University Place

cc >> Welcome to University Place. I'm Norman Gilliland. Roger Ebert has said of my guest today, "After 20 years of reviewing films, I haven't found another filmmaker who intrigues me more. Errol Morris is like a magician, and is great a filmmaker as Hitchcock or Fellini." And "The Guardian" recently put him in its top ten list of the world's great directors. However you react to his films, I think you'll find that he makes the strange familiar, and the familiar strange. And we'll find out how he works some of his magic by sampling some of his films later, and finding out where his mind takes us into dialogue. Welcome to University Place. >> Thanks for having me here. >> A pleasure to have you. Your earliest days getting inspired to create films. Were documentary filmmakers as much of an influence for you on inspiration as theatrical films? Or, where did it come from? >> It started with drama, theatrical films. I'm still obsessed with them. That really hasn't changed over the years. Madison, Wisconsin, because Madison has one of the extraordinary film archives in the world. >> It certainly has. >> And I started to watch films. I was a student here in the late '60s. I came back in the early '70s. Much of what I do, including making films, comes out of this place. It comes out of being here in Wisconsin. >> Of course, there is the project that I guess you didn't finish, that had you living in Plainfield for a year or more. >> That's correct. >> Maybe we'll touch on that a little bit later, too. But other than the rather macabre story of Ed Gein in Plainfield, what was... >> Just one small correction. People never know how to pronounce his name. They think because it's Gein, G-E-I-N, that it's German. The name actually was shortened from the Scottish. It was McGein originally. The correct pronunciation is with the long "E". >> Ed Gein. >> Ed Gein, yes indeed. >> I'll trust you on that. Anybody who spent a year researching him, and I guess no pun intended, digging up some new information, would be an expert. You must be one of the world authorities on Ed Gein. >> Maybe I am. >> How do you feel about investing so much of your time in a project that didn't turn into a film in the long run? >> Not an unfamiliar experience. Most of the projects I have, really didn't become films. And for years, I wasn't writing. I am now writing. I write regularly for the "New York Times." I have a book coming out from Penguin early next year. And I will write something about my experiences in Plainfield, Wisconsin. Maybe it's 30 years after the fact, but I will write about it. >> There's something to be said for 30 years of perspective on a project. >> I still have wanted to make, not a documentary film, but theatrical film about Ed Gein. And the title-- >> Wasn't it called "Psycho"? Wasn't that inspired by Ed Gein? >> "Psycho" was inspired by Ed Gein. It was written by Robert Bloch, who lived in Weyaugega, Wisconsin, at the time these murders received international attention. And "Psycho" is a truly great movie. It's one Hitchcock's greatest movies. My Ed Gein story is a somewhat different story, inspired by my own experiences with the case. >> One of the experiences you had, and I gather nobody else gleaned this from the circumstances, was the circular pattern of his exhuming people in the cemetery, and the significance of it. >> I can't quite call myself a frequent visitor to the Plainfield Cemetery, but yes, I was there many, many times. Ed Gein was principally, a grave robber, not a murderer. He'd read the obituaries, and he would exhume from various graves, women who looked a little bit like mom, middle aged heavy-set. And I became obsessed, the story of my life, I became obsessed with so many of the details of the Gein case, including the location of all the graves. >> And nobody else, as they say, had broken this ground before? >> Broken this ground? No, I don't believe so. >> So, that's still waiting for you to describe that process in book form you say, probably, or film? >> Or in film. I have a script called "Digging Up The Past," which is taken from Gein's defense attorneys. They had to provide an oral argument at the end of the case. Exactly really what do you say? I believe it's hard to know, because I'm just reading words on a page. I believe that the defense attorneys were somewhat nervous about what they were going to say. And without any trace of irony, they argued there's no reason to force this man to dig up the past, after all don't we all have skeletons in our closet? Yes, but usually not literally. ( both laugh ) >> Well, you know, speaking of people who are a little nervous about what they're going to say, you seem to have this wizardry when it come to getting people on camera to reveal themselves. And sometimes the effect might be considered comic to the viewer, and sometimes tragic. And sometimes this person is somebody we might call a small person, or an unknown private person, and sometimes it's a very public person. How did you go about getting somebody, in those early films, for starters, to reveal so much of themselves in something like "Vernon, Florida," or the "Gates of Heaven"? >> I don't know. It's an art form. Psychiatrists talk about transference, but that may just beg the