"Right now on" ""Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter,"" "we'll hear from the filmmakers behind the year's best documentaries." "You know, you think of Scientology, and you think anybody who'd be involved in that has got to be a wingnut." "I met all these people who had left, and then they were so smart, perceptive." "I think that there is a lack of strong female documentaries, in terms of the character." "There were three camera crews on that shoot." "No one shot the actual avalanche that you almost died in?" "The love that people have for going to college, there's that much more betrayal when they're assaulted and their school doesn't do something." "Investigative journalism, actually that space has been ceded to documentary filmmakers, and it does create social change." "I don't like the word "documentarian."" "We don't call Scorsese a "fictionatarian."" "You know, we make movies." "Michael Moore, "Where to Invade Next."" "Alex Gibney," ""Going Clear:" "Scientology and the Prison of Belief,"" "and "Steve Jobs:" "The Man in the Machine."" "Amy Berg, "Prophet's Prey," and "Janis:" "Little Girl Blue."" "Kirby Dick, "The Hunting Ground."" "Liz Garbus, "What Happened, Miss Simone?"" "Chai Vasarhelyi, "Meru."" "Hello and welcome to "Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter."" "I'm Stephen Galloway, executive editor of features." "I'm Gregg Kilday, film editor." "And let's get started." "Is being a celebrity an advantage or a disadvantage?" "Oh, you think I'm a celebrity." "(Amy) I thought he said genius." "I know" "Yes, I think." "(Alex) Yeah, hmm, which one should I choose?" "Great artist." "You mean 'cause I'm known, is it harder for me to walk into a place and, it's like, here comes trouble." "Yes, of course, it's more difficult, but it makes it more fun for me, 'cause then it's more challenging and-- and I just made this film, and kept it completely quiet," "nobody knew I was making it and, uh, I flew right under the radar during an era of social media where that's just almost impossible." "Yeah." "So yes, there's a way, even for me, to-- uh, to be able to do that." "How much, when you're taking a film out that does hit a contentious issue, I mean a number of you have active social media presences, do you then have to do months worth of follow-up with a film" "as a kind of ambassador about that film?" "(Liz) Sure." "Always, that's part of the job." "We want to-- We want to do that." "(Kirby) Yeah, yeah." "And I think that's very important, when you engage." "And even, you know, if there's hostility, and I certainly have experienced a good bit, though, Michael, I think" "I wish I just got hostility." "(Alex) Right." "That'd be awesome." "USA!" "Yeah!" "("Flight of The Valkyries" playingthroughout)" "(Michael) I have invaded your country." "No." "(Michael) To steal your great idea." "Unbelievable." "Is this the great big penis competition?" "I love this." "(laughing)" "I would have ketchup on everything." "(speaking foreign language)" "Death threats are great, too-- One thing I've learned is that the person who wants to hurt you does not send you a note in advance, so the e-mail, the death threats are great." "It's--it's the half a dozen assaults and attempts on my life, including, uh, a man who built a fertilizer bomb to plant under our home to blow it up and he went to-- he went to prison and, you know, I just" "I had to get security and I had to" "After my Oscar speech in "Fahrenheit 9/11,"" "I've lived a number of years in this kind of horrible situation, but I reached a certain point where I had to just stop being afraid, and I got rid of the security, and you know," "hey, I'm in my fifties, I've lived a good life, and nobody will say I didn't make a contribution, and if it's gonna happen today, it happens today." "And then things have been fine since, so, you know." "There's a funny thing that sometimes happens when you're outspoken and very public about it." "It gives you a peculiar kind of protection, not always." "(Liz) Right." "But it gives you a peculiar kind of protection, because, um, you're being out front, you're not hiding." "(Liz) Right." "What ethical issues do you deal with in your films?" "I mean, do you feel an ethical obligation?" "To Janis?" "God, it-- Yeah." "It was" " Yes, of course." "Um, I" " I fell in love with her." "You know, I fell in love with her even more by the end than the beginning and I found myself very protective about certain parts of her life but I constantly was challenging myself to" "Am I doing a disservice by not putting a certain thing in the film, because, you know, there is" "As long as you're" " As long as you're telling the truth, your truth, from the beginning to the end, I don't think it's" "I-I didn't want to exploit her." "I didn't want to, you know, highlight every little indiscretion of Janis Joplin." "Well, that's right, and also you-- But she's complicated, you know?" "She has millions and millions of people who love her, and same with Nina Simone, who are moved by the music and for whom it's part of their lives." "(Chai) Absolutely." "So you are making all these decisions all the time because you want that love to continue, you love the subject so deeply, they become part of your family." "(Amy) That's right, absolutely." "And I think that, you know, the reasons that these films are being talked about and seen is because there's something that we're recognizing as a truth that's resonating for some audience." "How much were you restricted by the fact that her daughter is one of the executive producers?" "Not" " We weren't restricted at all." "I mean, one of the things that, I think, when you're making a film about a biographical figure when there are still people alive involved with them, is you say to them at the beginning, like, "I need my space, this is how I work."" "Like, "I'm very happy to show you the film before it goes to the entire world, as a courtesy,"" "but that's really the extent of it." "And she was amazing." "I mean, I know you probably worked with the Joplin family in the same way." "Yeah." "And I have to say, Lisa Simone Kelly was more able to contain her own emotional reactions than I would have been in a film about my mother, and so it was wonderful, actually." "Right, yeah." "And this is why it takes so long, I think, for music documentaries, is because we often are, you know, trying to negotiate our space with the people who hold the estates, and I mean, you have to get" "And what did the Joplin estate insist on?" "Well, they are notorious for being difficult in terms of the-- you know, the fictional projects that have been trying to get off the ground, but with me, they trusted my vision." "I've been working with them for eight years now and they