Nick Broomfield

35:56And incrementally, you can change into almost imperceptibly so that 20 years later, you're actually an entirely different creature, although you think you're the same person. And I think that that had sort of happened to Yvonne. You know, he was kind of an interesting but tragic figure. And he and Heidi had this incredibly destructive love affair where they did the most dreadful things to each other and they were still sleeping with each other. She would put naked pictures of him, paste it on all the cars around the court in Los Angeles when they were all at court together. he would put a hose pipe through her letterbox into her house sort of flooding the whole bottom of the house and then I think they were responsible for each other going to prison It's such a bizarre story Yeah, I was like, of course I had no idea How could you?

37:03When he went in Yeah And that was the whole thing and, you know, I was a character in it and they used to, you know, he called me a rube he got really he got more and more annoyed with me which was kind of interesting and Heidi would blush you know when I said but Heidi I've got a log from your front gate indicating that Yvonne is still coming to visit you it's his car his car registration and she'd say no Nate you got it all wrong you got it all wrong going bright red and and you know it was it was such an adventure making that film it went on and on and on for i mean i couldn't really pay my crew anymore you know because it was like 14 weeks but i didn't have an ending you know but it was a wonderful adventure making it you know but you have to hang on tight and hope you're not going to lose your mind in doing it, you know.

38:07And, you know, Heidi's still a good friend. Amazing. You know, and she's highly intelligent, Heidi, now living with these birds in Pahrump in the desert.

38:22So much of today's life happens on the web. Squarespace is your home base for building your dream presence in an online world. Designing a website is easy using one of Squarespace's best in class templates. With the built-in style kit, you can change fonts, imagery, margins, and menus. So your design will be perfectly tailored to your needs. Discover unbreakable creativity with Fluid Engine, a highly intuitive drag-and-drop editor. No coding or technical experience is required. understand your site's performance with in-depth website analytics tools squarespace has everything you need to succeed online create a blog monetize a newsletter make a marketing portfolio launch an online store the squarespace app helps you run your business from anywhere track inventory and connect with customers while you're on the go Whether you're just starting out or already managing a successful brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create and customize a beautiful website.

39:40Visit squarespace.com slash tetra and get started today.

39:51What was the first of the music films you did? Probably Curt and Courtney, yeah. How did Kurt and Courtney come about? I think that came from you. I don't think it came from me. Well, I think you said there's a very interesting, because I made the Heidi Fleiss film, and then we had a lot of really interesting talks about many things. You know, Gene Scott included. Oh, yeah. And I think you said there's a really interesting article in, And there was some magazine that, it wasn't uncut, but it was to do with a marijuana. High Times? Maybe it was High Times. And there was a really interesting article in there about Curt and Courtney, which I read and thought, this is indeed an interesting story.

40:51And then I went up to Portland and Seattle and started making that film, which was very much a not at all a traditional music film. Did you go in knowing anything at all? I went in really knowing nothing. Do you remember who you talked to first? I think we first went to Portland because we were having real problems getting access to anybody particularly close to Kurt. And Kurt had been with a record label, was it Sub Pop? Yeah. Who I think thought we were the enemy. so we went to portland and talked to all these bands that had been contemporaries of kurtz like napalm beach and various other ones too i don't think any of them ended up in the film but one of them was breeding rats and they were all living in these crazy places and i guess it was at a time when there was a lot of, there was a sort of culture that was really on heroin.

42:11So we learned quite a lot about that. And then in Seattle too, and it was in the rainy season, and we stayed in this, well, the cheapest hotel we could find in downtown Seattle and slowly, you know, got to know some of Kurt's family and his girlfriends and I mean looking back on it it was a pretty depressed subculture I think it was very wet when we were there but it was kind of dark in a way yeah it was not a particularly enjoyable film to make there were bands like screaming trees yeah and you could you know we got a real feeling of where the music had come from but it was kind of a disastrous shoot i didn't have my normal crew with me why was that rita who i'd worked with for years was living in England and her husband had died and she had two small children and Barry Aykroyd the cameraman that I work with who also shot a lot of Ken Loach's films and actually he's done a couple of films with Charlize now he's a really amazing cameraman I remember when I said to him would he come and shoot the film his first question was is Rita coming along too and i said no reader can't do it i always remember his words that were i think without rita i'm not psychologically equipped to deal with you on the shoot

44:07that's great yeah isn't it real vote of confidence yeah because rita was the sanity in these often insane films. And Barry was the one who was knocked out at the leader who felt, you know, instead of the camera feeling like this art form, it was like a battering ram in my films sometimes. And so I had a completely different crew. You know, I remember one of the guys was somebody I'd met at Whole Foods who just, you know, said he'd love my films. And I said, okay, come along, you know. And he had a friend who I remember one morning going into their room and they were in bed with one of the subjects who was badly on drugs.

