Famed documentarian Errol Morris has always been drawn to outsiders and extreme human characters, having made films about Stephen Hawking, an executioner, a mole-rat expert, and even famed politicians like Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. In his latest film, The Unknown Known, Morris turns his Interrotron on the famously slippery Donald Rumsfeld in an attempt to unlock the secretary’s deliberately ineffable speaking style.
Morris sat down with CraveOnline to talk about his new film, about Rumsfeld, about his political drives, and why he seems to be so drawn toward such outsiders. Also his Taco Bell commercial.
CraveOnline: I’ve been a fan of yours going all the way back to The Thin Blue Line…
Errol Morris: Thank you very much!
Some of your more recent films (The Fog of War, Standard Operating Procedure, The Unknown Known) have definitely skewed more political when compared to your earlier work. What has inspired you to become more politically motivated?
Well it’s more about what’s going on in the world. I came of age during the Vietnam war which horrified me. And I felt compelled to make The Fog of War on the verge of yet another horrifying war. Disastrous, unnecessary war. The war in Iraq. And I had been writing… Actually, the movie does predate it. I started to think of the Abu Ghraib photographs. Because it seemed that no one had really tried to contextualize the photographs. No had really talked to the people who took the photographs. No one had tried to understand the circumstances under which the photographs were taken. Everyone had seen them. They were everywhere. They were ubiquitous.
Heck, they were on the cover of TIME Magazine.
Oh yes. And so, I made that film, and one name, of course, that kept coming up again and again and again and again was Donald Rumsfeld. Then the memoir came out, Known and Unknown, and I thought “Why not? I should do this!” Two disastrous wars, two secretaries of defense. My wife sees them as a trilogy. Standard Operating Procedure, The Fog of War and now The Unknown Known.
You managed to secure Mr. Rumsfeld for the film. Had he seen the previous movies? Did he know what he was getting into? Because it may have seemed like you were trying to oust him.
I don’t think that’s what I was trying to do.
Well, you certainly weren’t seeking to glorify him. Surely he sensed that…
I was out to listen to him. I told him early on that, like The Fog of War, there was only going to be one person interviewed. I wasn’t going to make the standard political film where you interview 20 people, and then edit it all together; what Mr. X or Ms. Y thinks about Donald Rumsfeld. I wanted to make a movie about what Donald Rumsfeld thinks about Donald Rumsfeld. The MOs, the oral history, the press conferences. So on and so forth. I call it “history from the inside out.” For better or for worse.
I get the sense from the film (and from actual history) that Rumsfeld was an evasive, almost slippery character; indeed the film is about that. But who was Donald Rumsfeld in person? Can you sum up his character from conversation, or is it all on film?
I don’t think there is anything more. Have you seen my essays in the New York Times? Did you read the first part? One of the Pentagon corespondents, Pam Hess, says that’s all there is. There really is nothing more. It’s the smile, if you like. The look of supreme self-satisfaction. The vanity. His absolute conviction that he’s right. That he has nothing to apologize for, nothing to regret.
You’ve had a chance to talk to two Secretaries of Defense. Were there any parallels between Rumsfeld and The Fog of War‘s Robert McNamara?
No, not really. The wars they oversaw were both disastrous, but they’re opposite. They are as unalike as two people could possibly be. One is genuinely reflective. Awesome. The other, almost an empty windbag. Full of evasions and platitudes.
I had this confrontation – a real odd confrontation – with [comedian/pundit] Bill Maher. He seemed impressed with Donald Rumsfeld’s comment that “Time will tell.” I asked Rumsfeld a question – a kind-of rhetorical question – “Should we have gone there at all?” Maybe we should not have gone into Iraq. Which is something I believe; I think the war was unnecessary. And Rumsfeld’s answer: “Time will tell.” Contrary to what Bill Maher may think, there’s nothing profound about that answer at all. It was just yet one more glib evasion. Okay! Let’s wait a hundred million years! Maybe someone can come up with a justification for the policy of the Bush administration!
In The Unknown Known, we hear more of you than we’ve heard in any of your other films. Your own voice plays a more active role, whereas you were previously very hands-off. Was that a conscious decision, or was it just because Rumsfeld was being so evasive?
I like the fact that there’s more of me in this film then there have been in previous films. I’d like to stick my toe further into the water. Maybe film myself as part of my films. That’s part of it, part of it was that I needed to be more part of this. To make it clear, wherever possible. I’ve read that – and people have said – that I didn’t push back enough, that I wasn’t confrontational enough. I may not have been confrontational in some adversarial sense, but I pushed back on him constantly. It’s clear that he is saying things that aren’t true, that he’s being unresponsive. A claim that no one was confused about Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, when in fact they were deliberately confusing people about it.
And it’s made clear in the movie. Clear that these “interrogation techniques” migrated from Guantanamo to elsewhere. It went on and on and on. He’s a man who is capable of saying utterly contradictory things, and not even noticing.
It seems like he’s the most frustrating interviewee imaginable.
That’s right. But there’s so much about him that is revealed in this movie. I’ve made all these movies about self-deception. Cluelessness. This may be the most powerful example of that sort of thing that I’ve ever done.
Now that you’ve talked to Rumsfeld, you’ve looked into the Abu Ghraib photo scandal, you’ve talked to McNamara, is there anything else left to explore in terms of war? Anyone else you still need to talk to?
I’d like to give it a rest for a little while. I’m making a feature this year. There’s time still left to do that sort of thing again, but not right away.
So no Dick Cheney documentary?
Have not.
You’ve mostly made films about outsiders – from politicians, to Stephen Hawking, to the guys in Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, to Fred A. Leuchter – how do you find these people, and how do you select to make films about them?
Oh they choose me, more or less. They present themselves as possibilities. The Fog of War happened because I was making a television series, “First Person,” and I had one possible interview left over, and I thought “Why not give it a try.” He’ll never talk to me, but nothing ventured nothing gained. And much to my amazement, McNamara eventually agreed to make the film with me. And one thing just led to another. As they say.
What of someone who’s not a celebrity, though? Like those four guys in Fast, Cheap & Out of Control?
Well I love those kinds of characters! I have an entire career based on people seemingly of no consequence who are absolutely incredible. And in their own way, amazingly consequential. Maybe not like Donald Rumsfeld, or Robert McNamara, but are really fascinating people.
What was the first record you bought with your own money?
What LP? I was a classical musician who went to Julliard. So I was obsessed with opera and classical music. Obsessed with Wagner, of all things. One of the first LPs I bought with my own money was “Das Rheingold.”
Cool. I think that was one of my dad’s as well. He’s an opera fan.
Wow. Where do you live?
Los Angeles.
I will be there on Tuesday!
For work, or for vacation?
Well, I live in Boston, Massachusetts – Cambridge specifically – but I’m in L.A. all the time. I was in L.A. a week ago, and I got more attention for a commercial I directed in L.A. than I got for The Unknown Known! The Taco Bell commercials with Ronald McDonalds. I gathered some 30 Ronald McDonalds in L.A. to talk about “My Name is Ronald McDonald, and I Love…” the new breakfast from Taco Bell.
There’s surely some sort of cultural comment to be made there, but I’m not the one to make it.
I’m someone with a somewhat checkered career.
Witney Seibold is the head film critic for Nerdist, and a contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
