INT: Let's just establish, did you eventually get money from public television? Who paid for the film [HOOP DREAMS]?

SJ: We did. And we eventually got money from CPB [Corporation for Public Broadcasting]. And the key to getting the money from CPB was because we found a station to be a partner. And that was, it ended up being not the Chicago station. They didn't, they weren't interested. It ended up be KTCA out of Minneapolis that became interested and wanted to help us. And then, with their help and a much slicker proposal, visually at least, [LAUGH] and they helped with the writing, we got money from CPB finally. So... [INT: So you were on a flyer for most of the production?] Well we got our first money about, real money, about… yeah. Well, it was really, it was probably like three years into the shooting. Up until then we just made it work. It was during junior year that we finally got money, of their junior year that we finally got some money from them and then eventually the MacArthur Foundation came in and basically saved [LAUGH] the film, made it possible for it to be done. [INT: Meanwhile, how were you earning a living?] Well, I was back there doing that PA [Production Assistant] work. And I did that for a while, but I kind of slowly worked my way up the food chain on commercial TV spot production, because that was the real work in Chicago that paid. I mean there were features coming in, and I did a little bit of feature work, but, as a PA and a location scout, but that was so consuming I couldn't do anything with HOOP DREAMS when that was going on. And so commercials was perfect, because I could work for a week or so and then I'd earn enough money that I could then go off and work on HOOP DREAMS for awhile. And I kind of worked my way up. I started as a PA and if it hadn't been for doing HOOP DREAMS on the side as a kind of the passion project, I would have quit the business. I would have quit, ‘cause it was just too humiliating being treated like you knew nothing and being profusely complimented for sweeping the set up. You know, like, "You take such great initiative, Steve. You sweep the set up and I don't even have to ask you to do it. You're such a good PA." I'm like, "Thanks." You know, like I'd want to put a knife in the back of them when they turn around. [LAUGH] So, but I did. I worked my way up to then Production Coordinator and then, and eventually became a Production Manager, and I even produced a, you know, a small commercial or two. And then Kartemquin [Kartemquin Films] began to employ me doing work on some of their sponsored films. I did a film for the MacArthur Foundation. And when we got that job, I told my colleagues, Peter [Peter Gilbert] and Frederick [Frederick Marx] and Gordon [Gordon Quinn], I said, "This is step one in the master plan to get money from MacArthur for HOOP DREAMS." And I started to tell them about HOOP DREAMS. And I was able to reel them in eventually, you know. And it's like, and so, but Kartemquin saved me too because they gave me work and other work that then could, they were committed to HOOP DREAMS, so they made it easy for me to work on HOOP DREAMS and work on the other work. And I did pilot videos and, you know, for unions. I mean I did all kinds of stuff to just make a living until, really throughout HOOP DREAMS entirely because we never raised enough money to… until I spent about a year, or a year and a half editing, that's, up until that point in time, it always had to work around other work. But when I actually got involved in actual editing, then I couldn't do other work. And I, we were able to pay me $2,000 a month to edit. So I did. [LAUGH] [INT: So you actually found yourself struggling, you found yourself a home base with Kartemquin?] Absolutely. [INT: And a support--] Film wouldn't have been done without them. [INT: And a support system.] Yeah.

INT: Now what was your idea of how it, of how long it was going to be and how it was going to be released or distributed or seen? Did you have any plans? [SJ: No.] Did anybody...

SJ: Well once we got public television [Corporation for Public Broadcasting] money, we, they had, they have no obligation to show it, you know. You sign a contract with them. You have an obligation to deliver it. They have no obligation to show it. [INT: You have an obligation to deliver what?] Well in this case, at first it was gonna be an hour-long film. And that's what KTCA wanted, and that's, and the amount of money we had we were, would be foolish to think we could do anything more than that, frankly. 'Cause we only got 70,000 from CPB. And then KTCA committed an additional, like, 60,000 that they were, if they couldn't raise, help us raise it, they would guarantee it so that we'd at least have a budget of 130,000 to do the film. So it was gonna be an hour-long film. But as we, we already had a lot of material. And as we continued to film that junior year, which was when we really started to shoot a lot, then it was like clearer to us that this was a longer film. And so it just kept growing in our, when we would kind of report to them on how things were going, we'd go, "Ah, we think this is more like 90-minutes." And they'd go, "Well, you know, let's see." And then we'd go, "We think this is probably two hours." And then down towards the end it was like, "This might be a mini-series, like three hours," 'cause we couldn't imagine getting three hours on public television. And KTCA was very nervous about all that as you can imagine. It was like, "Guys, three, what? Wait," you know. But I remember at the time, and Peter and I used to joke about this, Peter Gilbert and I used to joke about it, but it really wasn't a joke. We were like, god, we're spending all this time on this, years on this, and public television being the way it is, if this does end up being this, like, really long film, if they decide to show it, it's gonna be on at like 11 o'clock at night in these markets 'cause who's gonna, nobody's gonna put it in primetime. I mean, they're gonna show it after hours and no one's gonna see it. And we used to bitterly joke, like all our friends who we'd been boring them with stories of what we were doing all these years, they, it would be on television, they would come in the next day and go, "Oh crap. Your thing was on last night. I missed it." You know, and this is, before DVD's or, you know, it's like if you missed it, you missed it, you know. [INT: And then what happened?] Well then what happened was, is that we had a cut of the movie. It was a pretty far along cut and the MacArthur Foundation saw what we were doing and they really liked it and they helped pay for and organize a kind of summit in Chicago where they brought people from PBS, CPB, from some organizations, like, that work in communities around education and poverty. And then we also brought in John Pierson, who, at that time, was the Producer's rep. You know, he had helped Spike Lee get his first film made. He sold ROGER & ME. He sold SLACKER. He sold CLERKS. He sold THE THIN BLUE LINE. I mean he was the go-to guy for independent film, you know.

