STRANGER THAN FICTION: An interview with Capturing The Friedmans director Andrew Jarecki.
By Warren
Curry
6/11/03
Director Andrew Jarecki
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STRANGER THAN FICTION: An interview with Capturing The Friedmans director Andrew Jarecki. By Warren
Curry |
Director Andrew Jarecki |
Given access to a treasure trove of home videos shot mainly by David Friedman (New York's #1 birthday clown -- Jarecki had originally set out to make a documentary about people in that profession), the film illustrates in startling detail the disintegration of an upper class suburban family. The Friedmans, a model of normalcy living in affluent Great Neck, New York, had their lives forever shattered when the police raided their home one Thanksgiving and discovered that father/school teacher, Arnold, had been a consistent recipient of child pornography through the mail. This initial revelation led to charges of an even uglier crime -- mass child abuse and molestation, allegedly perpetrated not only by Arnold, but also his 18-year-old son, Jesse, during a home computer class taught by the man. Using present-day interviews with a wide cross section of people involved in the case, Jarecki's ultimate thesis centers on the elusiveness of truth.
Capturing The Friedmans won the documentary Grand Jury Prize at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, and Magnolia Pictures released the film in New York on May 30 to huge box office success during its opening weekend. Produced by HBO Films (it will air on the cable network after its theatrical run), the film will open in Los Angeles on June 13 and will continue to expand to more cities nationwide. CinemaSpeak was able to sit down with Andrew Jarecki at the film's Los Angeles press day.
(Note: This interview was conducted
as part of a press roundtable, therefore not all questions were
asked by CinemaSpeak.)
(Read the review of Capturing The Friedmans)
Why did you want to make a documentary about birthday clowns?
Good question. When I was 12-years-old I was a magician -- between the ages of 12 and 13 I did birthday parties just to make money, and it was fun and kind of goofy. When I was 13 I stopped doing it and went off and played baseball or something. When I grew up and had kids, I realized there were a lot of people who kept doing that as adults. I just was curious about them. There's this community of (professional clowns) in New York City and they're all friends, they go to the same restaurants and call each other by their clown names -- like Princess Priscilla is best friends with Professor Putter. I jus thought that these people were really interesting and sort of odd. I like that Errol Morris movie Vernon, Florida, which is just about these different characters. I thought that there are definitely some characters here, and it might be interesting to make a film about them. It wasn't until after I had done that for six months that I discovered that David Friedman, who is the number one guy who does that, had this secret story.
Has it hurt his career in any way? He expressed that concern in the film.
He's been concerned about it for a long time. It was one of the reasons he was reticent about being in the film. An interesting thing about family secrets is that not everyone in the family wants them to be a secret. His mother and brother didn't want to keep this story secret. The current status of David is that he's sort of absorbing the film in a way and starting to get past the intense denial that's in the film. He's starting to realize that his father was a pedophile, and his father didn't only commit thought crimes, but had sexual contact with kids on a number of occasions. That's maybe something David doesn't need to argue about. He can love his dad and still know these things and accept these things. I've said it to him very straight: "If you don't accept these things then you're just not a credible person." Nobody will be able to believe that you have any realistic perception of yourself or your family if you are constantly minimizing the impact of your dad's behavior because even your dad accepted it. In the last week or so, he's been going to screenings of the film and doing Q&As with me, and he's coming around in a way. He's realizing that it's okay for him to still love his father and accept certain things about him. I think it was a very generous thing that he did to be in the film knowing it could hurt his career. I think he felt that the film was an important document for his brother. I think to some extent David needs to get past it. He's been living in this fear that this story is going to come out, and it's been going on for a long time.
It has similarities to people who don't want to come out about their sexuality. He'll actually probably become a better clown because of this experience.
This sounds sort of crazy, but people have come up to us when we've been doing Q&As and have said, "I know what you're afraid of and I want to tell you that I am going to hire you for my child's birthday." Those are people who obviously believe that the police's version of the events is not accurate. That's given him a lot of confidence. I don't think he thinks that it'll have no impact on his career, but I think he's prepared for it.
Was there any point where you felt you were getting too close to the subjects?
