UNEASY Cinema Verité: Albert Maysles

This is the second of five interviews with Cinema Verité greats that I’m going to post today. 

When you're going into a new environment with your shooting how do you communicate what you are up to? I'm thinking of Salesman in particular, where you are just following the Bible salesman into some stranger's house.

Sometimes it's not necessary to say anything. You sort of look at the person, they look at you. You get immediate acceptance and later on when you're finished, they might say, "Hey, what's this all about?" So the salesman comes to the door. And we've already eliminated one problem, in that it's only my brother (doing sound) and myself, it's not a big crew or anything. We're not carrying anything but the camera and some magazines, a tape recorder and a microphone (which isn't hanging on a boom); we knew how to make things less cumbersome and less intrusive.

Do you kinda roll right in with an almost presumptuousness or arrogance to get the shots you need? Sometimes just being confident is enough.

There have been times when I guess most photographers would have pushed on but if I thought it was inappropriate or hurtful I might very well put the camera down. First, out of courtesy, second because the characters, the people, the events that I'm filming, they're not gonna change at the next moment or the next day. In fact it might be more interesting later on, more revealing. Once I was filming somebody who worked for a big company, he was in his fifties and his job was very important to him. It looked like he might get fired, and I was hoping to get into the office where the firing was taking place and film it perhaps in good taste. I decided not to, well actually, I wasn't allowed to. So I waited in the man's own office and when he got out of this session where he indeed had been fired he came back in. I filmed on as the man came in and then I put the camera down and I waited. Neither my brother nor I spoke at all for a while. Then I looked at him straight in the eye and said that if it was okay with him I'd like to continue to film. He paused for a moment, picked up the phone and gave the news to his best friend.

Do you think of yourself more as an artist or a journalist? Are you interested more in truth or beauty?

It's very close to journalism. It takes a lot of sensitivity. In my mind the best ones are artists. In a way it carries it a step further than journalism--by capturing it on film he achieves the aim putting you there. As a filmmaker we're not saying anything except that we will put you into position to experience it directly as the medium allows.

It seems like most documentaries today depend upon a narrative line rather than on the truth of a moment. Why do you think these filmmakers feel obligated to a point or a narrative?

You've hit upon it, a film has to have a message or point of view. Why are so many people led down that path? So strict and short sighted. Not too long ago a young black kid, full of enthusiasm, probably talented, came in looking for a job. I asked him what he'd seen lately that he liked. He mentioned a documentary film that had a very strong point of view, good guys/bad guys. So here we are just chatting with each other, what if somebody came in and started filming us with a point of view sort of thing, you're black, I'm white. Who's the good guy and who's the bad guy?

What did he say?

He said "Oh you're challenging me." Yeah, I am challenging you. Who's the good guy and who's the bad guy? He said, well, of course we're both pretty nice guys.

Another good example is Gimme Shelter. You find different people come away with very, very different assessments of what they think your point of view is? Is it a film saying the Rolling Stones are negligent, is it a film about the corruption of Rock'n'Roll, is it a film about the end of 1960's optimism?

Some people say, oh look at Mick and how callous he is, he doesn't even care. How they get that, I don't know. You can't, you don't want to control events when you're filming. You really can't control the audience, you give them what you found. Do it as faithfully and authentically as you can and there'll be some people that will misinform themselves. You can be more sure of getting them to decide in a way that conforms to your own conclusions if you formulated it more carefully.

Do you think you made a mistake by not showing your point of view more?

No. Everyone comes to a film prepared with a point of reference. I don't want to control that. In the long run, it's almost thirty years, now and it's held up. Woodstock, on the other hand, turned out to be a piece of shit. All that flower child stuff it's all nonsense. It's all interviews, all point of view, 99% of the film, big mistake. It raised no doubt in their minds that everything was fine. Nonsense, stupid film. Doubly stupid because they were asking all these pointed questions thinking that they were doing some good by asking for these propaganda stories.

What's the most amazing thing you've shot but not been able to put into a film?

One with Fidel Castro in 1960, we traveled around with him day and night. He picked up the phone, which was on the wall, and carried it around the corner to the next room. But the cable was still loose, you could still hear him but you couldn't see him. All that was included in the shot was the telephone cable. If his voice would go up there would be more pulling on the cord, etc., you could get a sense of him walking back and forth. I knew that unless I ran out of film, the phone line would suddenly go slack and out he'd come into the picture again.

Did you see Crumb? What did you think?

The only person who moved me in Crumb was Charles, the brother, who was so vulnerable but R. Crumb I thought was a jerk.

It got a lot of attention, people liked it.

What was your feeling on Crumb?

Well, I felt frustrated in a similar way. I certainly would've liked to have seen his father or his brothers get more out of him. I think Crumb is clearly autistic, some kind of social inability. And maybe that's true of Bob Dylan too. I think that Penne never quite got to Dylan, never made the connection. So maybe it is hard to get to them. I think that Penne may seek out those kinds of films where you can be pretty sure that people aren't gonna completely deliver, that is that they'll remain cold to the camera and cold to one another. On the same token, there's a short film he made, Nobody Loves You. You've gotta see it, it's a gem. It's all about people not making a connection. I'm guessing that that is a theme in his life, his relationship with his father, I don't know what it is but it's something very basic. He seeks it out. They say that politics is the art of the possible, well documentary is the art of the impossible. I think that he connects to that sense of not connecting as a filmmaker and will make a great film out of that.