INT: Shall we move to THE INTERRUPTERS? [SJ: Sure.] What turned you onto this story?

SJ: Well, what turned me onto THE INTERRUPTERS was my good friend, who became a partner on the film, Alex Kotlowitz, who’s a terrific Writer. And like I said, a good friend for years and years. And he was doing a story for The New York Times Magazine on this group from Chicago, called CeaseFire [Cure Violence], and specifically on this one part of the program where they have these ex gang bangers and drug dealers, and sometimes both, convicts, sometimes all three, who go out and try to mediate violent conflict in the streets, in the neighborhoods where at one time they very well could have been part of the problem themselves. So, he told me about this, that he was working on this; it was fascinating, and then when the piece appeared in The New York Times Magazine, I read it and I called him up immediately, and I knew that Alex had said that he was interested in doing something in film, and I said, “We should do this as a documentary.” And he was like, “It’s great stuff, but I don’t know if we can get the access to the streets. It was tough for me, a lot of times I was three, four blocks away ‘cause they didn’t want me around when the mediations were goin’ on, ‘cause I’m a white guy, you know, reporting. It’d be like…” he goes, “I don’t know if we’ll…” And I said, “Well you know what, you may be right, but let’s give it a shot. You might be surprised, we might…” And I said, and I remember saying to him, “If we do this, we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna do endless mediations, that’s reality TV. We don’t need endless mediations. We need some good ones, but then we’re gonna, like you do in the article in a way, I mean we wanna dig in and understand what’s going on, not just titillate the audience with a bunch of like, oh wow, I’m in the middle of something here, you know.” And so he was game to give it a shot. And the other thing, though, that was, for me, was that in the years since HOOP DREAMS had been completed, Arthur’s [Arthur Agee] dad Bo [Arthur ‘Bo’ Agee] had been murdered. He was murdered in 2004. Arthur’s dad, you know, he sold… He was a pastor in a church. He’d done a lot to clean up his life, you know, and he, but he also to make money, he sold "designer" clothes, knockoffs, out of the back of his Oldsmobile all across Chicago. He got murdered in an encounter. And William’s [William Gates] brother Curtis [Curtis Gates] had also been murdered; he was murdered on September 10th, 2001, the day before 9/11. And I got the call on 9/11. I was in Los Angeles, and William called me to say that Curtis had been murdered. And again, not getting into the details, but a situation, he wasn’t doing anything illegal. So, I saw, you know, they’re not, they weren’t family, but they felt like family to me, and I saw the devastating impact that both those losses had on them. And so for me, that was also a piece of why I wanted to do this film, to kind of try to understand what’s, how this happens, the impact of these losses, and here are these, like courageous individuals who are trying to do something about it.

INT: Were you ever tempted to get in, was it, did it have anything to do with guns? I mean did you hit into--not, that wasn’t in the movie [THE INTERRUPTERS]…

SJ: Well at the time, Chicago had some of the most stringent gun laws in the nation. They were, they were struck down as unconstitutional. The problem… Guns play a role, of course, and if we really wanna reduce the murders going on in the inner city, we have to get incredibly serious about gun control. But it can’t just stop, it can’t happen in the city. It’s gotta happen everywhere, ‘cause the guns come up from North Carolina or Florida or wherever. I mean, we didn’t wanna, we didn’t, we decided we weren’t gonna do a film that was about this issue that looked at it as a kind of issue oriented film. ‘Cause that’s not the kinda films I make. And it’s actually, to some degree, I mean in an article, Alex [Alex Kotlowitz] would do more of that because he has to, but it’s not where his, his heart lies as a journalist, he likes to tell stories too.

INT: Did you go to his, to the people that he’d [Alex Kotlowitz] written about?