45:04And I was like, this is like not good. And so I kind of started all over again on that film. Are there typically breakthrough moments in the process of making these films where something happens? Yes, I think sometimes you feel you've kind of got a complete picture of that person. You understand them. and obviously if they're a central character it's going to give you sort of some kind of arc of understanding which is i guess what you're looking for you know a development of a character i remember you know when we did soldier girls what's that one that was a film that joan churchill and I did in Georgia.

46:00And it was basically about following women through basic training. And there was this really tough drill sergeant called Sergeant Abing, who... Women or men? He was a man. I see. But the rest, the platoon was women. And it was in Fort Gordon. And Abing was just kind of unforgiving, relentless, sort of really didn't particularly like us either, you know, and would march everybody up and down. And then we discovered that he wrote poetry and he'd never wanted to be in the Marines, but had been kind of forced into the Marines and had been through Vietnam and was, you know, really worried about these women who, he said, you know, they're all going to be in communications and they're going to be prime targets in any conflict.

47:02The first thing you go for is communications. And he said, you know, these are all little gangbangers and, you know, from some teeny little town somewhere. And they're so unfit and they're so incapable. or, you know, I feel I've got to get them into some kind of situation where they at least can take care of themselves. So you saw this kind of ruthlessness that he had. There was a lot of caring. It was like a tough love kind of thing that you're describing. It was really like a tough love. And then, you know, one would see him with all these various characters. and then i remember at the end of the end of the story he kind of broke down and said you know i just can't i don't feel i can love anymore i think he'd just been through so much yeah he'd seen so much carnage and everything you know and that was incredibly moving then when the film came out I guess the Pentagon, who originally gave us permission, kind of victimized him and sort of sent him off to Belize or some remote spot to do jungle training for two or three years so that he, you know, the press couldn't get hold of him and he couldn't, as a kind of punishment, which we didn't know about because we tried to get hold of Abing, it was his name, quite a lot, And then Joan was in Idaho several years later and managed to find him.

48:44And he was completely forgiving. He was still the same guy. And then when Joan got back to Los Angeles, she opened her suitcase and Abing had put his purple heart in the suitcase. So you can have these incredibly profound relationships with people. So beautiful. And you'd never know it from the outside. No. Has your work ever been banned or censored? Yeah. Quite a lot. Give me an example. Well, again, Joan and I made this film called Juvenile Liaison. What's that? It was a scheme that the police had in Blackburn, Lancashire. You probably know Blackburn from the... Beetle cell. Yeah. Very depressed area.

49:45And a lot of families, extremely poor, mother or father missing. And the police had this scheme where the police would try and help with, you know, kids who weren't getting on properly at school or were stealing or were abusing their parents or disciplined problems and we we shot this film for a few weeks it was just very standard cinema but some pretty extreme things happened in it you know and the police meant well but they hadn't had any special training and they would take clearly autistic kids who had maybe stolen a cowboy suit or into the cells these barbaric police cells and turn the light out and leave them in there for a few hours to sort of try and horrify them back to to behaving properly Anyway, the film came out and it was immediately pounced on by some members of Parliament and shown at the House of Commons as an example of this terrible scheme.

51:00And the police managed to get the film banned. Wow. And the people in the film all got victimized again. You know, obviously, they had originally put us with who they thought were the greatest juvenile liaison officers. But when the film came out, they kind of fired them and made their lives difficult. Terrible. So, yeah, you kind of learn that, you know, when you're doing those kind of institutional films, institutions, rather than reform or change things, will generally point to the individual. Just blame people. And blame people. Yeah. Yeah. And shift the blame onto the people and off of themselves.

51:45Exactly. I see. And obviously you as the filmmaker take a certain responsibility for, especially those people who've been obliging and you've spent months and months with. So I felt terrible about this particular police sergeant. But that film was banned and has never really been shown in England. And then lots of lawsuits. What are the kind of lawsuits? Well, you know, the Whitney estate, actually even Leonard Cohen's estate. Really? Tell me about the Whitney project. Did you start that from the beginning or was there already something happening? No, we started from the beginning. Oh, I don't know the story of this movie.

