WEBVTT

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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Good documentary
writing does the opposite

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of what bad documentary
writing does.

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Bad documentary writing makes it
a lesson, makes it castor oil,

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makes it something that is good
for you but not good tasting.

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It's eating your
vegetables, you know?

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The good writing
permits it to be

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a whole other fluid
dynamic amidst other fluid

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dynamics that, in
their aggregate,

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dynamics that, in
their aggregate,

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creates something that permits
you not to have a one thing,

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but a more than one thing,
that celebrates perspective,

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that tolerates contradiction
in undertow in characters,

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that is willing to
not just be this

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is but this may be also this.

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And there's something
incredibly liberating

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and there's something incredibly
joyous when that happens.

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And it isn't just the writing,
it's the writing and interplay

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And it isn't just the writing,
it's the writing and interplay

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with first person voices
and how we edit those

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down from the whole journal.

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And the images,
and the newsreel,

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and the sound effects, and the
music, and all of the elements

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that go in there, they
are all in interrelation.

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To have all those elements
in play and to not say,

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oh, you can't use that
element because it's not cool

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or it's not right or
it's historically not

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good is to limit your
possibilities as a filmmaker.

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Put everything in, and
if you don't like it,

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Put everything in, and
if you don't like it,

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then take it out.

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You don't need to do
any interviews anymore.

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You don't need to
do first person

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invoices if you don't want to.

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You don't need to do narration
if you don't want to.

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But you're going to
have to do something.

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And filmmaking is
always symphonic.

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That is to say, it's
multiple instruments

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working at the same time.

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For us, our films,
for the most part,

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are written, which
means that we depend

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are written, which
means that we depend

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as the central skeletal
structure of our film,

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a written narration.

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And I remember coming into the
documentary world inheriting

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the sense that direct
cinema, the cinema

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verite experimental works
were much more closer

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to art or to cinema than
anything that was narrated.

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And I had a kind of
initial suspicion

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of that because I think I've
always enjoyed literature,

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I've always enjoyed good
nonfiction and fiction.

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The idea that narration
is the voice of God

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The idea that narration
is the voice of God

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is somehow not good and not as
pure as other forms of cinema

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is just crazy because
most of our literature

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is based on third-person
narrative exposition.

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And that's pretty good.

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And in some of the
earlier films--

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I did not invent
narration in films,

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I just figured that
it ought to get

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a different kind of
treatment, that it

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could have a dimension that
could be at moments considered

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could have a dimension that
could be at moments considered

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literary and literature,
and that it would not just

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be connecting the
talking heads, connecting

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the dots of a didactic
expository educational film.

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I cannot tell you, in an
industry where quite often

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people are suspicious of words,
how much they are central

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to who we are.

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And I would say, don't
be afraid of them.

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It's how we're
communicating right now.

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The script writing is
the central determinant

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of what the narrative will be.

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And that so much of what
comes out of the first draft

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is telling us louder than
anything else what the film is

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going to look like or,
more important, what

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the potential film has the
possibility of looking like.

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And so in a visual
medium, there's

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nothing more central in
our process than the word

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nothing more central in
our process than the word

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because the writer
will begin to assemble

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the treatments and
the ideas that we've

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given to him and the research
that he's done or she's done,

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and constantly going
back, providing new books,

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adding new facts
that we might learn,

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perhaps giving them
a talking head that's

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arrived that we finished and
we've selected the best of them

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and think that it might
go well in this scene.

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If 10 people are talking
about this world series,

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we'll put all 10 in and
immediately weed out seven

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we'll put all 10 in and
immediately weed out seven

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or eight and struggle
over the last two

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to figure out what's
in the final film.

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And so it's a completely
unformed thing.

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What we're looking
for early on is

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what is the unanticipated
dramatic arc that the material

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itself is demanding.

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And we begin to emerge
with something that

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is going to be determinant.

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Now that doesn't mean
that it isn't changed

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in a million different ways.

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in a million different ways.

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And of course, the
addition of an image

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is a huge, huge
difference to it.

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But I think in terms of
the structural question

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that everyone must be asking,
you have to be asking,

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those first drafts
are hugely important.