trusted my vision from the beginning when I made the first trailer, but there were just so many complications in just trying to get the film off the ground, and we have so many other issues" "that we have to deal with, with music and archive and existing contracts, but-- And those family members, they just have to take that leap of faith with you." "They do." "Otherwise, it doesn't work." "If they're on you all the time, the film won't happen," "It won't happen, yeah." "It'll just die." "(Kirby) And that's true of any" ""Meru" was kind of an interesting case with this, where Jimmy is one of the directors as well as one of the subjects of the film." "Um, and initially, he wasn't so present in the film, and it was something that became very clear that it was important for the story that he had to-- he had to kind of give of himself" "and actually, you know, appear in the film despite it being the last thing he really wanted to do." "(man) It's all about finding the cracks." "I don't see any here." "(laughing)" "(man VO) We'd hit these totally blank sections of rock and I was sure there wasn't anywhere else to go." "But then Jimmy or Conrad would launch into the void." "Now, there's this line between keeping a distance and really getting involved, and where do you cross the line?" "You ended up marrying your subject." "I did, I did, and don't regret it." "It was a great decision." "(all laughing)" "(Stephen) You're now pregnant with your second baby." "Yes." "Which might appear in the middle of this round table." "That's true." "How did that complicate the process of making that film?" "Well, I would always been a big believer of church and state." "Um, if someone wanted to date, I did not want to make a film with them, but with this material, like," "I got involved with the film before Jimmy and I became romantically involved, and it's" "I mean, we fell in love, and however, in terms of the filmmaking, it was interesting because he" "I wasn't on the mountain, he was on the mountain." "And he had this vision for a film and he wanted to tell the story of his mentor, Conrad Anker, and this kind of incredible journey they go on together, and as a documentary filmmaker, I knew how to do that." "So our working relationship is actually quite special and I think it made it" "It's also why our marriages work-- works, because we are a good team." "We're very different." "We come from it at different sides." "He really trusts me in terms of the storytelling." "I had a similar, complicated relationship with Charlton Heston." "(all laughing)" "I've never spoken about it publicly until now." "I think you maintained church and state in that one." "I had to keep saying," ""Chuck, you know, we're doing a movie here." "Let's keep it professional."" "Performance reimagined." "Style reinvented." "Sophistication redefined." "Introducing the all-new Lexus RX and RX Hybrid." "Agile handling." "Available 12.3-inch navigation screen and panorama glass roof." "Never has luxury been this expressive." "This is the Pursuit of Perfection." "The smart way to save on pretty much anything." "It's the biggest thing in shopping since... credit cards." "♪" "And all you do, is sign." "♪ save on pretty much anything." "♪" "It's the biggest thing in shopping since, shopping." "(BURKE) At Farmers, we've seen almost everything, so we know how to cover almost anything." "Even a stag pool party." "(PARTY MUSIC)" "(SPLASHING/DESTRUCTION)" "(SPLASHING/DESTRUCTION)" "(BURKE) And we covered it, October twenty-seventh, 2014." "Talk to Farmers." "We know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two." "♪ We are Farmers." "Bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪" "♪ ♪" "♪ ♪" "♪ ♪" "Welcome back to "Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter."" "We're talking with the filmmakers behind the year's hardest-hitting documentaries." "There are the movies where you become close to your subjects, there are the movies where your subjects won't open the door to you." "Uh, how do you decide to keep persevering on a film when those doors are put up in front of you?" "Alex." "(all laughing)" "Well, yeah, that's happened to me a number of times." "I've gotten" " I've been in movies where people have given me all the access in the world and some where they've got none, for example, in" "With Julian Assange in "We Steal Secrets"" "about Wikileaks, but actually, what I usually find is that when your road is blocked, it ends up causing you to take a more interesting path than you otherwise might have done." "In that case, I ended up focusing much more on Chelsea Manning, who had been left out of the story, everybody was talking about Wikileaks, but Chelsea Manning was the leaker." "Julian Assange was the publisher." "But I think that's the great thing about documentaries, because they're written in the cutting room, so your journey is-is the interesting part of the path, and if you allow yourself to be surprised and then" "change as you go, then anything's possible." "What surprised you in making a film about Scientology?" "And how did you change your mind about that?" "What surprised me was, you know, you think of Scientology, you think anybody who would be involved in that has got to be a-- you know, a wingnut." "I met all these people who had left, who had formed a core of the film, and they were so smart, perceptive, empathetic, and you realize" "And so, for me, then, the surprise was, it ended up being a kind of journey into understanding the prison of belief, really for all of us, that all of us can be captured by a kind of prison of belief and fall into" "a belief system that suddenly, um, persuades us to do things that we might otherwise find appalling." "(Hana VO) Out of the blue, one day I received this envelope with an invitation to join the Sea Project." "It was completely confidential." "I wasn't to tell anyone about it." "And I was so ecstatic." "Here was a chance to work with Hubbard." "And I signed yes." "I was on my way to the greatest adventure in my life." "Are we all to some degree prisoners of our beliefs, whatever they happen to be?" "I think we are." "Uh, you know, you said you were brought up in the Catholic church." "Once a Catholic, always a Catholic." "How's that going?" "(all laughing) Well..." "I've thought a lot about this since seeing Alex's film, because Mormons, Scientologists, these are very, very, very small religions, and very easy to either make fun of, you know, because they seem so strange." "But because it's the dominant culture, Christianity, we don't think of it as being strange that this piece of bread is actually the body of Jesus, or that we're drinking his blood." "(Chai) Right." "Scientology has-- Not similar, but its own bizarro thing, as I think most