by Bettina Gray
THE INTIMATE MOMENT:
The Art of Interviewing
The prominent photographer Ruth Bernhard was a petite and intense eighty year old when I interviewed her for the public television documentary series Creative Mind. Her eyes, as probing as a child's, devoured the room unselfconsciously. She had enough vitality to keep the entire film crew busy answering her inquisitive observations while the microphones were placed and lighting adjusted. I was aware she was summing me up in her mind at a voracious pace as well. From her remarkable alertness I found my cue for how to begin our conversation. We would talk about acute focus of perception. In this interview she told me, "If you can't find something worthy to photograph within forty feet from where you stand you are not seeing. . . . "I try to teach my students the difference between looking and seeing," she said. "You must look with eyes that are awake to the extraordinary within the ordinary. I want to capture in my photographs that singular moment of tenderness I see in life."
Ruth Bernhard waits all day to take one or two shots of her subject. That is all she shoots....not rolls of film with hundreds of duplicate shots, hoping for serendipity. Her photography is an art of focused attention, acute perception. It is an art that applies to many disciplines. To listen as well as hear, to attempt to distill and then portray everything perceptible of the moment and the person, this meditative precision of focused attention yields the intimate moment in interviewing as well as photography. It is that moment of extraordinary human encounter.
I have learned much more of value in my life from people than from books. Human accomplishment is measured in product and most often valued by the material manifestations, the work of art, the building, the books, the symphony, the accomplished act. But I find an artistry which transcends product in the art of personality integration. The unification of contrasts being one definition of high art, I see in certain people an exquisite mastery of living, a unification of personality amidst incredible contrasts of experience, obstacles and opportunity. I am as much interested in who they are as in what they have accomplished. I look to these others for a pattern to life, an inspiration for meaningful, scintillating integration of existence. It is often a vain hope--a pipe dream of wistful imagination, but there have been enough moments both on and off camera when the probing questioning has been rewarded richly, not by barter but by blessing--a beneficent gift of love to another and, by extension, to all others. I would characterize my encounter with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama of Tibet in this fashion and sincerely hope that this was also the privileged experience of the audience who viewed that conversation.
It is these moments of reward that I hope to find in every interview in order to bring forth a unique and intimate learning, not so much of specific answers to specific questions as a blessing of engaged and heartfelt exchange, an art form of living, personality to personality. It is an education into the range and expanse of consciousness, the potentials of humanity, an education that must be passed on generation to generation and gleaned from something as elusive as a manner of being, a look, a stance, a gesture, a critical choice, a moment of tenderness, an essence of being.
This ephemeral quality of human interaction surrenders itself much more completely in the technical medium of film than in other idioms. It is interesting to note that the longest running television show in the history of television, "Meet the Press," which dates from 1947 to the present, is based on the interview. Television interviewing is a powerful communications medium. In a few cases it is the extraordinary moment of filmed silence between guest and interviewer which has held the most poignant revelation. And only film could capture the nuance of such a moment. The drama of theater or opera is inherently fictionalized. The live interview offers a drama of realism, and the camera provides the flexibility of intimate visualizations unavailable to other artistic renderings. This is documentary realism, but it is also living art.
THE APPROACH:
I approach a new person to explore the way some might approach a first ascent in mountain climbing, cautiously plotting a course into this mystery called personality. This unknown ascent fascinates me almost as an obsession. Who is this human in front of me? Picking through the random heap of experience, what have they chosen to build a life upon? What is significant? What has shaped their life and its passions? What makes them weep or dance for joy? Is there a revelation they harbor, carefully refined in the molten moments of their soul? Does it shout, or sing, or rest quietly meditating, awaiting . . .? And what will it take of honesty, forthrightness, integrity or courage from me in order to induce them to reveal their cherished understandings and insights. In interviewing, there are the studied anticipations, the mapping of direction, moments of arduous encounter, planned retreat, impossible approaches, as well as sublime vistas of personality unfolding. Unsuspected, elusive, unplanned thrilling moments where two strangers are no longer strangers. There is the estimate, the surmise, drawn from developed skills and the actual approach, which often varies considerably. And there are those moments of suspension into the void, not knowing if or how, suspended by the safety rope of another--total trust.