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Even if you're
throwing them out,

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because there's something that--

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I mean, I've never
thrown it out,

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but even if there's wholesale
changes that take place,

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that's determining the
basic arc of the film.

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The English language
is so beautiful.

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It's so elastic,
it's so expressive,

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it's got so many nuances to it.

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Why don't you take it out for
a ride every once in a while?

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So a really good
example of what writing

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can do that takes it beyond
the didactic and just purely

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expository, this is what you
should know, the Depression,

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you know, 15 million
people were out of work.

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you know, 15 million
people were out of work.

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We also describe the Depression,
that in many American cities

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the animals in the zoo
were shot and the meat

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distributed to the poor.

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That in Pennsylvania,
convicts went back to jail,

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committed crimes
because they could

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get three square meals a day,
whereas once they were released

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they were on their own.

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So what you do is you
have the facts in there,

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but you deliver it in a
kind of poetic vehicle

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that makes sense to people.

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Everywhere, we look
for ways to do things.

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Everywhere, we look
for ways to do things.

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You can say, yes, you
can say 6 million people,

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6 million Jews were
killed in the Holocaust.

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But if you say in 1933, there
were 9 million Jews in Europe,

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in 1945, two out of three,
two out of three are dead,

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you've personalized it.

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All of a sudden it's
no longer 6 million.

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It's like saying four
score and seven years

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ago because 87 just
goes over your head.

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ago because 87 just
goes over your head.

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It is the poetic dimension
that well-used words

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bring that it is, I don't
know anything better.

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The biggest thing about
the narration, one

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hopes it has the poetic
dimension that elevates it

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from sheer exposition.

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But you hope that which
is expository is true,

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it cannot not be true.

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It has to be true,
you have to verify it.

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It has to be true,
you have to verify it.

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And sometimes you
multiple sources,

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some that say that
it didn't happen,

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some that say that
it did, and you

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have to use the best
and most available

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scholarship, which is why
every film we make always

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has a board of sometimes
two dozen scholars

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who are helping advisors.

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Sometimes even they don't
agree about interpretation,

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but we can try to
get to some facts.

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If you look at the
Vietnam working script,

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I think that the footnotes are
longer than the actual script,

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talking, citing
chapter and verse

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talking, citing
chapter and verse

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on a very controversial thing.

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We don't have an accurate
number of how many people

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died in Vietnam.

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The Defense Department has
one figure, 58,000 something,

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another group has this,
another group as this, or x

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number, 58,000 plus on the wall.

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And so we finally, after
years, just gave up

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and said more than
58,000 because we did not

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want to create an argument on
something that wasn't true.

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You really have to get
those facts right in order

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You really have to get
those facts right in order

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for the other things, the
more emotional, interpretive,

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the anecdotal, that are
going to be communicated

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through other media,
to be able to permit.

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If you don't have a strong
structure based on fact,

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then you're lost.

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Then you're into conjecture,
you're into argument,

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you're into theory,
you're into conspiracy,

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you're into craziness.

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That's where it leads.

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The third-person
narrator operates almost

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in an objective sphere,
describing what happens.

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The first-person
voice has a kind

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of intimacy that says that
those events occurred to,

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or happened to, real people.

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And that's an important
thing because the combination

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of the two creates
something that's

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fuller and richer
and more dimensional.

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In some ways, we're talking
about the wonderful tension

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and reconciliation
that takes place

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and reconciliation
that takes place

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between objective third-person
writing and first-person

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experience.

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In almost every
aspect of the work,

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there is a respiration
that takes place.

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There is an inhalation
and exhalation.

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It has to do with the pace
and rhythm of editing.

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It has to do with the length and
duration and quality of image,

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it has to do with the interplay
between third-person narration

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and first-person voices.

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It's always a way of breathing
so that you are permitting

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an audience to do what
they are actually doing,

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an audience to do what
they are actually doing,

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which is breathing.

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You do want them to hold
their breath at times

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but you also want to give to
them their own agency with all

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of the narrative that you've
done so it seems less my film

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than it is their film.

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The important thing for us
is that whatever is written

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is not written in stone.

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is not written in stone.

