoever, not even for the product. I would like to make a commercial for Kleenex. I would film a woman just at the moment when she is being handed the infant she has just given birth to. And just film her--there's got to be a moment there, when there's a tear--and she reaches out for the Kleenex. It sells the product and it gives us something to think about, something to feel about, and something to talk about.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: And that means how many hours were you sitting there quietly and unobtrusively waiting for the tear? You were supposed to be an objective observer and yet you are looking for something to happen. That's exactly what happens in all of your films. You're there, you are holding back and yet you are looking to see something in the background, a guy smiling at the Ozawa concert, or the little gesture that Ringo Starr does at the end of his piece. Talk about that eye.
Albert Maysles: A lot of good photographers have that. Henri Cartier-Bresson made that Matisse photograph with the white pigeons surrounding him. Just narrowing in on his face would have been nowhere near the photograph that he took. To put it another way, Orson Welles said it is important that the eye behind the camera be the eye of a poet. So many cinematographers and photographers, too--they know the techniques; they know how to light a situation, how to compose a shot. But if they don't have that poetic instinct then forget about it. I was walking down the street and somebody was coming in my direction with his arms outstretched and he had this strange look on his face. And if I only had my camera, because what happened was that he was catching a butterfly. I would like to see a whole new genre of documentary films where you could save these little moments as pieces of poetry.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: This actually gets into an interesting place that I think we're in now. It seems that we are all aware of the camera at all times. I feel as if we live our lives ready for a reality show. Everybody watches their reality TV, they're immediately ready. Do you find that people are different subjects now than they might have been when direct cinema was just beginning?
Albert Maysles: I don't have any more problem now than I had then and I don't have a problem because somehow I achieve that kind of rapport where people just go on with what they're doing. And if I feel that the camera is too much of a nuisance, then I'll put it down and wait for something fabulous to come along. I remember when I started filming Mick Jagger. I remember him coming over to me and saying something about a problem that he might have. And I listened and then I waited. Then something fascinating began to take place and I picked up my camera and filmed it. No problem thereafter. There was never a single moment when I was filming him when he said "let's not take that."

Lisa Schwarzbaum: But that's Mick Jagger, who is used to being in front of a camera at all times. I'm talking about LaLee's Kin, or people who are not famous who you are catching in the midst of doing something.
Albert Maysles: It's interesting that you mentioned LaLee's Kin. Here's a very poor African-American family with so much to hide. All the men are in jail, nearly all of them. The education they get is just terrible. The kids are only learning how to do well in SAT testing. No one has a job. And people are living in trailers. But again, right away, grandma, the main character, felt a trust me. And I felt confident that I would get that trust which is just as important. When the filming was all over, we finished the film and brought it down to Mississippi and showed it to grandma. At the end she turned to us, there was a long pause, and she said "Well that's the truth. But couldn't you have made it longer?"