SJ: We were interested in one of the guys he featured, to make a part of the film [THE INTERRUPTERS]. But this guy ended up deciding that he did not really, he--we chased him for a while. I think the experience of having done the article, he was fine with, but he just, he’d had enough. And but it took a while for him to really… and I just said, at one point to Alex, “Let’s move on.” No, we profiled all new people. And the people we found, I felt was, they were extraordinary people. And, and so we wanted to be a ground level experience. We wanted to be in the neighborhoods, through the eyes of the interrupters, and sort of seeing what it means to live in a community where violence is a daily fact of life. And to not just have it be this profoundly depressing film, here are these people, here are these individuals who are there trying to really make an impact, and these are people with history. These are people who are doing this out of a need for redemption themselves, and that was profoundly interesting. But we didn’t wanna shortchange just how tough it is there. So one of the things you see at the beginning of the movie is one of the more disturbing, I think, scenes of the entire movie, ‘cause we really wanted to knock you back on your heels as a viewer. This was not gonna be some easy, sort of, you know, you know, activist movie about change. This is a real life portrait of what goes on. Both what works and what doesn’t work, the successes and the failures. And so early on in the movie you see this, you know, very tough situation where this father’s lost his child, and he’s doing a press conference, and he gets into it with an aunt, and they have a shouting match; they’re all just so upset. And then they hear there’s another murder on the block and the police take off, and it’s just, you’re just like, "God, why would anyone live here?" That’s I think what you, that’s what I was thinkin’, when we were, when I was shooting it, is why would anyone live here? And, but as we went on, I mean that’s the beauty of doing this film was to really immerse in this, for 13, 14 months, we immersed in these neighborhoods, and we saw courage, we saw transcendence, we saw profound sadness, we saw, we saw people going on when I think most people would’ve given up. We saw, I mean we kinda saw it all. And it was a, you know, it was a, it’s one of the more remarkable filming experiences of my life, without question. And just human experiences, I mean, and to have that ability to be there…

INT: Why did they let you in [in THE INTERRUPTERS]? I mean why didn’t they kill you? [SJ: [LAUGHS] Well, they let, I think they let us in because…] And who let you in, I’m sorry?

SJ: Well I think, first the key is, I think the key--first of all, a lot of people ask, like how do you film, like on HOOP DREAMS and especially with INTERRUPTERS, ‘cause there’s some dicey situations that happen, and like weren’t you scared for your life, and all of this stuff. And I mean, I wasn’t. I mean there were a couple of tense moments where, like where there was some guy who, who went after Alex [Alex Kotlowitz] because he had seen him speak at an event of all things, and this guy, we ended up finding out had a real reputation, and, as it turned out, I had actually filmed an interview with this guy for a short film I had done a year earlier, so I tried to mediate, unsuccessfully. [LAUGH] You know. Then Ameena [Ameena Matthews], the real-- [INT: Interrupter.] She really mediated, thank god. But, so there were some tough moments. Nothing really, really felt terribly threatening, honestly, but some of that I think is you, you’re there with a purpose, and you kind of insulate yourself, realistically or not, you don’t feel in danger. But we also were with people who carry tremendous respect in those neighborhoods. Those interrupters. And we were with them. And that went a long way. And I think, though, also when you’re in those neighborhoods, and when word gets around you spend the time, that what you’re up to and people think it’s a good thing, like when it got around that, like, these guys are here, and they’re trying to like follow this work we’re doin’, and they’re trying to show the world, like, what goes on here that’s tough, and you know, we’re not, we’re not the TV news, just saying, it bleeds it leads. We’re there for the long haul, you know. It’s like, they, then people like, were like, okay, I got that. And we became more accepted. But the key were the interrupters themselves. They were, they were our way in, and they were our way out, in a way, and you know, and you know what? Some people say to me, they go, “Well you must of shot all this with like a little camera, right, ‘cause you don’t wanna be in the…” And I said, “No. We shot it with a big camera.” And every film I’ve shot, I’ve never shot any film--and I don’t normally shoot, but this film I actually shot, because we had to be able to run out at a moment’s notice and do this, and we wanted to go as small as possible, you know, with this. And we always had the big camera, and it’s like, I’ve found over the years people think that the bigger the camera, the more intimidating it is for people, and that you don’t get the intimacy, or that people don’t let down their guard, and I’ve never found that to be the case at all. It’s not about the size of the camera. And in this case, actually, the size of the camera was a virtue, because what it communicated to the guys in the streets is, is that these guys are for real, this isn’t some bullshit little operation, these guys are real, these are real, these are the real deal. It’s almost like, you have a big gun, that’s a good thing. You have a big camera, that’s a good thing too, in this situation. [INT: Amazing. Amazing.]

