BARBARA KOPPLE

A few days ago I found an interview with Barbara Kopple that a documentary professor I had at EICTV passed on to me, and I wanted to share it with you because I found it quite inspiring.

Here it is.

Barbara Kopple

New York, February 4, 2003

My parents did everything with the family in mind; as I grew up, they instilled in me the belief that there was nothing I couldn't do, which I think taught me to take risks. I was born in 1946 and raised in Scarsdale, an upper-middle-class suburb of New York City. My father worked in the textile industry, and my mother was a stay-at-home mom. My parents were Democrats, very liberal, and not at all religious; we celebrated certain holidays, but we didn't distinguish Christmas from Passover. My uncle is the playwright who wrote the play that inspired the film Casablanca, which was based on his own experiences. I loved talking with him, and I was very proud when he came to see one of my first films and loved it.

I studied clinical psychology at Northeastern University in Boston. As part of my training, I had to do a six-month internship at Medfield Bay Hospital , where I worked with patients who had undergone lobotomies. I had a feeling that if I wrote about it, no one would ever read it, so instead I decided to make a Super 8 film and thought, "This is extraordinary, it's magical." Filming wasn't difficult, since back then everyone seemed to be filming things. It was the time of the peace movement; communication groups were popping up everywhere, and there was always someone filming something. I didn't edit the film; I simply projected it as I had shot it, adding only a few comments. However, I would never dare to do anything like that again.

What matters in life is luck and opportunity. In the cinéma vérité class I attended in New York, there was a woman who worked for the Maysles brothers. She told me they needed help, and I didn't hesitate. They hired me, and I never set foot in that class again. My job was to do what no one else wanted to do, and what I loved. The assistant editor would give me extra work to do at night because I was so eager to learn the trade. In 1970, I worked with the Maysles brothers on Gimme Shelter , a film during which I spent my time running after Albert and David, carrying reels of unexposed film. They treated everyone like family, which made me collaborate even more enthusiastically. At the time, only women worked there. Shortly afterward, I got a job as an assistant editor under Larry Moyer. Larry was a fantastic teacher, and I remember him saying things like, "I'm going to lunch, so I want to see this scene put together when I get back in an hour." So, I started to understand how to tell a story thanks to him.

Documentaries aren't just about the rawest or most visceral aspects of life, but also about the beauty and joy of people. I had a wonderful experience working on * Winter Soldier*, which was financed by Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland. We barely had enough money for filming equipment, and whenever we were short of something, we begged relentlessly until someone would lend it to us. No one on the crew was paid. We filmed the testimonies of numerous Vietnam War veterans. I worked on sound and editing. It was a great experience for me, as I got to know these handsome, innocent young men up close, men who had suffered so much during the war. During the editing process, the entire crew stayed in a house that had been lent to us, a house where veterans would occasionally come to spend a few days. Sometimes they would wake up in the morning thinking they still had their weapons with them. Living with them and being by their side as they watched the footage we were editing was a truly enriching experience. I was quite young, under twenty-five, and I felt incredibly motivated by the opportunity to meet people who opened up and revealed their inner selves so profoundly simply by being in front of a camera. Some of their stories were sad, others extraordinary. Nothing motivates me more than exploring the true essence of a story, immersing myself in people's souls and observing who they are and how they change over time. When someone gives me permission to enter their life, what I try to do as a filmmaker is to make them forget I'm there and do my best to let them continue living their life normally.

A good example of this was Wild Man Blues , the documentary about Woody Allen's jazz band's European tour. What made it different for him was stepping away from familiar territory, as new situations tend to intimidate Woody. So I gave him a wireless microphone and let him do his thing. Sometimes he'd act a little for the camera, but as a rule, we were so far away from him that he forgot we were filming. And Woody never backed down. In fact, once the tour was over, he was itching to see the film. He'd call me again and again and ask, "Can I see something yet?" And I'd say, "No, Woody, you know I'm still working on a four- or five-hour cut." Finally, the day came when he called again, and I was able to say, "Okay, I've cut it down to three hours. You can come by and have a look if you'd like." He and his wife were blown away by what they saw. During the screening, the two of them held hands and giggled occasionally. As soon as it ended, all he said was, "How are you going to make a shorter cut?" "Well, that's up to me," I replied. "You're right," he said. And then they left.