faiths do." "And it's probably not really the faith itself." "The original texts of all the faiths are pretty good." "They all say that you should treat the poor well and be good to your neighbor and all of that, it's the-- it's the institutionalization of these faiths as they" "Well, and point of fact, in the Catholic church, most of what we receive as doctrine today" "I also was raised Catholic." "Um, you know, was made up at some point in time." "(Amy) That's right." "By a bunch of guys sitting around a table." "It's like, "How do we work this in," like..." "Right." "(Michael) Right." ""It's a guy, but he was a born of a woman who was married," ""but she was a virgin." "How are we gonna work that out," you know?" "But, um-- People love a good magic show." "It's-- (Amy) That's right." "When we deal with Scientology, or in your case, the Warren Jeffs church, did you have to take any kind of security?" "Did you ever sense you were being pursued at all while you were making those films?" "I had a private detective." "He was carrying a gun." "I mean, I" " I didn't know what I was going to get into when I stepped into Colorado City." "It was" " You know, the minute we kind of entered the premises, we were being followed by the God squad, these guys, these" "You know, huge Suburbans, throwing water bottles at us and locking us into areas." "When the end of the world was coming," "Warren had everybody gather out in this field and wait for the end to come." "And they came out here at, like, 6:00 in the morning, anticipating being lifted up and ushering in the millennium." "And when it never happened, about 6:00 at night," "Warren came out and told them that" "God had forsaken them because they were not righteous enough." "I mean, I think that we all do this because we're storytellers." "I think we all kind of get a hunch about something and we-- like, we're empathetic people and we walk into a room, and I'm not thinking about the Cineplex when I think about the next film I'm gonna make." "We're all just interested in the story and we start" "We get pulled into it and then we become spokespeople for issues that, I don't know if, you know, did you want to become the spokesperson, you know, against Scientology when you went into it?" "Or did you want to" "No, I was making a film that was about much more than Scientology, to be honest, but Scientology, you know..." "They took an ad out, yeah." "(Liz) They gave you that, they gave you that" "Gave me that opportunity, yes." "Moved into this?" "Make it look like this." "Let's check out our options." "Give it some style." "Perfect." "Now let's detail it." "Let's put our ideas to work." "And step into a new favorite room." "Let's do this." "Buy vanities in-store and online today starting at just $139." "The Home Depot." "More saving." "More doing." "With the pain and swelling of my moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis... ordinary objects often seemed... intimidating." "Doing something simple... meant enduring a lot of pain." "If RA is changing your view of everyday things" "ORENCIA may help." "ORENCIA works differently by targeting a source of RA early in the inflammation process." "For many, ORENCIA provides long-term relief of RA symptoms." "It's helped new RA patients and those not helped enough by other treatments." "Do not take ORENCIA with another biologic medicine for RA due to an increased risk of serious infection." "Serious side effects can occur including fatal infections." "Cases of lymphoma and lung cancer have been reported." "Tell your doctor if you're prone to or have any infection like an open sore, the flu, or a history of COPD, a chronic lung disease." "ORENCIA may worsen your COPD." "If you're not getting the relief you need... ask your doctor about ORENCIA." "ORENCIA." "See your RA in a different way." "Welcome back to "Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter."" "We're with six storytellers behind the season's most compelling documentaries." "What kind of person makes a great documentary filmmaker?" "I think it" " You have to be a workaholic." "I think it's the most labor-intensive art form there is, I really do, and-- and, uh, you know, if I have students or interns, you know, that's the first thing I tell them." ""If you're not a workaholic, don't get into the business."" "There's a relentlessness to it." "(Kirby) Yes." "A real tenacity." "Are you all anti-authority?" "(lips flapping) Probably." "Michael?" "(all laughing)" "I" " I think-- I think, um..." "I don't like to ghettoize, uh, documentary filmmaking from filmmaking." "I think we're filmmakers." "I don't like the word "documentarian."" "We don't call Scorsese a "fictionatarian."" "You know, we make movies." "And I would like people to see us, probably, as just-- as filmmakers, and, um, some filmmakers choose fiction as their avenue, and some choose nonfiction, and we choose nonfiction." "You know, Errol Morris was using innovative storytelling techniques, you know, 30 years, 20 years" "30 years ago." "30 years." "You know, I wouldn't think about "Gimme Shelter" as a, you know, he said/she said." "I mean, I think there's been a long tradition of unbelievably amazing storytelling in this genre." "Actually, if you look at "Gimme Shelter,"" "it's a really interesting movie, because it's in the cinéma verité tradition, so-called, but it's really structured like a murder mystery." "(Liz) Yeah." "You see the murder at the beginning, you wind back to find out how it happened and you get to the murder again." "Any time you make a film, you make a film that has a certain shape and you've chosen certain moments to emphasize or not." "But, we're dealing with the facts, and we're dealing with real people, not actors, but I think there's a lot of shaping that goes on, to be honest." "(Liz) That's right, yeah." "We're storytellers." "(Liz) That's right." "Yeah, we're storytellers." "(Alex) We're storytellers." "And we look for structures in our film that move people and pull people through and keep them engaged the same way that all filmmakers do, documentary and fiction filmmakers, um, and I think that if the films are successful," "they make you passionate, they make you see something about yourself that you sort of weren't fully necessarily aware of." "They make you move to be engaged, and I think that that's the best effect any film can have." "(Nina Simone VO) I've always thought that I was shaking people up, but now, I want to go at it more, and I want to go at it more deliberately, and I want to go at it coldly." "I want" " I want to shake people up so bad that when they leave a nightclub where I performed," "I" " I just want them to be to pieces." "(guitar wailing)" "Both of you have been vilified for your documentaries, and