question, because after all, what is transference? Everybody has the experience of people they enjoy talking to, and people they don't enjoy talking to, people that they would rather avoid altogether if possible. I really like interviewing. There's something magical about it. I'll sometimes describe it as human relationships in this very odd laboratory setting. For example, the two of us sitting here today. I developed my technique of interviewing before I became a filmmaker. In fact, I developed it-- Where did I develop it? I developed it in Wisconsin. Does everything come from this state? >> That'd be alright. So, if not for film, what medium did you use for interviews? >> A cassette tape. I would walk into a room with my cassette tape recorders, and I would put the tape recorder down on the table. The tape recorder was already running. I didn't like the idea of asking permission to record, because it always gave-- >> It put them on guard. >> It gave somebody the opportunity to say no. It put them on guard. So, I would put the tape recorder down in clear view. It wasn't as if I was surreptitiously recording. Everybody could see the tape recorder, and knew presumably, that I was recording. And then I had a game that I played with myself. How can I encourage people to talk at enormous length without interrupting them? How can I encourage them just to go on and on and on. >> Look at Frederick Wiseman and his documentaries. >> Fred has a different technique, which is something that fascinates me. I've always wanted to make a cinma vrit documentary la Fred Wiseman. He is the proverbial fly on the wall, in the sense that he will go into some situation, people will be talking, and he will observe that conversation. I'm almost the flip side of Wiseman, in the sense that my art depends on people talking directly to camera, directly to me and to camera. Sometimes I may be a fly on the wall, but it's a 600-pound fly on the wall. I'm far from being unobtrusive. I'm very much present. >> And how do you decide? In films, I mean, you're very sparing with it, as far as I can tell, but how do you decide when to leave your voice, albeit off-camera, in one of your films? >> I've been doing more and more of it. My most recent film, "Tabloid," has my voice all over the place. It's a central part of the movie. I don't know, maybe I feel more comfortable with myself. >> Did you do that, I'm trying to remember, in "The Thin Blue Line," at all? >> No, except for the very end of the movie. I had what I thought was a disaster. Here's a movie where I spent three years investigating a murder in Texas, and a man who I believe had been falsely accused of this murder. He's sentenced to death for the murder of a Dallas police officer in 1977. I had waited three years to interview the man who I believed was the killer, the real killer. And I started the interview on a Friday night. And my cameras broke. It's like a joke. >> That's the worst case scenario, isn't it? >> It's presumably a filmmaker's worst nightmare. And I thought, this can't really be happening. This is absurd. It's just all too horrible. I came back the following day with a tape recorder. I tape recorded this final interview, which is at the end. >> And it's very effective, too. It's because it's such a change of pace. >> And of course, my voice is all over it. It's me and the killer. The killer essentially confessing to this murder. I pursued him for three years. It's strange. The fact that it's not on film at the end of the film, the fact that it's this disembodied voice from a tape recorder, which you see on the screen. It gives it a power that it might not otherwise have. I can't quite say that I lucked out. But what I thought was a disaster turned out to be actually nothing of the sort. Let's look at what might be called, if there is such a term, a more conventional Errol Morris part of this film, "The Thin Blue Line." >> And there's nothing really in that evidence. There's just little David Harris, and nobody believes him. And so, we were very optimistic about his chances, until we walked into the court room, and here were all these people standing in front of the bench, three of them, anyway. They were taking the oath to be sworn as witnesses. Mrs. Miller got on the stand that last afternoon. And she said, "That's the man! I saw that man! I saw Randall Adams' face, just right after..." She said, "I saw the gun sticking out of the car when he shot that police officer," and "That's the man!" And she waved her finger right toward Randall Adams. She's the one that got him convicted. >> When I was a kid, I wanted to be a detective all the time, because I used to watch all the detective shows on TV. When I was a kid, they used to show these movies with Boston Blackie. He always had a woman with him. I wanted to be the wife of a detective, or be a detective, so I always watched detective stories. I'm always lookin', because I never know, you know, what might come up, or how I can help. I like to help in situations like that. I really do. Even though it's always happening to me, everywhere I go, you know, lots of times, there's killings, or anything, you know, even around my house, wherever. And I'm always lookin', or getting involved, you know, finding out who did it, or what's