Lisa Schwarzbaum: What has been the hardest one you have worked on? What confounded you in the course of making any particular one of your documentaries?
Albert Maysles: That's a tough one. None of it is that easy because it requires a great deal of patience and confidence. After all, in a way it's so much easier to make a Hollywood film where you get actors, tell them what to do and everything is under your control. As Alfred Hitchcock put it so beautifully: In a fiction film, in a Hollywood film, the director is God and has everything he wants to do--to heighten the drama: okay so we'll kill a few people. Have conflict, same thing. In a documentary, in a nonfiction film, God is the director. Or call it reality if you're an atheist.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: Is God the director or the editor?
Albert Maysles: The editor is controlled by the character, the essential character of what has been captured and of course it requires a great deal of skill in putting it all together.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: But it seems that there are two places where in the course of looking dispassionately but with love at truth--there are two places where you as a human being are making a choice. One is what you are looking at, where you eye goes and the second is what you do with that footage and how you assemble it afterwards.
Albert Maysles: This is why, when we make a film we always give as much credit to the producer, to the cameraperson and to the editor. We call them directors only because it helps them in making the next film to have that kind of credit. It should always be just filmmaker.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: Was there a project you were working on where you thought it was going in one direction and as it unfolded in front of you it either was not what you thought or when you got the footage afterwards you turned it into something else. I'm interested in your actual process of moving from saying, okay I'm going to follow Christo or Jeanne-Claude and see what comes out of that particular project and how you shoot them?
Albert Maysles: When making a film we never know precisely how people are going to react to it or precisely what the process is going to be. And they're full of surprises and of course that's the real thing.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: You guys keep coming back together again. You respond very much to Christo and Jeanne-Claude's projects and you really have become the documentarian of their work and they clearly have an ease in front of you. What is it particularly about their artwork and your artwork?
Albert Maysles: I keep bringing God into the picture. I remember during the course of the Gates project finding myself on the sixth floor of an apartment building on the west side of Central Park and looking out the window and seeing a photograph that someone had taken from that position with a panoramic camera, seeing all of Central Park from south to north and Fifth Avenue and beyond at a time when there was a rainbow that went across from one end of the Park to the other. Well, that was God's addition to Central Park that made it even more beautiful. Christo and Jeanne-Claude try to do as best as they could which was very very good. In rendering an artists rendition of something to be added to the Park that would be a true and beautiful addition.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: Over the years of working together because you know them so well now and you understand their process, has your eye changed? Do you go about a Christo/Jeanne-Claude film in a different way?
Albert Maysles: It's the same way as I do anything. Looking to see what I can't really control and have confidence that the interesting and important things will take place. And they always do.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: I want to move back to Grey Gardens. Why, of all this vast repertory of yours, why does this have this hold on popular culture so that it's told and retold and turned into theater and turned into movies and it's become a touchstone of a particular kind.
Albert Maysles: It's been retold again in still another way. My daughters [Sara and Rebekah] have just come out with a book on Grey Gardens. It's called "Grey Gardens" and it's loaded with drawings created by my skillful daughter. The other daughter took 150 hours of wild sound, sound that was not accompanied by the camera running and worked it all the way down to 60 minutes. And that's in the form of a CD that's tucked into the book.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: So why do we keep coming back this allure?
Albert Maysles: I think there's something in this relationship between these two eccentric women that touches upon something that is in ourselves. I love this expression: "Just like anybody else, but more so." It's interesting to me how a number of critics have just dismissed them. Oh, you shouldn't have made that film; what an exploitation. They're crazy, they're this, they're that ... putdown... putdown. They don't understand all the wonderful healthy things that are going on between these two eccentrics. We have a disregard in some quarters for nonconformity. Unlike their neighbors who have their grass cut to exactly two inches or whatever it is, their grass grows wild. They're wild characters themselves.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: It was interesting as we were watching these clips, we saw Salesman and when we saw Grey Gardens, there was a moment in each where I think we the audience laugh, or we're uncomfortable, or there's something about the Bible salesman trying this combination of religion and commerce and what he's trying to do and there is a moment when we might laugh and then be aware of these not-so-noble reactions in ourselves.
Albert Maysles: That scares people, some people. But we should get to know the truth. We have this thing, a pet peeve of mine which is to reject the notion which is so common that if you open your heart and soul to another person you're going to get hurt. In fact we describe it as a moment of vulnerability. And I'd like to know what the other word is for when you open your heart and soul to the other person and something good, something healthy takes place. I'm hoping tomorrow to meet up with Mr. Kucinich--because he's a great guy. And he has a few great ideas. One of them is, he stated that whereas we have a department of defense and we have a Pentagon we should have a department of peace. I want to meet him so I can see what it's all about. And promote peace through his experience.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: Does this mean that you would be interested in making a documentary about him?
Albert Maysles: Absolutely.
Lisa Schwarzbaum: Is this a possibility?
Albert Maysles: A great possibility.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: Now we're talking! With a teabag and everything in his pocket. I want to talk about the generations whom you have influenced and the kind of nonfiction films that are coming out today from people who learned from your films, who have gone off in their own direction. Is there anyone you are aware of who you think is moving in a new direction or a direction that you are following?
Albert Maysles: Not that much comes to my mind, but so often people have come to me and told me that they have seen Salesman in school or wherever and that they wouldn't be making documentaries if they hadn't seen that film. So it's had an enormous influence on young filmmakers.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: Do you watch the work of other filmmakers?
Albert Maysles: Yes. Just the other day I saw a film by Bob Elfstrom called Johnny Cash and it's a great music film. The film When We Were Kings--I happened to participate in making that film but at that time it was not just the fight that occurred in the Congo but also there were a great number of very distinguished African-American musicians who went there at the same time. There was a lot of that footage, some of which I've shot that has become a film. It's called Soul Power. It hasn't come out yet but you have to see it when it does.
Lisa Schwarzbaum: It's playing here [Silverdocs] tomorrow. [It also opens August 14 at Landmark's E Street Cinema].
Albert Maysles: See that's another talent--I'm a promoter as well!

Lisa Schwarzbaum: Let's talk equipment for a moment. Sixteen millimeter has been your standard. You work with classic sources, classic equipment. Has the digital world changed your eye? Have you stepped into that?
Albert Maysles: I'm all for it. In fact on my website you'll see 30 reasons why I switched from film to video. How else could I have made this little seven minute piece that I filmed not so long ago: three 3-1/2 year old children having breakfast and all told, it took me one tape, not four rolls of film which would have cost me by the time it was processed, several thousand dollars. That tape cost me $3. And I had exactly what I needed--a little camera in my hands with a microphone, it was simultaneously picking up the sound. I didn't need another person. Just myself sitting with these little kids. In fact, I'm making a whole film of a number of such get togethers. Two kids usually, ages four to six, each talking to the other, without any direction, of course. Just spontaneously.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: We talked earlier about your training and background in psychology and your early films looking at -- I guess all of your films look at the psychology behind whoever it is. But then you went through a tremendous period of doing a lot of films on artists, musicians. Now it seems that psychology and the inner soul of regular people is driving you again.
Albert Maysles: Well it started out that way with the psychiatry in Russia. It's always been the respect for anybody, famous or not. And there's one film that I've had in mind now for years, my dream film and one of these days when I get enough financing for it, I will make the film. I've already started it. [they decide to discuss this later].