Harlan County, USA was a tough film to make, and also the one that meant the most to me. I lived with miners and came to understand what life and death truly meant. At night, we had to carry firearms because a gang of heartless thugs were shooting at people's houses. I made some extraordinary friends there. I had never met people who lived and died for their guns. On the first morning of filming, there was a shootout, and someone had to be taken to the hospital. The next day, that guy was driving his car with a sticker that read: " THE .38 CALIBER IS WORTHLESS ." In Harlan County, you always had to make it clear that you were carrying a gun. Those people worked in one of the most dangerous industries in the country, a sector where a man or a woman dies practically every day from a rockfall or from inhaling coal dust. Those people were fighting for the right to form unions to improve their safety conditions and earn a decent wage, and the coal miners were doing everything they could to suppress their struggle. But the film was a vast canvas that encompassed much more: the miners' history, what anthracosis is, what life was like for the widows of the workers who died in the Farmington mine explosion. It was a personal account of the people of Harlan County.

Harlan County, USA premiered at the New York Film Festival. I had invited the miners and their wives to the screening and was somewhat afraid they might think I was exploiting them. What if they didn't like the documentary? There I was, standing in front of 1,500 people, with no guarantee they would like it. But in the end, an interesting discussion ensued, and we had a wonderful time. Hazel Dickens, the daughter of a miner and composer of the film's score, began playing the main theme. We had distributed 1,000 scores to the audience, who responded by singing along. It was marvelous. Then, when Lois Scott, who appears in the film, began speaking about the fundraising campaign undertaken by the Anthracosis Association, of which she had just been appointed treasurer, a shower of five- and ten-dollar bills rained down on the stage. I was standing in a corner laughing uncontrollably and I guess Lois forgot she was wearing a microphone because she said, "Barbara, stop laughing and start picking up these bills and putting them in your bra."

After that, I filmed American Dream in Austin, Minnesota. It was a film about the economic crisis in the American Midwest. I had been racking my brain trying to find a way to talk about the difficult situation people were going through at that time. Ronald Reagan was the president, and his economic policies were causing thousands of people across the country to lose their jobs. I moved in with a woman from Chicago who was dedicated to creating institutions for training unemployed workers who needed to turn their lives around. She heard about the impending closure of a factory in Worthington, and the circumstances seemed so intriguing that I thought I'd travel there to see what was happening.

It was a tough, difficult film that took me two years to complete. None of these films received state funding, so I had no choice but to ask for money from private foundations. I was always struggling to get hold of a roll of raw film or a camera operator. It was almost as if they were doing me a political favor by working with me. The overall structure of the film was very complex, as it involved the infighting between the national and local unions. On American Dream , as with many of my other documentaries, I handled production, directing, and sound. Working like that forces you to split yourself in two. You have to figure out where the next small amount of money will come from, assemble the film crew, make sure all your collaborators have what they need, and get the film made. Luckily, I had plenty of energy, and nothing was going to stop me from making that film. I remember one call in particular from our production office. I had spent the entire morning picketing, and my body was shivering with cold. On the other end of the line, someone said, "There's no money left in the bank." One of the people who worked with me chipped in a hundred dollars out of their own pocket to help us out. For the previous six months, we had written several letters to Bruce Springsteen asking for his help, since he was very involved with the workers' struggle at the time. I was running back and forth between the union office and the phone, and they kept asking me what I was going to do about it, and I had no idea how we were going to manage without money. Then, they called again later that same day to tell me they had just received a check for twenty-five thousand dollars signed by Bruce Springsteen. I was so happy I burst into tears.