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It is not the guide that
informs shooting and editing,

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it is something that is evolving
along with the detective

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work that's finding the
archives and the talking heads,

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along with the emerging
structure of a film that

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has nothing to do with
the script and everything

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to do with the script.

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And it is a really complicated
dynamic that goes on.

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The thing that's so
important that we insist upon

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from the very beginning
is that the writer

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be free to write all
the things that they

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be free to write all
the things that they

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think should be in there.

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And those are things that
we've suggested, too,

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that should be in there, and
to write them for however long.

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That writer cannot be worried
about whether there are images

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to illustrate.

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That's not the writer's job.

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The writer's job is to
just write that scene.

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And so inevitably, the
process of work on the script

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involves cutting it
down, editing it.

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And good stuff, too.

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It just doesn't fit, as you
begin to work in pictures,

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in an hour or a two-hour
time limit, what you can do.

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in an hour or a two-hour
time limit, what you can do.

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We've got episodes that go over
those limits because they work.

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But for the most
part, we're trying

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to make sure that we have
a coherent narrative.

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And so we will undergo many,
many drafts of the script.

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I'll read it first
from the writer.

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I will change a few words,
we'll submit to some historians,

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they'll give some notes,
we'll do a rewrite there.

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We'll share it more broadly.

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I will then record it.

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I will then record it.

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And as I'm recording
it, those words

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will change again because
things that you read

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are not the same as
things that are spoken.

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We will then do a
blind assembly, meaning

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we will put the words up against
nothing except a few talking

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heads that might have arrived
in in the course of shooting,

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and begin to see whether
the structure sounds right,

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feels right.

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It's not a radio play because
you are seeing the talking

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heads all chopped up into
there many jump cuts,

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and you are hearing this
imperfect narrator, me,

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and you are hearing this
imperfect narrator, me,

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read the words.

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But we get a sense.

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And on a big series
we might do two,

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might even do three blind
assemblies before we say,

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lets go to adding picture.

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We are constantly revising,
constantly reworking.

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Sometimes it has to do with
just nuts and bolts, changes

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and facts.

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Or we're just going
to make it better.

00:12:53.220 --> 00:12:55.730
And that might mean taking
something out or rewriting it,

00:12:55.730 --> 00:12:57.830
or we've restructured
a scene and that

00:12:57.830 --> 00:12:59.720
requires the
rewriting of something

00:12:59.720 --> 00:13:00.000
to make sure the thing flows.

00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:02.040
to make sure the thing flows.

00:13:02.040 --> 00:13:05.750
And it isn't until the very end
that we finally say no more.

00:13:05.750 --> 00:13:09.470
And there are a
thousand million things

00:13:09.470 --> 00:13:11.390
that you can do that
you have to do and be

00:13:11.390 --> 00:13:13.820
willing to do all the
way through the process

00:13:13.820 --> 00:13:15.320
until you go, whoa,
that's working.

00:13:15.320 --> 00:13:17.070
In the beginning is
the word, and the word

00:13:17.070 --> 00:13:21.220
is throughout but it is
not written in stone.

00:13:28.010 --> 00:13:30.000
The excavation of history
is a detective piece,

00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:32.160
The excavation of history
is a detective piece,

00:13:32.160 --> 00:13:34.820
and in that archeology
you don't get necessarily

00:13:34.820 --> 00:13:37.370
every shard of that
piece of pottery

00:13:37.370 --> 00:13:38.960
that you're putting together.

00:13:38.960 --> 00:13:43.590
And so you can't fully
show what that is.

00:13:43.590 --> 00:13:48.530
And so we have to figure out
ways to, in our language,

00:13:48.530 --> 00:13:51.650
communicate that it
isn't absolutely true,

00:13:51.650 --> 00:13:53.140
we just think it may be.

00:13:53.140 --> 00:13:56.000
You can't say, they did
this or they did that.

00:13:56.000 --> 00:13:59.580
You can say, he may have
been looking for, right?

00:13:59.580 --> 00:14:00.000
That's the kind of
wiggle room that we do.

00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:02.780
That's the kind of
wiggle room that we do.

00:14:02.780 --> 00:14:05.570
We can't actually prove
it because that person is

00:14:05.570 --> 00:14:10.520
no longer around and all the
evidence suggests exactly that.

