Errol Morris

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2021

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris has a very unique style of storytelling. Part of his creative process includes the use of a device he invented called a "Interrotron." It allows the subjects of his films to look at him, the interviewer, while also looking straight into the camera, creating the sense that his subjects are addressing the viewer directly. He's been lauded among the film community as a visionary and his film debut, 1978's Gates of Heaven is required viewing in film schools across the country. Since then, he's made The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War and the 2014 Netflix series Wormwood. Revisit our 2014 conversation with the acclaimed director on why Wormwood is like an "Everything bagel," capturing the art of the story and how the mid 20th century inspires his obsession with retrospective filmmaking.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of Maximum Fun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:20.0	It's Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorne.
0:22.6	Arrell Morris is one of my favorite filmmakers.
0:26.0	He's the kind of director that gets shown in film schools all the time.
0:29.4	He's contributed that much to the field of documentary making.
0:34.4	Have you actually seen his movies, Gates of Heaven,
0:37.2	or Fast Cheap and Out of Control,
0:39.0	or even the short documentaries that he made for ESPN? They are entertaining and fascinating and
0:46.8	exceptionally watchable, not like impenetrable or boring art house films. Morris has a way of painting these portraits of people, nuanced and funny, tragic, fascinating.
1:01.0	His newest movie, My Psychedelic Love Story, tells the tale of LSD advocate Timothy Leary's
1:07.5	longtime partner, Joanna Harcourt Smith. She was an author, an activist, and
1:13.5	according to Arrell, maybe a CIA plant. That's classic Errol Morris material, folks.
1:20.6	When I talked with him in 2018, he just released something really interesting, a Netflix
1:25.8	miniseries called Wormwood.
1:28.3	It was a bit of a departure for Errol.
1:30.1	First, he set aside his signature Interotron, which is an elaborate device that lets his
1:35.6	subjects make eye contact with him while also making eye contact with the viewer.
1:42.8	Instead of using the Interetron, he's conducting interviews on camera.
1:47.1	He also draws on the work of actors to tell the story for much of the film as well.
1:52.9	The movie is classic Morris in a lot of ways. It focuses on Frank Olson, a former CIA biochemist,
2:00.3	who died mysteriously decades ago, and his son Eric,
2:04.0	who's worked for years to uncover the truth about his life and death. Let's take a listen to a
	...

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