several other people here-- Yours has been criticized." "Chai, yours hasn't, you're lucky." "What's the personal price that you've paid to be documentary filmmakers and to make these films?" "Well, I think" " I mean, you sort of have to expect this." "I mean, if you don't get that reaction, perhaps you haven't made the film strong enough." "You know, I mean, it doesn't surprise me at all." "I mean, you're-- you're going into a territory that, you know, with sexual assault, for example, this is something that people want to cover up, they want to do everything they can." "Society, individuals, schools, you know, you name it, they want to cover it up." "So, what I wanted to show in the Hunting Ground is that, you know, I mean, the love that people have for going to college, that-- how much thrill there is, because there's that much more betrayal when they're assaulted" "and their school doesn't do something, so I focused, you know, went back even further and focused, on their, you know, these YouTube videos that we found of them getting acceptance letters, and it's" "that opening so sets the tone that I've" "I've heard people crying at that, what I thought was very comedic opening, because it just reminds people of how much school means to them or to their children." "(Alex) Right." "I think if-- if I haven't, you know, made that impact, where it's causing people to respond and even to come at me," "I really haven't told the whole truth." "(interviewer) So in your time at UNC, how many students came to you and said they'd been assaulted." "Um..." "Yeah, it's hard to put a number" "It's hard to put a number on it, so..." "At least a hundred." "(interviewer) And out of the hundred, how many of the perpetrators were removed from campus?" "From what I remember, no one was expelled during that time." "(interviewer) So these guys could just get away with it?" "Absolutely." "Ab" " And people could commit it repeatedly." "Isn't there a danger sometimes, and perhaps" "I felt this with-with-- both of your films, that they fall into agitprop?" "Like, that's a bad thing, or what?" "I mean, agitprop" " You mean, in the sense that we're engaging our audiences to have an emotional or a-- or a-a mental reaction to" "In the sense that it perhaps isn't the full complex truth." "But this is the issue, where we talk about what the full truth is, because we're all telling stories." "You know, we're not making Wikipedia pages on our subjects." "We're out there to tell a story about a subject that we care passionately about, and of course, there are gonna be many ellipses in this story, because we have 100 minutes and we're trying to entertain," "and I think this idea of the full truth is, like" "Is kind of something that--that kind of comes back to us a lot, but is never asked again, like, of a fiction film." "It's a little bit of a misunderstanding of the genre," "I think, actually." "Well, and I also think, I mean" "Chai, are you gonna say something?" "Oh, no, I" " That would be my question, is would you ask this of a fiction filmmaker?" "I think likewise with journalists." "Well, yes, you-- Like, if they're publishing from a certain..." "You would ask it of the movie "Truth."" "Is "Truth" the truth about Dan Rather?" "Is "Steve Jobs" the truth about Steve Jobs?" "No, it's an artist's vision" "(talking over one another)" "(Alex) It's perfectly legitimate to ask those questions." "(Liz) Is Picasso's painting of-- of, uh, of his wife the true picture of his wife?" "No, it's a vision, it's art." "Do you think Shakespeare's "Henry V" was-- was factually correct about Henry V?" "You can see we're getting really-- But I'm serious, though." "Is "Henry V" wrong?" "Because it's Shakespeare's interpretation of a story he wanted to tell using an actual character from history?" "My argument would be, as documentary filmmakers, you do have a high obligation to the truth." "(Liz) Absolutely." "And we adhere to it." "(Michael) Well, I think we all feel-- I mean, I think we do." "We all feel that, but the truth is, as you said, complicated, and layered, and the film I would make about Scientology would be different than the film he made about Scientology." "(Amy) Of course, that's right." "But it doesn't mean that his isn't true or mine wouldn't be true." "(Alex) Right." "That's" " Facts and truth are two different things." "Right, and I think there's a different definition, um" "Like, when we were talking about, like, the biopic," "I think it opens things up a little bit more, because you don't have" "A person-- like, Janis Joplin is not around to answer these questions;" "Nina Simone, not around to answer, and I think when you're dealing with an archive, you do kind of have to choose which path you're gonna go, and you know, there are lots of different versions of Janis' story," "but the one that I chose was, you know, it was just how to get from the beginning to the end of her life in a way that felt emotional and comprehensive to me." "Is there a subject that you haven't been able to make that's close to your heart but for whatever reason, you couldn't get the money, you couldn't get cooperation?" "I'm" " I mean, I know you took a great run at it, but, you know, the NRA." "I'm" " I-I" " You know, I'm sure we all think about making a movie on this." "(Amy) That's right, guns." "And it's just" " You know, I look and they're so successful, they're so politically successful." "(Liz) Let's all make one together." "(Chai) That's right, a team." "You should" " You should make that movie." "Michael's knocking on the door." "No, I've already done it, but you should." "It needs" " Seriously." "(Liz) Let's just go back and visit Chuck." "(Chai) It needs to be kept-- kept being made, keep on making." "Yes." "Because, you know, nothing's changing." "Maybe it is up to documentary filmmakers to take up, all of us, take another run at it." "(Amy) Right." "Its sleek design..." "is mold-breaking." "Its Intelligent Drive systems... paradigm-shifting." "Its technology-filled cabin...jaw-dropping." "Its performance...breathtaking." "Its self-parking...and self-braking...show-stopping." "The all-new GLC." "Mercedes-Benz resets the bar for the luxury SUV." "Starting at $38,950." "♪♪" "♪♪" "♪♪" "♪♪" "♪♪" "Welcome back to "Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter."" "We're getting the inside scoop from the filmmakers at the helm of this year's most compelling documentaries." "But several of you really put yourself in your movies." "Why?" "I ask myself that all the time." "Let's just be honest." "I mean, nobody of my ilk wants to see themself blown up 50 feet on a screen, so it's kind of like, you know," "I do it, uh" "(clears throat)" "I don't want to make it sound too noble, but I really see myself as" "I'm