| Interview: Brett Morgan on Chicago 10 |
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| Tuesday, 26 February 2008 | |
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Page 2 Morgen: It’s fantastic. Especially knowing that we were, in a way, the seeds of inspiration for that. We wanted to make this movie to tell the story to bring it to life in a very visceral way. Because we’re a documentary, we’re going to have a limited audience that the Steven Spielberg film will be able to transcend. I totally love the idea that the story is going to be done by the world’s greatest living filmmaker. What’s next for you? Morgen: I’m working on a fiction film about the Iran-Contra affair and I’ve been working on a mixed-media documentary/autobiography about Kurt Cobain. Do you have a dream project for the future? Morgen: Yeah, but I’ll never get to do it. It’s Blood Meridian which I hear, actually, that Ridley Scott is doing. My dream project wouldn’t have been to direct Blood Meridian – it would have been to hire Sam Cooper to direct Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and serve as a producer on it. Short of that, you know, I get so immersed in my films that it’s hard for me to think of what’s next. I just live, eat and breathe my subject matter while I’m working on it. The Iran-Contra film is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I really want to do a musical. I love genre films. I love musicals. I love westerns. If you’ve seen The Kid Stays in the Picture and Chicago 10, you may say, “This guy wants to do a musical?” But the thing with that is that you break down the fourth wall and you can go into this fantasy world. I love films that transport you. You’re here and suddenly you’re in a brand-new place you never thought you’d be in. I love the unexpected. At the same time, I grew up loving the French New Wave. As I got older, I grew to have a soft-spot for these big-budget disaters from late 70’s early 80’s like Heaven’s Gate, One From the Heart, Pennies From Heaven. When I was in high school, I had those three posters in my room. Three flawed masterpieces which directors were given all the resources. I loved seeing what these brilliant filmmakers were able to put on screen. They don’t necessarily work in their entirety but I love the sort of expression and energy that comes form allowing a filmmaker to go to these unexpected places. There’s a number of characters in Chicago 10 who are less significant to the plot and are there in an almost transcendent category. Allen Ginsberg, for example, has his own story and there’s a whole connection to the Black Panthers – would you ever want to go and turn some of those connections into their own films? Morgen: It would be hard for me. A film on Ginsberg, for me, would be too close to the film I just did. I sort of lived that world. I like traveling into different worlds and immersing myself in them and that sense of discovery along the way. I thought it was interesting that you had Ginsberg appearing in your film just after being played by David Cross in I’m Not There and it was sort of like he walked from one to the other and changed to fit the scenery. Morgen: Yeah, that was a really interesting film and I think you could draw a lot of interesting comparisons between what Todd was doing and what I’m doing because we’re both dealing with mythology and interpretations of iconic 60’s characters and rendering them as something more contemporary that you can relate to. I saw Todd’s film over the summer and – like the films I mentioned – it’s a flawed masterpiece. It works on a sort of experimental level but it’s like That Obscure Object of Desire. That’s great in theory but as a view you’re going to get alienated. You’re supposed to be alienated. It’s transubstantiation! So Todd, if you’re going to keep Brechtian films, you’re going to alienate your audience. But more power to him. I went to a test-screening of his film and got this huge thing of notes. I wrote one line: “Let Todd do whatever he wants to do.” Notes aren’t going to help him anymore than someone giving me notes on Chicago 10. Chicago 10’s a very intuitive film. It’s me and a bunch of footage trying to make something that I think people will want to see. How much of it do you think is you? Could someone else have made this film? Morgen: Well, Spielberg’s film will be a reflection of him and Sorkin and this is is – well, people that know me say that this is the most honest film I’ve ever made. They say that I am this film. I don’t want to describe myself, that feels weird, but I can be loud, obnoxious and audacious and a lot of what describes me describes the film. Hypocritical – a bit of a mess. This isn’t a clean film. I almost called the film Mash-Up or Mosh. I feel like Abbie represented a sense of theatricality and a go-for-broke attitude. I see a lot more of myself in this film than in The Kid Stays in the Picture. The Kid Stays in the Picture’s a love-letter. Bob and I were alike in that we were both extremely melodramatic. We made terrible producing partners after we made the film. I would say, “Bob, you know the biggest difference between you and I? I’ve never slept with two women and you’ve never slept with one woman.” There were things about Evans I loved. I loved his work and related to his work being his life. But there was also something cautionary. I’m married with three kids. You gotta have some separation from your work. But it was a film about a very glamorous, seductive man. This is very different. I was into the Dead and into punk and this film is sort of like hippie meets punk. So this is probably the most honest film I’ve made and a film that’s more about me and the times I’m living in than about the subject. Do you think that, for an audience seeing this now, that it’s still possible to go out and stage a protest and have it mean something? Morgen: I think that the film isn’t necessarily saying, “Go stage a protest.” It’s saying, “Don’t sit around and wait for someone to tell you what to do.” What happened in Chicago was that three guys were sitting around smoking a joint and said, “Let’s march on Chicago.” It created this huge theater and it was that simple. I think that in the viral age and the YouTube age there’s other forms of protest. You can make a video mocking the candidate you want to mock. You know, Obamagirl and things like that. I wanted to bring up the idea of fun. Protest doesn’t have to be so earnest. It doesn’t have to be so boring and dry and dull. I love the sense of fun. Michael Moore, for example, inherited the mantle from Abbie. Someone asked me the other day what Abbie would be doing if he were around right now and I said that he’d probably be making films like Michael. Using comedy and film to present these sort of political ideals. Look at Sicko. They guy made an entertaining and at times funny movie about healthcare. How do you do that? It’s impossible. 99.9% of filmmakers would make an unwatchable movie. But Michael understands the need to entertain and that if you don’t entertain, then people won’t watch the movie and they won’t get the message. I think Abbie and the Yippies really understand that.      |
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