goin' on. I listen to people. And I'm always trying to decide who's lying and who killed who, before the police do, to see if I can beat 'em. Yeah. >> This is a spectacular clip. I mean, it gives us a pretty cross section, I guess I would say, of "The Thin Blue Line." >> Yes. >> And so, what we have, is we have two women speaking, one of whom is the attorney for Adams? >> Yes. >> And what she is saying is pretty understandable. She's emphatic about it. But the other one is remarkable. She's in effect revealing that she just wanted to please the police in this investigation, and kind of wanted to be sort of important, like she was in a "Boston Blackie" episode, or something. >> Absolutely. >> And none of this came out before, though? I mean, leading up to the trial for the defendant, for the man who was accused, and actually convicted. >> No, not at all. I stumbled on this case by accident. Adams had come within three days of being electrocuted, and was saved by a Supreme Court Justice. Really, it had nothing to do with the case whatsoever. It was a technicality involving jury selection. Today, with the present Supreme Court, my guess is that he would have been killed in the Texas electric chair. And I can tell you with very close to certainty, he didn't do it. >> That seems to be pretty clearly what Harris is saying in that clip, the audio interview. >> Harris eventually was executed for another crime. And I spoke to him the day of his execution. And he, once again reiterated that Adams had had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder, that he was the person responsible. It's a true-- And you don't find that it's so clear cut in life. >> Very often. >> Black and white. But this case, yes. This was a clear and terrible miscarriage of justice. >> How grateful was Adams for you getting him off? I gather, not terribly, at least on the face of it. >> He sued me. And if that's a sign of gratitude, it's not a traditional sign of gratitude. >> And on what basis did he sue you? >> On the basis that he wanted money, that he had signed a release, he was unhappy with that fact. It was an absurd conclusion to a very difficult project. I am very proud of what I did. And the fact that I actually overturned a murder conviction in Texas, maybe I achieved something close to the impossible. My wife described it quite accurately by saying, just because he's a victim doesn't mean he isn't an

###

. And I think that is really the essence of it. Do I believe that he is innocent? Yes, I do. Do I believe he acted really badly when he got out of prison. Yes, I do. >> But was he worthy of execution? No. >> Of course not. He wasn't worthy of being in prison for a single day, let alone execution. There's so many odd ironies with this story. There's a Dallas psychiatrist who's involved, nicknamed Dr. Death, who would make predictions about future behavior. What you or I will do, say, six months from now, a year from now. I don't believe psychiatrists can predict human behavior. >> That's been demonstrated, hasn't it? >> It has been. Although, I make one exception. What Dr. Death would say at the penalty stage of a capital murder trial. He would always say that the defendant is dangerous and will kill, and kill again, unless he is killed by the state. This is exactly what he said about Randall Adams. >> And I gather about a hundred other people on death row. >> The only problem with this prediction, is Adams had never killed anybody. He had never committed any crime whatsoever, except for a DWI that was ten years' previous. He's been out of prison now for over 20 years and has never committed any kind of crime whatsoever, felony, misdemeanor, whatever. Grigson's predictions were just completely off-base, completely wrong. >> So that was obviously, almost an earth-shaking film, the results, actually a direct major response to a film that you made. But along the way, before that and after, you made films that were about causes that were not so big, or things that weren't causes at all that were perhaps just descriptions of then unknown people. >> Yes. >> Who were not controversial, and yet you found something to tie them together. I'm thinking of a film like "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control." How did you ever come up with the idea for that, coming up with these completely seemingly different people, and uniting them somehow. >> It's always hard to know where ideas come from. And usually, by the time I'm making a movie, I've forgotten about why I'm making it. I've just become involved in the process of making it. "Fast, Cheap" is an odd movie, because it is four stories that are seemingly unrelated. A mole-rat photographer, a lion tamer.. >> A robotics expert. >> A robotics expert and a topiary gardener. Why package these together in one movie? I like the idea of untethering a documentary from its subject matter. So much of documentary takes its importance from what it's purportedly about. I sometimes joke, you can't make a bad movie about Mother Theresa, because after all, Mother Theresa is a good person. >> And stature to anything-- >> But the truth of the matter is you can make a very bad movie about Mother Theresa. It really doesn't matter how good she personally is, you can make a very, very bad movie