Director's Cut

>> A good friend of mine in prison said to me, he said, you know what? He said, probably 95% of the people in here are not really evil people. They're just stupid people that did something stupid when they were stoned, you know. And I went, you know, I've seen a lot of that, man. There is a lot of that. They did something stupid when they were stoned. >> Hi. Welcome to Director's Cut. I'm Pete Schwaba. That was a clip from the documentary Lifers, which gives us an inside look at prison inmates who seek redemption despite knowing they have no chance of every being paroled. We're joined today by the film's director, Mark Mederson. Mark, welcome to Director's Cut. >> Thanks. >> So what compelled you to tell this story? It's kind of a depressing topic, obviously, the idea of spending your life in prison. But what did it for you? >> Believe it or not, I was inspired by the movie The Shawshank Redemption. >> Sure. >> But my original idea was to do a story about sort of infamous criminals and what happened to them, you know, 20, 30, 40 years later after they had been in prison, and the infamy of their crime and their trial had gone away, you know, decades in the past. I went to Angola and started interviewing inmates, just with a pencil and a piece of paper, and this idea of life without parole kept coming up and coming up with these guys. And it just-- On the way home, I was driving back from Louisiana to Texas at the time, and this idea of life without parole just kept kind of going through my head. And I'm like, I think that's the story. >> It's kind of intimidating, I would imagine, walking into a prison like Angola, which is in Louisiana, right? >> Mm-hmm. >> Were you nervous, scared? what were you thinking as you went in there to talk to these guys? >> Yeah. Everybody always says, gosh, I guess that you walk through that gate and you hear that clank behind you when the gate closes, then suddenly you must feel sort of worried or scared. But I didn't. Angola's an unusual place. It's either 16,000 or 18,000 acres. It used to be a plantation. So they actually have individual camps that are surrounded by fencing and barbed wire. So we actually-- You enter the prison through the main gate, and then drive around inside the prison, basically, inside the grounds of the prison. And then enter individual camps. The camps that I went to where the guys were the guys who were older, considered, basically, trustee level, who were all practically on their own out there. They had earned such a high level of trust from the administration that they were no long really a threat to escape or to harm anybody. >> You could have take one of 'em if you wanted?

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>> I don't know about that, but-- Yeah, Douglas who's in the film and a much, much older man, but he was about 6'4" and still in really good shape. >> He still looked like-- Yeah, I wouldn't have messed with that guy. He was pretty willing to talk, like you said. Were a lot of these guys willing to talk to you? >> Absolutely, yeah. It's one of those things, they've been there, like in Douglas's case he'd entered the prison in 1955, so he had been there almost 50 years. It had been a while since he had a new ear to bend, you know, somebody new to tell his story to. So he was very excited when we sat down and started to talk. I mean, I asked him-- I had my list of questions on my clipboard. I asked one, and I would say, maybe 30 minutes later, he was finished with question one. >> Wow, your're his new best friend. >> Basically going through his entire life's story with one simple prompt. >> Let's take another look at another clip from Lifers. >> And he jumped out of his car, and as he come outta the car, he had his revolver in his hand and he fired two shots into my windshield. The first round comes through the windshield, through my sunglasses, and hit me in the left eye. And the second round ricocheted off the windshield right about where the mirror is. When that round hit me in the eye I dropped my microphone and I threw myself over in the front seat, and I reached down and I grabbed for a mic to call in that I'd been shot. The second I was done with that transmission, it felt like somebody hit me right here in the left lower back and stuck a hot rod clean through me. >> I shot him twice from my vehicle. Then I stepped out and I walked up to his vehicle. >> I looked towards my door and the man was standin' there, leaned into my car with his gun and fired four rounds into my left lower back. >> Went back into my car, started it. And Steve got out of his vehicle. >> And then the second his car moved, I remember firing one round into the back window. And the back window just shattered, boom! And I thought to myself, gee, that's neat. I've never seen a window do that before. >> I didn't know that I'd been shot, in terms of, I didn't feel the impact. My adrenaline was so high that I did not feel the bullet hit me. I felt my back was wet. >> I don't remember firin' five of the six rounds. I only remember that first round. >> And I said, oh, I must be shot. So I leaned down and that's at that point where Steve put the rest of his shots through my headrest. >> But I remember sittin' right in front of my car watchin' him drivin' away up over the hill there, thinkin' to myself, has anybody heard me? At that point in time I stood