Hart Perry became the love of my life and the father of my son. It was wonderful to work with someone I loved so much and with whom I understood each other perfectly. Hart left his teaching job to work with me first in Kentucky and then on American Dream . The stories and the people I work with are what keep me going on set. Telling a story that no one else cares about gives me energy, and achieving something truly wonderful—a moment, a scene, seeing people change or connect with each other or do something that requires courage—gives me strength as a filmmaker because I feel like I'm doing them justice.

I think in all my films I get people to test me. So, for example, in Harlan County, USA , we had promised the picketers that we would be with them one specific morning. To get there, we had to drive along a winding mountain road that had no guardrails, and our car went off the road and ended up at the bottom of a ravine. Fortunately, none of the three of us were hurt, so we got out the filming equipment and walked the two miles to the picketers. People realized that we cared about their situation, that we were committed to their cause. I think documentary participants want to know who they're opening up to, so there has to be mutual trust.

Fallen Champ was my sixth film. Diane Sokolow, who worked for Columbia Tristaro, suggested Mike Tyson as the central figure and recommended me as the director. Fallen Champ was one of the first documentaries broadcast by NBC as a sort of "movie of the week." I liked that, because I believe a documentary can be just as entertaining as a fictional film. The narrative resources of both genres can be very similar. Before starting, I knew absolutely nothing about the world of boxing. If I had been a man, perhaps I would have had to prove something to the people I interviewed, but as a woman, I could ask any question I wanted. Mike Tyson was in prison for raping Desirée Washington, and some people considered it inappropriate to make a documentary about him. But I was fascinated by the possibility of delving into that man to try to understand what had happened to him. Tyson had a difficult childhood. His stepfather beat his mother, and he tried, in a way, to come between them. His high-pitched voice was also a source of ridicule among the neighborhood children. One day, someone snapped the neck of one of the pigeons he kept on his roof. Tyson punched the person, and that's when he realized his own strength. He went through several juvenile detention centers, and in one of them, he became interested in boxing. Later, he was assigned a trainer named Teddy Atlas, who had a young relative whom Tyson tried to seduce. Teddy held a gun to Tyson's head and threatened to kill him if he ever tried anything like that again. Atlas was fired and replaced by a new trainer, and I think that from that moment on, Tyson understood that if he was going to be the heavyweight champion of the world, he had free rein to do whatever he wanted. And as he progressed, that idea was confirmed: he could have girls, tons of money, cars, and luxury homes. So I think when Desirée Washington said "no," he didn't quite believe that such an answer could apply to him.

There's always a story behind everything, and we never stop stereotyping people. If I manage to break through those stereotypes, I feel incredibly fulfilled. As a documentary filmmaker, it's very difficult to be objective, but it's not so difficult to be fair. People are incredibly fascinating, and if you simply allow them to relax and open up, you'll get countless different insights into who they are and what they're hiding inside. You have to observe as thoroughly and deeply as possible to tell a story.

I made Defending Our Daughters for Lifetime, a women's television channel. The documentary captured the experiences of women who were going through terrible situations and taking great risks because they refused to stay silent. We went to Sarajevo and filmed a woman in her seventies who explained how she had been raped by young men she had known since childhood and to whom she used to give plums. And she blamed herself for it. In a way, she had managed to overcome some of the trauma by acknowledging that the rapes are committed to humiliate the Muslim women of Sarajevo. One of the soldiers we spoke to confessed that he had been told he had to rape at least one woman a day. But the documentary wasn't just about rape. We filmed a different story in each country, including Pakistan and Egypt. A support group was even created for many of these women who had come together to share their experiences, so they weren't left alone with the horror they had lived through.

When I started Harlan County, USA , I visited a place in West Virginia called Cabin Creek. I decided to name my production company after it to ensure I would never forget the experience of being in those coal mines and meeting those people. One of the lessons I've learned is that if you want to make documentaries, you shouldn't let anyone persuade you to wait until you have enough money or be afraid to start filming because you lack prior experience. I believe that if you truly care about what you do, people will help you, work with you, and everything will eventually work out. For me, the most important lesson is not to be intimidated by self-doubt or by what is supposedly the traditional or correct way of doing things. You just have to take the plunge, and if you do, a whole new life and a whole new world will open up before you.