Lisa Schwarzbaum: Did anyone ever turn you down? A subject that you couldn't do; they said no?
Albert Maysles: I wrote a letter to Mr. Nixon and never got an answer. And the odd part of it is, that as much as I disliked the man's policies, I would have turned out a film that I think he would have liked.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: On your website is says (1) "Distance yourself from point of view" and (2) "Love your subjects." So that means that Mr. Nixon or anybody you would approach with ... what?
Albert Maysles: Somebody got hold of that thing and said "How would you like Adolph Hitler." And that's a tough one. A very distinguished artist from way back told me that in the 1930s he would go to restaurants and cafeterias in Berlin and Vienna attended by other famous artists like himself. And one day he saw this guy come in and sit at a table nearby and just get more and more morose. It was Adolph Hitler. That kind of scene, that kind of information, somehow or other, I'd want to get into the film. Some way of understanding him as a human being, dreadful as he was, but get some insight of what made him the violent person that he was. I read a book on psychiatry called "Violence" and discovered that it's shame and lack of self respect that makes people violent.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: This comes back again to something you said about feeling the right to be where you are when you're filming. Feeling that you are not intruding. Do you ever actually leave a room because you think, "Oh no, I just shouldn't be here."
Albert Maysles: I'll give you an example. I was on a train and filming a woman, hoping to film her because she had this wonderful but dreadful story to tell about one of her children. And she had to tell it to me but she didn't want to be filmed. So instead I just filmed her hands as she was telling the story, and it was okay.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: Did she know who you were as you? Did she know you as a sympathetic ear, a documentarian of great renown?
Albert Maysles: As a sympathetic ear; I'm sure she didn't know anything of my work.
Lisa Schwarzbaum: And you just struck up a conversation with her?
Albert Maysles: Yes.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: Do you always have a camera with you?
Albert Maysles: I had a camera with me one day on the New York subway and it was on my lap and the woman next to me said, "Are you filming?" And I said, "No, but I make documentary films." "Oh, what's your name?" "Albert Maysles" "Oh, I'm from Plainfield, Vermont and I know Charlotte P[__]." My first girlfriend!

Lisa Schwarzbaum: Do you have something in your pocket all the time? Any camera that you could just capture...
Albert Maysles: I should have. If nothing else in order to capture those little moments of poetry. I think back to 1961-2 when I was with Mr. Fidel Castro spending several 24 hour days. I remember filming with my big 16mm camera on my shoulder and one day he said, "Look, this evening I'm going to be at the Chinese Embassy. There's a reception, would you like to come along?" So I went along with him and of course I couldn't carry the camera in there. I wish I had a little video camera in my pocket because what happened was during the course of the evening and standing shoulder to shoulder next to him a messenger came rushing in and handed him a telegram. He opened it, read it, turned to me and said, "Should I translate it for you?" I said, "Yes of course." And he said, "Your State Department has just broken off relations with Cuba." Well one of these days, I don't know if I can film Fidel, he's in such bad shape but there are other things, other people that I filmed 48 years ago that I'd like to catch up with. A family whose story I got very beautifully and the kids who were eight years old and now are that much older and I want to see what's happened.

Lisa Schwarzbaum: Now is the time to talk about what you are doing next. Tell me about a couple of the projects that you are working on?
Albert Maysles: I already gave you some idea of my interest in trains and meeting strangers on trains. So that's the film. Strangers that I meet on trains in half a dozen countries around the world. Long distance trains where I had the opportunity to find that two or three day trip somebody with a story that is about to take place when they get off the train. I filmed a woman some years ago who was in Pittsburgh when she got on the train and she was headed to Philadelphia. Why? Because when she was three years old her parents broke up in an ugly divorce and she has never seen her mother since. She's lost touch with her mother. She just got a call from Philadelphia: "I'm your mother. Get on the next train. I'll be waiting for you at the train station." So I kept on filming of course. We get off the train; she got to the stairs that lead up into the station and there was a woman at the top of the stairs who flung open her arms, rushed down the stairs, they embraced and stayed embraced for some time talking to each other. Finally the mother turns to me and says, "Isn't she gorgeous?"

Lisa Schwarzbaum: This is the Maysles touch. Isn't HE gorgeous?

The audience was then shown a clip of an Albert Maysles work-in-progress.

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