about her. The idea that I can pick subjects that are seemingly unimportant or unworthy and turn them into movies, interesting movies, was a worthy enterprise for me. It's finding something in the story that's unexpected, unbranded, the movie doesn't stamp on itself, "I'm important," or "I'm significant." >> We're going to talk about distribution and marketing a little later, and how you would brand a film. But let's have a look at "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control," and see how you bring in one of these subjects, if not four. >> Evolution spent a long time, billions of years, getting to the point of little creatures which could chase each other around, have mobility, and interact with the world in a meaningful way, apart from being an amoebae that just sits there and doesn't do much. Once that stuff was there, all this other stuff evolved very quickly. Higher level intelligence, whatever that is, is pretty easy once you have the ability to move around, hunt, chase... They're the tough parts. I don't believe it's possible to have a disembodied intelligence without a physical connection to reality. Everything we think, everything in our thought process is built around being in touch with reality. Even the word "touch"... A cockroach has 30,000 hairs, each of which is a sensor. The most complex robot we've built has a 150 sensors, and it's just about killed us. We can't expect to do as well as animals do in the world until we get past that sensing barrier. >> Whatever you're saying here, it is funny. I mean, the footage is kind of like pseudo-scientific-looking '50s footage mixed in with animation, mixed in with, I'd say "serious," but the guy doesn't even do that for me. He doesn't even look quite that serious when he's talking about robotics. How did you decide to put all this stuff together? It must have been a heck of an editing job. >> It was an impossible editing job. It took well over a year to edit. Interesting, because it's the kitchen sink approach to filmmaking. There's all kinds of media in this movie. Everything you could imagine. So, the task of putting that all together was monumental. And there was no model for it. There was no movie like this. No prototype. >> Toward the end of this film, if I remember right, you actually make the cuts from one of each of the four individuals closer together, and then have maybe the MIT robotics guy talking over surface footage, and in one way, a blending. I mean, is this your way of kind of your own personal Errol Morris' unified field theory? Uniting all these disparate things? >> Maybe so. We had a plan in the editing that we'd start out with these four discreet stories. The audience would be clear there's story A, B, C and D. And then, as the movie proceeds, the stories get mixed together, they get blended together until there's a certain point in the movie where you're in free fall, The dialogue and the picture become divorced from each other. >> Right. >> And you don't know quite exactly where you are. I don't think there's really anything quite like this movie. I'm quite proud of it. But I would be very, very reluctant to try to do this again. >> So the overall effect, you would say, in a word or two, of a film like that, "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control," would be, the effect that you're after, I mean, blended, certainly gets us most of the way there. >> A dream. It was made around the time that my mom and step-father died. I have always looked at the film as an elegy. And it may be the most visually interesting film that I've made. Built around a lot of devices that I've used in other movies, odd serials, black and white imagery. You name it, you can find it in that movie in some form or another. >> Which I suspect is the way the mind actually works, all the kaleidoscopic pieces somehow ground together. >> That's probably a great way to describe it. It is a kaleidoscopic movie. But a movie I hope with some heart. It's a movie about four people confronting ideas about mortality and life, in one form or another. >> Not long after "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control," you got back toward the death row theme, but in a somewhat different way than what you had done with "Thin Blue Line," with "Mr. Death." This is another, I guess I would say small person, and yet he has a way of walking on the world's stage. How did you find him? >> The "New York Times." Page 1 of the "New York Times." One of my favorite oxymorons is painless execution, taking the ouch out of the death penalty. Fred Leuchter appeared in an article, and the headline was, "Can Capital Punishment Be Humane?" There he was, standing in front of one of his patent-pending electric chairs. I read the article buried deep in the paper. And very near the end of the article, a line or two, was reference made to the fact that he was a holocaust denier, and that he had been involved in this odd report, The Leuchter Report, which had become fashionable in neo-Nazi circles. >> He had been denying the holocaust. >> That's correct. >> But he actually put scientific, or pseudo-scientific measures to demonstrate his theory. >> One of the most appalling things is to see science, which is one of the great constructs of the human