Jamie Chung and Bryan Greenberg Find Romance in "Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong"

Playing in Theaters

Jamie Chung and Bryan Greenberg Find Romance in Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong

(from Sag Harbor Express Online 2/11/16)

Bryan Greenberg and Jamie Chung in “Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong.”

Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong fits my category Movies That Should Play in Sag Harbor. You won’t have to wait until tomorrow to see Emily Ting’s debut feature, because this Hong Kong-set romance opens this weekend, at the Village East Cinema on 12th Street and Second Avenue in NYC and around the country. “Ruby (Jamie Chung), a Chinese American toy designer from L.A., visits Hong Kong for the first time on business. Finding herself stranded, she meets Josh (Bryan Greenberg), an American expat who shows her the city. Meandering through nighttime streets pulsating with energy and possibility, they fall into a winding and carefree conversation, buoyed by an undeniable attraction.” There is only one problem with their perfect “first date,” which Josh admits to Ruby–he has a girlfriend.

They part ways but run into each other a year later, after she has moved to Hong Kong. He still has his girlfriend and now she is engaged to someone back in America. But on their second night together, their attraction is even stronger and things become increasingly intense. We sense they were meant to be together for the next hundred years, but do they realize it, too? You will find that the Ruby and Josh have so much chemistry because they are played by the immensely charming Jamie Chong (terrific in the little known Knife Fightand as Mulan on TV’s Once Upon a Time) and Bryan Greenberg (HBO’s acclaimedUnscripted and October Road), who were engaged when they filmed this movie and married last Halloween. Fresh from being interviewed on Today, the two stars had breakfast and this conversation with me this Thursday in a very loud and crowded Le Pain Quotidien across from NBC.

Danny Peary: Bryan, I know that both you and Emily Ting went to Tisch, before she produced a couple of movies you were in. Did you meet there?

Jamie Chung, Emily Ting and Bryan Greenberg.

Bryan Greenberg: We were there at the same time but didn’t know each other. That’s the way NYU is. We “reconnected” on The Kitchen, which she produced with a lot of other NYU alums who I didn’t know either before working on that film. Then we worked together on A Year and Change, and while we were working on that she gave me the script for Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong for Jamie and me to read.

DP: So you were brought in as a team.

BG: Yes, we were engaged then.

DP: Jamie, did you know Emily at that time?

Jamie Chung: Yes, because I also did A Year and Change, in a tiny role. She was the producer and from that brief introduction, she told Bryan that there was this script she wanted both of us to read. She sent it over to see if we wanted to do it and we really loved it.

DP: In the production notes, Emily says you two to give her back “really good notes in re-working the script” and she “went through two months of intensive re-writes with their guidance.” What were your suggestions?

BG: The script was great. The dialogue flowed, the core of it was there but it just needed a little bit of a polish. The biggest thing was that after the two acts in Hong Kong there was also a third act set in Los Angeles. It was just a whole other thing and we all fell in love with the idea that it all take place in Hong Kong, which meant extending the film by making the second act a little longer. So we worked with Emily on that. She was super-collaborative but we don’t want to take any credit for the film you see.

JC: It is all Emily. The skeletons are definitely there but our thinking was from a character perspective, because that’s how we read scripts. We didn’t think of the story as a whole, which is what Emily did and is so hard to do. From my perspective–in the second act, when Ruby and Josh meet again after a year, there was nothing in the script that held her back from getting together with Josh. We needed something to tie her down a little bit, like give her a secret. Her secret was she was engaged. That kind of helped to pull her back a little bit…

BG: It raised the stakes.

JC: Right, it raised the stakes because she’s torn about what to choose. That was something we came up with together.

DP: If the first time they met, Josh didn’t have a girlfriend, would that have been a good time for them to begin a relationship or would it have been too early for them?

JC: The story would have ended there! Nobody wants to watch a movie about how much in love two people are. I feel it’s more interesting to watch imperfect people, imperfect couples. There’s got to be conflict. That’s what drives every story.

DP: Emily says she’s a big fan of Before Sunrise and the sequels and they were an influence on this, as is obvious. In the first movie, the characters played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy are young. If she had a boyfriend and he had a girlfriend back home it wouldn’t matter because of their ages. But your characters are older, with career responsibilities and a few more years of life and the maturity to make long-term commitments with another person.

JC: Yeah. The wok is one clear difference that sticks out with me. [Unlike the two young travelers in Before Sunrise] Ruby is in Hong Kong because of her new job. It’s not the job she wants to do but she knows she has to make some money with the toys before she can begin her own fashion line, which is what she really wants. Josh has a pretty great job in finance.

