DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. Frederick Wiseman, the documentary filmmaker whose approach was to choose a subject and capture it at great, revealing length, died Monday at age 96. A law school graduate who was studying at the Sorbonne when he picked up a movie camera, Wiseman became excited by the possibilities of the new, less cumbersome recording equipment to capture sound and images from actual settings and events.
His first documentary was 1967's "Titicut Follies," filmed inside a Massachusetts institution for the criminally insane. He edited the vast amount of footage into a harrowing story told without narration or any talking heads, just capturing the action and the people and letting the drama and morals reveal themselves. New York Times film critic A.O. Scott once wrote, Walt Whitman wrote that the United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. And in a Whitmanian temper, I would argue that Frederick Wiseman is the greatest American poet.
Some of Wiseman's films were the length of TV miniseries, and many were shown on PBS. His films included "Central Park," "Juvenile Court," "High School" and "Hospital," which, though made in 1970, has scenes of operating room intensity and patient care humanity to rival anything on "The Pitt." Here's a nurse calling a pair of colleagues to try to find a bed for a young boy. She's willing to claim he has an illness, any illness, if that'll help. Her conversation isn't staged. It's just captured.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "HOSPITAL")
UNIDENTIFIED NURSE: What I want is a bed. Well, really, nothing. I mean, there's no disease, but I need a bed. And I was hoping you and Dr. Wake (ph) could think of something where I could get one by. A bed for a little boy who doesn't have any place to go. I'll give him anything you want. What do you want him to have?
BIANCULLI: Terry Gross spoke to Frederick Wiseman in 1986.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
TERRY GROSS: Why have most of your films been about institutions?
FREDERICK WISEMAN: Why have they been about institutions? Well, because after I made "Titicut Follies," which is a film about a prison for the criminally insane - or in the course of making that, I realized what you could do for a prison for the criminally insane, you could do for other places, namely, make a film about them.
And it seemed to me that this was relatively unexplored territory in film terms, because not all, but many documentary films up to that point would pick one charming person - a prize fighter, a movie producer, a movie star or somebody with an eccentric personality - and make them the focus of the film. And I thought it would be more interesting to try and do a series of films where the place was the star and where the film would be an impressionistic and, perhaps, novelistic account of what the place was like and not following any one individual.
GROSS: Do you have a point of view about the place when you go in and start shooting?
WISEMAN: Yeah, I always have a point of view. But invariably, that point of view changes as a consequence of learning something, because most of the time, my point of view is based on very little knowledge or experience, or certainly frequently it's the case. The most extreme example I can give you to illustrate that is my attitude, say, about the police before I made "Law And Order," because the film was shot in the fall of 1968 in Kansas City. And it was shot right after the Democratic Convention and the police riots on the streets of Chicago.
So it was the trendy view at that time, not only because of what happened in Chicago, but elsewhere, that the police were all pigs. Well, you ride around in the police cars for approximately 15 seconds, and you realize that the piggery is in no way restricted to the police because you see what people do to each other that make it necessary to have police in the first place, which is not any - is not to excuse police brutality when it does exist. But what it is to do is not isolate it from other forms of human brutality, which make it necessary to have police to respond to and protect other people from.
GROSS: Well, it's a less simplistic way of looking at things that there are good guys and bad guys (laughter) on both sides of the fence. Do you find that a lot when you go into a place, that there aren't obvious good guys and bad guys?
WISEMAN: Yeah, very often. Yeah.
GROSS: And that the good and bad is a lot more ambiguous?
WISEMAN: Yeah, well, I mean, ambiguity and ambivalence rules the day because, you know, I mean, it's just like in our own experience or the way we act ourselves.
GROSS: I sometimes wonder why people or why the people at the top of an institution would let you film them (laughter) because sometimes the people really don't end up looking very good. And you never know how you're going to come off if there's someone with a camera and a microphone recording everything that you do.
WISEMAN: Well, as someone - as a fellow once said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And I've made - I've now made 18 films in this style. And only in three of those situations have the people giving me permission not liked the film. And in each of those situations, they only turned against the film, not when they first saw it - because when they first saw it, they liked it - but only when they didn't like the way they or some of the people in the film were characterized in the reviews.
GROSS: Which were those three?
WISEMAN: "Primate," "High School" and "Titicut Follies."
GROSS: And those are the most controversial ones that you did, too.
WISEMAN: Well, I mean, they're controversial because - in part, at least, because the people that were in them originally liked them, and then subsequently were put on the defensive by what was written about the films, not by their initial response.
GROSS: You became a filmmaker when you were in your 30s. Your first career was as a lawyer. It's always a hard decision, I think, for anybody who's already started one career to change into another, especially into one as financially risky as documentary filmmaking. Why did you want to enter into that?
WISEMAN: Well, I didn't like being a lawyer. I taught law, and I just simply didn't like it. And I was bored. And I guess I reached the reaching age of 30 and figured I'd better do something I liked. And I had been fiddling around, making 8-millimeter movies for a long time. And I was interested. And...
GROSS: What'd you like about documentary movies? You didn't want to go to Hollywood and shoot Hollywood feature films.
WISEMAN: No. Well, I'm interested in feature film, but not the kind that gets turned out by the studios. But it just seemed to me there was a whole, great, interesting world out there that hadn't been explored in film terms. I mean, with all the documentary movies that have been made by everybody that makes documentary movies, America is still a relatively unexplored country from the point of view of documentary film.