SJ: John [John Pierson] had seen the film, a rough cut of the movie [HOOP DREAMS]. He loved it. Did not want to represent it because he didn't think he could sell it, frankly. I mean he said so. He loved it, but he didn't think he could sell it. But he was such a fan of it he came to this summit by way of, to say to everybody in the room, especially the public television executives, “This is, you know-- [INT: A major...] --this is an important film. You really should, like, give it a real platform for release, you know, on television.” And the good thing is is that he never really had to give that speech, because when they showed up for the conf--they had been given, sent it in advance and they showed up and we had the thing at the MacArthur Foundation, around a conference room table. And everyone showed up and as they came in the door, you know, these executives from everywhere, they were just, like, you know, "Wow, I, you know, I put it on. I was like, oh my god, how am I gonna get through this? And I just, well I watched it all in one sitting." And so it, and then John, that's when John said, "I've actually spoken to Karen Cooper at the Film Forum and she's interested in seeing it. I think the film, I don't, you know, I don't know what the film can do, but it's, Sundance [Sundance Film Festival] wants it now. You know, the, you know, you guys should take this seriously." So a plan was kind of hatched to sort of see what could happen. And at that point we knew that at least for public television it wasn't gonna be lost in this sort of ghetto, [LAUGH] if you will, being shown late at night at least. But then, when it went to Sundance, that's when it really took off. And part of what made it take off was Siskel [Gene Siskel] and Ebert [Roger Ebert], because they watched it at the behest of the guys who were selling the film for us, who were from Chicago. They got them to watch it, even though it had no distribution, it was just going to Sundance, as a kind of a favor to the hometown film. And they loved it and they decided to go on their show [SISKEL & EBERT] while the film was at Sundance and had no distribution and no interest in distribution at that point. And they, you know, they gave it this big, you know, great review and said, in the show, "This film deserves to be in theaters," you know. And that led, that paved the way for what eventually happened with the film, you know. [INT: And is it a complete coincidence, accident that you wind up thanking both Siskel and Ebert and John Pierson?] [LAUGH] Well-- [INT: I mean--] John. [INT: --how amazing.] Yeah, well John may not think of it. I know that for a while there John did not think of REEL PARADISE as a thank you. 'Cause it's a, you know, it's a tough film. But it is, it certainly was… there was a kind of poetry, you know, for me to, 20 years later, be at Sundance again with the Roger Ebert documentary [LIFE ITSELF], given what Roger did for HOOP DREAMS. Obviously none of that was ever planned, but it just so happened to work out that way. And there was a kind of beauty in that, you know, to be back there with that film.

INT: The film [HOOP DREAMS] obviously changed your life. It also changed the life of the boys. HOOP DREAMS set you on a course with these two young men. How attached were you to them and what effect, I mean, just briefly, what effect did this have on them that you, how involved did you stay with them?

SJ: You mean after it was done? [INT: Yeah.] We, quite involved. I mean quite connected. I mean even to this day. I mean, you know, you go through periods of time where you're not as connected 'cause they're busy and I'm busy and we're all busy and... But no, I stayed, you know, I've stayed connected to them. And they've had extraordinary lives since then. But we, you know, we kind of decided that we would not, gonna do a sequel. And everyone, both they and us, you know, for all these years were kind of in agreement on that. But yeah, we definitely stayed attached. And it, yeah, I mean it had a profound impact on them. You know, I think being in a film like that that, there's obviously great benefits that come from that, for them. You know, the notoriety, some opportunities that are presented. But there's also, you know, it also can, there's another-- [INT: It's a letdown.] --edge to it. Well there's the letdown when the moment passes. But there's also a kind of edge. You know, I think Arthur [Arthur Agee] for years and years might have held onto a dream of making it somehow in some form of professional basketball longer than he should have. And I think HOOP DREAMS probably contributed to that, because people would put him on semi-pro teams, even if they didn't think he was talented enough-- [INT: He was--] --just because he was Arthur Agee of HOOP DREAMS, you know. I think it took him a while to kind of realistically look at his future. And I think with William [William Gates], you know, William's story in the film, you know, he starts out as this sort of phenom in the making. And then with the knee injury, it all goes in a different direction for him. And even though he really ends up being this tremendous success in my view, you know, not only did he get a scholarship to Marquette [Marquette University] in basketball, and he eventually did finish his degree, which was great, but he also ends up being the kind of conscience of the film, you know, as the young man who is, who had the dream, who had, who saw how fleeting and tenuous it can be and always wanted more from life than to just be a guy who was a basketball player. I think that’s a wonderful story in the film, but it's also, for him, it's also, you know, when he looks back on the film it also represents a very painful time in his life for a lot of reasons. And I remember him telling me once that for years his, he has young, he has sons now who play basketball and his oldest son is a sophomore at Furman [Furman University] and a star of the team. But for years he wouldn't let his kids see the film past, you know, when it got the point where the knee injury happened he would stop it. 'Cause he didn't want them to see it, in part because, you know, it's painful for him, but it, also because he didn't want them, he wanted them to be pure in their dreams and not feel-- [INT: Discouraged.] --you know, not experience that at their young age, that he kind of did. And, I mean, and so I think for William it's been a, more of a double-edged sword. It’s presented opportunities for him, no doubt, and he has pride in having been a part of it. But it's been a double-edged sword.

INT: You followed this with PREFONTAINE. [SJ: Yeah.] Hugely into fiction filmmaking. [SJ: Well biopic, sports biopic. I mean… Yeah, but good fiction filmmaking with-- [SJ: Scripted, yeah.] Scripted with a different kind of Crew, with Actors--[SJ: Yes.] Don't denigrate--[SJ: Based on a true story.] Based on a true story [LAUGH], which could keep you honest. [SJ: Yeah.] And-- [SJ: It's remarkably true, actually.] With an arc that isn't all that different except it's fate-- [SJ: Yeah.] Well, you don't know which is fate and which is whatever. [SJ: Right.] But it's the same. It's like this epic tragedy that you're capturing again. [SJ: Yeah.] So, let's deal with technique and then we'll talk about how come this keeps being your story. [LAUGH] [SJ: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well..] How, what, how did you, how did it happen?