No. I was very honest with everybody from the beginning. David at one point said, "I'll be in the film, but you need to make it comport with my version of the events." And he said, "It seems like you agree with a lot of things I've said." And I said, "Yeah, I do." And then he was like, "That's okay, right?" I said, "No. It's going to be my film and you don't even want it to be your film, because if it's your film then nobody's going to believe it. What you want is a third party who is going work on this and is going to get deeply into this and have credibility. You need to have someone that is willing to reinvestigate the case. I'll tell you right now, if you want me to do it your way, then don't participate." By that time, his mother, brother and uncle had participated and I think finally he concluded that I was going to make a fair movie. Although it wouldn't be his version exactly, it would be a new take on it.
You mentioned Errol Morris. Have any of your peers seen the film, and what feedback have you received from them?
Michael Moore saw it the other night. I didn't talk to him afterwards, but he did stay for the whole Q&A. We had an hour and a half Q&A at the Tribeca Film Festival and it literally looked like we had a jury box of every single person who was involved in the law enforcement side of the case. A lot of interesting people happened to be at that screening, and at the end it was a fascinating altercation. The smart detective, who says, "You have to be very careful about asking leading questions," gets up and says, "That expert in the film was wrong because she was comparing it to the McMartin case and it has nothing to do with the McMartin case, because they were all social workers and didn't know what they were doing, and we were well trained police officers." He was criticizing this woman Debbie Nathan, who was sitting directly behind him -- literally the seat behind him -- and he didn't realize it. She gets up and says, "I take issue with that." He spins around and goes, "Oh -- it's you!" Then she says, "I have a problem with what you said, because obviously the police did a really bad job investigating the case." At this point, Fran Galasso, the detective sergeant from the film, who is kind of the engine behind the case, pops up and says, "Well, it's important that you realize that Jesse Friedman expressed no remorse." Two minutes later, David walks up and says, "The reason he did that is because we got bad legal advice." At which point, Peter Panaro, Jesse's attorney, pops up from the third row in his muscle shirt and says, "That's really unfair because I begged Jesse Friedman not to say that." He asks me for my opinion and I give my opinion, then in the middle of all this, you hear this little clearing of the throat from the top row of the theater and in his little windbreaker up stands Jesse Friedman and he says, "Actually, I have a few things to say about this." Having all of those people in the same place was really fascinating, and I know anybody who stayed through that Q&A was really moved by it -- just by the continuing multi-perspective view of the case. It's so interesting that it continues to go on.
Have you been amazed by the success of this film? Winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and then its opening weekend in New York.
I was really happy to see how it did in New York, and I went to every screening in New York and did a Q&A afterwards. I felt that it was important for us to be there and give people a chance to express themselves. I thought we might run into some people who might interest me -- people who had been involved in the case. That's one of the advantages to only opening in a couple of cinemas -- you get all of the interested people to see it. That was part of the logic of opening in Great Neck, as well as opening in Manhattan. The judge's best friend came to one of the screenings and said that she was having dinner with the judge that night and wanted to see the film on her own first. People are starting to try to absorb the film in their own way and are coming forward and having opinions about things. I had a mother come the other night who said, "We were visited by the police. My son was in the computer classes and the police told me that my son had been molested. I spoke to my son and he said that it hadn't happened, so I sent the police away. I've always wondered if I knew the whole story. That's such a weird thing for the police to tell you. Even if your son tells you the opposite, you wonder." She said that the film gave her a lot of confidence that her son was telling the truth. That was gratifying because it did something for her and now, at least, she has ten times more information than she had before, even though the film is not trying to make that point.
Have you found that people walk out of the film with definite opinions regarding the guilt or innocence of the Friedmans?
I would say that most audiences are very sensitive to the Friedmans and understand that this family has been through hell. For those people, I don't think it's mitigated by the idea that perhaps they did these awful things. They see the film and understand that whatever you believe, you have to have compassion for these people because they're human beings. Arnold Friedman, while he was a pedophile and a pretty abhorrent character in many ways, was also a good father, who loved his kids and in many ways was a noble guy. The idea that you have this person who's not a monster, who's not just this sort of total cipher, but is actually a guy who has emotions just like we do, but also has this incredible sexual desire that is so different than most of us in the population. He ends up largely unredeemable. The average person in the audience, if they don't think about it enough, says, "What difference does it make? Isn't Arnold's position, 'I'm being accused of the wrong felonies.' Why do we care? Whether he did it in the computer class or didn't do it in the computer class, he had sex with his brother, molested these kids, used the mail to transmit pornography." The answer is that it makes a tremendous difference. If you don't believe that Arnold was guilty of those particular crimes in the computer class then there's no reason to believe that Jesse was involved at all. That's a tremendous distinction given the fact that the stakes in this case largely are the lives of two people, and one of them was the younger Friedman who went to jail, in the end, longer than the father did.