52:32I've never seen it. Well, I'd gone into Showtime. I was pitching them some story. You can tell when people are completely disinterested. You know, they're sort of yawning and looking at their watches. And I realized it was going disastrously wrong. So I suddenly said, Whitney. You know, I'd been for a hike that morning with a friend, and he, for some reason, said, what happened to Whitney? You know, this was... How long was this after her passing? Not that long. He had brought it up on this hike, and I thought, yeah, what did happen? Neither of us knew. so I just sort of said Whitney apropos of nothing suddenly I had all the interest you know what I mean and 10 minutes later I had a commission I knew nothing nothing not even her music yeah you know and then what's the first thing you do after that well sort of try to at least listen to the music and get someone to tell me something about the story.

53:41Who were the characters in that story? Well, it was, I guess, Bobby Brown, her parents, Sissy, her mother, the conflict with the father, her brothers who had turned her onto crack, Bobby Brown who had been blamed for turning her onto crack but had in fact not. And then Clive Davis, who had created this mythical figure of Whitney Houston, who was sort of like black royalty, who was this entirely different person. who, when she didn't live up to his creation, was then kind of disparaged and looked down on and had this terrible legacy of Whitney Houston when she was an entirely different person. Wow.

54:39Who had grown up in Newark, which at that time was pretty tough, and was also supporting this enormous family of dependents who were all, kept her on the road and kept her playing, even though she really didn't want to and her voice was damaged and, you know, she couldn't hit the notes anymore. That was kind of where it went, you know. There was very little footage that we could get. One of her bodyguards told me about somebody who had shot a film that had never come out. he was austrian and was now working on cruise ships or something we spent about months and months trying to find him and eventually got a hold of this guy called rudy dolletzel who had indeed shot with whitney for a year the footage had never come out wow we bought this other film what was that footage like it was pretty beautiful it was beautifully shot it was great footage but it lacked the story you know often you can have great footage but if you haven't got a story there's no context yeah it was incredibly helpful and i remember you know So we called it Whitney, Can I Be Me?

56:10And I think she had a strong sense of who she was. She used to be called Nippy when she was growing up. And all her close friends called her Nippy, which was completely different from Whitney, the Clive Davis creation. And apparently on her rehearsal studios, she'd written this sign, can I be me because she wanted to do completely different kind of music you know she wanted to do much more sort of soul you know much music she liked black music yeah and she was being forced into doing this other kind of music yeah and also she she didn't own any rights over her music so it was all of that that ended up and you know although I never met Whitney.

57:02I felt an incredible sympathy and support for her, having started knowing absolutely nothing, you know. And I think a lot of storytelling is finding that identification and sympathy for people and telling their story in a way that creates empathy. i feel like you're always respectful of whoever it is is in your movie you just show them i hope so it feels like that feels like that and it's rare where so much of the things that we watch are telling us what to think yeah also i think everybody is full of you know the human condition is one of failings and things that could be better. Yeah. And everyone is full of blemishes, which I don't know.

57:59I mean, I don't think it's interesting to tell stories that don't have contradictions or don't have different views of that person. It's not what life is like. Yeah. Life is filled with contradictions and things don't fit perfectly and things don't always make sense. More often than not, they don't make sense. And I guess newspaper articles, maybe someone gets a week or two. Documentaries, you sometimes get the better part of a year. So you can go into things in real depth. And I think it's the gray areas that are often much more interesting than anything else. like Witte Blanche's Driver, who would come out with the most incredible racist statements that would kind of make your hair stand up and end, at the same time was an incredibly kind, endearing person who I think had known nothing else when he'd been growing up, you know.

59:09Was the Whitney movie the first one that used a lot of archival footage? It was, actually. From a technical standpoint, how was that different? It was much more of an editing exercise, because when I was shooting everything, I was constructing the story as I was going along, the narrative. So, you know, you'd shoot one scene and then think, I need this, or I'm interested in finding out this aspect. So it was kind of like working with building blocks. you'd do one kind of interview or have one kind of scene and then you knew you needed this scene with that person or you narrowed down your vision and so by the end of the shooting you'd really know precisely what you were doing whereas at the beginning you start with open slate or you know when you've got a ton of archive you kind of have to build a story around the archive and find the archive that illustrates the story.