INT: LIFE ITSELF. Well, you were gifts to each other, you and Roger [Roger Ebert].

SJ: Well I think he was more gift to me for a long time. Maybe making this movie is, you know, my payback or whatever. [INT: Tell me, I know that he, he reviewed your work and you became friends. What was it like… You found out soon after you began that he was very sick.] Well actually, not soon after we began. You know, when we began the film, the idea was not to document Roger’s last four months of his life, at all. His health was fragile. More fragile than it had been, since the last time I saw him, but I wasn’t buddies with him, so I didn’t see him frequently. But I could see that his health had, it was more fragile now. But he was still going to screenings, and going to, and throwing dinner parties at their Michigan home, and going to, you know, events, and things like that. So part of the idea with that was, we were gonna, you know, I was gonna give you the sweep of his life through interviews and archival and all of that, but I was gonna use a springboard, much like he did in his memoir [“Life Itself: A Memoir”], I was gonna use his day-to-day life now as the springboard to that past. And I was gonna show just how determined and vibrant he remains despite all he’s been through, and the fragility of his health. And you know what, that is in the movie. But it’s also in the movie that he, you know at the beginning of this movie that before this movie is over he’s gonna be gone. And really, we kept expecting that he was gonna get better and come home, and then we would go on with what I originally planned. And then when he revealed to me, via email, that the cancer had returned, and that he did not expect to be alive when the movie was done, then that changed it. That changed, of course, a lot of things in terms of what this film would become. It would still be all the things, I think, I set out to do, but it was also about the dignity and grace and courage of a man who’s dying, and a man who, you know, a man who had written about all this very candidly, and with a sense of humor, and… But it’s one thing to write about it all, which in and of itself was brave and courageous, the way he wrote about it, and insightful. That was all--and I wanna take nothing away from that. But it’s one thing to do that when death doesn’t seem to be at your door. It’s another thing when it finally is, and it was, and he still had this great, you know, sort of attitude about the whole thing, you know. [INT: And it’s still another thing when there’s a camera.] Yes. [INT: I mean, he maintained that all, and you were there.] Yes, but he also let us see his frustrations too. You know, you see that, you see how hard it is. [INT: Oh, yeah.] You know it’s, this isn’t just him holding forth about, I have this great attitude, it’s like you see it all. And, but what you…

SJ: You know, I think what Roger [Roger Ebert] decided, when Roger decided that he was gonna participate in this film [LIFE ITSELF], he didn’t say this, but I felt it, clearly, and it was so clear. He decided, like, you know, he knew the kind of documentaries he loved. He knew what he expected from a documentary. And I think he was like, “Well I’m not, I’m gonna hold myself to the same standard. I can’t change the rules because it’s me.” [INT: And he said that. He did say that in the film. He said, “Steve’s the Director.”] Yeah. He did. But I mean, it’s like, he said it in so many different ways. When I filmed the suction-- [INT: Oh. He said--] --which is very hard to see, where he’s having his, his windpipe cleared, and you see how painful it is. And it’s something Chaz [Chaz Ebert] did not want us to film. But Roger did, and he knew I’d wanted it. And when he, after I filmed that, he, I think he saw how much it bothered me to have filmed it, like oh my god, what a, ooh. And he wanted to assure me that I had done the right thing. And so he sent this email that I got when I got home from the shoot that said, “Great stuff!!! I’m so glad we got something today nobody sees: suction.” And that’s in the movie. But I, what that told me was, he’s in, he’s all in. And-- [INT: He’s making a film.] He want--but yes. He’s all in, and he’s seeing this on multiple levels. He’s seeing it on the level of, if this is gonna be a good film, it’s gotta be that. He’s seeing it on a level of, I’ve walked this walk, I’ve talked this talk about my illness to the public, and I’ve written about it, and I’ve been candid about it, there’s no stopping now. I have to live up to that, and I wanna live up to that. It’s important to me. And, and I think he saw the greater virtue of that for people watching this movie. And I can sit here today and say, since the movie’s been out and it’s been seen, you know, a lot at this point, and I’ve had so many people who have dealt with loved ones who went through cancer, they have come up to me and they’ve said, “I came into this movie thinking it was about Roger Ebert the film critic, you know, who I liked in movies and all that, and it is all that; I had no idea that what I was gonna get from it was this, this thing about how he and Chaz [Chaz Ebert] coped with illness in such a beautiful, loving and courageous way.” And so he saw that, and he allowed us to put that in the movie. And for anybody to allow that about themselves in a movie is a pretty spectacular thing. For someone as famous as him to do that, that is exceedingly rare, because usually when films are about famous people, the candor is more in quotes. It’s like it’s much more managed, and it’s like, it’s, you know, it’s just a much more managed situation, and he didn’t manage it.