In moments of hesitant introspection, I ask myself, what right have I to ask a lifetime's distillation to be laid before me, and hence the public? What makes me think we are deserving of these treasured inner-most reflections? If they are displayed like so many wares in a bazaar, as we often see on the exhibitionistic soap-chat talk shows, what are we doing to the mystery of intimacy and privacy anyway? But it is a momentary pause. Curiosity drives me quickly back into the fray. And I remind myself that it is the documentary interview that restores integrity to television talk. Much of the controversial on television is commercially driven, a glitz-blitz of self-promotion and product promotion, human interaction used as an arena of barter. Stripped of promotional hype the documentary interview is a revival, a model for basic, direct, honest communication of the kind that has carried humanity through millennia, a vital link of generation to generation and future to past.
WHAT IT TAKES: INSATIABLE CURIOSITY
From early childhood, I remember my family following me around regularly making apologies for my inquisitive intrusions into the lives of strangers. This intense curiosity for humanity has driven me most of my life. It is incurable. Maybe genetic. My mother once lost me in a train station awaiting the next connection when I was six, mid-point in our journey from Kansas into the deep South. She was desperate. I was delighted, completely forgetting my mother or the train schedule. I had found an elderly black bathroom attendant who would talk to me. We must have talked for fifteen or twenty minutes before the parental desperation descended. My mother found me quizzing this wonderful woman about every aspect of her life. In those moments in some midwestern train station I was no longer six, no longer white, no longer limited by age and race and upbringing, I was exploring the life of someone who had lived and loved and understood. Forty years later, I still remember the person and what she conveyed.
LESSONS FROM GUESTS:
"Such open, generosity of person," I can remember thinking of Isabel Allende, the Chilean writer, as she surrendered herself in the interview process, without hiding or dissembling, knowing that what she was saying was public, on camera, for anyone to hear, and saying it with complete ease. With feminine dignity and intensity she talked of the rape of her country, the murder of the artists, of repression and exile and of the new life and love she has found since. She told me she writes in order to invent her life! She calls it inventing memories. She says she re-invents herself into new experience. As we were talking, in a singular moment came a flash of personal realization (cameras rolling) that this is why I interview, to escape the boundaries of life.
PROFESSIONAL INTEGRITY:
A recent survey reported that the US public trusted one group even less than lawyers and that is journalists. Unfortunately, I am not surprised. I am dismayed at how often I see journalists and interviewers more dedicated to finding the story they planned rather than the story that emerges. I am repulsed by attack-interview questions for the sake of humiliation and intimidation. What is called fact-finding I often feel is truth betraying. Pretense, false promises, trickery and editing to alter the speaker's intent are not considered legitimate forms of social discourse within society and it appalls me when these are modeled for the public in certain forms of interviewing. Respectful inquiry or hard questioning does not have to involve ridicule or broken promises. Such practices betray a fundamental assumption about the audience and its presumed crassness, dislocation, and insensitivity which I find insulting. Integrity and trust are vital, they show in the results, and they are even more required in a difficult examination of controversial issues. Freedom of speech is a responsibility as much as a right.
PREPARATION:
It is sad also to note that managers and media advisors who coach guests being interviewed suggest that they come ready to supply the questions, since many interviewers are not prepared. Spontaneity does not equate with lack of preparation. In fact, spontaneity gains from intense preparation. Even jazz improvisation is built around a structure of highly developed pattern and skill. Contrary to the common assumption that anyone who can talk on camera can interview, the art of capturing unique moments of human encounter is a highly challenging and developed skill. Voracious reading is a key to good interviewing. To prepare for an extended profile interview of a half-hour or hour duration, I may read a good deal of what my guest has written, reviewing related subjects as well. It is not unusual to have stacks of books in several different locations in my house, ready for me to pick them up as I get a chance. (My family has forbidden me the bad habit of having a book on the front seat of my car as I drive through downtown traffic, picking it up at stop lights.) If I am completely unfamiliar with the experience references of a guest I will sample them if I can before an interview. This has lead me to Sufi-dancing, snorkeling with a pod of dolphins, attempted ice-skating with an overweight maverick theater producer, Zen meditation, cooking for 40 over an open hearth fire in a dirt floor shack, learning to play a few notes on a new instrument, trying gymnastics moves, yoga postures and mountain climbing. During the interview the command of focus for both participants, regardless of the wildly distracting elements of cameras, set personnel, lighting, technical interruptions, retakes and guest nervousness rests completely on the host. Before I branched into television production I trained as a classical musician. Having experienced the exacting mental and emotional discipline of concert solo musical performance as well as hosting a series of extended profile documentary television interviews with challenging and substantial guests, I would have to say that probably the latter is more demanding.
