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July 21, 2006
Albert Maysles greying the Gardens
At indieWIRE, Johnny Leahan has a crackerjack chat with Albert Maysles as a sequel to Grey Gardens is released in New York City. "[T]hat is often a question people ask about your documentaries: Are you exploiting your subject? "Well, there are two things that you ought to avoid... exploiting and being so protective that you're overdoing the project and don't allow the person to really come through. So you have to be very discreet... I mean, reality shows. 
Who needs all that profanity? Come on. There's a film that I'm doing now [In Transit] about people on trains. And it's not just interviewing a person - it's going to be in half a dozen different countries, different cultures. I met a woman at the train that was pulling out of Pittsburgh and I stopped filming her because she was getting nervous... I find out that the reason she was on the train was that when she was three years old, her parents broke up in an ugly divorce. Her father got custodianship, and she would never see her mother again. Why is she on the train? The night before, she got a call from a woman in Philadelphia. "Get on the next train, I'll be waiting here at the station." So that's when I got off the train with her and filmed the encounter. It turns out the mother finally puts her head over her daughter's shoulder, cries, and says she's gorgeous."
Posted by Ray Pride at July 21, 2006 05:36 PM
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