Homecoming
Started Operation at ABC as a reporting journalist in Iraq o Wanted to make a movie that spoke to the human reaction to war o Got a bit of money from PBS to develop the concept, they liked it but gave no money o Got trapped because PBS wouldn't let them do anything yet Was the film about writing o Yes and no, there are many things that they can show that would trump any words said. o Had to hold back on extreme images of blood and guts because it detracts from the words said o Documentary about remembered experience not just documentary experience When made choices, what criteria was used to choose? o There was none, the army had a very complex process for choosing the stories to be used in the book o Some of the writing is really bad, but the message there is important Looking at 11 final pieces, did you have the whole movie in your head? Some abstract, animation, photography? o Never did, just broke each one down and decided what was best. o The piece with the pics of dead soldiers: wanted a single walking shot of a soldier through Baghdad but it was just boring o Taking Chance was the last piece for a while, but he realized that the war isn't over, not everybody is home now o Added the poem at the end because they needed something after the funeral service. Did you meet the contributors before filming or did he just base it on writing o Found that all the writings he chose were white men besides the Asian guy o Found that he had to find women to feel okay about it. o Unsure why there was little good writing from women and minorities, but it may have to do with why people are in the military in the first place The words in the first sequence were put there by the filmmakers o Can we put words there? Sure. Nontraditional documentary o Labels, why are we so hung up on this? o Doesn't care if it's a documentary or not. How did he get the authors o Read their books again before calling them so he could connect o This isn't a hard sell, they want to do this stuff o Tim Obrien was the hardest to get, responded to persistence Revealed the process of the interview o How does this relate to performance instead of reality o Wanted to be upfront, if you watched the whole thing without realizing there were words there then he sort failed of
The conversation that we're not having There are people fighting for our freedom while we do nothing o Part of what a doc can do is open dialogue to the culture involved How does he feel about the Oscar buzz and why does the family not have an audience o People don't want to see something about IRAQ o Most amazing thing about the oscars was that people were seeing the film finally Made $6000 in the box office The Oscars brings short and feature length documentaries to light and makes people know about it o Bush isn't mentioned in the film because he wants the film to outlast the current politics and respond to all war experience Other mediums or styles of presenting it? No, just a movie. What made him decide to use animation for that sequence? o Had a friend who was making his own animations for a short doc o Didn't think of anything else when he read the piece o Hardest part was finding an illustrator that had a style he liked o Did each drawings as separate elements, uses planed photos so that they can move and look more three dimensional o Met the kid who was into graphic novels and used them to tell his story How did he plan some of the other sequences? Planning and execution of Taking Chance o Very lucky, wanted to use steady cam for the moving journey o Followed the same journey that he did, filmed along the way o Couldn't have looked better if they tried to design it o The cemetery actually overlooks the town. o They had flags, put them up for each fallen soldier o Did he saturate the film in this scene? From the TV background, they spent a lot of time in post Didn't all look that way before. He wanted to color correct for 60K Are you a movie nut? o Yes always been a film fan o Before this film, he had never thought of doing fiction. How big a leap is it from doing a remembered experience to an imagined experience Working with actors was great too, they love to be directed With Duvall, he wanted him to do Taking Chance. The condition was is that he was not allowed to direct him. He did two reads of it with a military colonel voice that was terrible Suggested to do it more intimately, and Duvall loved it and it was great It was his people who were afraid he wouldn't like to be directed o
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