00:14:10.520 --> 00:14:13.850
But because we don't have that
final piece in the puzzle,

00:14:13.850 --> 00:14:16.460
you have to say may have
been or would have been.

00:14:16.460 --> 00:14:18.470
And there's lots
of ways in which

00:14:18.470 --> 00:14:21.680
when people write us letters
and say, you said this,

00:14:21.680 --> 00:14:25.190
we say, actually, it
may have been that.

00:14:25.190 --> 00:14:27.680
And we did that
quite consciously.

00:14:27.680 --> 00:14:30.000
And if we get to a point
where we're uncomfortable,

00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:30.140
And if we get to a point
where we're uncomfortable,

00:14:30.140 --> 00:14:33.800
that it's too suggesting,
even the may have is not

00:14:33.800 --> 00:14:36.170
a big enough qualification,
we just won't do it,

00:14:36.170 --> 00:14:37.370
we'll take it out.

00:14:37.370 --> 00:14:39.500
It's better to err
on that side than it

00:14:39.500 --> 00:14:44.480
is to feed people's
misconceptions.

00:14:50.950 --> 00:14:53.850
The first full chapter after the
introduction of the Civil War

00:14:53.850 --> 00:14:57.300
series is a chapter called
"All Night Forever," which is

00:14:57.300 --> 00:14:58.710
about the reality of slavery.

00:14:58.710 --> 00:15:00.000
We did not want any
one of our viewers

00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:00.930
We did not want any
one of our viewers

00:15:00.930 --> 00:15:03.600
to misunderstand why
the Civil War came.

00:15:03.600 --> 00:15:06.420
There's lots of different
causes and stuff like that,

00:15:06.420 --> 00:15:10.350
but there's one main principle
reason that it happened,

00:15:10.350 --> 00:15:11.280
one main cause.

00:15:11.280 --> 00:15:14.170
And that's the existence
of chattel slavery.

00:15:14.170 --> 00:15:17.100
So for us, with the power
of a Negro spiritual

00:15:17.100 --> 00:15:22.020
that we have playing, and
this unbelievably leveling

00:15:22.020 --> 00:15:25.700
neutron bomb of a quote
by Frederick Douglass,

00:15:25.700 --> 00:15:30.000
it then suggested that our prose
could be more straightforward,

00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:30.680
it then suggested that our prose
could be more straightforward,

00:15:30.680 --> 00:15:33.020
that we didn't have
to add anything to it.

00:15:33.020 --> 00:15:36.020
In fact, if we did
it would become

00:15:36.020 --> 00:15:39.890
purple and overripe
and hard to justify

00:15:39.890 --> 00:15:43.310
in the face of the power
of the Douglass quote,

00:15:43.310 --> 00:15:47.990
the power of the spiritual,
the power of the images you're

00:15:47.990 --> 00:15:50.120
seeing, human
beings in shackles,

00:15:50.120 --> 00:15:55.610
human beings whose backs have
been scarred from lashes,

00:15:55.610 --> 00:15:58.610
human beings that are
treated and prodded

00:15:58.610 --> 00:16:00.000
like they're
animals, wedding vows

00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:01.430
like they're
animals, wedding vows

00:16:01.430 --> 00:16:03.890
that are changed till death
or distance do you part.

00:16:03.890 --> 00:16:09.410
It's a time when restraint in
language is in itself poetic.

00:16:09.410 --> 00:16:14.210
And then the narrator intones
in a very straight fashion,

00:16:14.210 --> 00:16:17.690
"'No day ever dawns for the
slave,' a freed black man

00:16:17.690 --> 00:16:19.620
wrote, 'nor is it looked for.'

00:16:19.620 --> 00:16:23.360
For the slave it is all
night, all night forever.

00:16:23.360 --> 00:16:26.840
One white Mississippian
was more blunt,--

00:16:26.840 --> 00:16:29.080
NARRATOR: "'I'd rather
be dead,' he said,

00:16:29.080 --> 00:16:30.000
'than be a nigger on one
of these big plantations.'"

00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:37.120
'than be a nigger on one
of these big plantations.'"