INT: I also felt that you got an unusual candor from his [Roger Ebert] friends [in LIFE ITSELF] [SJ: Yes.] I felt that, that bar, and those guys, all of them, and I’ve heard them be, I’ve heard--one of them, Simon, who is normally quite--[SJ: Roger Simon.] --off putting, was absolutely right there, and candid. I mean, so the candor came not just from, it came from his world. [SJ: That’s right.] And that was quite terrific. [SJ: Thank you, yeah.] It even came from, it came from what’s his name’s wife? [SJ: Marlene. Especially from Marlene [Marlene Siskel].] Whoa, but I mean--

SJ: She, well, she is… Gene Siskel’s wife, Marlene, had never been interviewed before. Not because people didn’t want to, and of course you can see why, she’s great, but because she declined to. You know, she was a very private person. Gene and their family were very private in the way they dealt with his cancer. His brain tumor was private, so. But she told me when I met with her before we started the film, and I was saying, “Come on Marlene, I really…” She said, “Look, I don’t feel like I have a choice. I have to do this.” And I’m so glad she did because she is the closest we could get to Gene’s view, was through her. And you’re right, I mean everyone’s candid, but see, Roger attracted people like that. He, he wasn’t into bull--he was a great bullshitter, but the people he loved and he in his heart and soul was not a bullshitter; he was a real guy. And he loved real guys, and those guys knew, it’s like--now, when I went out to them to ask them to be a part of the film, none of them would have participated had Roger and Chaz [Chaz Ebert] not said to them, “Please participate.” And they told them, in the emails to them, “Be candid.” They said, “Please be candid.” I mean, come on. It’s like, you know, and they, and they, to their, to his word and to their word, they were. And I remember when we interviewed Rick Kogan, who’s great in the movie, who says a lot of great stuff. And when that interview was over, Bruce Elliott, who’s in the bar, he’s the guy that says, “He’s nice, but not that nice,” and talks about the, you know, gold diggers and prostitutes that Roger used to date. Bruce was listening to Rick’s interview, and after it was over, Rick said, “How’d I do?” Bruce goes, “You were good, but you were pretty soft in a lot of places.” And Rick goes, “I’m sure you’ll make up for it, Bruce.” [INT: They were real friends.] They were real friends. [INT: It was clear. And what he handed you, I mean…]

INT: How did you feel about being handed, you’re basically being handed the responsibility.

