乔纳桑·德米（卫报）

Jonathan Demme
At the BFI Southbank, Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme talks about capturing the tears and dignity of the former US president in his Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains

guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday April 01 2008

David Thompson: Please welcome Jonathan Demme.

Jonathan Demme: If I could just say a very brief few words, I lived in England for much of the 60s and 70s and the BFI Southbank was my church. In my country at the moment we're having an election and one of the things that struck me about being with Jimmy Carter is that whether you agree with his doctrines there's a sense of how this man, this former president - the sense he has, the respect for the office. I really want to strap George Bush into a chair and make him watch this again and again and again.

DT: We'll talk about the film and then take some questions from the audience. You've already expressed your admiration for Jimmy Carter before making the film. How did this come about?

JD: There's a company in America called Participant Productions which wants to make films that will be entertaining and commercially viable but that address something important in the world today and that offer an agenda for positive change. They famously did the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth. Anyway, the guy that heads up Participant, who's yet another eBay billionaire, a terrific guy called Jeff Skoll, became quite enamoured of Carter and asked him if he would be willing to have a film made. He called me up because I'd done some quite good films before, and I said: "Yes, I'd love to."

So I went down and [Carter] squeezed me into his schedule four months later, for an hour. And in searching for a story he mentioned he had this book coming out, which would be called Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, so, to me it was obvious: it was a road movie, which would be supercharged with a certain amount of controversy, and would be a great way to check the legendary stamina of this 83-year-old who supposedly sleeps for three hours a night and is doing good the rest of the time. So that's what happened and he bought the idea. But the folks at Participant weren't very happy that the focus was going to be on the Middle East. They said, what would the message be? And I said, well he does have this message that people should talk to each other and that, through that, peace can be achieved.

DT: And in terms of getting access to him, it was pretty much open door, was it?

JD: Well, yes. I did tell him when I first met him that obviously he couldn't have any approval about the finished content. The other thing was that I told him he would have to give us unrestricted coverage from the moment his door opened until he went back in his hotel room at the end of the day. And he went for it and stuck to it all the way.

DT: And how much did you really know about his personality before you got involved? What were the things that you discovered?

JD: There's a profile of Carter in the New Yorker by Hendrick Hertzberg, who writes wonderful political stuff, especially for the New Yorker. He had been a Carter speechwriter and sometime in the early 90s he wrote this incredibly loving profile of Carter. And I was excited because there is this combination of this presidential-sized ego, convinced you're right, macho, in the sense of striding the world, contrasted with this weepy, big-hearted guy who will burst into tears at the drop of a hat. So that sounded like a nice, complicated character and certainly a more complicated character than we knew of on the basis of what we saw from the media during his presidency and since.

DT: How did this man ever become president of the United States, because he seems so human?

JD: We hope that this is going to happen again in our country, that the clear humanity of senator Obama and his unadulterated message of peace and his interest in talking to the enemy will resonate with more people than not. You can imagine the moment when we are shooting this documentary and I'm in the room there and it's like: "God, he's crying". It was so exciting, that was a great moment on the trail.

DT: So you had carte blanche in the film to show what you wanted up to a point? There were some episodes that you didn't show.

JD: Up to a point. I showed the film to Carter out of courtesy and he gave me - I promise you, eight pages of frame-specific notes. And they weren't even notes from a guy who wanted his image preserved. They were more like editor notes: "That's a bit boring, that could be tiresome." But he was uncomfortable with the remarks he had made about Apic (American-Israel Political Action Committee) at a press conference out in Atlanta. And I called him and said: "Well, the whole point of this film in a way is to hear stuff like that." And he said: "OK".