up and I walked back, and I leaned back into my car and called in that I had been shot. And that's how the shooting took place, and this is where it took place at, was right here. You know, the one that hit me in the eye stopped the thickness of a piece of paper from entering my brain. Now, there's people that will argue with me and say I did suffer brain damage that day, but the doctors said I didn't, okay? One bullet went clean through me and hit me in the liver, missed a major blood vessel in my liver by 1/4". Two bullets ended up in my left hip. And then one bullet hit me in the spine and is in my spine. >> Okay, spoiler alert, those two guys become very good friends, which is phenomenal in and of itself. But what is it like when you, as a documentarian, come across a story like that? Do you just like-- Is it all motivating, inspiring? Talk about that a little bit. >> Yeah. I was actually-- I mean, the idea of including Steve was because I wanted to include a victim in the story, and hear the story from the other side, the victim's side as well. But I wasn't really having much luck with that. So I was actually traveling through Denver, reading the newspaper and it was a syndicated story about Steve who was running for the Republican nomination for governor in Wyoming. One of his platforms was that he was going to release the man who had shot him five times, because that man was serving life without parole. And Steve had forgiven him and didn't think that he should be-- He thought it was a waste that he was still in prison. >> Seems like kind of a campaign killer. >> Yeah. >> If people don't know the whole story. You're gonna do what? You know. >> Yeah, and I guess it was, because he didn't win the nomination. But he did go on and serve, and is still serving in the Wyoming House of Representatives. >> How often do they see each other? They're still good friends. And he called him his best friend in the movie. >> And that was another thing that after the film was completed I learned about the system. At that time the Wyoming prison wasn't very full. It was sort of a supermax and it wasn't very full, so they would bring in inmates from other states where the prisons were full. Well, this prison got full and they ended up shipping Mark off to Oklahoma, and then I think, Virginia. >> Oh, wow. >> And so it ended up that they were separated. I'm not sure where he's at now, because I lost touch of him. I used to keep in touch with Mark on a regular basis. But at the time, Steve was going to see him every two weeks if he could. He said, they would go about every month or so at the very longest stretch between seeing each other. >> Which is really weird because you'd think he has to has had relived that over and over in his head at times. The fact that he's still-- >> Yeah. >> Or have bad dreams and you wake up, and it's like, oh, that guy's my friend now. >> Well, and Steve was a state trooper and at the time we were shooting this he was a cop, and he had actually lost some law enforcement friends over the fact that he had befriended Mark. >> Wow. That is something else. It's nice when states have reciprocity too, with prisons. You don't have to pay that out of state tuition. >> Yeah. >> We've about 30 seconds to go to another clip here, but how much pressure does that put on you as a filmmaker, when you get a story like this? Is there more pressure on you to be able to tell it deftly? >> Yeah, I always tell people there's two types of stories. There's the story that's not that great, that you have to work really hard to make it good. And then there's the story that's so good that you worry that you're going to mess it up. >> Right. >> That this story is so great that I want to make sure I don't blow it. Their story was definitely one of those. Once I called Steve through his campaign website and once I talked to him on the phone I could tell he had the sort of personality that was going to be great for doing interviews. You could see, there he even still makes jokes about being shot in the head. >> Amazing. >> You know? >> Let's take another look at a clip from Lifers. >> I'm full. I have 5,108 prisoners. I have no more room. I have 4,700 inmates with over 50 years. So I've asked our Department of Corrections where's going to be the next Angola. I said, I'm going to turn it into an old folks home. I just think this, and let's just go back to the basics, send them to prison. They're horrible when they come, or they've committed horrible crimes. Let them come here and let them just kind of sift out. Some of them are going to stay horrible, some should never be released from prison. Some are just animals. But some are going to see the err of their ways are some are going to try to change their lives. Some are going to be remorseful. Some are going to try to and will be rehabilitated. We should have a hearing for everybody, should have an opportunity to have a hearing. Charles Mason has a hearing. Because the one's who do change and the one's who can change and who are changed, we shouldn't waste the $45 or $50 a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year on keeping them in this prison. But in our business, when you fail, somebody else pays for your failure, with their life or whatever. So we had to look into failure, because a failure has a great impact on society. I can't afford to let them go out and hurt someone