1:00:16I found it very difficult to begin with, I think. It's a whole different way of working. It's much more finicky. But in some ways, I quite liked having the piece of the editing room. Yeah. And being able to have a sort of disciplined day. it was probably much longer edit than usual yeah it was it's very tricky a in the whitney thing we didn't have to source that much archive because it was all there but in other films i've done waiting for the archive finding the archive is such a time-consuming business and then molding it into the story and finding the relationship between the different bits of archive is also kind of tricky it's it's just a different discipline i think and the stones film that i did was almost all archived interesting but you know kind of frustrating to work

1:01:35LMNT. Element Electrolytes. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? Do you want to maximize your endurance and feel your best? Add Element Electrolytes to your daily routine. Perform better and sleep deeper. Improve your cognitive function. Experience an increase in steady energy with fewer headaches and fewer muscle cramps. Element electrolytes. Drink it in the sauna.

1:02:12Refreshing flavors include grapefruit, citrus, watermelon, and chocolate salt. formulated with the perfect balance of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to keep you hydrated and energized throughout the day. These minerals help conduct the electricity that powers your nervous system so you can perform at your very best. Element electrolytes are sugar-free, keto-friendly, and great tasting. Minerals are the stuff of life. So visit drinklmnt.com slash tetra and stay salty with Element Electrolyte. LMNT.

1:03:00Tell me about Biggie and Tupac. Biggie and Tupac. What made you want to make that film? Well, I'd always wanted to do a film about the LAPD. And there was this police officer, Russell Poole, who was alleging that Biggie had been killed by these LAPD police officers who had an allegiance with Suge Knight and Death Row Records. And I met with him a few times. Where did you hear that story? I think I probably saw an interview with Russell Poole on television. I see. And then I went and met with him a few times. and then also met with Biggie's mom, Valetta, at the beginning, who was very anxious to get to the bottom of who had killed her son.

1:04:12At that point in time, no one knew anything? No. So that was really the way on that one. And what happened next? what channel 4 put the money up for is you know i've been moderately lucky and i haven't had to wait enormous amounts of time generally to get funding which i think can be so frustrating and depressing for a lot of people it's also allowed you to make a lot of films Yeah, and it's allowed me to make a lot of films. So we got the money pretty quickly. And then it was this sort of real conundrum of there were all these different theories and different people. And, you know, there's a lot of shenanigans going on.

1:05:07And also there were two people. So it was very difficult to do justice to them both because obviously they had this real connection. Tupac had helped Biggie a lot at the beginning. And there was this kind of sort of weird rivalry or misunderstanding developed between them, which was so tragic that these two people who started off with a lot of love and were incredibly similar, I mean, obviously, size-wise, they weren't very similar. But they were both unbelievably talented students. They were both sort of A-grade students. Tupac went to the Baltimore School of the Arts, which is a pretty amazing place.

1:05:54And Big E was, you know, at this private school and writing this incredible poetry. And so they gave each other a great deal. and then they were sort of overtaken by these other forces which obviously emanated in some way from their own situations i think you know tupac was always kind of looking for a father and a greater meaning in life and enjoyed the bravado of suge knight and all these, this posse of kind of gang members and stuff. And of course, Biggie was singing about it, but I, you know, it was a kind of love story that ended in complete tragedy. Both of their talents were manipulated for other reasons.

1:06:57You originally wanted to make a film about the LAPD, Right. Did the LAPD piece of the story become a big part of the story? Well, yes. Well, then there were these three police officers, David Mack, Rafael Perez, and this guy called Elijah Muhammad or something. Those three police officers were all—two of them had worked at death row as off-duty police officers and were also members of a gang, the same that Suge was a member of. David Mack was subsequently convicted of a bank robbery and sent down. And Rafael Perez was all involved in the Rampart scandal. So they were kind of up to their neck and stuff.

1:07:50And I remember interviewing this very funny woman who was both their girlfriends at one time. I don't know exactly what they got up to, but she was pretty hilarious. So there were a lot of, again, complicated characters. I mean, I guess, you know, the two main characters in it was the portraits of Tupac and Biggie. and we did find a lot of material that had never been seen before. How do you go about doing that, finding archival that hasn't been seen before? A lot of the Tupac stuff was from his friends, his family. Same with Biggie. You know, there were friends of his who had shopped material, But it's a real time-consuming needle in the haystack time.

