Judah Finnigan: Congratulations on Life Itself. It’s such an honest and rounded tribute to Roger Ebert and I’m sure he would be immensely proud of it. First off, could you tell us a little about how this project came to be, who approached you and what attracted you to making it?
Steve James: Sure. It came to me through Garrett Basch, one of the producers, and Steve Zaillian, his partner and the highly-regarded screenwriter. They read Roger’s memoir and thought it would make a great basis for a documentary and approached me about it. And so I read the memoir and I agreed, and I think what really did it for me was… I knew of Roger’s impact of film and I read him and I watched the show back in the day, but I think what really sold me on wanting to do the film was really his extraordinary life. That also included this profound influence on film and film culture. I just loved the journey of his personal life and I think I probably wouldn’t have made the film if not for that.
Yeah. And obviously, the circumstances of Roger’s condition would have altered your initial blueprint of what the film was going to be. How notable were the differences between your initial conception and the outcome?
Well, the biggest difference is that I didn’t expect Roger to be gone. No one did. And really, right up to near the very end, we all thought that Roger was going to revive. Even if the doctors down towards the end were giving him six to 16 months; as Chaz [Ebert, Roger’s wife] says, she heard six to 16 months and she thought two years, because that’s the way it had been in the past. She’d always been able to revive him and help him come back. So that’s the biggest change; that I thought we would be telling the history of his life-story the way we do in the film, but it would be going back-and-forth to a guy who is living a very vibrant and active life today. What I hoped to get from that though conceptually, I did get… in just a very different way. Which is I hope to show how vibrant and alive and hard-working and humorous [he is]. All those qualities that Roger has, I hoped to show as he persevered despite his frailties. Even though we ended up filming during the last four months of his life, all those things were still there, and in a way, it makes it even more poignant and amazing that he possessed those qualities til the end.
Yeah, definitely. When you were first starting out as a filmmaker, Roger championed Hoop Dreams when it was still a relatively obscure title. He was someone with which you had a relatively close relationship and whose support has been of great importance to your career. So how difficult was it to balance between making something that’s clear-eyed and objective about your subject and then making something that’s of more personal resonance, to you and maybe even to him?
Yeah, good question. We wrestled a little bit, during the making, about whether I should in anyway reference Hoop Dreams in the film, and speak in anyway to my personal connection to Roger. We decided against it for two reasons; one is that it is very tricky to do that and not have it look self-serving, and secondly, he helped so many filmmakers in the same way that he helped me, that I didn’t need to be speaking about it. Errol Morris and other filmmakers were able to speak to that just as eloquently, if not more, because he did it for so many filmmakers. And I do think that even though Roger was such a champion of Hoop Dreams and remained a really strong supporter and even champion of my subsequent work - right up until The Interrupters; which he tweeted, when it premiered at Sundance, that it was “Oscar-worthy”. Of course, that didn’t work out. But I think despite knowing him all these years and the support he gave my work, I never really got to know Roger in any real, personal way and I think that actually aided me. And I think that he probably saw that and thought that was a good thing, because it allowed me to be candid, I think, in ways that if I had been a close friend of his, I might not have been.
But all of your films seem to have that sort of balance between being unsentimental and a little tough, but also finding the humanness in your subjects. So are there any specific methods that you employ before tackling a picture to manage not getting too emotionally invested?
Well, I appreciate that you say that because I think that is something I aim for in my films. I think that I get emotionally invested, but I feel I have real intent against sentimentality. I don’t think I’m a sentimental person. There have been many times over the years where I’m tearing up or crying in the midst of filming something, so I can see and feel how moving something is, and precious something can be that people have shared with me, but I feel like I do have intent against sentimentality, because I feel like films can be emotional without being sentimental and they’re just more powerful and honest for being that way. And I’m also really intrigued with people who have complexity; we all have complexity, but people whose complexity I find fascinating. And again, that gets back to Roger’s memoir: that’s what was so great about it. It was clear from him writing about his own life that he was a complicated guy and had had some obstacles throughout his life. And that he was candid enough about them in his memoir, I figured “Well, we can certainly be candid about them in the film”.
Definitely. Returning again to that, your films are so often these profoundly intimate immersions into people’s lives and their legacies and their struggles, to the point where I imagine that it’s not just documentation for you, but a considerable chunk of your life onscreen there too. Hoop Dreams was five years. Does such intimacy with these kinds of people take a toll on you?
I don’t ever feel like it’s really taken a toll in any kind of larger sense. I think that when you are in people’s lives and things happen to them – tragic, and if not totally tragic, then bad things happen - you certainly feel it and you feel for them. In the best of circumstances, you feel related to them well beyond being a filmmaker. So in that way, I guess you could say there’s some toll taken. But in the grand scheme, it’s a measure of closeness and trust that’s just exhilarating too and most satisfying. I feel like I’ve been able to get close to my subjects in ways that if I’d met them in real-life, it would be awfully unusual and rare for something like that to just happen.
Was there any experience in particular that was tougher than the others?