00:16:37.120 --> 00:16:41.080
A slave entered the world in
a one room dirt floored shack.

00:16:41.080 --> 00:16:44.020
Drafty in winter,
reeking in summer,

00:16:44.020 --> 00:16:48.760
slave cabins bred pneumonia,
typhus, cholera, lockjaw,

00:16:48.760 --> 00:16:50.860
tuberculosis.

00:16:50.860 --> 00:16:54.520
The child who survived to
be sent to the fields at 12

00:16:54.520 --> 00:17:00.000
was likely to have rotten teeth,
worms, dysentery, malaria.

00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:00.130
was likely to have rotten teeth,
worms, dysentery, malaria.

00:17:00.130 --> 00:17:05.270
Fewer than four out
of 100 lived to be 60.

00:17:05.270 --> 00:17:06.322
That's it.

00:17:06.322 --> 00:17:07.280
And it's just straight.

00:17:07.280 --> 00:17:11.720
And that just is the
radioactive, the kryptonite

00:17:11.720 --> 00:17:15.659
that just begins to
alter what everybody's

00:17:15.659 --> 00:17:17.200
view of what the
Civil War was about,

00:17:17.200 --> 00:17:20.260
which is this noble disagreement
between northern states

00:17:20.260 --> 00:17:22.450
and southern states,
and states' rights

00:17:22.450 --> 00:17:25.690
and nullification and economic
and social and political

00:17:25.690 --> 00:17:26.530
differences.

00:17:26.530 --> 00:17:28.520
It's about that.

00:17:28.520 --> 00:17:29.984
It's about that
in a country that

00:17:29.984 --> 00:17:30.000
had proclaimed that all
men are created equal,

00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:31.900
had proclaimed that all
men are created equal,

00:17:31.900 --> 00:17:35.110
4 million human beings were
owned by other human beings.

00:17:42.590 --> 00:17:44.840
When we get into a
discussion about slavery,

00:17:44.840 --> 00:17:46.160
we abstract things.

00:17:46.160 --> 00:17:48.410
I don't know how many
times people have said,

00:17:48.410 --> 00:17:50.660
well, you know, slavery
would have died out

00:17:50.660 --> 00:17:54.330
in a generation and a half.

00:17:54.330 --> 00:17:55.360
OK.

00:17:55.360 --> 00:17:57.110
So be a slave for a
generation and a half.

00:17:57.110 --> 00:17:58.010
You willing to do that?

00:17:58.010 --> 00:17:59.551
Well how about just
for a generation?

00:17:59.551 --> 00:18:00.000
OK, if that's too much,
what about a decade?

00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:02.360
OK, if that's too much,
what about a decade?

00:18:02.360 --> 00:18:03.150
No?

00:18:03.150 --> 00:18:04.880
How about a year?

00:18:04.880 --> 00:18:06.450
How about a month?

00:18:06.450 --> 00:18:07.790
How about a week?

00:18:07.790 --> 00:18:09.260
How about a day?

00:18:09.260 --> 00:18:12.500
How about an hour?

00:18:12.500 --> 00:18:15.890
The abstraction of the reality
of our historical past,

00:18:15.890 --> 00:18:19.460
particularly with regard
to slavery, is abhorrent.

00:18:19.460 --> 00:18:21.620
It permits us to
treat human beings who

00:18:21.620 --> 00:18:26.970
live lives as full as we do to
be abstracted into some force.

00:18:26.970 --> 00:18:30.000
So it's not as if people
weren't powerfully

00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:30.410
So it's not as if people
weren't powerfully

00:18:30.410 --> 00:18:33.710
aware of the moral
injustice of it back then.

00:18:33.710 --> 00:18:35.630
And yet, we just abstract it.

00:18:35.630 --> 00:18:38.600
And we assume that thank
goodness we're not,

00:18:38.600 --> 00:18:40.430
so therefore
there's no humanity.

00:18:40.430 --> 00:18:42.720
And that continues to this day.

00:18:42.720 --> 00:18:45.590
We still stop at the
color of the skin

00:18:45.590 --> 00:18:51.010
and not the content of the
character, as Dr. King said.