just a stand-in for the audience." "I like it." "I just want to say, I like it." "I mean, I think" "You like looking at me blown up 50 feet?" "I do, I do, and I" "I like your-- your influence" "I like your influence on documentary filmmaking." "But everyone puts themselves in their films." "Right." "It's just a matter of adding a personality." "I mean, it's before we even start a film, we're thinking about why we're drawn to it and what questions we're going to ask." "That's true." "Alex, in "Going Clear," you're clearly the investigative voice going through this film, whereas in your films, you use other voices." "How do you decide whether to become the first person narrator or not?" "Well, sometimes, for me, I find narration to be efficient." "You know, instead of burning off the attention of the audience by using, like, four or five different interview subjects to create a point of exposition, narration could be efficient, but I don't ever want it to be" "the voice of God, it should be the voice of Alex." "Right." "Don't go away." "We'll be right back." "♪" "There it is..." "This is where I met your grandpa." "Right under this tree." "♪" "(Man) Some things are worth holding onto." "They're hugging the tree." "(Man) That's why we got a Subaru." "Or was it that tree?" "(Man) The twenty-sixteen Subaru Outback." "Love." "It's what makes a Subaru, a Subaru." "Welcome back to "Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter."" "We're talking with Hollywood's most sought-after documentary filmmakers." "Amy and Kirby, you made documentaries about sexual abuse in the church." "How much influence do you think you've had in creating that narrative?" "Well, I think with "Twist of Faith,"" "I focused on just the experience of one man who had been abused and how it impacted himself, his family, his-- his relationship with his wife, his community and his church." "And I actually think that had a huge influence." "You know, the Boston Globe had just recently broken that story, but people were still saying, I kept hearing over and over," ""Well, somebody's been abused, but why don't they just get over it ten, 20, 30 years ago?" (Amy) Right." "And I think, you know, "Twist of Faith" did help answer that question, is that this is something, they're called survivors, they're with it for the rest of their lives." "(Amy) That's right." "I think something that's interesting, and you see in a lot of these films, actually, not mine included, is that investigative journalism, actually, that space has been ceded to documentary filmmakers, because there's not the same kind of" "investigative journalists that we saw with Sy Hersh, and Bob Woodward and that generation, and I think these guys are doing that now, and they're given the time and leeway and it does create social change." "To your point about whether these films have effect, I mean, you go around this table and see that each of these individuals, the films that they've done have educated-- have educated millions of people." "If the goal is social change, why do you want your films shown in movie theaters?" "My goal isn't social change." "You know, rather than-- in front of big audiences?" "No, my goal is to make a great movie, and to have it seen by audiences in a movie theater, and to give people a chance on a Friday or Saturday night after working hard all week, uh," "to pay ten bucks or whatever and watch something that's gonna make them think, it's gonna make them laugh, it's gonna make them cry, it's gonna have" "This is also something that's created by the industry, like, whether or not these movies are seen on television" "Like, we love our movies being seen in theaters, and I think that it's the greatest way to receive a wonderful story as an audience member." "(Amy) Absolutely." "And be moved and be changed." "It's also wonderful for them to go on television and reach millions and millions and millions of people." "( Michael) Right." "As these films have." "I think this is an" " This is an inside baseball thing that doesn't actually apply in the real world." "And when I say that I'm not doing this for social change," "I mean, this is me saying this." "Obviously, I care deeply about these issues." "(Liz) Of course, yeah." "But I know first and-- (Amy) But you're a storyteller." "If I don't get the art right, the cinema, the filmmaking right, whatever I feel strongly and passionately about politically, it's gonna fail, so I always try to put that ahead of the politics." "If that's all I cared about, I would be a political activist, or I would be running a grassroots group or running for office." "Do you think you can really change anything significant just with one film?" "I made a film called "Taxi to the Dark Side,"" "and ultimately, you know, it ended up being adopted as required viewing by the Army JAG school." "(Stephen) Oh, wow." "And that's something I wouldn't have expected when I started to make a film about how the Bush administration had institutionalized torture, so." "(Amy) That's right." "(Liz) Yeah." "You can" "You can look at "Twist of Faith,"" ""Deliver Us from Evil," Max Mea Culpa" "Sorry, "Mea Maxima Culpa."" "But I mean, if you look at what happened, people started coming out and speaking publicly after your film." "Yes." "I had a priest come out and talk on camera to me." "The Pope resigned after his film." "I mean, it's like" "It took ten years, though, you know what I" "(Michael) I don't think" "I think Enron was very hard to understand, until his documentary came out and it's the definitive explanation of greed gone amok in his documentary." "(Amy) Yeah." "I think we can all point to things in our films where" "A film of mine from the '90s, "The Big One,"" "resulted in Phil Knight of Nike ending child labor in his Indonesian shoe factories." "(Liz) And there are those big things, and there are the-- also the small things." "I mean, there are people who empathize with people that they didn't think they could, and they would and they go sit on juries, and they go talk to their neighbors and they're thinking about them" "in different ways, about what structural situations put them where they are and made them who they are, so it's also like that." "You know, there's the big and then there's the-- the microcosm." "The micro." "The little-- the small, yeah." "I've been accused of being responsible for people eating less rabbit meat." "I mean, seriously." "I've actually read this." "Well, that's big." "(Chai) I just don't know why you would" "I don't know why you would do it unless you thought you could change something." "(Amy) That's right." "I mean, I don't know why you would, like, suffer through this process." "(Amy) That's right." "Unless you thought you could change one" "We love it." "I