mind, used for the purpose of selling idiocy. It's not uncommon, but it's still appalling. >> So were you interested in exposing him in your film? >> Yes and no. I'm a Jewish boy from Long Island. I never had any reason to doubt that the holocaust happened. So why even be interested in someone like Fred Leuchter? I would say one of my favorite things is false believe, people believing things that are unutterably false, but they find a way to believe them anyway. Fred Leuchter is the perfect example of this sort of thing. One thing that really interested me is what is anti-Semitism? Here you have a guy who has done things that, on the face of it, seem a perfect example of anti-Semitic stuff. Denying the holocaust, claiming that poison gas wasn't used in Auschwitz, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. At the very least you would say that this exhibits a certain insensitivity to Jews, and to history. So what the hell is this story about? I think that's one question. There's a question beyond the question is this true or not. To me, of course it wasn't true. That was not to be debated. Of course, I did go to the effort, paid lip service, to showing why Fred's research was really, really off-base and stupid. But that was not at the heart of the movie. The heart of the movie is asking the question, who is this man, what in the hell is he thinking? And why? Is it anti-Semitism? Is it some kind of hubris? Is it a way of showing he knows better than everybody else? It's interesting. I am writing a long piece now for the "New York Times" on a four-year-old murder case, a case involving a Green Beret, Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald. >> Oh, yes. >> Now, here's a case that is really based on pseudo-science. It's interesting to see experts take the stand, offer "expert" testimony, and the horrible realization that it's really not science. It's the veneer of science, the facade of science. It's a kind of make-believe science, like Emily Miller in "The Thin Blue Line" is a make-believe detective, going through the motions, going through the actions, thinking that she's actually investigating something, when in fact she's completely delusional. But here's the question. Here's the central question. Are we all like that? Are we all just completely out of our minds? >> Well, that is how we find films interesting, isn't it? Or, to put it in '70's terms, how we relate to them, is am I like that, or in what way am I like that? >> Absolutely. Am I like that? And there's, of course, I hope I'm not like that. >> And at the end, of course I'm not like that. >> Of course I'm not like that. How could I possibly be like that? >> Let's see some of "Mr. Death." This was from 1999, and see some of the techniques you used, not just to talk about the holocaust denial so much, as about this electric chair, or improved electric chair. >> Indeed. >> That Mr. Death was perfecting. >> Yes. >> That was back in '89, I believe it was. At that time I was still in school. I just remember coming home, what is this big box in the front yard? It's an electric chair. Hmmm. Fred and my uncle were here, you know, he'd come out with the crowbars. They had to break the box open, unscrew all the parts and there's an electric chair sitting in the front yard. It was just very unusual, something that I wasn't expecting. I guess Fred was expecting it. (laughs) It's very difficult getting up and down those stairs with a couple hundred pound piece of oak chair. Of course, before we even brought it inside, had to have Fred sit down in it, strapped him in. I said no thanks. I had processed a couple of rolls of film; photos that I took for engineering purposes. Detailed stuff, so you know how it looked before you took it apart. I went through it and I said, "Wait a minute." I went back and, what the hell is this? We had a magnifier, and we were trying to figure out what was there. We saw what appeared to be more than one image. As far as I understand it, certain objects give off auras. And some objects that have been exposed to high intensity electromagnetic fields absorb some of that energy and would give off an aura. I don't know what we photographed. We don't know if we photographed an entity. I mean, we don't know what's there. It may still reside in the parts that are in Tennessee. Or when I tore the chair apart maybe it was freed. I don't know. That's assuming there was something there to start with. >> This takes us beyond the realm of would you say, kind of the political issue of capital punishment, into the realm of weird. I mean, with this aural photography, the image of, presumably, an executed convict in the chair. How did you tap into that? Did he just willingly get into that discussion? >> Yes, willingly got into that discussion. The story of this photograph, his claim, of course, is that he's taking a photograph and he sees ghosts, or ghost-like figures that are floating about. >> The electric chair. >> The Tennessee electric chair, the ghosts of those who were electrocuted in that chair. Now, do I believe in this sort of thing? Sorry, I don't. But what I was fascinated by, and it becomes the central theme of the entire movie. You could consider this a kind of mini film inside of the film, is the question of what in hell