else. That's why, if it's more my responsibility to see who's released, I'm going to be really, really watching that failure rate. Our track record's horrible because we release the wrong people from prison. Our recidivism rate is skyrocketing. But if you look at who's doing the releasing from prison, you find that it's not normally the prison staff. It's the folks that are the pardon and parole boards and victims' rights groups, and these kind of people. And they all get positions on these boards. The boards are political. So the professional isn't really having the final say as to who's released. Because they still want those boards to have those victims' right people, which they should. That's okay. But they're just loaded with non-professionals in our business. And so I hate to be judged with the job I do on rehabilitation when I don't have any say as to who's released. >> We're back with Mark Mederson, director of the documentary, Lifers. That guy was an interesting warden. Talk a little bit about his process and how he deals with the prisoners. I love the press conference, or the meeting he does with the prisoners. >> Yeah. He's very special as a warden. I will say, he's still a Louisiana politician, so there's still some things there that can be questionable at times. He did things like, the still have a prison rodeo at Angola. >> Really? >> And it was so popular that they decided that they needed to build an arena, and it was going to be a concrete arena. And so he decided to find a used concrete mixing truck and bought it, and then went and sort of tried to get permission. Because he knew what he was going to have to do if he tried to go through the proper procedures to do that. Then it would have to be a brand new one and they couldn't afford it, so he went out and sort of found his own used concrete mixer. They've since then built, I think, at least two chapels on the grounds of the prison as well. So yeah, he's a very interesting guy. And as one of the few wardens that will allow the media access, because it's not sort of a First Amendment right to have access to prisons. It's just the opposite. And he even told me, I said, aren't you concerned a little bit about security when you've got guys like me coming in here with cameras? And he said, no, if you can find a hole in my system, I want to know about it. >> Wow. So you showed the film there, at Angola. >> Yeah. >> What was that like? Talk about that. What was their reaction? Did they like it? >> They liked it a lot, and afterwards, again, I was just basically mobbed by all these guys telling me-- Douglas, of course, had suggestions for editing he thought that I should make.

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Well, you know you really need to switch this around here. But it was very well received, and the concert that we did in the prison with the band from Austin was also extremely well received there, as well. >> Yeah, that looked like a fun event. >> Yeah. I went to see those guys and didn't know them, the Worry Boys. And after seeing them I got their CD, and I'm listening to it and I'm like, this sounds like the kind of music I would like to have as part of this documentary. And so I worked out a deal. I sent the CD to the warden. He loved it, it was his kind of music. So I said, I'd really like to have the band perform a concert at the prison so I could sort of justify having their music throughout the film. >> Right. >> I knew, as you said at the beginning, that the subject could be depressing. >> Yeah. >> And I didn't want it to be that kind of depressing film. So I thought a nice way to make it a little more upbeat was to have their concert in the film. And I got multiple times in critiques that were written newspapers the response of, "surprisingly upbeat" for the subject matter. >> Well, it is a depressing topic, but it's very uplifting how these guys deal with their circumstances and that kind of stuff. Let's take another look at a clip from Lifers. >> Restorative justice argues that what really matters is that harm has been done. When we harm somebody we create an obligation, and that obligation is to put it right in some way. So we say that there's three different foundational questions that we have to ask, who's been hurt? What are their needs? Whose obligations are they? But at the center of restorative justice is to put this effort to put things right. So I think putting right has two parts to it. It means we have to address the harm, and we have to address the causes. If I were going to say, restorative justice in a word, it's respect. If you unpack that word, I think that's why a lot of offenders do what they do. It's an effort to get respect. And I think part of the reason the justice system doesn't work is that it doesn't offer them any respect. It just repeats it. And I think a lot of why victims feel the trauma they do is that they've been so disrespected by the offender, by the system, by their loved ones. And that if you disrespect them in the justice system you just perpetuate the cycle. So I think what restorative justice, the fundamental value for restorative justice is respect. Our current system focuses on making sure people get what they deserve. It is preoccupied with guilt and pain, punishment. That's really it. It's, you know, a law's been broken, he'll get what he deserved. And so there's really nothing