(Photo by Ben Pierson.)
After attending a lecture on Errol Morris Thursday afternoon, it was off to the Union that night to hear the man himself.
Morris was a lot taller than I thought he'd be and had this great big avuncular smile. He came onstage wearing a tan jacket which he never took off.
His "prepared" remarks were relatively few. In them he talked about how the UW made a difference is his life. He preceded explaining just how his time here made him into the man he by saying, "Maybe I'm still a ne'er do well" and noting that he had been rejected by every college that he applied to. His high school counselor then recommended applying to the UW as "they accept everybody". It proved fortuitous as Morris said that he was introduced to the things that preoccupy him today right here.
For starters, there was the TV commercial he shot for Parthenon Gyros, their first ever. Plainfield crazy man Ed Gein instilled in the young Morris an obsession with murder, the nature of crime, and the insanity plea. He did three interviews with the killer himself. Morris described the interviews as "deeply prurient". Morris said that he wrote the first climbing guide to Devil's Lake as well. Back on campus, two history professors – George Mosse and Harvey Goldberg proved to be great influences on the history major. Mosse was "incredibly perverse, sardonic, and pessimistic" and saw ideas as the mechanism of history while Goldberg was an impassioned advocate of ideas about right and wrong. Lastly there was the Wisconsin Historical Society who had a large collection of Warner Brothers/RKO films which the young Morris would watch.
He rounded out his speech by saying, "I've been very, very, very lucky" and with this he said that he'd rather take questions than attempt to speak on some predetermined topic.
Questions from the audience ended up being launching pads for Morris to tell stories and go on interesting tangents. Someone asked if he had any good stories about Morris' friend Werner Herzog. Before detailing how he and Herzog posed as doctors to interview mass murderer Ed Kemper in California, he noted that he met many of the New German Cinema directors at the Pacific Film Archive and Wim Wenders was the first person to see a rough cut of Gates of Heaven. Wenders remarked that it was a work of genius.
Another person asked if Morris had ever distorted the truth in any way to get a movie made. His answer is one that I wish more people understood – especially a certain Madison blogger who constantly longs for newspapers to undergo a atavistic transformation because they were "objective" back in the day. Morris said that the mere act of putting together a story means leaving stuff out and/or putting emphasis at one place or another. "Sometimes it becomes a Liberty Valence thing." Furthermore, he offered that people are reluctant to accept truth. For instance, it is commonly said that Morris got Randall Adams off of death row with his film The Thin Blue Line but, in fact, the movie ended up getting Adams out of a life sentence. Morris said that reporters didn't believe him when he would correct them.
There were lots of other great stories to be had as well from the set of his films. "The electric chair is a very scary thing" was how he introduced some tales from the making of Mr. Death. The crew were locked in a death chamber for filming and Morris said it was interesting to see who would sit on the chair and those who wouldn't. Morris wouldn't and neither would his cinematographer. However, the gaffer was happy to be strapped down and have his picture taken – for Christmas cards.
Morris described Fred Leuchter, the film's subject, as an "impossibly ridiculous character" but a very sweet guy. (He upgraded electric chairs for a living and got mixed up in Holocaust denial – all chronicled in the movie.) When the camera was off, Leuchter would chain smoke but, when it was time to shoot again, he'd snuff it out. When asked why he did this, he said "You've got to understand Errol, I'm a role model for children."
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