SUBJECTIVITY OF THE INTERVIEW:
I am convinced that interviewing is a necessarily subjective exercise. My producers and I were once denied a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for an exciting series of interviews (later produced as Parliament of Souls) on the basis that the proposed interviews could not be scripted in advance. That is, we were denied funds because we refused to conduct interviews with some of the world's top spiritual and religious leaders in such a way that the specific questions and outcome could be provided in advance to the grant providers. It was my naive initiation to the shock that there are those in this supposedly free-press country that are unwilling to risk anything so unscriptable as a genuine, fresh, spontaneous conversation with social, political or spiritual leadership. Interviewing is intimate, it is spontaneous and it is intensely subjective. It is this kind of subjective, searching conversation, held either in private or in public via the media which is vital to social and political freedoms. It is imperative that the audience continue to have available to them these kinds of conversations. I want to know what my guest has to offer because it is personally important to me and to my guest. I do not want to be forced to frame questions in relation to the guessed values of some Nielson-probed, focus-group tested, market research assured, sanitized abstract projection of a hypothetical audience.
RELATIONS BETWEEN THE PRODUCER/DIRECTOR AND INTERVIEWER
I have met producers and funders who feel that when they look for on-camera talent to conduct an interview, they are looking for a visual prop, someone who will be a vehicle for their questions: "If I want you to have an opinion I'll give you one". A job of this kind is an equivalent role of news-reader, no insight or independent reasoning is expected or appreciated. All questions are provided, don't improvise. In effect, it is an acting job and an attempt at scripting spontaneity. The result is very unsatisfactory, varying from a superficial fluff piece where the audience picks up an underscore of complete insincerity (or genuine incompetence) on the part of the questioner, to a real derailing of insight which an articulate and outstanding guest might have offered in a once only opportunity. Most blame the interviewer when such a production fails. However, even the most outstanding interviewer when reduced to a list of scripted questions over which they had little influence will obtain an unhappy result. Good interviews (as life) are not scripted. It is easy to vent production anxiousness in over-control but the best way to exercise control is before the interview and not during it.
LEARNING FROM THE MISTAKES
A young Asian jazz pianist sat in front of me in a freezing cold, darkened set on a bleak February day. The aim had been to interview the musician in his performance element, a jazz house in downtown San Francisco. I had spoken to this guest in a pre-interview to get a feeling of his personality and of any special clues to his interests. I sensed trouble immediately. He was intensely nervous. He couldn't get through a sentence on the phone without stammering but after a bit I was able to warm him up enough that his speech smoothed. After my phone chat with him, I went to the producers to warn them. I was not opposed to the concept they were looking for in inviting him, but in my opinion it was going to prove a very difficult interview and I personally knew several musicians who could do the job better. The producers were committed, we couldn't back out. I cautioned them to make the setting of the interview as intimately cozy and reassuring as possible. Instead what we had was a large, cold room on a set where nearby noises repeatedly interrupted.
The producer was calling retakes every few minutes. I could not ease my guest as I had previously on the phone. He was so tense he couldn't keep his train of thought on the retakes. The technicians were boiling from the intruding sound breaches--promised not to happen again. The producer and I were new to each other, this being only the second interview we had worked on together. Everyone was hoping that I could magically pull the musician out of the bag.
Sitting on the edge of my chair, doing everything I could think of to put my guest at ease by posture, voice intonation, and body language as well as questions, we finally had some momentum going. He was relaxing, speaking in full sentences now. The interruptions from nearby offices had been quelled and things other than heads were beginning to roll. My guest was politically fixated as well as nervous. We had covered his political views but I was supposed to interview him as much for his art as for his politics and was trying to move the conversation in another direction. No go. So in desperation, departing from the scripted questions offered me, I asked him if he had ever fallen in love with a sound just for the sake of that sound, the purity and beauty of it? And, in the momentary flash between question-- pause--answer, before he could give his response there came the booming sound of a Toilet Being Flushed Overhead! We all heard it. The room was acoustically over-live, an echo-chamber. Stop the set. Tempers flared. Did you hear that! (As many of us were breaking up!). Of course we heard it. Was it recorded? Yes. OK . Retake! Rolling. Re-ask the question. "Have you ever (chuckle) fallen in love (te he) with a sound. . .?" The humor should have helped but it was lost. We never recovered. We went on but I could never get the interview off the ground. (In my opinion many of the politically obsessed lack humor.) The interview aired but I didn't have the heart to watch it. My guest told me afterward that he had never been interviewed on television before. I had assumed on a series of this magnitude they wouldn't try a completely inexperienced guest. They had wagered at least $100 thousand on that bet--that's probably what the production averaged per show. The next day the producer called a group review asking ME what had gone wrong. We finished the series amicably and quite a few really good interviews followed but that one remains one of the lower moments in my career. Moral: check the bathrooms and tape them shut first!