1:08:48You know, it's a lot of people who claim to have stuff that they haven't got, and then they want to charge you the earth for it. You know, this is their one moment of fame and opportunity. So it is difficult. Did you get to interview Suge? Yes. How was that? It was amusing in a way. He was in Mule Creek State Prison. And you got permission to film him in prison? Well, it's complicated. Again, it was finessing a relationship with the governor. I see. And in Mule Creek State Prison, you can get permission to film the institution in general, but not to film a specific prisoner. So you go up there.

1:09:40My normal crew didn't want to come because you have to sign and put your address in the prison logbook. And they were all like, are you kidding? Because we got all these threatening messages from death row before saying, we don't want you to do an interview and piss off. And then when they heard we were going, it was like, what hotel are you staying in? What plane are you coming? you know all this horrible stuff so anyway we got there and you had to sign a waiver i remember saying that if you in in the unlikely event that you were taken a hostage that you had no objection to your kneecaps being shot out no kidding you have to sign that for yeah you have to sign that for real i saw my erstwhile cameraman sort of turn green You signed it happily.

1:10:34Well, I just thought this is like a farce. Anyway, so then the superintendent of the prison says, I'll have to take you around. What do you want to do? We sort of did a couple of cursory other interviews. And then I said, you know, we want to talk to Suge Knight. And he said, oh, fine. You know, so he took us to Suge's cell. But at the time that you went, you didn't know what was going to happen. You didn't know for sure you would get to talk to anybody. No. No, we just went up there. We had permission to film in Mule Creek, but we didn't know. Did they know what the topic of what you were filming was about or no?

1:11:16I think they might have done. I mean, the superintendent was super obliging. Great. And, you know, he took us. Suge was on the phone at the time. him i said oh shall i go and i'll go and ask him you know and super says no i think i might have more luck you know i think shiv was trying to get on parole or something i see so he went up and you know death row had said he's not going to talk to you so you might as well just forget it you You know, so he comes along and he has to go back to his cell to get a big cigar. And then we do an interview with him outside. Is he smoking the cigar? He's smoking the cigar.

1:12:06Amazing. In prison. Yeah. Amazing. In the prison. And he obviously could make as many phone calls as he wanted kind of thing. He seemed to have a lot of rights one way or another. I think he probably has a lot less now. now that he's got a big conviction. Is he in prison now? Yeah. I wasn't aware. I think he was sentenced for murder. You know, he knocked that guy down with his car and stuff deliberately. I don't know the story. So you interview him smoking a cigar outside, and was it illuminating? Well, I think the circumstances of the interview were illuminating. You know, he said, I don't want to talk about the murder of Biggie right up front.

1:13:00But he said, I want to give a message to the kids. And then he came out with this pretty, given that you've seen the rest of the film, and you knew what he was up to. It was this kind of almost Christian message to the kids. And then I asked him a few other things about Snoop Dogg. who he was threatening to kill at the time. And he talked about Snoop being a snitch and that snitches got killed and all that kind of stuff. But I wouldn't say it was one of the finest interviews, but it was very telling, the circumstance of it. And it was frightening to be there, actually. You know, he's quite an intimidating presence.

1:13:52You know, he's very big. And then he's got this very soft, a very soft, gentle voice, which I found completely freaky, you know, because everything about him is menace. And the voice made him even more menacing. Wow. So the film, you know, was sort of, well, I think it was a good portrait of the Big E and Zupac thing, but inconclusive in that the LAPD have never, it's still unresolved, you know. It's unresolved in the movie. Is it still unresolved to this day? It is. If something got resolved, would you go back and add an ending to the movie or no? I don't think so. I think it's just a portrait of those people at that time.

1:14:52I see. In that particular situation. Are all documentaries that about a particular moment in time? It's not a biography. It's something else. Well, I mean, I guess there's lots of different kinds of documentary. I think none of them are definitive, but they're an interpretation of a particular situation at that time, I think. I think they're kind of historical documents, a lot of which I don't think you'd be able to probably make anymore now. Why do you think? I think things are much tighter. I think there was a sort of magical notion of freedom of the press, which was super respected, particularly in this country.

1:15:47You know, when I first came here, and I don't think that exists anymore. When do you think it changed? I think it changed in the Iraq War. You know, there was nothing like the freedom that the press had in Vietnam, where they could go everywhere. And then there was the deliberate bombing of, what was that particular news outlet? It had Arabic funding. Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera. Was bombed? Yeah, yeah. I don't know the story. Yeah, there was deliberate, on the part, I think, of the U.S., deliberately taking Al Jazeera in various places. I think that was sort of the beginning of the end. Probably Julian Assange as well.