BG: But Josh is young enough to make a career switch. [He wants to become a writer, as Ethan Hawke’s character becomes.]

JC: It’s a quarter-century crisis.

BG: He’s old enough to be successful at something but young enough to make a pivot.

DP: Bryan, when they first meet, when Josh is taking a break from the party where his girlfriend is, and Ruby asks him for directions, would he have volunteered to walk her to her destination if she had been a guy?

BG (laughing): He was have said, “Hey, man, don’t you have an iPhone? Pull it out!”

DP: So immediately he realizes he’s doing something wrong?

BG: Yeah, that’s the beauty of this film. It really focuses in on that gray area of what is and what is not cheating–and the morality of actions, even when they are not physical. The nuance is fascinating and I applaud Emily for exploring that.

DP: Jamie, if Josh was wearing a ring, would Ruby have walked with him to her destination?

BG: I think she would have appreciated his help, regardless. And if he was wearing a ring, she would have felt more at ease, thinking, “He’s not trying to hit on me.” At the beginning, when he first asks her, she refuses him. Then she walks off and realizes how crazy Hong Kong is and she walks back up the stairs and says she does need his help.  I think she would have said yes immediately if he was married. As a grown woman, when a man with a wedding band on is being polite I give him the benefit of the doubt.

DP: As they spend more time together on their walks, do you think Ruby and Josh have the exact same feelings toward each other, or is one way ahead of the other?

BG: It’s hard for me to say. But trying to be objective, I think Ruby is a little more taken by Josh than he is by her at the beginning.

JC: I don’t think so.

BG: You don’t think so?

JC: I don’t think she’s taken by Josh. I think she just appreciates his help. I think she eventually warms up to him.

DP: I don’t totally agree with that because there are expressions Ruby has that indicate she is attracted to him, too–although I’m not disagreeing that he ismore attracted to her.

BG: She makes the choice to come with him. He doesn’t initiate that. He is helping her out but he’s not trying to push her to the next step. But when they meet again a year later, I do think that Josh is the one who is pushing it. He’s the one who is essentially saying, “I know it’s bad but let’s take it a little further.” I think Ruby is more innocent in the first act, because she doesn’t have a boyfriend then, and [not knowing Josh has a boyfriend], she is the one who is pushing it.

DP: I’m not sure if it’s more about her being innocent or naïve as it is her being curious, wondering where things could go.

JC: It’s always what ifs. “What if I’m making a mistake?” “What if this is the man of my life?” “What if my boyfriend back home is the man of my life?”

DP: I think one of the hardest things you had to do was to draw on your own experience of falling in love while at the same time remind yourself that Ruby and Josh are two different people.

JC: Yes.

BG: With acting, I think of everything as very short-term, immediate. When I approach the first scene I then think about what I want to do. It’s that near-sighted. So I can’t get caught up in if it’s my life or the character’s life because at that moment what I’m focusing on is so minute.

JC: I agree with that. In that first scene, as the character, you don’t know what’s going to happen; decisions are made in the moment.

BG: We were able to draw on our own history and that influenced a lot of the story, even some of the dialogue. And the idea of white guy dating Asian girls. That’s a little loaded: when he says that, of course I know what that is like. Also: when people, Josh and Ruby, meet for the first time and the timing isn’t right–that’s the same thing that happened to us. When Jamie and I met, the timing wasn’t right…

JC: There was no flirting.

BG: But there was something there.

DP: I’m sure you both saw Annie Hall and remember the scene when Woody Allen is having a polite conversation with Diane Keaton and meanwhile he’s actually wondering what she’s like naked. So when Ruby and Josh are walking down all those steps in Hong Kong and carrying on a civilized conversation, are there wild thoughts going through their heads?

JC: There’s always a subtext. There’s always something between the lines.

BG: It’s “what’s literally happening?” and “what’s actually happening?” That’s how I approach my work. I try to find what’s underneath because there’s always something that’s not on the page.

DP: You two seem so comfortable on screen together, like you’ve been acting together for years. Were you that comfortable?

JC: Yes. Physically we were uncomfortable because it was so hot in Hong Kong but emotionally very comfortable.

BG: Because we already were engaged…

JC: And living together…

BG: And we knew each other so well, so we decided that during filming we’d live in separate places. That created a little distance between us and the characters.

DP: I read in Us Weekly that you did that so it wouldn’t appear that your characters had your own high degree of chemistry, especially when they first met. I assume you filmed this movie chronologically so their chemistry would build.