does Fred believe? What's going on in his head? Does he believe in this stuff? Is this just some kind of Vaudeville act, a charades? And how were these photographs taken? They seem so obviously produced through double exposure. They seem to be hoaxes, frauds. Did he commit the fraud? Did someone else commit the fraud? Did he commit the fraud and then conveniently forget that he had committed a fraud? To me, it raised all kinds of crazy questions about Fred and his capacity to believe anything. I think there are many of us, maybe all of us, that are capable of believing anything. All you have to do is look at politics at the current moment, or probably at any moment in history, to convince yourself that people's ability to believe is unfettered. People can believe in anything. It doesn't matter how ridiculous it is. It doesn't matter how pernicious it is. People can believe it. And maybe that's the scariest fact about people, the scariest fact of all. >> That certainly comes into your Oscar-winning film, "Fog of War." Self-delusion, powers of self-deception, wouldn't you say? >> Yes. >> When you interviewed Robert McNamara all those years after the Vietnam War, that he was probably the main architect of? >> This is an important question. He is always described, I mean if you read a thousand popular accounts of the Kennedy and Johnson years, as likely as not, McNamara would be described as the principal architect of the Vietnam War. A war, by the way, that I demonstrated against. >> In Wisconsin, I imagine. >> Not in Wisconsin-- In this city! In 1969, on Bascom Hill. I don't believe he was the chief architect of the war. This will be something endlessly debated by historians. I believe that the real architect was Lyndon Johnson. >> Is this a conclusion you came to after interviewing McNamara? >> It's a conclusion that I came to, not just simply after interviewing McNamara, but investigating and researching this story. I don't think McNamara is the fall guy, by any means. He was an active participant in all of this. But the main impetus for the war I do not believe came from McNamara. This is also a really important and interesting question, a question about morality, a deep question about morality. If you serve a president who endorses policies that you don't agree with, what do you do? You protest within? Do you quit? If you go public, exactly what is the correct course of action. And it's not so simple. It's not as though these questions have easy answers, where you can look up in a book that'll give you some algorithm for deciding one way or the other. They are vexing, perhaps impenetrable moral questions. >> How did you get McNamara to reveal so much of his regret and doubt about that war? >> Well, he lives in a world of regret and doubt, to be sure. I'm always amazed when people, having seen the film, ask me, does McNamara have regrets about the role he played in Vietnam? Well, gee, gosh, golly, the entire movie is about that. The entire movie is about his regret. My wife sometimes calls him the Flying Dutchman in the sense that here's a character traveling the world hoping for some kind of redemption. A redemption which, I think in his heart he would like, but perhaps feels he doesn't deserve. He's a very complex, immensely fascinating character. I was very lucky, very fortunate to have had the opportunity to interview him, to make this movie. A once in a lifetime opportunity. >> Maybe your timing was just right in terms of his thinking on the issue. >> You look back on a successful project, and you think, well, how did I get this timing right? How did this really work out? Because there's so many ways in which it could have not worked out. There's so many ways in which it could have failed. McNamara came in on a Tuesday. Two or three days before, there was an article in the "New York Times" Sunday magazine on Bob Kerrey, who had been a senator from Kansas, a Medal of Honor winner, a Vietnam hero, who had been accused of war crimes. And McNamara clearly hadn't read this article. I mentioned it to him. This is just shortly after he arrived in the studio. He got very angry, saying that accusing Bob Kerrey of war crimes was misplaced. If anyone should be accused of war crimes, it should be him. He was Secretary of Defense. A very powerful, surprising statement. We started the interview, and within a couple of minutes, we talked about the fire bombing in Japan, and his role. This was something unknown. He hadn't written about it in his biography. >> In 1945... >> He was a 27-year-old Lt. Colonel in the Army Air Force. >> Somehow connected to Curtis LeMay, I would assume. >> Connected to Curtis LeMay and to LeMay's superior, General Norstad. >> And later, LeMay, of course, played a prominent role in the Vietnam War. >> One of the odd things is when McNamara, it's the most powerful thing in the "Fog of War," says that if our side had lost World War II, he would've been tried along with many other people as a war criminal. The fire bombing in Japan is now nearly forgotten. >> Because of the atomic bombs. >> We think of the two atomic bombs. LeMay, one of the fiercest proponents of atomic weaponry, and an enthusiast, you might even say, for atomic war, was not in favor of using the atomic bomb in Japan, because