SJ: Well yeah, I mean, I think while we were making the film [LIFE ITSELF] before he [Roger Ebert] died, I felt a responsibility, but I didn’t feel, I didn’t feel it as much as after he died, because I thought, okay, I’m making one documentary on him. You know, other people are gonna come along and do something, I’m sure. I mean I’m all about taking the pressure off myself, not adding the pressure. And so I was like, you know, but once he died, I absolutely felt like, you know, there may be other documentaries, there probably will be in some sort, you know, but this will be the only one that he was fully a part of, and yeah, I felt the responsibility. But I also, I didn’t feel like, I didn’t know how good the film was gonna be. I didn’t, I knew it wasn’t gonna be a bad film, but I didn’t know how good it was gonna be, but I knew that we had, he had given us something special, Chaz had given us something special, and that, I was about two thirds through the interviews when he passed away. And I felt like, you know, I just knew that people had been, you know, they’d been great. And so, you know, and there, you know, if it’s not a good film, then we’ve screwed it up in the editing, that’s what I… [LAUGH] [INT: You know, visually also, there was something amazing about the grotesque. It, and the--] The disfigurement. [INT: --fact that he was always smiling. That, whether that, I don’t know if it was, that he was--] No, he made that smile happen. Because when you see him when he’s asleep at the beginning of the movie, his jaw’s hanging down. [INT: Oh I know. So he was able to control…] He was able to make that smile happen. [INT: How amazing. I mean and…] And his eyes, I mean I think the key-- [INT: His eyes, the…] The key is the eyes. [INT: Yes, yes, always, always, always.] And his eyes were just so full of mischief, and-- [INT: Of humor, yes, yes.] --humor, and love, and, and if he was not happy, you saw that. I mean, it’s, it’s all in the eyes, and he was still Roger. And who knew he was such a great physical comedian? He could be funny, you know, he, he hits his head with the, you know, the Britney Spears toothbrush. [INT: And the amazing thing, that everything is gone except…] Yeah. Yeah.

INT: Is there a film either fiction or documentary that you wish you’d made?

SJ: Oh there’s… Well there’s a lot of films I wish I’d made, like, you know, half of Kubrick’s [Stanley Kubrick] work, THE GODFATHER, LAST TANGO IN PARIS, VERTIGO, THE RULES OF THE GAME, I mean, I, you know, there’s a lot of films I would’ve loved to say I made, yeah, yeah there’s a film I made, called RULES OF THE GAME, you might like it. No, there’s a lot of films. I mean I, I feel like I’ve drawn influences from so many different films.

INT: Talk about Renoir [Jean Renoir], you haven’t, we haven’t talked about that here.

SJ: Well Renoir, when I took that class, I didn’t know who Jean Renoir was. I’d heard of Renoir [Pierre-Auguste Renoir] the painter, but that’s about it. You know, if you’d have shown me his paintings, I would’ve have been able to say, “Oh, yeah, that’s a Renoir.” You know, but that was a revelation. And part of what was so great about that revelation was the fact that it wasn’t immediately evident to me, I wasn’t, I didn’t understand enough about film to fully appreciate what he was doing when I--‘cause the professor set it up, like RULES OF THE GAME is at the top of most critics’ list as the greatest film ever made, some think CITIZEN KANE, but RULES OF THE GAME is, you know. And I was like, at that point I’d seen CITIZEN KANE, and I understood why people loved that. You know, it was kinda self-evident. It’s a very showy film, I mean it’s a masterpiece and all that, but it’s a very showy kind of bravado piece of filmmaking, right? But when I watched RULES OF THE GAME first time, I was like, wait, this? This is, why? Why this? I mean it’s kinda interesting. And then the professor said, “Watch it again.” So I watched it again. And I’ve, I’ve probably seen it, you know, seven or eight times over the years since then, and even recently when it came out, they had it in theaters recently and I saw it again, which was spectacular to see. And anyway, it was realizing that, and it informed my documentary filmmaking, what he did, because it was the way in which he had a way of creating and capturing a kind of life that was deep and complicated and sort of beautiful, but tragic at times--I mean it’s just… and the layers of, you know, of action in that movie, and other films, I mean his sense of composition. He had a kind of artless but astoundingly beautiful style that is great for narrative cinema, but is a tremendous inspiration for documentary cinema, I think. And so he was really important to me. And I think, you know, the films of like Kubrick [Stanley Kubrick], or Coppola [Francis Ford Coppola], you know, the early films of Coppola, there was an epic ambition to those films that hooked me. And I, you know, in my own way, HOOP DREAMS is a kind of epic; STEVIE is kind of a mini epic in its own right; NEW AMERICANS is kind of a--I mean I, I kinda have these kinda epic ambitions too, in the work I do. It’s not epic on their scale, but it’s epic, in, you know, in my way. I mean…