SJ: Well after HOOP DREAMS... [INT: The world opened up?] Yeah. It was like, I was like, you know, Peter [Peter Gilbert] and I, 'cause we were still working together, and Peter, you know, shot and was a Producer on PREFONTAINE, you know, we were a bit like, it was a bit like Kevin Bacon in THE BIG PICTURE, you know? Where, you know, it's sort of like there's, you know, everybody wants to have a meeting with us. And, I mean, I, you know, getting flown out here for meetings first class and, you know, put up in a hotel just to have meetings about like, “What do you guys want to do next?” You know, that kind of thing. I mean it was very heady. And got attached to a number of projects, you know, with like powerful Producers. And, none of which happened. And then, you know, did that for a couple of years there. HOOP DREAMS came out in '94 [1994]. And, you know, two years in it was sort of like, you know, nothing's really happening. I mean I did get offered what became; well it was also titled then, GRIDIRON GANG. And it eventually got made with 'The Rock' [Dwayne Johnson], like, I don't know, how many years ago. But probably at least 10 years after it was offered to me. And I turned it down because I thought the script wasn't very good. And I'll never forget, the Producer was David Heyman, you know, very powerful Producer, then he wasn't. And he like accosted me in the parking lot 'cause we were in a room with all these, we were in the room with all the decision makers and they were ready to say, "Yes. Go make it." And he was like, "Steve,... [INT: You can't do this.] ...do you realize what you've just done?" [LAUGH] It's like, "You can't do that." I was like, "Well the script needs work." He goes, "I know it needs work. You say, ‘Yes. I love it,’ and then we fix it." Anyway, we, I just didn't know how it all worked. And I was, I wanted to make something good to follow-up HOOP DREAMS.

SJ: So eventually what happened is is that PREFONTAINE came along. It was not my idea. There was an existing script that was, had been written by Eugene Corr, and they said, "Would you like to do this?" And I knew who Prefontaine [Steve Prefontaine] was. I was a sports fan. But I didn't know all the ins and outs of his story. I read the script. I liked the story. I wanted to change the script. They let me rewrite the script even though I had no screenwriting credits or experience to speak of, but they let me do it. [INT: They let you. Did they pay you?] They paid me to do it. And then they let me direct it. And so we went and made it. But it was the, it was a really low budget studio film. It might have been, in real dollars, the lowest budget studio film ever made, certainly the lowest budget period piece ever made. I mean it was like ridiculous. It was like a cable movie, but the studios made it. And so they let us go do it, and so we did it. And, you know, it, by normal studio film standards, this was a small production. But for me-- [INT: Huge.] --of course, this was huge because it was like, you know, big crew and-- [INT: It was also Disney [Walt Disney Pictures]. I mean...] Yeah. Yeah. Hollywood Pictures-- [INT: Yeah. They don't...] --the adult division. [INT: Yeah, they don't let you. They wanted it. I mean they didn't do accidents, as I recall. They, [LAUGH]...] No, but there was this competing film that Tom Cruise was producing-- [INT: Oh, that's right.] --his company [Cruise/Wagner Productions]-- [INT: I forgot that.] --that became WITHOUT LIMITS with Robert Towne directing. So, imagine this. I was, I'm first time Screenwriter and I'm rewriting PREFONTAINE in, at my home in, you know, Oak Park, Chicago. And I know, 'cause I knew about the competing project 'cause the guys that were at Warner Bros. with the competing project used to be together with these guys and they had a split. And they split over Robert Towne. Like these guys did not want Robert Towne to direct it. Those guys did. They went to Warner Bros. These guys went to Disney. So I knew that while I'm sitting there writing my version of Pre's life, Robert Towne, of CHINATOWN, is writing the same story in L.A. And I'm like, what have I gotten myself into? [LAUGH] What am I doing? But I felt like, I mean I got into the story. I get into whatever I do. But I felt like I needed, if I was gonna do a film out here, I needed to do one. Because I didn't think this window was gonna stay open. And at least they were letting me kind of do, at least till they read my draft, they were letting me do it [LAUGH], the way I wanted to do it. And so then I wrote the script, and then Disney green-lit it, but they told me, "The good news is it's green-lit. The bad news is is that it's gonna be for half the money we said we were gonna do it for." So then I had to rewrite it again, and that's why it became this faux documentary. Was, the faux documentary became a way to try and make it-- [INT: With the witnesses.] With the interviews, and using real footage of the real Pre.[INT: Which was fabulous.] And that was, that's why it became a faux documentary. And I know probably the handful of people that saw the movie when it came out probably thought, “Oh, great. Yeah, well he's a doc guy. Of course he's gonna do it as a faux documentary.” But that wasn't the original intent. It just became-- [INT: But that's what made it distinctive, I thought.] It did, but I wish we had gotten to do it the way Peter [Peter Gilbert] and I wanted to do it. And today I think you could. Because since then, I'm not saying this led to it, but since then there's been so much more of a use of, not literally a faux documentary like it is a fake documentary, but documentary techniques totally adopted wholesale in feature films, right? Well back then that was not a very common technique. We wanted to like, you know, really treat it more like we would shoot a real documentary, but Disney... [INT: Oh you did? You weren't going--you didn't, you weren't going the other way? You weren't...]