1:16:40Exactly that, and the other guy. Snowden. Snowden. Yeah. You know, and now there's the whole fake news thing has made everyone crazy. What was tracking down Maggie? That was by the time Margaret Thatcher was forced to resign. I don't know anything about Margaret Thatcher. In America, we're not taught to look past the boundaries of this country. Well, she was best friends with Ronald Reagan. And the same way that Ronald Reagan was deified by the Republican Party, Margaret Thatcher was by the Conservative Party. It was a sort of all-out re-evaluation of the sort of paternalistic policies of following the Second World War, of building a home for heroes and the state's obligation to the workers and so on.

1:17:48She re-evaluated all that, completely changed it. Did it impact everyday people's lives? Yeah. In what ways? Well, she destroyed the unions, who were a really powerful force. They were protecting workers' rights. They were very involved in industry. There were nothing by the time she had finished. She passed legislation making the closed shop illegal. She was kind of forced to resign by her own party. And then she went on a book tour with this book she had written. Was she popular or unpopular in Britain? She was, I would say, pretty unpopular by that time. And she was so unpopular in the foreign office that I was able to get her schedule all the way across America.

1:18:40So I knew where she was getting her hair permed and what hotel she was staying in. and, you know. It seems like a security risk. Yeah, exactly. Well, we obviously weren't going to do anything to her. No, but still, it's like... Exactly. It tells you something's wrong if you can... Yeah, exactly. If you can get that information. And so we sort of evaluated her, who she was and what she'd done while in power as she was going across America and also looking at all these arms deals her son had done by virtue of his association with her, with Iraq as well as the Arabic states. Incredible sort of corruption that was also part of it.

1:19:30And we were just sort of following her across America and talking to all these secret agents from Mossad and other places who had done deals. You know, they sold night vision spectacles to Iraq and various chemical weapons and all that kind of stuff. But it was kind of an alarming film because we realized after a while we were being followed, which was an unpleasant feeling. Was this for Channel 4 as well? This was for Channel 4, yeah. How was that film received? I don't think it was the greatest film. I think it was a good idea. But again, it wasn't sort of definitive. It was a re-evaluation of her.

1:20:19I didn't love the film. And I remember it was incredibly difficult to edit, to get a story to really work. Was it just the nature of what it was, or was there anything you could have done, in retrospect, to improve it? I think it begged for a proper conversation with her, which we never got. And it was not possible to get. No, we tried really hard. She had a few journalists that she would talk to, and that was it. But I think, in a way, that payoff wasn't there. I see. in a way that i think if we hadn't got suge knight you wouldn't have had the payoff on that film sometimes the hardest thing is to get the end to get a sense of proper closure and when you don't get that you know like we didn't get it in the Margaret Thatcher film, there's always that kind of nagging feeling that you could and should have gone on a bit longer.

1:21:32With Kurt and Courtney, there were all these allegations about Courtney, and it was a nightmare getting up at the ACLU dinner saying, should you really be awarding courtney this prize when she's you did that yeah i went there to do that milosh forman was there with the larry flint film and it was a big event it was a big hollywood event courtney was guest of honor you had not talked to courtney yet no i hadn't talked to her and we first see Courtney coming out of the loo. She's clearly just done a line. And then there were all these speakers coming up to a podium talking to this room, right? And I sort of worked out when I could nip up in between speakers and I just went up there and I kind of knew what I was going to say.

1:22:40I think I said, I don't want to be a party poop. But, you know, Hollywood sometimes has a problem of distinguishing between fact and fiction. And it was giving the torture freedom to somebody who had threatened journalists in the past, esteemed journalists and threatened to bludgeon someone with Quentin Tarantino's Oscar. And so was it really wise for them to be giving the Torch of Freedom Award to Courtney Love, at which point this guy jumps up from the audience. I was praying for someone to remove me, but I ran about this time because I'd run out of things to say. I mean, the best thing they could have done is just leave me up there like a blithering idiot can't you know anyway he came up and we were arrested he threw kind of literally manhandled me off the stage i see just a person in the audience no he was the host i see of this not a security guard no no no he was a guy in a suit well the security guard wouldn't have known that i was not supposed to be up there i see Everyone thought I was part of the show.