he thought he had already turned Japan into an ashtray. The fire bombing was so effective, it displaced... >> Widespread. >> Yes, it destroyed city after city after city. It killed literally millions upon millions of people and displaced millions more. LeMay's view was, why bother, we've already done the work. So, yes, that was a very powerful moment for me, and a very powerful moment in the film. >> I think one of the other most powerful moments is this one, where McNamara is talking to a former Vietnamese adversary. And you really get the impression in this short scene that McNamara, and the U.S. by extension, got it all wrong, in terms of the motive of the Vietnamese in that war. Let's look at this clip from "The Fog of War." >> Yes. >> There aren't many examples in which you bring two former enemies together, at the highest levels, and discuss what might have been. I formed the hypothesis that each of us could have achieved our objectives without the terrible loss of life. And I wanted to test that by going to Vietnam. The former Foreign Minister of Vietnam, a wonderful man named Thach said, "You're totally wrong. We were fighting for our independence. You were fighting to enslave us." We almost came to blows. That was noon on the first day. "Do you mean to say it was not a tragedy for you, when you lost 3,400,000 Vietnamese killed, which on our population base is the equivalent of 27 million Americans? What did you accomplish? You didn't get any more than we were willing to give you at the beginning of the war. You could have had the whole

damn thing

independence, unification." "Mr. McNamara, You must never have read a history book. If you'd had, you'd know we weren't pawns of the Chinese or the Russians. McNamara, didn't you know that? Don't you understand that we have been fighting the Chinese for 1,000 years? We were fighting for our independence. And we would fight to the last man. And we were determined to do so. And no amount of bombing, no amount of U.S. pressure would ever have stopped us." >> Is that Robert McNamara saying that the Vietnam War was a mistake, that it was unnecessary for the U.S. interests? In that shot? >> Interesting for me to think about what McNamara is saying in 1968 and 1969, and the lectures of Harvey Goldberg on this campus. One of the points that was consistently made was that Ho Chi Minh was a patriot first, a Communist second. And that he had come to America because he had been so influenced by our own Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence. And we had rejected him. It's a very sad story about how our preconceptions, our various beliefs actually lead to catastrophe. I mean this is a catastrophe, 58,000 American soldiers killed. The estimates vary, 2.5 or 3 million Vietnamese. This is a catastrophe. There's no other way to describe it. And its effect on America and our belief in our own democracy was strained. I'm very proud to be an American. I consider myself a patriot, whatever that means. But at the time of the war, to me, the patriotic course was objecting to it. I'm very proud to have been part of those demonstrations. McNamara knows that. I would tell him, you know, I demonstrated against the war. Well, so did all of his children. >> Is that right? >> Yes. He was estranged from his three children for many, many, many years. >> Is that kind of self-perception also the theme in "Standard Operating Procedure"? >> Uh, yes and... Another theme, the theme of photography and how we can be given a false idea about the world through images, something that endlessly interests me. >> A false idea? I would think you would've said a truer idea, given the photography that came out of "Standard Operating Procedure." >> Like truth in general, truth is never handed to you on a platter. It's not somehow you arrive at truth by taking a picture or writing a sentence. It's a search, a quest. >> You do mention in the film that some of those images, for example, were cropped to remove certain other people who were party to the goings on at the prison in Iraq. >> What happened goes so far beyond that sort of thing. People will say, well, they know better. It wasn't just these seven bad apples, that we're responsible for all of the bad things that happened in Abu Ghraib. I believe that those photographs got George W. Bush re-elected in 2004. This is a somewhat heretical view, because didn't Bush himself say Abu Ghraib was the worst disaster of his presidency? But here's how I think it worked. The pictures are released, shown around the world. People are horrified. Arguments ensue. What do these pictures really mean? Do they show the face of the American war in Iraq, or are they pictures of just a few demented individuals that are not characteristic of the whole? What was lost in these endless debates is a real analysis of what happened at Abu Ghraib. As if somehow you could argue about it through the pictures, the pictures were all you needed to see, all you needed to know. And the debate stopped there. So, it was easy for the president simply to say this was despicable. This makes me sick. This is not America. To distance himself from it. But in the absence of any real investigation into Abu Ghraib, we have come to believe that those photographs is what happened there. And