Was there a lot of footage you had to cut from the film?
There's so much. I have to set aside six months to work on the DVD for this movie, because it's going to be so different. It's not going to be the director's commentary on the performance of Matt Damon or something. There was a 5 ½ hour cut of this film at one point and it was fascinating. If you're into this material, it didn't get boring and the story didn't peter out. The story stayed really interesting. There are a million little things. Fran Galasso, the detective, has this dog that barks incessantly with no sense of proportion at all, and she beats the dog. When I was doing the pre-interview with her, she started rolling up this newspaper and slammed the dog across the head, and it went skidding across the floor and hit the refrigerator. The next day, I went back to do some establishing shots of the house and her husband had the dog on the leash, and the dog is trying to get away. I'm shooting the dog and the husband and I say, "By the way, what is your dog's name?" He says, "Jessie." Literally once a week, I learned some insane detail about the case. That was originally part of the epilogue -- that Fran Galasso was promoted and is retired in Long Island with her husband Jack Galasso, who is a judge, and their dog Jesse. And there's this great shot of the dog just like (mimics the dog's considerable discomfort).
What about Seth Friedman (David and Jesse's brother)? Has he seen the film? Does he want any part of this?
He hasn't seen the film -- I don't think he's seen the film. He felt very strongly that he didn't want to be a part of it. He took the view that the last time his family was in the public eye it didn't work out very well, and he didn't want to do that again. He's extremely angry. I don't think he wants to go there in any way, I don't think he wants re-consider his father in any way, I don't think he wants to look at these issues at all.
In the wake of all of the controversy in the documentary community about Bowling For Columbine and whether or not it is truly a non-fiction film, what sort of responsibility do you feel documentary filmmakers have to being objective?
You could certainly say that Columbine
was a movie with a point of view from the first minute, and there's
a place for that. Clearly the public responded to that movie because
of the perspective -- they love knowing that the NRA is just bad.
It would've been interesting in that film, for me, if you would
have met somebody from the NRA who was not a doddering lunatic.
There are people in the NRA who are really smart and who would
say, "I've never even shot a gun in my life, but you know
what? The reason I'm a member is because I think it's so critical
that we have the right to bear arms, and the reason is because
historically in America there are moments when it has been useful,
and that's part of the essence of democracy." There's a perspective
to be made -- there are certainly intelligent people who'll take
the other side of that equation. Personally, I wouldn't prefer
their view. I would prefer the view that we have too many guns
and there's something wrong with that. But then at least you'd
be in a totally honest dialogue about what to do about it. You
could say maybe there should be fewer guns but not no guns, or
something like that. In this film, I feel like we just set out
to give the information. One of the things I think people are
responding to, by wanting to see the film, is that other people
are leaving and saying, "This wasn't just one of those talking
heads things where he says this and he says that and who do I
believe? We were given primary source material of what was going
on inside the Friedman house. We get to know this family in the
most intimate way you can imagine. We have all the material you
could possibly use to try and make our own judgment in this case."
And there was no trial. The combination of the absence of a trial
and the fact that we have this incredible home video material
makes us feel like we are in a position to make a judgment about
what happened or at least begin to understand what happened --
to make some type of judgment about it. That's very empowering
for the audience. I think people connect with the film at that
level, because they've been spoon fed so much stuff over the years.
I think that a large segment of Americans are interested in the
fuller story and are interested in seeing that Arnold Friedman
may have been one of society's most reprehensible types, but he's
not just a type and in fact there is a person there. You actually
have to look into that person to try to understand, not just what
happened to him, but what happened to his brother, what happened
to his son. I think every time you put somebody in the monster
box -- it might be important to imprison somebody; that's sometimes
necessary -- you don't learn anything. You just go, "Thank
God that person has nothing to do with me. We're in totally different
species." Then you can't look at yourself at all. What's
interesting with this film is that people will go see it and then
come up to me and say, "That is the most screwed up family
I've ever seen." Usually, if I don't respond, they'll come
back 15 minutes later and they'll say, "I know this is going
to sound kind of weird, but that father kind of reminded me in
some weird way of my father. Of course my father wasn't a pedophile,
but he was an addictive personality…" You realize that
this is our story. Everybody has family secrets -- there's are
just more extreme. Everybody has home movies -- there's are just
more unusual and more comprehensive.
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