Of course, the rabbis on the other hand refused permission to ... we'd filmed the encounter and it was amazing. They had been initially uncomfortable but I talked to a younger rabbi and he talked to his colleagues and they said OK. And we went in and we filmed this extraordinary encounter - they beat the living daylights out of him, hit him with every argument. They were unrelenting and articulate and he was like: "Oh, not that again." It was an amazing moment, ended in a prayer circle with them holding hands; ended with the rabbi who delivered the prayer becoming very emotional. It was a beautiful scene. And at the end of the night they came over and said: "Well, we are inclined to think this will probably be OK." And I said well, sign releases right now. Let's get this over with.

Then one rabbi - a woman - said: "I'm a film-maker, and I know what you can do with footage. It would be madness for us to sign releases until we see exactly what you are going to do with this." So I said fair enough. And we edited it down to eight minutes and I did edit it. They were made to look very strong, very formidable, which they basically were. And Carter was made to look resilient and beleaguered and unrelenting, but he basically didn't win. So I called them up, and got a letter from an attorney saying, do not attempt to contact the rabbis, individually or collectively. They do not want to see it or participate in the film. It was very frustrating because I was depending on that scene. But I think the gap that is left is very interesting.

DT: We'll come back to the film a bit later. But in terms of your career, you began in the Roger Corman school of film-making, exploitation movies. And then progressed to these remarkable movies, Melvin and Howard, which never really got the attention it deserved, Something Wild, Married to the Mob and then something called Silence of the Lambs, which I think was quite successful. It seems there has been a logical trajectory in terms of your feature films. Where did the idea of becoming a documentary maker come from?

JD: Well, two places. In a nutshell, I went to Haiti in 1986 and became a Haitian art lover and found a people who were on the verge of becoming a democracy. And there was this love of democracy down there, with the very idea that you can make the country better through democracy. And I thought that would be a great thing to try and capture. And I was looking for an excuse to go back to the country as soon as possible. So I called my friend Joe Menell, who has made endless documentaries here in London and all over the world. And he got some money from Channel 4 and we went back and made what was really my first documentary [Haiti: Dreams of Democracy]. And that just got me started: the thrill of filming an important and valuable reality.

Then I did Cousin Bobby in the 90s. And I was very aware that in America at that time and even now when you saw any people of African descent on TV they were either entertaining, playing sports or doing something bad. And it was something that many people reject. I was approached by a Spanish company that wanted feature film-makers to make documentaries. And I tried to find a double dutch team that would let us follow them and get inside their heads. But there was a lot of resistance to a white guy coming in ... and it hit a wall. Then my cousin contacted me and I found out he was a minister at an essentially black church, so I chose to make a documentary about him. And I fell more in love with the documentary process, the whole idea of having a documentary that functions as a film in addition to a conveyor of ideas and information. I always like the absence of following a script and having to deliver some zucco climax that falls into the rubric and so on.

DT: We've got a clip of The Agronomist, so perhaps we could just say a bit about the main character of the film.

JD: Jean Dominique is The Agronomist of the title. It's actually ironic because he wanted to be an agronomist, but he ended up being a brilliant journalist and a leader of the pro-democracy movement in Haiti. In fact, I met him when Joe Menell and I went down: everyone said if you are making a film about democracy here you have to go to Radio Haiti. So we went there and filmed his amazing editorial that day. Then when Aristide was unseated in the coup a couple of years later, Jean-Dominique went into exile in New York. And I thought that that guy could be such a movie star. So I wanted to meet him and cultivate him to be an actor. And one day I would have a part for him.

So my ruse was to pretend to want to do a documentary about him: the journalist in exile. He was bored and wanted to do this, and was also a movie buff, so he was kind of intrigued. So we started doing these interviews, and Jean became bored of it - we'd become very good friends - and he said: "Put your little camera away and we'll just be friends." So I said: "OK". And then tragically he went back to Haiti and shortly after getting back on the air, he was assassinated. And in the wake of this horrifying event, my friends and I who had been shooting this faux documentary with decided: "We've got all that footage, let's finish the story."

DT: Here's a clip from the film.

(The audience watches the clip.)