INT: What about the religion of verité [cinéma verité]? How do you…

SJ: I’m not a pure verité filmmaker. I’ve seen and been influenced by pure verité filmmakers that I love: Maysles’ [Albert Maysles; David Maysles] work; Barbara Kopple’s early work; Frederick Wiseman’s work. But I’m not a, I’m not a pure verité filmmaker because I am more interested than most verité films are able to, I think, capture in the inner psychology of people. I wanted to know what makes people tick. And yes, some verité films, and the great ones get at that to some degree, but they, but I do think there’s a limit to what can be achieved with that form, for my taste, and so. And I am not a fly on the wall filmmaker. My way of getting verité scenes, mostly, is by getting to a level of comfort through interaction with the subjects, to the point where they have a level of comfort that allows them to accept me being there more then that they forget that I’m there. And the analogy I’ve used when I do master classes is that, you know, let’s say you wanna have someone over for dinner, and let’s say you have, let’s say it’s someone you have romantic, you know, designs on. What do you do, first time they come over for dinner? Well, you spend a lot of time in front of the mirror picking out the very best thing to wear, that makes you look your best. You clean up the house. You, if you’re cooking, you think okay, what’s my signature best dish to impress this person, right? Well that’s kinda the way it is when a film starts with subjects, is because they think because you’ve chosen them, that you, that they are special in some way, which they are, but they wanna make a great impression, they wanna live up to some expectation you have of them. You don’t come to them and say, “I wanna make a film about you because I think your life is just kinda normal, and kinda boring really, but I wanna do that, I wanna…” You’re saying they’re special, so they wanna be special. So, so it’s hard. It’s hard to be special. It’s hard to have that first date, and someone in your home. So what I wanna do is, I wanna get as quickly to that point where it’s like I’m, it’s the 20th time I’ve come to your house. You don’t care what you’re wearing, you’re wearing sweatpants, there’s nothing to eat, ‘cause fuck it, I’m not gonna go make something for you, you come over all the time and the house is a mess. I wanna get to that place, so that there’s a level of comfort because that’s what they really are. And that, a lot of times for me, comes from not just being around a lot, but comes from interacting, and getting to a level of comfort with me as a person that they, that they like having me around, and they’re comfortable with me.

INT: Sometimes also they [subjects] talk to you, don’t they?

SJ: Yes. [INT: Yeah.] Yeah, I try to pick and choose my spots with that. I don’t mind if someone comes and addresses me, but a lot of times, there are moments, a lot of moments in my films where it’s a pure verité moment, where I’m, there’s no… it’s as if I’m not there. And the interaction is not with them, and I don’t encourage them in those moments to speak to me at all; I don’t want them to speak to me. But, a lot of times, immediately after that moment, there might be a lull, or the moment’s passed, and then I will engage them. Because I find that that’s the best time to really get inside what they’re, if it hasn’t been revealed by that moment, everything I wanna know, and I have a question, that’s when I will ask. So that’s--example from THE INTERRUPTERS is, when Ameena [Ameena Matthews] and Caprysha [Caprysha Anderson], this young woman that she’s been trying like crazy, doing everything she can to reach this very tough young woman, they have it out near the end of the movie where Ameena reads her the riot act, and Caprysha… And I’m there shooting, and I’m, I mean I’m as close to her as I am to you now, I’m shooting this on the bench. And Ameena, and Caprysha gets up and stomps away. And that’s when I asked Ameena about what she’s feeling right then about Caprysha, like what, like how frustrating is it for her, and she just, she starts to cry and she talks about how she sees herself when she was 19 in this young woman. And it’s a very moving, for me it’s a very moving and powerful moment, and I could’ve interviewed her later about it, and it probably would’ve been pretty good, but there was something about her sitting on that bench, Caprysha’s gone, the scene’s over, but the scene, in a way, continues because now it’s about Ameena telling us all that she’s feeling about… And she, you know she does this wonderful thing where she says, “I’m not gonna call her, you know. I’m gonna wait for her to call me,” and then two minutes later she’s on the phone calling her. And you know, it’s very revealing.

