Q & A at Woodstock Film Festival

by Jay Blotcher

Chronogram magazine
October 2008
www.chronogram.com

Q&A with Haskell Wexler

Among film historians, cineastes, and those who simply follow the eternal ballet between light and shadows, cinematographer Haskell Wexler commands as much attention for a project as that project’s director. And with good reason: His painstaking approach to the craft—from the time in 1962 that he ran down an alley with a handheld camera to create a classic cinema trope—has transformed good films into great films. (But not without on-set battles; in his memoirs, Elia Kazan pronounced Wexler “a man of considerable talent” but also “a considerable pain in the ass.”) Centuries from now, film students will still be hypnotized by the results of Wexler’s work on In the Heat of the Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Days of Heaven, Bound for Glory, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the latter two of which brought him Oscars.

Wexler, who will receive a lifetime achievement award at this year’s Woodstock Film Festival, is also known as an indefatigable supporter of progressive causes, from the Sandanistas to union leaders to more humane working conditions for the film industry. Even at 86, Wexler’s pugnacious approach to politics is evident in a brief phone interview.

You have been a champion of the Woodstock Film festival since its beginning. You are a gentleman of very specific and very passionate political ideals; you would not have become involved if it didn’t reflect your values.

Woodstock became known to me because of the map and the concert and the film. When it happened, it represented a generational spirit. And spirit shows itself profoundly in music. When they started the film festival, it felt like—if I can use one of those subjective words—it felt like they were dealing with that same spirit of who were are and who we want to be, what kind of world we want to live in. All those things relate to filmmaking. And filmmaking is what I do, what I love, what I get my pleasure out of.

We are careering into the Democratic Convention [as of press time]. I’m sure this will reignite people’s interest in Medium Cool [a documentary Wexler directed and shot during the 1968 Democratic Convention that folds the real-life protests into the film]. I wonder if you have been asked to appear at screenings of the film, and to talk about the experiences of shooting this film in 1968.

There have been a lot of groups of filmmakers who wanted me to join with them in filming around both conventions. And I have hesitated to want to cooperate with them for basically what you might call political reasons. Just like most of our history, I don’t think people really know the history. I think the history of 1968 is not in the film; it’s not what we shot on the streets. That’s the movie. That’s life, the movie. And I’m not interested in shooting life for the movie in 2008, because the players in the movie are much more sophisticated on the so-called security side. Their methods of sequestering any rights to assemble in any meaningful way have been so thoroughly militarized. And the danger of some kind of event—either by some crazy anarchist or by some provocateur—would create another movie that would not enlighten people, but make them more fearful and more [under] control of authority.

But the main difference between ’68 and now is that ’68 happened because on all levels, great masses of American people were not being heard by either the Democratic or the Republican parties. They were being ignored. So that was the essence of why they were demonstrating in the streets. And that is not clear from the so-called demonstrators [of this era] in front of the convention center—in either party, either candidate. Neither one of them are saying, “We are living in a lie.” No one is saying that the political system has lied to us in deadly ways.

When you accepted the Oscar for Best Cinematography for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1968, you said, “I hope we can use our art for love and peace.” I was wondering—

[Laughs] That’s right, I did say that! That’s true. I’m laughing at how cornball the words sound. And, actually, the Vietnam War was going on, and those words peace and love—you looked at an image in the back of your head of some girl in a T-shirt with her nipple showing, and some guy with long hair a kind of wild look in his eyes. So, those were revolutionary words.

Regarding the spirit of those words, which directors these days create work that help political advancement and peace and love? Is there somebody like a Hal Ashby [director of Bound for Glory] these days, whose art and attitudes and his political philosophy coalesce?

They’re out there, but they’re not out there. Amongst Hollywood directors, many of them—writers as well—do not get work. The corporatization of all our media, Bill Moyers speaks the best about that. It also goes with moviemaking. Look at the coming attractions at any time in any theater and see what it says in the [box] below: “Rated for violence, sexuality [etc.].” The established no-nos are the very thing [I look for in films]. When I see something that’s got a G rating, I figure, like a lot of people, that I don’t want to see this, it’s going to be boring. So that’s where [the movie industry] brought us, by changing our language and changing our response to images. In my documentary Who Needs Sleep? I quote George Orwell: “In a time of deceit, telling the truth can be a revolutionary act.”

One of the reasons [directors] don’t challenge [social injustices] is because those kinds of pictures don’t make money. Anti-war pictures are flops. If they’re flops, they’re failures. If they’re failures, nobody sees them. Getting back to Woodstock, [the] Woodstock [Film Festival] is a possibility for artistic, interesting, entertaining films to be showcased. [The festival] should also be a catalyst for people to see that those films that they think are worthy to be seen, are seen by more than the lucky people who come to Woodstock.

The Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Haskell Wexler at the 2008 Woodstock Film Festival Award Ceremony, Saturday, October 4 by his friends and colleagues writer-director John Sayles and producer Maggie Renzi.