SJ: Well once we, once I'd rewritten the script, it was like, okay, well if we're gonna shoot it [PREFONTAINE] let's do it more--and Peter [Peter Gilbert] and I used to talk about, like, you know, like with the Actors, like I, Peter would stay out of the room. He was shooting it. I mean he was DPing [Director of Photography] and operating. So it was like, we'll keep Peter out of the room and we'll block it out and then we'll shoot the rehearsal with Peter. He has no idea what people are doing. [INT: So he'd shoot it like a doc.] So he'd shoot it like a doc. And then, of course, we'd do other takes and stuff but the, we would really try to embed that process into the making of the film, sort of to make it more authentic feeling and more real in a way that we knew it could be real. [INT: Well also, it would give you a comfort zone 'cause you know how that...] I know how that works. [INT: Yeah. You know how that feels.] And so, but they were like, "No. We can't do that. I mean we're already going along with the faux documentary idea, but that, you know, ah, you know, let's, I mean, we can't do that." So we didn't. And I didn't have the balls to like push it and say, you know, "We're doing it this way," or, you know, whatever. We just--we didn't do it. And so, that's not the only thing. But I mean, no, I was learning on the job too.

INT: No, no. I found it [PREFONTAINE] very moving and he was, what's his name, Jared Leto? [SJ: Jared.] How was that, had you ever worked, really, with real Actors? [SJ: No. Never.] What was that like? Did he know it?

SJ: Yeah. He knew it I think. He thought it was cool, you know, this doc guy coming in to do it. You know, Jared [Jared Leto] was a young guy and he liked the whole concept of it being this faux documentary and stuff. I mean he was cool with it, you know. But he was also very, you know, and I don't think this'll be a newsflash; he was a very intense guy and a very intense Actor. And that, all that intensity was great for the role. [INT: Fabulous.] But, you know, it was hard for me 'cause I'd never really worked with Actors before, and so, you know, I really didn't know what I was doing, frankly. And, but, you know, I was faking it. [INT: But the performance was terrific. And also…So what was like...

INT: Did you come away feeling I'll, I never want to do this again, or did you come away feeling, oh, this is a new world?

SJ: Well, you know, here's the thing. I've done three narratives. Two of them were cable movies that followed PREFONTAINE. But in each of the three cable, each of these three, you know, narratives that I've done, somewhere in the middle of the production on all three of them I've swore that I would never do this again. I've been like, I can't, you know, this is just crazy. This is crazy. It's like a military campaign and I'm not a very good general. You know, whatever. I mean it was like, and I, each of those films I thought got bet--I mean they're, I don't, I'm not embarrassed by the films, but I, there was something overwhelming about just the process and it gave me profound respect for narrative film. I already had it, but it gave me more respect for, like, how they, how you get great performance and into main, you know, capture lightening in a bottle. I mean in a documentary--this is an oversimplification to some degree. In a documentary you're capt--you need to capture lightening in a bottle. In a narrative you need to create lightening in a bottle. And so it's like, it gave me real respect for when people really make that happen and those great transcendent moments when I felt like we did it. You know what I mean? And there's nothing sweeter than when you feel like you do that. But it's so tough. I remember reading a quote from Steven Spielberg once around that time where he said, "Making a feature film is like, you get up in the morning and you have all these great ideas and you're just raring to go and then you, one by one, compromise them the rest of the day." And I remember reading that and going, boy, that's right. And then I remember thinking, wait. That's Spielberg saying it? He feels that way? You know, so it just… But I would get to the end of them and go, I gotta do this again 'cause I want to do it better. I want to, you know, I got something from it. And so I did. Now after the third one I stopped doing it because, I mean for personal reasons. I, my kids were growing up and I was missing a lot of their growing up because I was gone all the time, and I missed being fully immersed in documentaries. I missed that. And so I kind of made a decision to go back and do documentaries more. [INT: That's a very unusual and...] [LAUGH] Well, yeah. I've made a career of bad career choices. [INT: This is not a bad [LAUGH], no, it doesn't sound that way at all. It doesn't sound that… So far that's not the case. You stayed in Chicag--] I don't, I know, I don't have regrets about my career.

INT: Let's talk a little bit about the other two films because I thought they were terrific. I think you got better. I think you got... [SJ: Thank you. I thought so too. [LAUGH]] And the, the-- Let's talk about PASSING GLORY. [SJ: Whatever you want to do. Ok.] Harold Sylvester story. Again, a true story. [SJ: Yeah. It's a true sports story.] A true sports story, so you were comfortable in your base.

SJ: Well, yes. But I also, see I, all this time when I was doing those, I was also pitching completely non-sports stories that I wanted to do. But no one was comfortable with me doing that, was what it came down to. It was sports biopics that they felt comfortable going back because of HOOP DREAMS. And then once you've done one, then it's like… And I remember complaining about this, you know, to Bill Butler who shot both PASSING GLORY and JOE AND MAX. And, you know, Bill Butler, a legendary DP [Director of Photography], I remember complaining to him once about being pigeonholed in sports films out here. And he [LAUGH], you know, he heard me complain about it for a few times and then he said, "Hey, hey," he goes, "stop complaining." He goes, "Do you realize how many people out here would love to be pigeonholed?" [LAUGH] He was like, "At least you're pigeonholed." [LAUGH] So I was like, you make a good point. But, yeah. I mean I think that with PASSING GLORY, John Sayles rewrote Harold Sylvester's original script. And John Sayles had actually, in a weird sort of like confluence, he had, years earlier, requested HOOP DREAMS for research for the work he was doing--long before I was ever attached. And it originally was gonna be Denzel Washington's feature directorial, you know, first effort and he was gonna star in it playing the role that is played by Andre Braugher. [INT: Wow.] And he was gonna direct the movie. And then it just didn't happen. And then it ended up as, at Turner [TNT; Turner Network Television], as a cable movie, at a time when cable movies were all the rage anyway. So, you know, it was like a great project, and I got in the, you know, my Agent at the time got me in on it and they liked the idea of me doing it and so they gave it to me. And then I got to, un-credited, you know, 'cause I didn't deserve a credit. But I got to, I actually got to do a rewrite, you know, polish for the shoot. And I got to, like, rewrite John Sayles. That was kind of a cool thing. If I'd only gotten to rewrite, you know-- [INT: CHINATOWN.] --the CHINATOWN guy. Yeah. We won't even say his name, Robert Towne. Wouldn't that been fun, to rewrite him? But anyway. So I got to do that. And that was a great experience to do. I mean it was, I loved the story. I loved working with Andre. He was a terrific Actor. You know, Rip Torn is, you know-- [INT: Amazing.] --amazing guy. And Ruby Dee was in it. I mean, you know, we had kind of a great, you know, cast and some young Actors who were terrific playing, you know, the ball players and--

INT: When you're looking for these young guys, when you're looking for athletes or, do you cast athletes and--[SJ: I think...]--assume they can act? Or do you cast Actors and try and...