mean, we do love it." "But it's part" " But even on "Meru," it's like, these three" "Why was "Meru" suffering?" "Well, I think that it is just this process." "Oh." "You fell in love." "Yeah, I know, I know." "(Amy) Two babies later..." "But I mean, one, like, their physical endurance, but you know, even, like, a film like "Meru,"" "where all three of them are environmentalists." "Like, they have a very strong connection to the outdoors, and anyone who sees the film looks at the outdoors differently, and that is a change." "Can I disagree, though, with something that you said about the-- No." "You cannot disagree, next question." "Go." "I don't think it's inside baseball to have this discussion about theater versus television." "I've done both." "I had two TV series." "I love TV, but what I want to say about this is that I think that it does matter." "A movie is meant to be seen in the dark with strangers on a big screen, and I know that the audience that's watching it, that will watch it on TV, or on an iPhone, are gonna experience it a different way," "and for the social issue, the politics of it." "I have a better chance with, I think, a thousand people who see it in a movie theater, because that's an active thing." "You have to get a babysitter, you have to leave the house, you have to spend money." "It's an active thing." "And TV is so passive and there's so many other things going on." "Are the people who are gonna pay $10 to see your movie basically the ones who agree with it in the first place?" "No." "That's" " For me at least, no." "That's why I've been lucky enough to have the box office" "I've had, because I've been able to cross over from the church of the left." "My films are shown in shopping malls in Minnesota, in Michigan, in Kansas and Idaho." "In-- There are liberals in Minnesota and Idaho." "They're everywhere." "Alex, what do you think, what he said?" "I think that it's a blended experience, too." "I also make my films for the big screen, but I'm perfectly happy for people to watch them on television." "In fact, in my own viewing experience, it's cheaper and sometimes more satisfying to watch it on my big screen TV at home, and by the way, the theatrical experience, for an independent filmmaker," "is usually a terrible business deal." "Terrible." "So it's blended." "I mean, I think the point is, what we're celebrating here is cinema, and cinema, you know, if I were to watch my film at the Ziegfeld, great." "(air horn blowing)" "(female VO) RootMetrics, in the nation's largest independent study, tested wireless performance across the country." "Verizon, won big with one hundred fifty three state wins." "AT+T got thirty-eight," "Sprint got two, and T Mobile got zero." "Verizon also won first in the US for data, call speed, and reliability." "AT+T got text." "Stuck on an average network?" "Join Verizon and we'll cover your costs to switch." "I'm CariDee." "I've had moderate to severe plaque psoriasis most of my life." "But that hasn't stopped me from modeling." "My doctor told me about STELARA®" "It helps keep my skin clearer." "With only 4 doses a year after 2 starter doses STELARA® helps me be in season." "STELARA® may lower your ability to fight infections and increase your risk of infections." "Some serious infections require hospitalization." "Before starting STELARA® your doctor should test for tuberculosis." "STELARA® may increase your risk of cancer." "Always tell your doctor if you have any sign of infection, have had cancer, or if you develop any new skin growths." "Do not take STELARA® if you are allergic to STELARA® or any of its ingredients." "Alert your doctor of new or worsening problems including headaches, seizures, confusion and vision problems." "These may be signs of a rare, potentially fatal brain condition." "Serious allergic reactions can occur." "Tell your doctor if you or anyone in your house needs or has recently received a vaccine." "In a medical study, most STELARA® patients saw at least 75% clearer skin and the majority were rated as cleared or minimal at 12 weeks." "STELARA® helps keep my skin clearer." "Ask your doctor about STELARA®." "[BURKE] At Farmers, we've seen almost everything, so we know how to cover almost anything." "Even "Turkey Jerks."" "[Turkey] Gobble." "[Butcher] I'm sorry!" "(BURKE) Covered March fourth,2014." "Talk to Farmers." "We've seen almost everything, so we know how to cover almost anything." "♪ We are Farmers." "Bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪" "Welcome back to "Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter."" "We're talking with the most sought after documentary filmmakers." "Another issue that's very big at the moment within mainstream" "Hollywood is the lack of diversity and the lack of women filmmakers." "I mean, documentaries seem to be one area where there's some kind of parity between men and women." "Absolutely, absolutely." "We're very proud of our documentary branch." "(Amy) Yeah." "Yeah, we-- we have" "But why is that?" "Well, part of it is probably the money." "The cynical" " I mean, no, the cynical explanation is the bar" "They're lower budgets, overall, and so that's the-- Right, lower budgets, lower pay." "So it's being opened to women and we work for four years for one fee that's not enough to live for four years." "(Amy) Right, right." "So I mean, it's-- And we're not financing within the studio, it's" "We're doing these things independently." "(Liz) So it's great, but it's actually" "I don't think the roots of the structure" "Right, something I noticed in making a film about a woman," "I think that there is a lack of strong female documentaries, in terms of the character, and I think that that's something that I feel really personally responsible for, after making a film about a strong woman, I want to try to" "And you went through this as well." "But you guys have done a great job." "But I mean, it's" "(Chai) The two of you did a-- ...that many documentaries about strong women, or flawed women." "Right, women who are challenging the system." "(Amy) Yeah." "(Liz) That's interesting." "Why is that?" "I mean, we live in a society that's been historically sexist, and there were fewer women who were given those opportunities." "I mean, people like Nina Simone and Janis Joplin played a huge price for their badass, you know, boundary-busting..." "(Amy murmuring)" "Uh, stances in their political moments." "Absolutely." "Yeah." "And it's not just historically sexist, it still is." "Yes, of course." "The New York Times article a couple months ago, 2% of the top 100 grossing, uh, uh, uh, films, Hollywood films, are directed by women." "2%." "They're the majority gender." "They're 51% of the population, and 2% of the storytelling done by Hollywood is done