Well, I think… Boy, yeah. Stevie was, I think, hands-down the toughest. Because I had this history going back to when he was twelve, and when I set out to do this film, I had no idea that he would be arrested and charged and go to prison for what he did. So, that was not an easy one because I also wrestled with whether I should even be making the film or not. That was the hardest film I’ve ever made. But all of the films have had their hard moments. In Hoop Dreams, the Agee’s and all the turmoil they went through was tough; it was tough on them and it was tough to watch, but obviously it’s much tougher to live through than for us to bear witness to. William [Gates] with his problems with his knee injuries, and certainly in Life Itself. I mean, losing Roger. I can only imagine what that loss meant to Chaz and the people who have been really close to him all those years. But even I felt… as many people who were just fans of his writing and only knew him in that way, I think we all felt a real loss there.
What’s your favourite aspect of Life Itself? Is there a moment in there that you think most effectively communicates Roger’s spirit?
There is a lot of things I love about his life. But I think that my favourite moment that we filmed was the moment where I am talking to he and Chaz when they’ve shared – or Roger has shared with me – that the cancer’s returned and that he’s not going to… the doctor’s are saying six to 16 months… and he delivers it… he has this wonderful way when he could no longer talk of pushing the button of things he’d typed and then miming his response while you’re hearing it. He had this wonderful way of bringing those words to life with his face. The way in which he talked about that, in a kind of off-hand way, the way in which he’d come to accept it already, and the way in which he used this analogy that this part of his life – as much of a struggle as it had been – had been a kind of terrific third-act. That he wouldn’t have had it any other way in a way. That if he had been hit by a bus or something, that would have been no kind of third act. The way in which he embraced it and saw his life - not in a facile and superficial way, but he saw his life through movies - I thought was just kind of amazing and profound.
I thought it was quite powerful seeing the way that the “Thumbs Up” symbol has transformed from just the grading of a movie to becoming this emblem for optimism and hope, which you see throughout the film.
I think that’s a great observation. It is amazing that the Thumbs Up gesture which was just a part of the show - and a kind of clever conceit of the show – came to have a more profound meaning for Roger’s life. I never saw him do Thumbs Down in the time I was with him [laughs]. I saw him not happy, but I never saw him do Thumbs Down [laughs again].
Also in the film, we get these duelling commentaries on the downside of Siskel and Ebert’s brand of criticism - like that it’s dumbed down for audiences or that it’s biased – and that’s weighed up against the positives; like the accessibility of their language or their tendency to give a platform to emerging filmmakers like Errol Morris or yourself. So obviously, the latter is very applicable to yourself, but as a filmmaker, what is your stance on the function of film criticism?
Wow. Well, I think it’s multifaceted. The brand of criticism that that show was engaged in; Roger concedes that it’s a kind of “consumer advice”, which Jonathon Rosenbaum labels as a critique. I don’t think that’s true. I think it was real criticism. I think it was just criticism in a different kind of way, and that had not happened before; where critics sat across from each other and in a very smart yet concise way, they debated criticism and debated films, and I think that what it did is that it brought the idea of thinking about films in a more complicated way to a larger audience. It helped do that. I think most of us tend to think that if there’s one art form we feel confident to say we like or dislike, it’s film. It’s the most democratic of art forms. But yet, what I think they did is they really encouraged people to think more deeply about them. And then Roger epitomised in his written criticism the other virtues of film criticism, which has time and place to be more thoughtful, and the leisure of expanding on ideas and going deeper. I think film criticism is a hugely important part of the art form because it not only stimulates deeper thinking among the people who watch films, but also among us filmmakers. And then, of course, in the way in which critics can champion smaller films and lesser-known filmmakers, it also serves a function of really helping to build careers.
Definitely. Finally, what keeps documentary filmmaking compelling for you?
What keeps it compelling for me personally; I can’t think of a better way to step outside my own world - and the limitations of my own world, or my own upbringing, or my own education and knowledge - and be challenged and go places in the world, both literally and figuratively, where I am there to be immersed, and to learn, and to try and understand. It’s just such a great passport to the world. I think the other thing that’s so exhilarating about documentary [filmmaking] is that it has grown as an art form and become not a genre unto itself but a form of filmmaking that includes every conceivable genre out there, in the ways in which people are making documentaries. That’s a pretty thrilling and exciting thing.
Are there any particular titles or filmmakers that are standing out to you at the moment?
Oh my god, there’s a lot of them. Well, Laura Poitras. I can’t wait to see what she does with the Edward Snowden thing that she was into and won a Pulitzer; just for her reporting, not even for filmmaking. I can’t wait to see what she does with that story but she’s someone that’s been doing some very exciting work. Lucy Walker has been doing a lot of great work. Marshall Curry is someone else; I mean, there’s so many great people. There are just so many exciting filmmakers out there, who I think are furthering the art form, and challenging themselves along the way.
Excellent. Well, thanks so much for your time, Steve. And I hope you have a good and exciting journey to New Zealand.
Thank you. I’m looking forward to it. And thanks so much for your good questions and interests.