in that that I think is real accountability. Okay, mercy. Well, he says, really there's very little room for mercy in the system, and mercy is seen as kind of the opposite of justice. It's not like you can do justice and mercy at the same time. You do justice, and then mercy is somehow relieving the justice, which I think is an interesting issue to talk about what mercy means then. Let me put this another way. James Gilligan, who I quoted the other day, says that all violence is an effort to do justice or undo injustice. Think about that. All violence is an effort to do justice or undo injustice. I think there's a lot of truth to that. Most of the offenders I know believe that they are doing justice in some way, or undoing some injustice that was done to them. And if that's the case, one of the things we've learned, if you-- That is, they think they're victims, and a lot of times they are victims. If you punish someone who thinks they're a victim it just confirms that victim image. >> So you teach film, too. And what would-- What's the one thing you teach your students about how to make a good movie, would you say? If there is one. >> I think I always tell them-- I give them the example of the movie, Rocky. I say, what's the movie Rocky about? And they say, oh, it's about boxing, it's about training to get a championship. And I said, no. It's a story about guy who never lived up to his potential, down and out, and he gets that one last chance. That's the story everybody can relate to. I always tell them, look for that story behind the story. You know, the story that you may not know about until you get there and you start working on it, at least with documentary work. I don't know, necessarily, that much about trying to do a narrative feature film, but always finding that little interesting story that may have been overlooked. >> Do you think that teaching film makes you a better filmmaker? And if so, how? >> Certainly. You know, I'm critiquing as I watch some of the shots here about, oh, good, I did have the shadow that slightly-- slight shadow on the face that on the side closest to the camera. And all of these other things that I try and teach students when I talk about visual storytelling. >> Yeah. What kind of crew are you lugging around in this prison? Well, you're in a number of prisons, but how big of a crew do you use for something like that? >> On the day of the concert it was me and a camera operator and I had a sound guy. But besides that it was just me and a camera operator for the rest of it. And I actually brought-- You know how it is, you beg borrow and steal to get friends to help you out. I'd borrowed a second camera. You actually will see me in one scene when Mark and Steve first sit down to have their meeting. You'll see me walk around behind them-- >> Oh, I didn't notice that. >> --with a Canon GL1 as they sit down to talk. I was getting the second-- I was also second camera. And since, as I said, since you don't have a lot of access in prisons, it's very limited, I liked having a second camera so that we could shot, you know, two things at once to make sure I had enough footage of stuff. So while my camera operator, Matthew Franklin, was shooting, I would also sometimes be in another part of the same room even shooting some other stuff. >> You know, it's funny. As an independent filmmaker myself I'm always envious of documentary filmmakers because it seems like they get grants and they get-- Because raising money is a horrible process. How did you find your budget with this? Did you get grants? >> I did get two grants, two small grants with the Austin Film Society and the Texas Film Producers Fund. But one of the things that was required was that you had to get insurance, production insurance. >> Sure. >> And the one grant too, the year before the grant had been $10,000, that year the grant was going to be $5,000. Production insurance was around $3,000, something like that. So I talked to another filmmaker and he's like, oh, yeah, I basically just get this grant to pay for the production insurance, so-- I had my own gear so that helped. The expensive part was traveling, so did a lot of driving on a lot of these. But, you know, I spent a fair amount of my own money as well. >> Let's see another clip from Lifers. >> By me hating you, me hating you means you're still in control of my life. Well, we were talking that one time and you said, you know, all these guys in here can twist it around to where it's their victim's fault. Remember when we were talking about that? That was the first time restorative justice, I think, come up in one of our conversations. >> It would be easy when you do a lengthy period of time to get angry at the system, angry at watching your life go by, but because I do have a relationship with Steve I get to get reminded. His prison's never gonna go away. The bullet's still in his spine. The eye isn't gonna grow back. >> I never thought of it like a prison, you know. I know what you're saying but-- >> What it's saying, you're always going to pay for that day, okay? >> You're not? You always will. >> But I guess what I'm saying is having the relationship with you is a reminder that you're going through, daily, through constant pain, and when I get to feeling sorry for myself all I have to do is think about you. >> See, and I get to feeling sorry for myself and I think about you.