DT: You presumably agree with [Jean Dominique's] sentiment that cinema can be a force for change?

JD: Sure, it was very exciting to hear Jean talk about that: the idea of using film aggressively, as an instrument for positive social change, especially the non-political forms that he mentions.

DT: It's very interesting that Night and Fog should be guilty by admission.

JD: Yeah. They got it, didn't they? They had their own unjustly confined people in Haiti. The country was full of people unjustly imprisoned and being tortured and killed. By the way, that lovely music playing there, that's Wyclef Jean, who composed the score and played everything himself.

DT: Have there been films in your own life which have had that power, such as Night and Fog?

JD: There was one film that I saw in my late teens at the New York film festival, Loin du Vietnam which was a series of five short films by French directors against the war in Vietnam. I wasn't against the war in Vietnam, I didn't have any political opinions; I was against being drafted and killed. And I went to see this film and Alan Resnais had a segment that talks about the horror of the Nazi occupation of France, and how the Americans had shown up and liberated France, and were adored for this. And now, today, in 1968, the Americans in the context of Vietnam have become the Nazis: the Vietnamese had been invaded by them. And however it was spun, I came out of that movie radicalised; I got the joke. It was an amazing moment for me: the film triggered something. So, yes, a film by one person can make a difference.

DT: Aside from the documentaries which are portraits dealing with social situations, you've also been very involved in music. How did that side of things begin?

JD: Gary Getzman and I went to see the Talking Heads concert at the Hollywood Bowl in 1984 and I watched it and thought: "This is like a movie waiting to be shot." So we decided we should try and get the money to film David Byrne, and then we could hang out with him. And I remember David asking what would be different about this film compared to any other music films. And I said, well that's one of the many things we'll discuss, but can we have permission to go and try to secure the money to make this film [Stop Making Sense]. He was inclined to say yes. He designed the lighting for the live show with a lighting director and found it very frustrating that he could never get the right lighting. He realised that on film he would finally get the chance to get the lighting right. So in a week he called back and said he had the money, and we went off and did it. And he kept asking me that damned question. Ironically we did have something that was different: we never showed the audience and the music flowed one song into another. So we ended up having our definitive difference. And we had one of the greatest cinematographers in the world with Jordan Cronenwerth, who did films like Blade Runner.

DT: And the film also differs from the Pennebaker style of Monterey Pop. The shots are very sophisticated and smooth and seem very planned. Is that the case?

JD: I think those are also more documents of an event. These aren't documentaries at all: they're performance pieces; sheer entertainment designed to make you think that seeing this movie is better than it could ever be to go to a live performance, containing a tremendous amount of music and sometimes surrendering to that music. I live in New York and I see Martin Scorsese from time to time and I love his films like The Last Waltz but I think: Martin, do a version where you take out all those interviews. and I said this to him and he said,"Yes, I looked at it once like that". But it didn't interest him and that's fine. But for me as soon as you start cutting to the audience or doing interviews, you lose that sheer musical momentum, that unique excitement that can be accumulated through music, and you miss the possibility of having a joyful musical experience. I love that Scorsese doesn't want that version because it would easily blow away all other performance films away. Can you imagine?

DT: We've got a clip now from Heart of Gold.

(The audience watches the clip.)

DT: There's a lovely moment in that where [Neil Young] looks across and it's his wife who smiles back.

JD: Yeah, and I was thinking while watching this that there's a very conscious effort in these performance films that another thing that might make it a little different from some others is that there's a very conscious effort to not present musicians but characters. And we're trying very hard to develop a character and avoid arbitrary cutting to any of the musicians. If you can try hard to only cut to people when there's a real reason to cut to them then they sustain whatever meaning they might have: if you start randomly cutting it all doesn't matter. I have tried to avoid cutting as much as possible. In response to the MTV school of cutting, where you try to match the beat and the rhythm through editing, we thought: no, let's do it this way. And you arguably get a sustained look at the musicians and a deeper appreciation of what it takes to play these instruments and sing like that.