And one of the things that's exciting about it is the fact, if you're lucky and hang around long enough, you're going to stumble across situations that are funnier, more dramatic, more tragic, sadder than almost anything except really great works of literature. And it's not you that have invented them. You've just been lucky enough to be a witness to them and be able to record them on film and include them in a film. But it's an opportunity. I mean, in one sense, it's novelistic. In another sense, it's a form of natural history.
GROSS: There were many - when you were starting in the mid-'60s or so, documentary filmmaking had, I think, just turned a corner. There was cinema verite. There were a lot of documentary filmmakers who were inventing a whole philosophy and style in approaching their subjects. What were some of the theories of that period that excited you? And what were some of the ones that you rejected and thought were really baloney (laughter) and weren't really important?
WISEMAN: Well, I mean, I think the whole notion of cinema verite is a baloney notion, I mean, just to use a, I mean, French term like that. I mean, the notion that documentary film represents truth rather than one person's view of a matter, I mean, which gets tied in with the whole idea that there's such a thing as objectivity, I mean, again, strikes me as obvious nonsense. But a lot of people cling to that. And there's also a certain amount of pretension among some documentary filmmakers, who I think see the real subject of their films as themselves.
Frequently, the documentary filmmaker will be a character in the film, or there'll be lots of shots of the documentary filmmaker in a mirror, just to remind the audience that this isn't really true, but it's a movie and the way to demonstrate that, as if the audience didn't know they were watching a movie. So I guess I'm part responding to that. And it seemed to me what was interesting was to explore not - you know, not to pick one's navel, but to see what was out there. And that's quite interesting, to say the least.
GROSS: None of the movies of yours that I've seen have any narration in it or any interview with it. In a lot of documentary films, the filmmaker will be off camera but will be asking questions to the person who is the subject of the movie or the subject of that scene. And the person will then be, like, discussing what they're doing or discussing their life or whatever in response to those off-camera questions. Why have you decided to, like, not either have narration or interview in your movies?
WISEMAN: Well, I guess, you know, it comes down to something as simple as I don't like to be told what to think. And I think when this kind of documentary technique works, where you're photographing and recording unstaged (ph) events, it works because or at least in part because you're placing the audience in the middle of these events and asking them to think through their own relationship to what they're seeing and hearing so that the editing of the film - and by the editing, I mean, what the - the structure of the final film - represents my point of view toward the material. And that's the substitute for narration. The order in which I present the sequences and the pacing of the sequences is the way I express my attitude.
Now, that is related to both traditional storytelling fiction film terms, and it's also related to the way a story gets told in a novel because you don't - I mean, of a novel you really like, you don't demand that the novelist summarize his attitude toward the characters in an introductory chapter. I mean, we - Trollope is a great writer, but we sort of laugh now at his asides where he tells us - I mean, he steps out of the role of the omniscient narrator of the novel and sort of intrudes his own presence. Well, that - what I try to do is express my point of view indirectly through structure and - but leave enough room in the material so that the audience can respond on the basis of their own values. But yet, if they want to think about what my attitude is, they can figure it out by saying - by thinking about what sequences I've included and the order in which I've included them.
GROSS: I'm trying to think about your position of not discussing what your intentions are with movies or what you finally think of the subject of your films. And I guess part of me is a little uncomfortable with that 'cause I always feel like your opinion is there, and it's up to us to crack the code (laughter) of what it is.
WISEMAN: Well, I don't think it's so difficult. I don't think it's so - I mean, I don't mean to make it a mystery.
GROSS: Then why wouldn't you want to just say it?
WISEMAN: Well, because I think it trivializes the subject and because I think if I've made the film correctly, the final film is an expression of a complex attitude toward a complex subject. And to the extent that I say, well, welfare centers run poorly, or the administrators are poorly trained, or the clients are all psychological or biological basket cases, well, that's demeaning. It's demeaning to - both to the administrators and demeaning to the clients because the problems of each of them are unique, complicated and manifold, so to speak.
And if the movie just even begins to suggest that, it will have accomplished one of its purposes, where - and I think another part of it is that I don't want to set my - there's a certain temptation, which I try to resist, to set myself up. And I think it's one that any documentary filmmaker has or any journalist has, or any radio person interviewing on a radio program has, too. And that is the setting yourself up as an instant expert on a subject about which you may not know all that much, but where sometimes the occasion may demand that you assert yourself with an authority that your information or your background on the subject doesn't warrant. So that - I'm very hesitant about, say, generalizing about police or the health service delivery systems or welfare or whatever because to the extent that I understand it, what my understanding is, is in the film. To the extent that I don't understand it, or the film has failed, will be readily apparent to someone who has a greater understanding about it than I do.
GROSS: OK. I want to thank you very much for talking with us.
WISEMAN: Well, I enjoyed it. Thank you.
BIANCULLI: Frederick Wiseman recorded in 1986. The documentary filmmaker, whose films included "Titicut Follies," "Hospital" and "Central Park," died Monday. He was 96 years old.
More than 20 years after winning an Oscar for "Almost Famous," Kate Hudson is nominated again for playing a Milwaukee-hairdresser-turned-Neil-Diamond-tribute-performer in "Song Sung Blue." On Monday's show, she discusses how she prepared and why it's taken so long to start making music. Hope you can join us.
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BIANCULLI: To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram - @nprfreshair. FRESH AIR's executive producer is Sam Briger. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Diana Martinez.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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