Errol Morris: Interviews (review)

For its series devoted to conversations with filmmakers, the University Press of Mississippi could not have chosen a more pertinent and inquiring innovator in the nonfiction motion picture world than Errol Morris. The collection boasts three decades worth of interviews that illustrate a remarkable genesis of the documentary format. Morris envisioned, as early as his first feature Gates of Heaven (1978), the macabre tale of two separate pet cemeteries in California. Morris eloquently speaks at length on the art of the interview itself, the decidedly bizarre content of his works, the state of non-fiction filmmaking in general, and his very gradual transition from suffering as an "unemployable" student to being one of the world's most surprising masters of cinema.

Editor Livia Bloom's selection of work does credit to her reputation as a documentary curator and writer, and this volume represents a diverse mapping of Morris's unshakable dedication to his subjects and the bewildering nature of their characters. The book's introduction and filmmaker chronology sections cover a character profile of Morris himself, first as the boarding school student in Vermont who received an 87 on an I.Q. test (a low score, indeed), and later as a Berkeley PhD candidate who was repeatedly caught trying to sneak into screenings at the Pacific Film Archive.

The selected pieces that follow this intriguingly humorous introduction include a profiling of Morris's career by Roger Ebert, articles and interviews by Bloom herself, a transcribed question and answer period with Morris and Werner Herzog at Brandeis University, and a penetrating, previously unpublished conversation with film scholar Paul Cronin.

The spirited conversations consistently comment on the noteworthy technical facets found in nearly all of Morris's films. The most memorable of these is his version of a "talking head" interview, where the subject stares directly into the camera's lens rather than off to the side where the interviewer is usually located. This candid subject/viewer relationship is achieved by using a device designed by Morris called the Interrotron, a two way set of video-equipped monitors, so that both the interviewer and the subject may look at each other while the person in the hot seat gazes into the camera's lens.

Although inspired by the works of documentarian Frederick Wiseman and other similar artists of the 1960s and 70s, Morris is quoted numerous times as saying that he tries consciously to avoid the usual nonfiction technical standbys. The most offensive to him are those habits derived from direct cinema such as handheld equipment, zooming, and use of natural light. In fact, his aim has been to influence his subjects with both his presence and filmmaking instruments; he insists that large cameras, large lights, long hours, and a lot of questioning lead to nearly anyone offering a noteworthy performance.

Consistently using cinematographic devices to elicit the truth, Morris' films are distinguishable from one another by subject alone. Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997) is a visually throbbing meditation comparing the philosophies of a topiary artist, an M.I.T. robot scientist, a lion tamer, and a mole-rat expert. Through time-lapse photography, shifts in color tone and careful juxtaposing of stories, the overlapping passion among these men and their pursuits creates an amazingly complete multi-faceted portrait of ambition.

Among his more pointed and serious works is The Thin Blue Line (1988), the story of the innocent death row inmate Randall Dale Adams, who, through Morris's research, was exonerated after serving over a decade in prison for the murder of a Dallas police officer. The film's aesthetic was groundbreaking in its use of stylized recreations, each hinging on the varied testimonies offered in the film. The ultra-controlled nature of Morris's aesthetic emphasizes his subjects, who always seem to bear their circumstances with little difficulty. Just as Richard Avedon employed a spotless backdrop behind each of his striking portraits, Morris allows every detail of discourse to stand out uncluttered.

As a compilation, Errol Morris: Interviews offers a valuable perspective on the...