SJ: I really went for… Well, you try to get both. And I really went for… I would rather have a guy that can play, who's also good Actor versus a guy who may be an amazing Actor and has no athletic ability because you can fake baseball. But I've seen it badly faked where you go, well that guy's never played any baseball, you know, from the way he's throwing it it's like obviously he's never played any baseball. But most moviegoers, you know, there's ways to fake it. You can't fake basketball, really. You've gotta have some skills in it or it's just, you know, it's ridiculous. So, but I was lucky because we found guys... And Arthur [Arthur Agee] had a small role in the film. Arthur is in PASSING GLORY. He's on the-- [INT: How terrific.] --team and he's got a few spoken lines and he loved being there. And it was great. I was able to get him on it, which was fabulous. [INT: Terrific.] And so, no, I mean it was a great experience.

SJ: And then going to do JOE AND MAX, that was the most ambitious of the films I did. You know, this incredible, it's an incredible story of Max Schmeling and Joe Louis. [INT: And the portrait you did of Schmeling. I mean I'd never, this is, how much of this is fiction? I mean...] No, a lot of it, I mean we took, you know, I think partly 'cause of my doc background-- [INT: Sure. Well that's what I'm asking you.] I really, with these biopics, probably, to my detriment in some ways dramatically you might say--[INT: No, no.] I really wanted to always make the truth work if we could and really push to always try to make the truth work. No. I mean Schmeling was a favorite of Hitler and had those dinners with him and had to go plead with him ultimately and you know… I mean all of that's true. He did hide, you know, some Jews away from the Nazis who came through. I mean he did--all that's true. All that's true. So, and his relationship with Joe; it's all true. And he actually reached out and helped Joe, towards the end of Joe's life when he was in economic distress and he helped, he reached out to him. I mean it is a remarkable story. And it was great to be able to do that and work with the Writer. You know, Jason Horwitch, who wrote the script did a terrific job. So I really enjoyed it. But I mean they were hard films. You know, we shot the entire film in Berlin [Berlin, Germany] and we had to find, we had to make New York work for Berlin and it was a period piece and we had to recreate the Nazi era and, you know, it was-- [INT: And it--and the production design was terrific.] Yeah. [INT: I mean it was beautifully, all of them.]

INT: So, you are now bitten by Hollywood or not quite [after making JOE AND MAX]? [SJ: Well...] What, is it increasing or are you getting to like it less?

SJ: Well, I… I mean I felt like I was becoming better at this. And it's not like I didn't want to do it again, even though, like I said, in the middle of it somewhere like in frustration [LAUGH], like I'm never gonna do this again. You know, I definitely wanted to do it again and my wife and I talked about possibly moving. Maybe we should move the family out here, because part of the problem was, is that when I would go on these productions is, I mean PREFONTAINE shot in Seattle. You know, we had to shoot this New Orleans story in Atlanta, which was unfortunate, but we did. And we shot in Berlin for JOE AND MAX and then we finished out here. And between pre-production, shooting elsewhere and post, I was gone so much. And so my wife and I had a walk on the beach at Santa Monica [Los Angeles, California] one day when she was out here with me and we said, "Should we move the family out here 'cause if I'm gonna continue to do this we have to do this." And we decided that we did not want to uproot our kids and move 'em out here. We decided that the stability of, and of their lives back there, which we loved too, was more important than moving them out here. And I made this decision, l said, "Look, I've got this [LAUGH] film, STEVIE, that someone has decided to give me some funding on, so we can finish that." I'd been working on STEVIE. [INT: You'd already started on STEVIE?] Oh yeah. In, during, I was shooting STEVIE between '95 [1995] and '99 [1999], so it was paralleling these other films. I don't know how I did it, but I did it. And I had just gotten some substantial funding for what would become THE NEW AMERICANS, this mini-series that we did. And I said to my wife, I said, she had been, you know, complaining about how long I was gone and I didn't like it. And I was gone all the time and she, and I came home and I just said, one night [LAUGH] I came home and I said, "I made a decision. I'm, I think we can make the documentary thing work. I think I can pull the funding together." You know, we had three kids. And I just said, "I think we can make this work. And I just, I want to be home more." And I thought she was gonna, like, leap into my arms like in a Hollywood movie and cue the music. And she sat there and she went, "But where's the money gonna come from?" [LAUGH] I was like, "Judy, what?" you know. But she did want me home. But she was nervous about it, you know, 'cause it was kind of like, you know, the money, you know, I wasn't making what Steven Spielberg makes to make movies, but I was getting, I was making real money, you know, that I didn't make on HOOP DREAMS. Trust me. And so, but, you know, I just did that. And I felt good about that. I mean I wouldn't trade having done STEVIE or THE NEW AMERICANS or the films that followed. I mean I have no regrets. I turned down basically; I could have done DON KING: ONLY IN AMERICA, that great movie. A great, great cable movie on HBO. I, that was in the palm of my hand and I turned it down. I turned it down. And for a while there I thought that was a really stupid decision, especially when it came out I was like, that's a really--I knew it was gonna be a great movie and they had Ving Rhames. Did you ever see that? [INT: I did. Who wound up directing it? I don't know.] I can't remember the guy's name, but maybe that's... [INT: Not bad?] But I… I mean I don't mean ill on him but-- [INT: No, I know.] --it was a career making kind of movie. And, you know, out here, I think, 'cause it won all the awards. I'm, you know, I might not have done as good a job as he did, okay. But it, the script was great and they had Ving Rhames attached, which was like, oh, it's a perfect role. It's a lifetime role for an Actor. Anyway. So yeah, I made that decision. But you wanted, one of the things you wanted to talk about was differences between doing docs and features. [INT: Yes.] Do you want to talk a little bit about that? [INT: I would really like to know about it. What is the major difference? How do you feel at the end of one project and how do you... I mean I felt always that one, I came out filled up and the other I came out emptied. And...] [LAUGH] That's good. I, you know what, I hadn't really thought of it that way, but I think that's, you're right on. [INT: I'm sorry. I didn't...] No, no. That's, no. I, no. [INT: It's so wildly different.] I think you're absolutely right. That is one difference. With the docs I've done, and I've done, you know, I've done docs that have taken...