1:23:59I was in a suit, white shirt, and I had all the gear on, right? But I was a dreadful coward. I mean, I really didn't want to do it. It was a complete nightmare. I was sort of drenched with sweat. It sounds horrible. Horrible. And I remember I had this very gorgeous girlfriend at the time, Belgian, who was really gutsy. And she said to me at one point, because I was kind of, oh, God, I can't do this. if you don't do it i will and i was like so shamed i finally got up and did it right you know so i was just beside myself with horror and shame and i remember my agent i was speaking to him the next day and he said did you hear about that idiot who got up but didn't didn't know it was me at all did you hear about that idiot who got up and And I said, Dan, it was me.

1:24:59And he went, no, no. I was that idiot. Yeah, I was that idiot. That was me. Anyway, yeah. That's amazing. But I did have the ending. I then had the ending. Yes. So you can tell how, you know, and I'd run out of money to pay the crew or anything. so it was like it was painful going up there but it was even more painful not having an ending yeah you know yeah and i wish kind of you know with the thatcher film that i think rita rita this is a bit of an excuse but i think rita and barry had just about had enough on that film to i've been dragging them all around america and they just wanted to go back to their families and Yeah.

1:25:47Have a bit of, you know. Do you ever get tired of it when you're doing it? Or are you like excited by the chase of it all? I guess I feel you get one shot, really. Yeah. You're not going to be doing this film again. And I had the experience of making a couple of films for television when I first came out of film school. And really feeling they could have been really great. but they fell way short of that because they were so compromised by time and other things and i felt that was kind of a disservice to the people in the film as well as us the filmmakers so you know it's also kind of a record of your ability or lack of ability at that time you know you just want to get it as good as you can is it as much fun for you now as it's ever been i think so i think some of my films the later films would be more archival and they're more of a riddle you know it's it's the riddle of finding the story that will ring with an audience who can identify with it.

1:27:04You know, I think one does change over the years. You know, I think I was obviously... I hope so. I hope so. I'm much more angry, I think. And probably, you know, The Well was a lot more political, directly political, than it is now. What is direct cinema? I made this big feature when I was just starting it. It was a bad film. I had a wonderful cast. It's one of those unfortunate things where I can only blame myself for not making a great film. But I found working with a gigantic crew and not working with people who were acting themselves, I just couldn't do it properly. And so direct cinema was, for example, I made a film about the Chinese cockle pickers.

1:28:04They were these kind of undocumented workers from China who ended up picking cockles in this place called Morecambe Bay. Cockles are these kind of shellfish you can eat. And it's very dangerous because the tide comes in incredibly fast. And they were forced into doing that because they couldn't get employment anywhere else, really. And anyway, 25 of them drowned. Wow. This one particular night. And I did a film about them, and I got the same kind of Chinese from the same part of China who were in England, who were living in these houses with gangmasters to basically act themselves. And then I did the same thing.

1:28:52You recreated the historical event with other people playing the people. Yeah. That's interesting. Because they were basically... Non-actors. Non-actors who had come from the same background, who were living in these five to a room in these houses, who had left their families behind in China, often with the grandparents, their kids, some of which they'd never see again because... Was it like a version of slavery? Slave labor, really. Really? Yeah. When was this? I did that in, I think, about 2005. And this was happening in Britain in 2005? Yeah. Still happening? I would imagine. Wow. I would imagine.

1:29:37And you get incredibly powerful performances because they're kind of not performances because they haven't got their kids. So if they're acting the part of somebody who hasn't seen, you know, often you cast somebody who doesn't have their kid. Yeah. And a gang master who, the same kind of gang master. What's a gang master? there somebody who rounds up the people puts them all in the house charges them rent every week to stay in the house and gets paid and then doles out the wages and sort of also probably drives them to work and you know runs the house and then i did the same thing in with american marines in iraq and he was shot in jordan and it was around a particular incident called haditha and there were these incredible naval reports that indicated exactly what had happened which is basically these marines had killed I don't know 20 or 30 completely innocent Iraqis why because they had an IUD had gone off killing one of them in a Humvee and they were looking for the terrorists who'd done the bomb and they were called Kilo Company.

1:31:17And previous to that, in Haditha, they'd been at this other town where they had basically, the American army had said, everybody's got to leave this town by such and such a time. And if they don't, we'll kill everybody in the town, which they had done. So Kilo Company had had the experience of literally killing everything, anything that moved pets people children old people anybody who stayed behind in that town was killed then they went to haditha and one of the sergeants or whatever said clear those houses and that you know there were kids and old people and they were all killed and they claimed that There'd been shots fired from the houses.