THE RISKS:
The risks are emotional: getting caught up in the stories of the guests. Some of the most personally embarrassing situations have happened on the occasion where I have finally achieved that moment of intimacy with a guest, when just the two of us are probing the mystery of life together, every fiber awake and listening, --no cameras--they have ceased to exist,--and a guest then launches into a tale of some tragedy or tenderness they have survived (as far too many in this world can tell). It makes for wonderful moments of film. However I have been taken by surprise in these situations to find a welling up of empathetic emotions that can and do waylay. I once interviewed a guest who had lost his wife to Alzheimer's only a few weeks before our interview. He sat in front of me talking of their exemplary life together as public servants and international leaders, he having survived Nazi incarceration for his part in the French resistance. He was talking quietly of his feelings that she was still with him, helping him. Unexpectedly I was teary eyed and not in control, moved by the nobility of spirit and the love and generosity of this politically prominent man to talk so candidly and sweetly of his lost wife. We had to stop the cameras and take a break in order to continue. Again it happened to me as a guest told the story of one ordinary Dutch Christian mother who risked her family and her life in harboring and raising a young Jewish baby boy during World War II. The guest told me the story speaking of the terror of both sets of parents as they sought to keep each other informed, the love these strangers had offered, the belief of the natural mother that the boy was dead (when communications broke down), the sacrifice she made as she lied to her husband that there was no news when she was sure her child was dead, and the final real reunion after the war to return the child to his parents unharmed. A story was like many I had heard. We were on solid ground. Then my guest revealed at the end that he was that child, now grown and involved in international humanitarian relief projects, a Rabbi, saved by a Christian woman. It was obviously hard for him to tell this story, but he said he would continue to repeat it because this was a genuine living example of compassion that saved his life, the kind which is vital to our future. There I was, suddenly nailed again, unable to go on. Cut! Break time. Professionalism demands self-control, but God help me if I should ever become so accustomed to this as to stage it and remain unmoved. That will be how I know it is time to quit .
WOMEN IN TELEVISION:
There will be a day when this last commentary is unnecessary. It is eagerly awaited. However, at present, even though women have broken many barriers in media over the last few decades, Martin Lee and Norman Soloman point out in their book, Unreliable Sources: a Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media , "We are told the [women's presence in the mass media] is improving--but usually without reference to how bad the situation remains." They go on to say that 94% of the top management positions in the U.S. news media are held by men. Fairleigh Dickinson University's dean of graduate studies, Barbara Kellerman says, "Women are by and large still excluded from the select group that constructs our national reality...for a female to play the role of commentator, expert or analyst--that is to be the resident sage--is still disturbingly rare."
Lee and Soloman continue by quoting Marlene Sanders: "I think women are going to be a presence in broadcasting, but we've had a slowdown [at the networks] in the last eight years. . . The move for affirmative action has been played down. The pressure is off the people who hire. The women are there but at a quarter of staff." In a 1989 survey of the networks, researchers found that 22.2 percent of the stories on CBS were reported by women, 14.4 percent on NBC, and 10 percent on ABC. "There are fewer women on air at the networks now than there were in 1975 when I went to work at the networks," said Linda Ellerbee, "The reason you see us on TV is so you don't notice our absence in that room marked 'executive producer' or 'CEO' or 'network president.'."
With a few notable exceptions, those who decide what we see and how we see it are male. This situation has many sociological and psychological historic roots and reasons. But I must say, I do not think I am from Mars OR Venus and I would like much more opportunity to see women as well as men in television relate to the world and to sexual roles with considerably more depth. When women are more a part of the media decision-making structure, when the media presentation of women allows the public to see women (and women to see other women) as intellectual, capable as much of logic as of emotionalism, capable of reason, authoritativeness, self-control and leadership without a loss of those qualities of femininity that gift the world with grace, we will all benefit richly.