by the majority gender." "It's" " I mean, it's just-- It's really..." "But, and then also" "Anthropologists aren't gonna understand this a few hundred years from now." "And also, women are going to the movies." "I mean, "Pitch Perfect 2" was this huge box office success because it had strong female characters." "I mean, interesting female characters, and-and-and people went, and it was a huge success, and so there's also women in the audience who are-- who are backing up the need for more of the stories." "Absolutely." "(Amy) Right." "If you were to make one documentary about one women, who would it be?" "I mean, I'm so" " I'm so-- Still entranced by Nina Simone." "It's hard for me to think of who I would do next, but" "I have one for you." "(Liz) Okay, who?" "Hedy Lamarr." "(Amy) Oh, yeah." "(Liz) You know, it's so funny, people on Facebook keep on, like, pinging me about Hedy Lamarr." "(Amy) That's right." "That wasn't you, was it?" "Or you." "(Amy) No." "I think you should explain why so that our audience knows." "Well, Hedy Lamarr was an extraordinary person, an actress who was famous for an early nude scene, but then, was an inventor, a scientist who ended up doing a lot of," "I think, the code-breaking for World War II." "So, an extraordinary person who" "A real polymath who never got her due, and she-- she" "And on her Wikipedia, it says "actor-scientist."" "So it's kind of amazing." "When you see that, "Actor-scientist"." "Have you seen my film, the one that's out right now?" "So, it's this film." "It's the" "The threat through the film is that in those countries, in those societies where women have real power..." "Oh, women." ""Women." (Michael) Yeah, women." "Not a singular woman." "(Michael) Not a single anecdotal story, but women have real power in those countries, everyone benefits." "I had this kind of thought before I started shooting, but halfway through it and going across these countries, it's just like, we were just, like, saying," ""Clearly, there is a common denominator."" "There have also been some women dictators, there was Margaret Thatcher." "Oh, no, no." "No, no, no, no." "I lived under Thatcher in England, and I promise you, it wasn't great." "Yeah, and if you've seen my film" "No, no, no, no, no, no." "When it's just one woman, it's a token." "When there's two women, it's a minority." "When there's three women, or more, now it's-- the table starts to look a little different, as this table does." "Right." "That's right." "(Michael) It gets better the more women are at the table." "(Amy) That's right." "It" " Hollywood will be better." "The Catholic church." "The Catholic church would be better." "Maybe the Pope should see your film." "I would love for the Pope to see this film." "There's a purist-- purist view of documentaries, that you should never restage or re-shoot a scene." "What kind of outdated" "(talking over one another)" "Did you restage things for the mount-- for your mountaineering film?" "No, because you couldn't." "I mean, no one in their right mind would return to Meru to try to do this again." "And it was the last thing." "Well, Jon Krakauer might." "(Chai) Yes, yes, well, Jon would have loved to go," "I think, but Jon is into that type of suffering, and so that was actually an interesting craft issue for us." "But Chai, I'm curious, when we see footage of avalanches, are those the actual avalanches that the-- the men were in, or did you have to resort to other footage?" "Well, this is an interesting issue between Jimmy and myself, where I was like, "There were three" ""camera crews on that shoot." "No one shot the actual avalanche that you almost died in?"" "I was like, "What sort of filmmakers do you think you guys are?"" "And then they all calmly explained to me that if you actually get down two minutes earlier, you've got this much higher chance of finding someone alive, and so "Chai, chill out."" "Um, but that" " Those avalanches are from a guy who specializes in avalanches, he actually stages them." "Like, he sets them." "One thing I don't do, I don't" "I don't do a second take." "So if I'm doing" " If I'm interviewing somebody or I'm talking to somebody, if the sound guy says," ""Oh, it didn't come through very well,"" "or something happened with the camera, the battery" "If you go back and try to get a civilian, a non-actor, down to repeat and try to get what you just got, which was so great." "Yeah, it doesn't feel authentic." "(Michael) It doesn't feel authentic." "You can ask the question later." "(Alex) I go back." "I sometimes redirect, and I come back." "(Michael) Yeah." "(Kirby) Yeah, exactly." "I just gave up on it a long time ago, I just" "Well, I don't redirect and say," ""Try to say it this way." But I come back around, particularly if I feel I haven't been entirely honest," "I may come back around to that subject later on." "It's a way of corroborating." "(Alex) Right." "It's a really good way of corroborating." "You also learn something in the first answer, and you're thinking about it as you're doing the interview, and how it relates to your film, how it relates to their experience, and then you-- you're sort of prepared" "to answer the question in a different way." "(Amy) Absolutely Maybe come at it in a completely different way, with a completely different tone, and then you get-- It opens up in a completely, you know, new way for you." "(Amy) Totally." "I think the strangest" "Not an anecdote, but the strangest encounters with me in all my films have been the-- how many times I've discovered how wrong I was while I was making a film." "(Chai) Mm-hmm." "And that has happened each time, in "Sicko," about healthcare, I thought I was gonna make a film about the 50 million people that didn't have health insurance, and the film became a film about the 200 million" "who do have health insurance, that they were in danger because these insurance companies have no intention of paying up when-- when and if you really find yourself in a catastrophe." "And that that became, then, the film, or in "Roger  Me,"" "it wasn't a film about General Motors, or Flint, Michigan, it-- halfway through it, I realized, this is a film about an economic system that's unjust and it's unfair and it's not democratic, and" "and so, each of those times, that turn, and I'm sure you guys have all had that experience, when that takes place, what you set out to do, and sometimes you do a 180 with it, and you're not upset" "that-- that you were wrong, you're so thrilled by the fact that you've learned something." "WHEN A REWARDS CARD IS DESIGNED TO SYNC WITH YOUR LIFE," "IT GETS TALKED ABOUT... ♪ ♪ ♪" "SO YOU CAN LIVE THE WAY YOU LIVE, AND ENJOY ALL THE REWARDS." "CHASE SAPPHIRE PREFERRED." "SO YOU CAN." "To the couple wondering what a