1:32:12But it was a complex story, really, because, you know, most of these Marines were 17 or 18. You know, they were... Kids themselves. They were kids, and they had been trained in a particular way to react, kind of zombie-like. You know, so we got the Marines to basically act out how they had been. And we built barracks for them. And then we recreated this little hamlet of houses. How did they feel about recreating something like this? Absolutely okay. Really? Yeah, because a lot of them had, yeah, they had really no respect for the Iraqis anyway. And this is what they did. I mean, it was all too familiar to them.

1:33:12They had been trained to shoot and ask questions later. They killed the enemy and spayed everyone. So the film very carefully showed their training and their mindset that had been programmed. It really is showing the problems with the system. Yeah. The villains were not the killers in this case. No, they were absolutely not. It was the system that created the situation. Yeah. And then the villagers were caught in between the terrorists who were laying the IEDs and the American army. They were obviously being threatened by both sides and were just trying to raise families. And they didn't have a political allegiance.

1:34:01And so they, of course, were aware of where these IEDs were being planted because they would see it happening. And then, of course, the Marines would be furious that they didn't tell them and that one of their number had been blown in half. Yeah. So we did that. I was very pleased with the outcome on the incredible. It was very emotional, very, yeah. Where did that show? Well, it was on Netflix. As you can imagine, didn't go down enormously well in America. Yeah. In cinemas and stuff, we had a screening at the Arrow. And I remember the manager, it was a fistfight at the end of the... Wow. Some of the Marines were there, and people were so, you know, patriotically not believing this could happen.

1:35:01Yeah. Are there any stories that you've been wanting to tell that haven't been able to do yet? there are a couple of things i started i didn't finish but i think i've been lucky in that i've been able to do most of what i wanted to i mean i think it was possible to make more political films more social films when i was starting than now I think now you're kind of looking at true crime and maybe music, if it's big enough. But, you know, the documentary market is pretty disappointing, I would say. It's not pioneering and looking for new ways of storytelling or interesting new kind of subject matter.

1:35:58Do you think of yourself as an investigator? Yeah, I always saw myself as a kind of Clouseau. More than, you know. Bumbling. Bumbling around, yeah. Tell me about the business side of filmmaking. How does that work? Well, the model I used for a long time was the British TV stations are much more risk-taking than here. So I would get the initial funding from BBC or Sky or Channel 4 to get the film going and then generally shoot the film and edit the film and then sell it in the US. but i think that model has kind of gone because most of the streamers want to own and commission the product that they're doing and they're not buying in in the same way that they were so if you're not very careful you can end up with a very costly film which you're going to end up having to finance if you don't get someone on board.

1:37:20I think the difficult thing is you can obviously waste an awful lot of time trying to gather the funds to start the film, but it's very risky now to start the film without having complete funding up front. And from British television, they would not fund the whole film. It's too expensive. I see. I mean, particularly if there's archiver music, I think you're probably lucky in the UK with a documentary getting, I don't know, four or five hundred thousand pounds, which is probably eight hundred thousand dollars. Whereas, you know, you probably need double or treble that probably. Hasn't technology brought down the cost of making things or no?

1:38:06No, because you spend more time in post. I see. Post is much more expensive now than it was before, and it's just more complicated. And then everybody wants everything delivered in so many different formats that the delivering in the formats costs a fortune. The films you make change you. I felt very changed by the experience of making Eileen. And, you know, the relationship with Eileen, the relationship with Sergeant Abing, this wonderful Liverpudlian housewife called Ethel, who sort of educated me politically. I think the people in the films that you value and have relationships with, it changes you quite a lot.

1:39:06they open doors and show you things you didn't realize before and in a wonderful way I think

1:39:43Tetragrammatin is a website.

1:39:49Tetragrammatin is a whole world of knowledge.

1:39:58What may fall within the sphere of Tetragrammatin? Counterculture. Tetragrammatin. Sacred geometry. Tetragrammatin The Avant-Garde Tetragrammatin Generative Art Tetragrammatin The Tarot Tetragrammatin Out-of-print Music Tetragrammatin Biodynamics Tetragrammatin Graphic Design Tetragrammatin Mythology and Magic Tetragrammatin Obscure Film Tetragrammatin Beach Culture Tetragrammatin Esoteric Lectures Tetragrammatin Off-the-grid Living Tetragrammatin Alt-Spirituality Tetragrammatin the canon of fine objects, tetragrammatin, muscle cars, tetragrammatin, ancient wisdom for a new age. Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day.

1:40:50Take a breath and see where you are drawn.