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If the victim every reaches a point where the perpetrator and the victim can set down and get to know each other, you know, we'll have less victims. >> And I think-- I've been very, very lucky, obviously, that you've come to like me, care for me. >> It hasn't been without a struggle though. You're one of my few liberal friends. >> And I don't think victims even have to like the person or-- I think just the venting process, letting them now the pain it caused in their lives. And not only do we do better for the victims, but we do better for the criminals because let them know the pain they've caused. And when they start to see victims as people rather than faceless entities. We allow them to depersonalize them, and they should be forced to deal with the pain they've caused in other people's lives. >> So he was almost paroled, right? Talk a little bit about that. >> Well, the governor had paroled-- I forget the total number, but several inmates in a row had given them, had signed a parole for them. The newspaper in Wyoming found out about this and did sort of a story about it, and then a lot of people had got upset that these guys were getting paroled. And Mark was one of the next two or three up after that. And the governor decided, well, since it's gotten bad publicity, I'm going to shut it down. >> Did doing this film change your opinion of the criminal justice system in any way? >> Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, I did a fair amount of research as I was going through it. One of the things that jumped out right from the start, from that very first day that I went to Angola and sat down with, sat across from inmates and was just interviewing them with a pencil and paper, was that there were so many guys in there that are just regular guys. You know, what you see on the news is the worst of the worst. As Warden Cain said in there, they had over 5,000 inmates. They're not all just horrible people. A lot of them are guys that made a mistake. Like Steve said, made one mistake, or slowly started by stealing bikes or doing whatever and worked their way up until all of the sudden they did something that was really bad and they ended up in prison. >> We have about 20 seconds left so I want to ask you, once you saw the finished product, what were you hoping viewers took away from the film? Probably something like what you just said I would imagine. >> Yeah. I think this idea that you have a lot of-- Since prisons fill up, a lot of guys that aren't serving what these guys call letters, which is life, they're serving numbers which is a year, a number of years. The guys serving a number of years can get out. A Lot of them are often younger and are still wanting to commit crime, when a lot of these guys are in their 60's, 70's, 80's and are no longer a threat. And maybe they should be the one's that get an opportunity to go free. >> Great job on the film. >> Thank you. >> Thank for being here today. >> I appreciate it. >> And thank you for watching Director's Cut. For more information on Lifers please got to wpt.org and click on Director's Cut. While you're there, send us an e-mail or find out how to submit a film. Also, don't forget to like Wisconsin Public Television on Facebook and follow us on twitter. I'm Pete Schwaba, and I will never shoplift again. That is my vow to you the viewers. We'll see you next time at Directors Cut. >> Crime is a young man's game, it's not an old man's game. They just mature, they grow out of it. They call it criminal menopause. >> And we would like to be seen as the men that we are today and not the men we were 30, 40, 20 years ago. >> Forgiveness is when you don't hold animosity and you can say, I understand you did it. I wish you hadn't. I hope you never do it again, but I have to forgive to be forgiven.