Making the film: Part 3

Part 3: Round One of Interviewing

As the saying goes, the best story is the story you can get, so for my project, the fact that Boston is the hub for a universe of writers who knew and admired Andre Dubus was crucial. Moreover, Dubus, born and raised in Louisiana, had spent most of his adult life working and residing in Haverhill, Mass., which was about an 80-minute car ride for me.
I had chosen to tell a story that followed very clear narrative lines: Dubus had spent his early adulthood struggling to succeed as a short story writer, wrestling with such themes as faith, duty, courage and family. He had by middle age reached a level of readership that hadn’t matched the broad critical acclaim of his work, and was struggling. Then, on a late night in July 1986, he stopped as a Good Samaritan to assist at an accident scene on the highway from Boston, and had been struck by an oncoming car, which not only killed the man next to him but resulted in horrible injuries to Dubus, who lost one leg and the use of the other. The last part of the story was Dubus’s struggle with coming to terms with the accident and his God, his writing that chronicled those struggles, and the final crescendo of acclaim that finally came to him.
After meeting his son, the novelist Andre Dubus III at the PEN awards in Boston in 2005, I contacted Andre to size up his interest in, and support of, such a project. He liked it and referred me to his older sister Suzanne, who runs a shelter for battered women in Newburyport, Mass.
Suzanne, like all the Dubuses, is a masterful storyteller, something I suspect is in the blood. By the finish of my one-hour on-camera interview with her, I knew I had a story worth telling. Suzanne, as with everyone I interviewed, would show amazing candor about the life of Andre Dubus, a man whose faults and screw-ups were as breath-taking as his writing, which indeed was the place he tried to make sense of his own behavior. That evening, I arranged with “Young Andre” to come to his home the next week, where I interviewed him for two hours. Within those three hours of tape I had the spine of the story, the birth-to-death story of his life, told well. I knew that I was now going to be looking for people to help fill gaps, or elaborate on stories I’d heard, or speak to the man’s writing.
Over the next four months I conducted about two dozen interviews. Some of the considerations included where to shoot, the “location” question that tends to be less an issue for news-video shooters, who tend to frame tightly and leave background out. One of the advantages of higher-quality video is the ability to set the subject in an environment that’s appropriate to the conversation, and it had its hurdles.
I’ve always like the Errol Morris film A Brief History of Time, which tells the story of Stephen Hawking, the physicist who been stricken with ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. The film features a variety of scientists, most British, recalling Hawking’s early life and work as they sit comfortably in their well-appointed British studies. I only learned later that Morris, funded for the project by Stephen Spielberg, had used his Hollywood-sized budget to actually contstruct sets. Each of those cozy British parlors, with their woodfires flickering so welcomingly, were fake.
But for the rest of us, we shoot where we can, and each shoot led to a variety of efforts to find the right spot, or at least no a bad spot, to shoot. It required interview subjects to be amenable as well. I interviewed Stephen Haley and Jack Herlihy in Dubus’s favorite bar, where one of his finest short stories (“Rose”) is set. I interviewed his Bradford College teaching colleague Peggy Walsh in the classroom where Dubus taught - not an easy task, because Bradford closed in 2000 and its campus held by a land company. But after numerous calls, we were able to get the room opened, and brought a broom and paper towels to make it somewhat presentable. Probably a small touch no one else noticed, shooting in that room, but it made me happy.
I also tried to vary composition of subjects. Some were to the left of the frame, others to the right (an important framing rule of thumb is not to place your subject’s face dead-center in the frame, which leaves way too much dead space above the head). I tried some in daylight, others at night, some indoors and some out. I also interviewed some people in offices so small I couldn’t set up the umbrella light I was then using. I had to shoot in existing light, usually from the window, to lesser results.
One easier way to go is to find an event where multiple interview subjects gather. I interviewed Dubus’s ex-wife and his youngest two daughters at their home. I interview Stephen and Jack in the bar. And I also attended the Newburyport Literary Festival, where I grabbed some people I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten. One was Richard Russo, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of “Empire Falls,” who did a reading at the festival, at the Newburyport Congregational Church. He agreed to be interviewed, and I set up quickly at the back pew. That I interviewed Russo in a church as he discussed the famous Dubus work “A Father’s Story” – in which the protagonist wins an argument with God – was a nice bit of serendipity.
At the end of the two dozen interviews, it was July of 2006 and I had enough to cut a feature-length film. I also knew there were a nuber of other people I now wanted to interview who lived outside of the region. Unlike a print piece, where a phone interview would suffice, I had to go to these people.