A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

I am trying to draw a parallel between Sherman and myself, which is accurate in some ways and comically ironic (I hope) in other ways. I do have some things in common with Sherman although some of the parallels have been reversed. He's a Northerner who was coming down South; I'm a Southerner who went up North. But I also take it a step further and posit myself in the role of an exiled Southerner living up North who returns to the South again. I both identify with Sherman and find my personality and what my life stands for as being in contradistinction to what Sherman stood for. I both consider myself to be a Southerner

and

to no longer be a son of the South. In some sense the South is alien territory for me.

MacDonald:

There's also a parallel in the fact that you and Sherman met mostly women.

McElwee:

Yes, most of the Southern troops were in Virginia at the time, with Robert E. Lee, entrenched around Richmond. Left behind were women, children, and old people. There's also the basic difference between Sherman and me in that Sherman was quite successful in his campaign. He achieved his military objectives. If one considers the purpose of my journey finding an ideal Southern woman to marry, to fall in love with, whatever, I'm unsuccessful in my "campaign." Time and time again, I meet with outright defeat or at best there's a draw.

MacDonald:

Is there a sense in which you use the camera as a weapon? Is that an implicit parallel?

McElwee:

In no way am I really trying to use the camera as a weapon.

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But, of course, the act of filmingno matter how gently, how sensitively it's donetakes advantage of people's vulnerability. The act of filming is an invasion of privacy, in a metaphorical sense perhaps a rape of some kind, pillage of some kind. In the scene when Karen, the attorney and ERA activist, tells me to stop filming, she has to tell me not once, but three times. That suggests an indictment of the act of filmmaking.

MacDonald:

The scene of Burt Reynolds at work in Charlotte is interesting, both because Reynolds is a Southern star and, from my point of view, becauseironically, since you're not allowed on the set

Sherman's March

is at least as interesting a film as he's appeared in. Did you originally plan to "invade" the set?

McElwee:

At first, I did go through proper channels. Had I talked myself onto the set, I might have gotten some interesting imagery of Hollywood filmmaking and of the creation of the Southern hero as represented by Burt Reynolds. But even when I requested permission to be on the set, I understood that if they denied it, I would then explore the point of view of the outsider peering over the fence, or I might take a stab at going behind the scenes only to be stopped. As things turned out, I pursued both and ended up with the second, which seemed to me to work out fine. The scene is a successful emblem for the difference between two styles of filmmaking: the single-person documentary approach is posited against the very complicated Hollywood way of making films, where you have celebrity casts and large crews, and security forces to keep people at bay.

MacDonald:

The way the Ross McElwee persona develops in

Sherman's March

reminds me more of the literary device of creating a narrating character whom the reader does not entirely identify with, or, at least, who is different from the writer. In

Sherman's March

there's a lot you don't reveal (information about whether or not you're sexually involved with the women, for example). We get an inside view of your life,

but

you as filmmaker shape what we see in such a way that we come to see you as a separate and somewhat mysterious character.

McElwee:

In

Backyard

I am represented primarily through my subjective voice-over narration. You do see me in a mirror shot, and playing the piano, but those are the only times you see the filmmaker. In

Sherman's March

I go a step further. I deliver monologues; I try to create an almost literary voice-over. I think this enables the film to achieve a subjectivity it wouldn't have otherwise. I could have filmed the same people in the same situations without having said anything or revealed anything about my personality. That film might have been interesting, but I think not as interesting as when you hear something of what the filmmaker is thinking at a particular juncture in the film, and when you occasionally see the filmmaker in the setting where the film is unfolding

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(such as at the treehouse on the island when you see me in the bunk bed). It seems to me that these things are absolutely necessary to make the film work.