SJ: I've done two docs that have taken over seven years to complete and I've done one with THE NEW AMERICANS, which was a collaborative enterprise with a bunch of-- [INT: I loved that...] --talented filmmakers. [INT: --I loved that series.] That took six and a half years to make, okay. So-- [INT: That's worth it. I mean that's a masterpiece. I felt that was masterful. I loved your segment. I loved the whole putting together.] That was--well that was part… One of the big motivations for me for doing the series, when I had--well I, you know, when I got the idea to do it there were two things I wanted to do with it. One was I wanted to tell the story of immigrants, the immigrant, contemporary immigrant experience coming to America, but I wanted to start before they got here. Most films I'd seen, it's after they're here, that people look back on it, whatever. I wanted to start before they get here 'cause I want to see who they are there. I want to know what their dreams are before they get here, and then I want to see America through their eyes and understand their life. I want the viewer to be with them not looking at them as someone who has come into our country essentially. And then the other thing I was very excited about, and I said this to Gordon Quinn who was my Executive-- [INT: Producer.] --Producer colleague on it, and he directed one of the best sequences in-- [INT: Which one did he do?] --with Jerry [Jerry Blumenthal]. They did the Palestinian story, which is one of my--I mean all the stories are great, I think. [INT: They're all, you--] They're all great stories. [INT: They're all totally unexpected.] Yeah. [INT: They're totally...] Yeah. [INT: ...they're nothing you've seen before.] Yeah, I just, I thought everybody did a fantastic job with it. [INT: And also the, what you got was a, their honest view of America as opposed to the canned stuff that we get or the way we think of ourselves.] Yeah. Yeah. And they had such… they had similarities and they had divergences. I mean it is, you see where the American, myth of the American dream comes from and the immigrant. You also see the lie behind it. You see it all, I think, in that series. And it's like, anyway, but the other thing that really excited me and I said this to Gordon from the start when we were just conceptually saying, before we even knew what the stories you're gonna tell. I said, "I want to edit it so that we intercut the stories." Because I want to, whatever stories we land on I want to compare and contrast those experiences. I don't want to do a series of stand alones. I don't want to do it like, tonight the Palestinian story. Tonight, the Nigerian story. I wanted to interweave them. And that was, in some ways, creatively, the most exciting part of the making of the film, of the series. We just, we, I had, you know, David Simpson [David E. Simpson] cut it with me.

INT: How did you choose your Directors [on THE NEW AMERICANS]? How did you, what did you do?

SJ: Well we, it was a real process. I mean we knew that I was gonna do one and we knew that Gordon [Gordon Quinn] and Jerry [Jerry Blumenthal] were gonna do one. [INT: So you thought--you decided on five stories.] Well we decided on, in some cases we decided on, I think we mostly decided on Directors first, but we had certain stories in mind. Like I had read a great piece in The New York Times about the baseball camps in the Dominican Republic. And... [INT: How come you didn't do that one?] I know. Well most people, it, when they hear about the series, they, "Oh, you did the baseball story, right?" And I go, "No. I did not want to do the baseball story because I'd been doing all these biopics." I was like, "I could do the baseball story, but I'm not gonna do it." And so we found a great team. They were not sports people, but they did a terrific job with that story. I mean because it's not ultimately about baseball. But I mean you gotta deliver on the baseball, but it's not ultimately about baseball. And so we found Carlos Aparicio and Susana Aikin; they were these talented filmmakers from Spain. And they, you know, they loved the idea of doing the story and we loved their work. [INT: And when you say you found them, how did you find them?] You know who deserves credit, Gita Saedi, who was the series Producer. She did a phenomenal job. She really helped us to round up the directing candidates for the series. We liked, we met, I, so you'd have to really ask--I don't remember exactly how we found each of them, but like Gita found a number of them and we talked to them. I knew I wanted to do a baseball story, so we wanted a Director or a directing team, in this case, who were fluent in Spanish and culturally, you know, adept for that story. And so that's, we found them. I don't remember, on the India story-- [INT: Amazing.] --if we had decided we wanted an India story first or before we found Indu. I think we found Indu Krishnan first and she just impressed us like… But, you know, I knew that we wanted to get a variety of stories, variety of reasons for coming to America and from a, and from different places in the globe. And I knew that we couldn't do 12 stories so we had to find ways to try to get your arms around the kind of immigrant experience in a big way through five stories. And so...

INT: But the Indian story was brought in later it seems.

SJ: Yes. Well that became an editorial choice because when we started to edit it [THE NEW AMERICANS] we decided that it's too much to ask of the viewer to rotate between five stories right out of the gate. And, so we decided, and we looked at the stories in terms of what, which stories had the most material to work with that could more easily sustain over seven hours. And we decided that the Palestinian story, the Nigerian story and we chose the baseball story, not as much because they had tons and tons of material, but we knew that from an entertainment standpoint it would be a great counterpoint to the Palestinian and the Nigerian stories as a way of starting the series. And I think it was. And so we wanted to hook you on these three stories, and then in episode hour four, we introduce the Mexico story, which is one of the most heartbreaking. I mean it is maybe the most heartbreaking story in the series. And, you know, Renee Tajima-Pena who did that, we actually discovered her. Once the series was underway, we heard that she was doing this story and we reached out to her. And we said, "We'd love to talk to you about this series," 'cause we also heard that she was looking for funding. And we said, "I don't know how you feel about becoming part of this series." And she loved the idea and so we kind of adopted her.