the true story is a much deeper, and a much uglier story. It's one of the darkest chapters in American history. We were operating, in essence, a concentration camp in the heart of the Sunni triangle. It's interesting having made this movie, because I really made a movie close to current events. McNamara, yes, it had application to current events, but it at least is framed in events of 50-60 years ago. This was very, very immediate. Many people would love to pretend it never happened. Maybe myself included, I might add. But it did. >> Let's take a look at some of "Standard Operating Procedure," and see what the procedure for Errol Morris is in airing some of the subject matter having to do with Abu Ghraib. "Standard Operating Procedure." >> All the years as a cop, I would say over half of my cases were solved because the criminal did something stupid. Taking photographs of these things is that one something stupid. They gave me 12 CDs and said there's thousands of pictures from Abu Ghraib. We want you to find all of them that depict possible prisoner abuse, or people that were in the area at the time the abuse was occurring. And we need to know exactly when the pictures were taken. The pictures are worth a thousand words, but unless you know what date and time they're talking, you wouldn't know what the story was. I starting lining pictures up based on subject matter. I put these on a timeline so the jury could see when the incident began. When did it end? How much time lapsed in between these photographs? How much actual effort did these people put into what they were doing to the prisoners? Who else was there in the room at the time it occurred? How could all this go on without anybody noticing it? When you look at this whole case as one great big media event, you kind of lose focus. These pictures actually depict several separate incidents of possible abuse, or possible standard operating procedure. All you could do is present what you know to be factual. You can't bring in emotional politics into the court. >> Very effective in some other techniques there that we can't show in the time allowed, in projecting, I'll call them re-enactments, on doors and walls in kind of a ghostly manner. After all, we're talking about some ghostly interrogators in that context. >> Yeah. >> Also, though, probably the most sophisticated use of graphics. Have computers really changed significantly the way you make films over the years? >> Well, certainly digital editing and digital photography changed how I make movies. I used to call myself a ten-minute psychiatrist, or the 11-minute psychiatrist. When you work on film, whether it's 16mm or 35mm, a magazine of film is 11 minutes and a couple seconds. You have to stop, take the magazine off, put another magazine on, slate, etc. Psychiatrist's know when their 15-minute hour is up. I would always know when my 11-minute magazine was up. Now, it's different, because all of my interviews are shot on high-end digital media. And I can shoot interviews forever. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, I don't know. My first digital interview was for "Standard Operating Procedure," and was done with Janis Karpinski. We shot over two days, 17 hours over two days, which is of course, absurd. >> Yes, it is. It's a very high shooting ratio, isn't it? I want to end with a commercial. >> Sure. >> I can't resist being a little retro here. You did what, 100 commercials for Miller beer? >> Yes, maybe more. >> Did you create the, I'll call it the persona for these ads? Because they do have, the ones I've seen, a common sort of center, which is me and my beer, and other things I'll accommodate if possible, but don't expect too much. >> This was truly a collaborative effort. Three creatives at Wieden & Kennedy in Portland, Oregon. Jeff Kling, Jeff Selis, Jeff Williams, I call them "The Jeffs," and myself, and an editor, a really fabulous editor, Angus Wall, created the campaign. One of the best things I've ever done. I assume I'm not going to be remembered for my movies, but I expect to be remembered for Miller High Life. >> We'll hope that's not the case, but these are very memorable commercials. Here's one. >> Hmm, that last egg's looking real good. You had quite a few though. Maybe you shouldn't. But, if you make a light choice here, maybe you will have room for just one more. See there? When you life the High Life, you can live it both ways. >> It's got that Errol Morris look, even in 30 seconds, or 60, you can say that's Errol Morris. >> Well, thank you. >> It's got the let's say, down to earth look, if not the unwashed look, the everyday look, and the little person, if you will, enjoying his Miller beer. >> Yes. Commercials are really interesting. And when they turn out well, which is not always the case, it's always a great pleasure. This campaign, it went on for close to a decade. And they left us alone and allowed us to do a lot of really, really good work that I'm proud of. >> Errol Morris, it's been a great pleasure spending the hour with you. >> Thank you. >> There are many more questions I have, so the next time you're in the neighborhood, I hope I get a chance to ask them. >> Thank you. >> I'm Norman Gilliland, I hope you can join me next time around for University Place.