good deal looks like..." "No." "Seriously?" "We'll give it a 6 for composition." "Scary." "Wow, what about just putting a fair, no haggle price on the window?" "Not zany enough?" "♪ ♪" "Sometimes the best deals are pretty plain to see." "♪ ♪" "Welcome back to "Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter."" "We're sitting with the directors behind this year's most intriguing documentary features." "Is there one single film, documentary or otherwise, that changed each of your lives?" "Well, I saw "The Atomic Café" in 1983, and it's the first time" "I saw a documentary about a serious subject that used humor." "It's the duck-and-cover films from the '50s put together into a documentary, and then, on the flipside of that," ""Hearts and Minds" back in the '70s, uh, was the definitive film about Vietnam that I encourage everyone to see." "It was very powerful, it moved me, it won the Oscar, he got booed off the stage, 'cause he read a telegram from the head of North Vietnam to the American people saying," ""We want peace," so those were early, for me." "I remember seeing "Breaking the Waves"" "and I just felt zero removal between me and" "I was in the room with Emily Watson and I just remember feeling her pain in such a deep way and I felt like that-- that made me want to make documentaries." "(Stephen) Wow." "Fiction, wow." "And not one movie, I mean, but certainly, the '60s verité filmmakers were so influential to me when I first went into film." "Especially, what's interesting is they're working under much more difficult conditions, with, you know, equipment that's much harder to use, so" "But it's interesting, like you said, you know, if there's an obstacle, it actually allows you to be more creative, and certainly, there's a million obstacles in making a documentary, so I think this" "unpredictability of making the film and then of editing it is what is really drawing audiences to this." "This is why I think documentary films are so successful, is they-- they understand the narrative arc in a feature film, but no one, including the filmmaker, knows quite what the arc is." "Well, I think there were so many." "I think Barbara Kopple's "Harlan County" film." "I mean, also, as a female filmmaker, doing that film was incredibly inspiring to me." "I was making "The Farm" in the mid-'90s, and her film was something I held, it gave me a lot" "It gave me inspiration, and she, as a filmmaker, mentor, has been extraordinary." "(Chai) As a woman, yeah." ""Thin Blue Line" was a tremendous, liber-- (Amy) Me too, yeah." "Tremendously liberating film, because it meant that you could do anything." "Uh-- but in the service of a truth," "I mean, he got that guy off of death row." "So he was investigating, but also, by using fiction techniques within the context of a documentary, proved that there is a different approach to truth that you can take as a documentarian that can liberate us all," "so maybe that was the most influential for me." "How has reality TV impacted what you do?" "I honestly kind of ignore it, which," "I don't know if that's possible." "But I do" "Michael watches "The Bachelorette," we know." "(Chai) Yes, we know Michael watches "The Bachelorette."" "Yeah, I watch-- I watch reality TV." "I don't think it really has-- I don't know, maybe" "I don't know what you guys feel." "I don't feel it has a tremendous interplay." "I feel like, again, viewers understand the different codes, you know, that when they watch our films, you know, that they understand the codes that we're telling them." "If his is first person, or if mine is, you know, with the voice of the artist herself, like, they understand the codes of what kind of thing they're being told." "Sometimes filmmakers get into trouble when they're not clear on those codes, and I think that can be a confusing thing for audience members." "(Amy) Right." "And also, maybe then the trust between filmmaker, your bond with your audience is a little confused." "The public loves nonfiction." "I think if you look at the Nielsen ratings of the top 20 shows, some weeks, half of those shows will be nonfiction shows, some of them will be "The Bachelorette"" "and "Dancing With the Stars,"" "some of them will be "60 Minutes."" "People love nonfiction." "The New York Times book review section this Sunday, one-third of the books reviewed were fiction, two-thirds were nonfiction." "I would like the same treatment with cinema." "That'd be great." "In terms of nonfiction cinema, not being put over at the children's table at Thanksgiving, but-- but to be sitting at this table, and it's just-- it's a constant struggle that, I think all of us face," "whether we are well known or not, to get nonfiction in the forefront, because we know the audience loves nonfiction." "Isn't this basically a golden age of documentaries, though?" "But do you feel like they've been saying this for 20 years?" "(Alex) No, I honestly think in the last ten years, it's become palpable and now you see people, like, I came in, um, you know, just came back from overseas," "and going through, uh, customs, and at passport control, the guy starts-- stops me and starts talking about "Going Clear."" "I'm like, when" "When would that have happened, you know?" "That's right." "It's like, people are now" "Like Michael says, people are engaged with nonfiction in a way that they never were before, and I think part of that is that, you know, the people at this table have upped the game." "In other words, they're making great films." "Many, many others." "I mean, hundreds." "Right, and many" "There are hundreds, thousands." "There are great filmmakers out there." "Yeah, there's a lot of great filmmaking." "Who are doing outstanding work, and formally innovative work, so that you can't speak of them as-- as one thing." "(Amy) Yeah, right." "I think that's probably the most exciting part, is that there's innovation and progress within the genre, and that is also because it is cheaper to make films, and there are more people making films, which can create" "a pressure, but the progress is cool." "(Chai) Like, it-- I think it's the unpredictability, I really do." "You sit down in front of a documentary, you don't know what you're going to get." "There's all these different attacks on it, you know, there's all these different things can happen narratively, and you can see the filmmaker being surprised as you watch it, and I think the audiences can feel that." "(Stephen) Well, let's see" " Thank you, everybody, for taking part in" ""Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter"" "with documentary filmmakers." "Thank you." "Thank you for having us on." "(Amy) Thank you." "(Chai) Thank you." "Cheers." "We're at the adult table!" "For a short time." "(Amy) That's right."