INT: Now were, did, were these filmmakers who were willing to give up their editing [on THE NEW AMERICANS]? I mean that's a major...

SJ: It was a… You know, we had it, we had, I mean it was like an, it was like such an incredible group of both filmmakers and people, you know. I mean they… What we did was we said, "Look, we've selected you guys as filmmakers because you're very talented. We know that you can work in a compatible style to each other,” you know. Like Renee [Renee Tajima-Pena] has done all different kinds of styles, but she can do anything. And so, and she was shooting this in a more vérité [cinema verité] fashion than some of the other work that she's done.

INT: Now did they [filmmakers] bring in the stories [THE NEW AMERICANS] or did you have the, how did the, how did...

SJ: So what happened was, Renee [Renee Tajima-Pena] already had a story. Indu [Indu Krishnan] found her story. We kind of helped, we kind of found the story, helped find the story for the baseball story. Gary--Jerry [Jerry Blumenthal] and Gordon [Gordon Quinn] went out and we knew wanted to do a Palestinian story and they found that story. And then we found our story for the Nigerian story. So, as they were making it and shooting it we were providing guidance and keeping tabs and support and feedback. They would tell us what's going on and we would, you know… But they were, they're total pros, so they didn't require a lot of handholding at all. But then when they got to the point where they started to edit we kind of had them all in and we just said, "Look. Here's what we can do budget wise and time wise. We can give you about two months, maybe three, to kind of pull together the best stuff of what you have. You're welcome to get as far--you can give us a stringout of stuff. Tell us, you know, give us what you think is your strongest material. You can arrange it or not. Do whatever you feel like you can do in that period of time. And then you're gonna have to-- [INT: Let go.] --you know, give your baby over to us." And they were willing to do that. I mean, you know, they said it's hard. But, you know, I think we did right by them and I think they felt… once they started to see--they understood the concept. They understood the importance of it. They understood it's kind of how it had to happen. Because we needed to be able to make it feel like one series, not a series of very different films kind of stuck together. And so they did. And we, altogether we had 1500 hours of material that we edited down to seven hours. [INT: Fifteen hundred hours of material after they gave you their rough, their...] No, no. A total of 1500 hours-- [INT: Total of what was shot.] --material. They gave us stringouts, but, you know, and their stringouts-- [INT: What, I don't know what a stringout is.] You know, stringout of like... [INT: An assembly?] Yeah, an assembly of, like, the best stuff. In some cases a little more edited than others, even within a given part of the stringout. And, but, you know, that's all they could accomplish in that amount of time. And then we had to kind of take it over and... [INT: Did they have any rights? [LAUGH]] And then as we were going through the process we would share with them what we were doing and get their feedback, absolutely. And they gave invaluable feedback. But, you know, we used their, we used what they gave us as a good template of their story. But then, of course, when you start to put it together you need to find other stuff. It's not all in that. So we'd go back to the footage and so-- [INT: Now did you go back to the footage or did you get their Editors back? I mean--] No, no. We did it. No, I mean the series was edited by myself, David Simpson [David E. Simpson], who I've now worked with on three projects. That was the first time I'd worked with him. Leslie Simmer edited for a solid six to eight months as an Editor. Gita Saedi did some editing. I mean if I added up all the amount of time that went into the editing of this, it's a lot. But at a certain point David and I became, we were like the guys on it and we divided and conquered. For a while we worked with the, within individual stories and then we started to marry them together. And then we would take episodes and work on episodes. [INT: Now, by now you're working in what medium? What's your format? What are people--] We're working on Avid. [INT: And they're shooting what?] They were shooting DV. That was… At that time, you know, there was Digi Betacam [Digital Betacam], but we couldn't afford it. We could not afford it. So it, we shot on DV. We just could not afford it. [INT: And did you finish, you finished...] We finished, well, we actually finished, you know, on… I mean when we, we actually finished on DV, we finished it at Kartemquin [Kartemquin Films]. We mixed it at Kartemquin. We didn't have the money. [INT: This is amazing.]

SJ: We did this series [THE NEW AMERICANS], we had no sponsoring station. [INT: You didn't? It was for public television? The understanding was that it was for public television?] Yeah. We had public television money. We had no sponsoring station. We didn't feel like we needed one at that point. I may be wrong about this, but I think that THE NEW AMERICANS is arguably the most ambitious, completely independently made public television series-- [INT: Amazing.] --maybe ever, in terms of the sheer volume of time, material, what went into it. Even though it was only-- [INT: The talent.] --seven hours, it was seven pretty kick ass-- [INT: The talent.] --hours. [LAUGH] [INT: The talent.] Yeah. It's a… I'm immensely proud of it. I wish more people had seen it.

INT: I had never seen it before. It's a stunning series [THE NEW AMERICANS]. It was completely eye opening to me. [SJ: That's great to hear. That's great to hear.] It was not any of the immigrant story--nothing. And not my grandmother's story, nothing. Nothing that was familiar.

SJ: And so many things happened. In the Indian story he came to, he comes to America because he's doing fine in Indian, in Bangalore, but he wants to compete in the big leagues of Silicon Valley. He gets here during the boom and then the bust hits. And the Palestinian story straddled 9/11 [September 11]. And so, and that had a profound impact on them. I mean all these things-- [INT: Amazing.] --happened that are just, yeah. I'm very proud of that series. [INT: Now it seems to me that this was a story also of people who came to this country legally. [SJ: Yes.] They all came legally.] We thought about telling, in the Mexico story, we thought about telling, but Renee's [Renee Tajima-Pena] story wasn't an illegal immigration story. And you know what, in a weird… I mean I've seen a lot of illegal immigration docs and a lot of great ones. [INT: Fabulous.] What I loved about this one was is that it was a legal story and you saw the incredible hardship. [INT: Anyway.] You saw the incredible hardship and they're doing it legally.

