Headlined "Scenes Cut From Film Find New Role In Court," it seems rather straightforward at first. Lawyers for Chevron, suing over a documentary about the company's actions in Ecuador, demanded outtakes from the film. Naturally, the filmmakers said no. And frankly I think they're right.
A documentary is -- or at least should be, in my opinion -- an act of journalism. It is reporting on something factually, telling the viewer information that is truthful and accurate. That information may be 100 years old, or about some ongoing issue, but an effort should be made to tell some fact-based truth.
However, to be clearer, I'm not so sure a documentary has an obligation to be objective. A filmmaker does not, I think, have to ensure he gets every side or tell every part of a story. It's still a documentary to, for example, tell the story of an activist for or against something and be sympathetic to his point of view, and not feel any need to include the opinions of the people he's an activist against.
It's fair, I think, to have an openly declared point of view -- to say, for example, that I set out to make this film because this issue bothered me. Ideally, say with this past year's Oscar winner, "The Cove," if you have a point of view, you also have an array of facts on your side.
On the other hand, I'm reluctant to call Michael Moore (despite his Oscar in the category) a documentary filmmaker. He does make films on issues of import, and he is very clever, but he is also fast and loose with the facts. He is not, I think, engaging in journalism, or even activist or "concerned" journalism. His is a work of propaganda. Fair enough -- especially if you agree with him -- but not documentary filmmaking.
So, having dispensed with that aside (see what I mean about boring the kids?), a true documentary should be treated in most ways like reporting. That means sourcing and sources are a critical -- and often closely held -- part of the process, especially in any sort of investigative work ... like, say, exposing what the filmmakers believed was wrongdoing by Chevron in Ecuador.
But here the question gets murkier. The Times reports that the judge let Chevron have the outtakes. (Again, a mistake in my opinion, undermining the capability of future filmmakers to do long-form exposés and get access; who's going to let you to unguarded moments on a "trust me" basis when that trust can be overruled by a court?) And in the outtakes we find ... the lawyers fighting against Chevron in Ecuador engaging in all sorts of questionable practices themselves.
So how did Chevron know to ask? Apparently, they saw a version of the film shown at Sundance that included a scene revealing a technically nonpartisan expert attending a planning meeting with the anti-Chevron lawyers. In the final release of the film, that shot was gone. So what does this tell us? Well, that the lawyers were skewing the "neutral" testimony to their side, and that (most importantly) the filmmakers knew this was a bad thing.
So now the Chevron guys get to work their way through the outtakes -- 500 hours of footage -- and they're finding all sorts of questionable stuff. Says The New York Times: "The clips ... 'have sent shock waves through the nation’s legal communities,' one federal judge said in an opinion. Another court last month called them 'extraordinary evidence' that suggests that lawyers 'presented false evidence and engaged in other misconduct.'" The filmmakers' lawyers say this is all a smokescreen, and we should get back to the point of all the nasty stuff Chevron did.
And now I'm wondering:
1. Why did these guys film all this in the first place? I know it's great to have access, and planning meetings with lawyers are just the sorts of things a documentary wants -- showing something important but otherwise hidden from view. But just who's malfeasance were they trying to document? And if you're on the side of the people you're filming, is it a good idea to actively film them engaging in questionable practices?
And 2. If they did it in all innocence (not realizing until the edit, say, that having the expert in the meeting would look bad), why didn't this become part of the film?
And hence, we return to Point One: Documentary filmmaking (especially about contemporary issues) is an act of journalism. These guys ceased to be any sort of journalist when they consciously concealed these significant facts. (Not being a lawyer, I won't go into the question of what kind of lawyers are involved here.) Truth and reporting are about going where the facts take you, and the facts here took them to a someplace else -- a place they weren't planning to go, but one they found themselves in.
One might argue that the film was about what Chevron did, not the legal case and its conduct, and that's a fair point, except they were busy filming the legal case, weren't they? If they were simply going into the jungle and out to sea, showing what Chevron was doing, well that would be a safe point. But now the film is also about the legal process, isn't it?
To take it somewhere I've worked, let's say I'm doing a film on Robert E. Lee, and let's say I am working on it from the point of view that he was a tragic figure, a fine fellow dragged reluctantly into defending slavery, an institution he abhorred. And finally, let's say I get exclusive access to never-seen-before, very private letters from Lee to his wife, Mary. (All of this is plausible enough -- I had been working on a Lee film, and there are recently released Lee letters, with more to come.)
But now let's say I come across one letter in which he says he finds the services of his slaves delightful, and he wouldn't eliminate such a grand institution for all the lives in either the Federal or Confederate armies. (NOTE: This is not true; it is an example for debate purposes only.) Now, I can tell myself that this is just one letter out of hundreds, and many of those other letters speak to feelings exactly the opposite. Maybe he was just in an odd mood, or I didn't understand the context -- perhaps Mary had sent him a letter lost to the collection, in which she asked what he thought other Southerners believed. Maybe he was drunk (though a noted teetotaler). But, you see, that is all rampant speculation and wishful thinking, elaborate logical constructs to allow me to cling to my initial premise and ignore an inconvenient and uncomfortable fact. I cannot deny that the (fictional, for the sake of debate) letter exists.
So I think there are a couple of ways to go. My first inclination is to simply shift the focus of the story and make the film about making the film. We set out to do Robert E. Lee the gentleman, but found this letter -- what does it mean? My second thought is to make the film planned, but integrate the new information. At no time do I seriously think: Let's just ignore this thing and do what we'd always planned because that theme is a Greater Truth that overwhelms this difficult, little detail.
So what's my point? Well, I guess I have two. One is that a documentary's outtakes are sacrosanct, part of the process, as much as a reporter's notes and a lawyers memos, and should be so protected. And the second is that, whatever "Crude" is, it has wandered into a gray morass in which telling the whole truth seems less important than making its point ... a very dangerous place.
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