DT: Neil Young is a film-maker in his own right, sometimes under the synonym Bernard Shakey. Did he have strong opinions of how you should film him? You've done a number of projects together and you're doing one now, I believe ...

JD: Yeah, we've shot a new concert film in a very different style. We wanted to team up. The first time I worked with him was when he wrote a song for the film Philadelphia, which was a beautiful song and great for the film. And then I shot a four-song live video with him called The Complex Sessions. And I'm obsessed with music, he's obsessed with films and we'd talked and got on nicely. And after the last feature film I made, Manchurian Candidate, I happened to call him up.

I'd had it with feature film-making for a while: it was such a pain in the arse working with the studio and these warring producers and formulas and the laziness of the distributors. And I was feeling lazy and wanted to shoot something. And he didn't tell me at the time but he had just had a brain aneurysm discovered. And he was writing these new songs, and he was very excited about them and talked about the spirit of Nashville. And he sent me the lyrics, which I thought were uncommonly rich. And I told him what I pictured: doing a film that would kind of create a timewarp, journey-back-in-time experience.

He started talking about the faces of his musicians: "You won't believe these guys, they look like a biker gang." And he completely left the film-making alone. And then of course it came to the day when Neil decided he wanted to recut a scene. And it was, like, Paradise Lost. But what am I gonna do? He's such a legendary American artistic figure - he is Canadian but we've adopted him fiercely. He cut a scene with the editor and it wasn't nearly as good as what I'd had. And I told him this, and he went: "OK". So that was it.

DT: Let's take some questions from the audience.

Question one: Hi I'm from Philadelphia, so I appreciate your appreciation of the city. I had a question about the editing process of the Carter film. I found myself really gripped emotionally during the Camp David scene. I couldn't work out why that hit me so powerfully.

JD: Well, first of all the sight of people gathering to talk about peace is kind of amazing. But then the image of the Egyptian leader and the Israeli leader embracing each other. Are there people like this alive any more? Can we ever see this again? And Carter aside in a way, somehow the enormity of that, that this can happen: the breadth of how far we've moved away from a moment where such a scene seems possible. But yeah, when we looked at that footage, we were like: "Oh boy". I didn't want to use a lot of archival footage as it would seem more like a documentary, as opposed to a western. Cos I had this idea of the ancient sheriff who comes to town one more time. And it seemed the power of the present got too diluted by these trips. But with the Camp David footage it seems to be the heart of the matter. Ok, now we've been very strict about not flashing back, let's just surrender. And we also had this beautiful music on that scene, and I don't think there is any now, because it doesn't need it. They didn't do it to a soundtrack when they did it. So thank you for noticing that.

Q2: I was just wondering how much of an intervention into the discourse around Palestine and Israel the film is. Do you think it might run the risk of spectatorship, never coming down on one side or another?

JD: I feel like different forces were at work with me while making this film. One was the inevitable American fear of being irrationally branded as anti-semitic for having anything remotely to do with any kind of discussion that was in any way sympathetic to the Palestinian reality. And by the way, I feel that Carter provides information in the film ... I think maybe 1% of Americans understand that the wall is not built on an internationally agreed upon boundary between Israeli and Palestinian territory. I think everybody thinks - because it's what the American media has told us - that it's there for security. I didn't know that the wall will choose to go deep into Palestinian territory, and be claimed by Israeli settlers protected by the Israeli military. And I know I'm not anti-Semitic for finding fault with that, and finding that appalling. And I know we have provided a tremendous amount of funding to the Israeli government in the interest of what's called defence, but has these other things that happen and have more to do with territorial acquisition. But I feel it's extraordinary that this film contains that. I don't think the film contains difficult-to-locate information, but I think it's amazing to hear Carter talk about it.

DT: That's about all we have time for. Thanks very much to Jonathan Demme.