SJ: It was a, that was a high point. Doing that series [THE NEW AMERICANS] was a high point for me and I think all the people involved. We just, it was a… we had such a great group of people, greatly talented and collaborative. And I think everyone came out of it loving it. The only downside was not enough people saw it. And when it premiered... [INT: It was what year?] When it in 2004, I'll never forget this, the night of its premiere there was a cable movie on Heidi Fleiss' life that, we, you know, got most of the reviews because, you know, at that time, again, the Internet was not that big a deal in terms of reviews and stuff. People weren't, people were getting their reviews from newspapers and stuff. The reviews we got were spectacular, but most of the reviews were done of the Heidi Fleiss cable movie in which, of course, it was panned as being awful. And, you know, it's like, and I'm like, great. You know, we spent six and a half years... [INT: This wasn't Nick Broomfield's?] No, no, no. No, this is, no, no. That's a good movie. This is a cable movie, you know, with--a scripted cable movie based on Heidi Fleiss' life. I don't know who did it. It's probably a great guy I'm sure. I didn't watch it but it, but the reviews were not great, okay? [LAUGH] And we were like, great. We spent six and a half years. My big, you know, fear about HOOP DREAMS, kind of came true with NEW AMERICANS, which was, we got great broadcast time. We were, you know, we were in primetime and all that. PBS did well by us. [INT: Where was John Pierson when you needed him?] Well we were, we did well by it. It was just the realities of television, which is, television reviewers can only review, there's so much they have to choose from and I think a lot of them were like titillated by the idea of a Heidi Fleiss movie, so they wanted to watch that. And then they had to decide, like, do I watch that or do I watch a seven-hour mini-series on immigrants coming to America? You know, well, I'm busy. I'm gonna watch the Heidi Fleiss show.

INT: Now did the series [THE NEW AMERICANS] go to Sundance [Sundance Film Festival] and do the festival circuit or not?

SJ: We actually got it to play, it played at South by Southwest [SXSW]. They showed the whole thing, which was nice. It played a few festivals, including IDFA [International Documentary Film Festival]. And IDFA did a great job of playing it multiple times. And it was kind of a hit there. I mean people loved it. They got suc--and at South by, we did it in one fell swoop. You came in that morning and we promised you if you were there by the end, we were gonna ask a few simple questions to prove that you hadn't left, and we handed out prizes. [LAUGH] [INT: How long was the whole thing? I don't remember.] Seven hours. [INT: Yeah. I did it.] Seven hours. [INT: It's fantastic. It's really a work of intelligence of... I just want to talk to you about--] And it's funny. There's a lot of humor in it. [INT: It's funny and it’s human.] It's funny.

INT: And I want to talk to you about intercutting, because in my experience, frequently what happens with intercutting is you can somehow, sometimes cut off the emotion. [SJ: Right.] You didn't do that [in THE NEW AMERICANS]. How did you not do that? How did you, do you remember?

SJ: Well, all I know is, and I, the trial by fire on intercutting, really, for me, as an Editor, you know, in that role as an Editor, and I love editing, it's a… I love editing as much as any part of the process, and in some ways I like it the most. [INT: Me too.] But the trial by fire for me was HOOP DREAMS because we had this story of these two kids who at the beginning are on the same path, in the same school, easy, seemingly. Also probably would have been fairly boring. But then their lives diverge when Arthur [Arthur Agee] gets kicked out of St. Joe's [St. Joseph High School] and William's [William Gates] on this one track. And then the rising and falling fates of both these kids whose lives were, are largely apart from each other at that point. The real challenge editing on that film was how do we go back and forth between their two stories and what are the junctures in which to do it? With the goal being, you want to leave, I think, you want to, and the same applied to THE NEW AMERICANS. You want to leave a story when you feel some sense of satisfaction, of something having happened that's significant, sometimes, or you want to leave it hanging to come back to. But it has to be a provocative moment in time to leave. And then choosing how to go to the next story, it becomes an important question of, how is it going to then comment on what we're going into because people are gonna be carrying it with them across that cut, if you will, to that story. So in HOOP DREAMS, perfect example, is there's a moment in HOOP DREAMS where Arthur is very, you know, memorable moment in the film where Arthur's family has had their power turned off. They're really down in the dumps and they have no power. They're using a lamp that's plugged into the downstairs neighbor and carrying it through this darkened house. That's the last shot of that sequence. And then it cuts to William, who's going through his own sort of tragedy at that point. He's had this knee injury. But what's happening is, the very next shot is, he's getting an MRI and he's got, he's at a very high-end hospital getting a high-end MRI and there is no shortage of electricity and attention on this kid and, like, his future. Like a lot of people are invested in his future. Even though he's going through his own share of tragedy, but it's a different kind of tragedy than what the Agees are going through. And that became a cut point in that movie. And we did that in a number of places in the movie, and not always between their stories. There's a moment later in the movie where Sheila [Sheila Agee] is getting, this wonderfully moving moment, where Sheila is getting this nurse's assistant's degree that she has earned. And it's this very moving thing, and there's this ceremony. And then the last shot in the sequence is you see this ceremony where all these women are getting it and it's in this big room and there's all these empty chairs. And it's this very significant moment in her life and kind of, hardly anyone is there, right? We cut from that-- [INT: To the graduation.] --to the basketball game of Arthur's and the gym is packed and rocking and it's like basketball. And so, I mean these are the… You look for those kind of moments. I wish I could… I haven't watched NEW AMERICANS in such a long time; I can't think of a good example. But you look for moments where, you know, where the stories can comment on each other, so that somebody's plight or ascendance is contrasted or the irony of what's going on in one story comments on the next story. I mean it's just, you look for those moments. And that's what makes it exciting to do, though, as an Editor and as a storyteller, because then… I think each of those stories were really, in and of themselves, they're intrinsically fascinating and interesting stories. I felt like they grew in interest because of being able to juxtapose them next to each other.