INT: If you are not shooting, where are you in relation to the camera?

SJ: Usually… depends. If it’s a really tight quarters situation, I will step out. ‘Cause I, the people I work with, in recent years I’ve worked a lot with Dana Kupper who’s terrific, and you know, she goes all the way back to STEVIE with me, and she’s shot a number of the films in between, a large number of them. So especially with somebody I’m comfortable with, and work with a lot, I will, I’ll step out in a tight quarters situation. If it’s not a tight quarters situation, I’m usually over her shoulder. I stay out of her way in terms of her ability to move and stuff, but she knows that I may occasionally pull that headphone off that ear to whisper-- [INT: Tell her where to go, right.] --whisper a little something-- [INT: Something’s happening over here.] And sometimes she knows, and she doesn’t take it personally. I may have to grab her and sling her in this direction, because she’s, you know, when you’re shooting… [INT: Focused, yeah.] Like there’s something over here she’s gotta get right now, and she, you know, she doesn’t get upset when I do that. [INT: That’s great.] But I think that, I learned on HOOP DREAMS, though, with Peter [Peter Gilbert], who’s a terrific shooter, I learned this a really, you know it was interesting how I learned this, ‘cause you know, I worked in that way with him, too. And one day he went to shoot a basketball game that we needed, and it was not one crucial game, it was during the playoff March senior year for Arthur [Arthur Agee], but it was an early round, and it was figured that Marshall was gonna kick butt and move on. And I was in the middle of doing something for money at Kartemquin [Kartemquin Films], editing. So I was like, “You know what, I’m gonna stay here for this, you go shoot the game, and call me if anything, like if it’s, if anything’s happening then I’ll run over, you know.” So you know, it was what we expected; it was no big deal. And then I saw the footage, and it was wonderful. And I realized that it just dawned on me, it’s like sometimes you can make the mistake, if you’re a Director in those situations, of talking too much to your cameraperson. And what happens is, is that they then, they start to question their instincts as a shooter because you’re talking to them so much, it’s like they’re waiting for you to just tell them what to shoot next because you clearly don’t trust their instincts, right? So you have to really learn to pick and choose and have faith in your shooter. [INT: And then not to lose faith in yourself because you’ve, because they’ve come back with a fabulous…] Right, because you do contribute. And a lot of times I find with shooters, a lot of it, with most the people I work with, I’m having to make them stop shooting the fabulous person talking, who’s great, and get them to shoot the person listening, because they don’t wanna miss something. And a lot of shooters, no matter how good they are, they’re afraid that something great gets said and they were shooting a cutaway, it’s a catastrophe, and I tell them, it’s not. Because a lot of times, the great thing that’s said, it’s how the person took it that’s more interesting. We got it, we got the audio, don’t worry, it’s there. But seeing a person react to something really amazing said can be much more interesting. And I tell young filmmakers, when they say, “How do you know when to go off the shooter, and how do you know when to get the cutaways,” and you know, especially when something really dramatic is happening, like the barber shop scene in THE INTERRUPTERS, when I’m shooting that, so and I had to live by these words too, ‘cause I’m shooting it now, and there’s nobody to blame in the editing but me, for not having the coverage. I tell them I say, “You know one way to think of it is, if you weren’t shooting, what would you be doing? If something really dramatic’s happening and there’s people in a room, would you just stare at the person shooting? No. You would be looking. You know, you’d be looking to see what’s the reaction, how are people taking this, what’s going on in the room else wise, you know wow, what? And that’s your guide, and so shoot it that way too. So if someone says something very provocative, you’re curious like well, what’s the reaction, go get it. And don’t worry if you miss some great gem. If you’ve gotten some great gems, you’re good, you know, you’re good.” It’s like, you know. [INT: You made the right choice, documentaries versus features.] [LAUGH] Well I wanna do features too now. [INT: You made the right choice, okay, all right.] I’m ready to do it again. [INT: Okay.] Bring some of that knowledge to bear.

INT: What does the Guild [DGA] mean to you?

SJ: Well the Guild, I mean, you know, for me, it has been, first of all when I was doing the narrative stuff, it was great to have the Guild in my corner because it ensured things like, you know, that I would get paid at a certain level, and that… And then in editing, I would have a certain amount of time to do my cut of this movie before the powers that be get to come in and tell me what they think. And you know, so there was just all the protections that come with that. And then you know, some years ago they reach, started to reach out to documentary filmmakers, which I thought was very smart. At first I was like, really, documentaries? But it was very smart. And it was smart for the Guild; it’s great for the livelihood and power of the Guild to include documentary filmmakers. But it’s also fantastic for us, because, I mean, the health insurance is great, and I know… I let my health, my DGA health insurance lapse once, when I edited someone else’s film and produced it. And I’ll never make that mistake again [LAUGH], because it is this incredible thing. It’s been great for my family, and great for me, and the peace of mind that comes with that. But also the, you know, the pension part of it. The you know, being vested in the pension plan, it’s like in America today, you know, there was a time when a lot of people had pension plans, ‘cause they had factory jobs that put money in pension plans, and it was like a fact of life for a great many; it’s unfortunately not true today. And to be able to know that I have that on top of everything else is, you know, is an incredible comfort for me at my age--as I don’t plan to be retiring any time soon, but you know, you never know--to know that I have that in my future.

INT: Are any of your kids gonna be filmmakers?

SJ: My youngest son just graduated from Columbia College [Columbia College Chicago] in Chicago in film with a concentration in cinematography, and he was second camera on the Ebert film [LIFE ITSELF], on all the, on most all of those interviews, and even some of the other footage that’s in the film are shots of his. And it was, you know, it was amazing to have him on the shoots and pay him; I paid him. [INT: Bet your tooshie.] To be--and you know, and after he, after the very first shoot where he did second camera in the interview, I looked at the footage, and I said, “Jackson [Jackson James], come here, I wanna show you.” I said, “I don’t think you’re giving me enough head room here, and you’re a little too centered on the framing.” And you know, second camera on this, Ebert, was not, it wasn’t one of those classic where you set up second camera one frame and just let it go and you could like walk out of the room and it’d be fine, because I have the main camera, Dana [Dana Kupper] moving around. [INT: You need the second shot.] Then I want the second shot to be different from whatever she’s shooting, so he had to be on his toes. It’s like if she’s wide, I’m tight. When she’s tight, I’m wide. And he’s constantly having to be ready and adapt. And, and he did a fantastic job. After that first day, he didn’t get defensive, he didn’t say, “Dad!” He was like, “Okay, okay, okay.” And from that moment on, he did the best job. I know I’m his dad, but honest to god, we had professionals in other cities, ‘cause I didn’t fly him to L.A. and New York, he did the best job, of any of them. He’s, you know, he’s got skills. He doesn’t wanna do documentaries, but he loves documentaries. And who knows, he might come around to doing documentaries, but I think it’s great, he’s off doing his thing. [INT: Wonderful.] Yeah. [INT: This is terrific.] It was fun. I enjoyed it. [INT: And your legacy, so your legacy is your family, and your family of films. Congratulations.] [LAUGH] I like that. [INT: Congratulations.] Thanks, thanks for talking to me. It was great. [INT: What a pleasure. Thank you.]

INT: My name is Lynne Littman. Today is October 29th, 2014. I've just completed an interview with filmmaker Steve James for the Directors Guild of America's Visual History Program. We're at the DGA in Los Angeles, California.