BG: No. We actually filmed the second act first. I had to shave!

JC: But we did try to film what was in each of the two acts chronologically.

DP: Was there discussion about whether their second meeting a year later was fate, confirming they are destined to be with each other? You spoke earlier about how you two had to reconnect as well.

JC: They happen to meet each other on a boat at the start of the second act. And it’s completely fate because she never takes that ferry to Kowloon, and that where he lives. She’s taken aback because they left their first interaction so abruptly and she happened to move to Hong Kong since the last time they met. She’s a bit scared because now she is engaged. She wants to pick up where they left off or close the book after a final chapter.

DP: I know you have to identify some with your characters, but–and I consider them very likable–have you ever thought about whether they are good people?

JC: I think they want to try to do the right thing. I don’t think Ruby wants to hurt anyone. She certainly doesn’t want to hurt her fiancé back home. She’s the one to say, “I’m cheating.” Josh’s first response is: “We’re not doing anything. This isn’t anything wrong.” He’s in denial and yet he keeps pushing it to the next level, like one stop instead of two stops. It really is a personal decision on where you draw the line in terms of what’s cheating and what’s not.

BG: As actors and artists, it’s not our job to judge these characters, good or bad. I think everyone considers themselves a good person. Even Hitler did. It’s the audience’s decision about whether Josh and Ruby are good people. It could be that it’s a little bit of both and that makes it interesting.

DP: Are we watching them become increasingly attracted to each other, or are we watching them actually fall in love?

JC: I think they’re falling for each other.

BG: Yeah, they’re falling in love and fighting it. Is the juice worth the squeeze? Is it worth it. I know we shouldn’t be doing this but I can’t help but feeling this way. And I don’t know what to do. These characters are asking themselves, “What is the right thing to do?”

JC: I feel that the second act is very strong in regard to that conflict. It has been set up.

DP: Now that you’re married would you play your characters with a different perspective?

JC: I wish I played Ruby with more resistance in the first act. If a guy is hitting on you and you’re not having it but you need something from them–that would be more interesting versus trying to be coy with it.

DP: Well, I’d say Ruby resists him very strongly at the end of the first scene.

BG: No regrets. No looking back.

DP: Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy do a lot of talking when walking in Richard Linklater’s trilogy. Unlike you two, they didn’t walk down stairs, at least as much. It really is an art.

BG: It really is. We had no permits to shoot there. We were just running and gunning.

JC: It was a free-for-all.

BG: We had some amazing takes that you’ll never see. One time a drunken ex-pat walked right toward the camera in the middle of a take. . There were a lot of long takes with us walking and because we were unable to control the situation, we just had to adapt to it. It was difficult and challenging.

DP: You both have done a lot of acting but have you ever done anything like this film?

JC: There hasn’t been anything so character-focused, with just two lead characters. I’ve never done anything like this.

BG: I’ve never done anything this intimate. This is one-on-one, two scenes, so contained.

DP: Talk about the title Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong. I think it tells us something about the characters, both Americans living in Hong Kong, being unsettled in time and place.

BG: I never thought about it. I do think it’s a great title. I think this movie is very much about that city. It’s a character in the film and it is being introduced to western audiences in a way they’ve never seen before outside of action films.   This is the first romantic film I’ve seen set in Hong Kong. I didn’t know about this city and was surprised by how progressive it is. It’s a crazy, advanced city. I feel like it’s a day ahead and L.A. is a day behind.

DP: In her director’s statement, Emily Ting, who has spent a lot of time there, describes Hong Kong as being a “magical” but “sometimes alienating metropolis.” I won’t give away the ending, but IF Josh and Ruby end up together, do you think that they’d stay in Hong Kong or return to America?

JC: They could get away and start fresh.

BG: Maybe, or they could set up shop in Kowloon.

DP: Was it a completely romantic setting in your view, or did you want it to be partly alienating?

JC: I liked getting lost in the crowd. I thought it was romantic.

BG: Very romantic.

Evans and Sands' Riveting "What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy" Now in Theaters

Playing in Theaters

Evans and Sands' Riveting What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy Now in Theaters

(from Sag Harbor Express Online on November 5, 2015)

By Danny Peary

What Our Fathers Did :A Nazi Legacy fits my category Movies That Should Play in Sag Harbor. I wrote the same thing after it played at the Tribeca Film Festival in April before its main title and subtitle were flipped to how it is now. When I first posted I wrote:

Philippe Sands (left) and David Evans

“I predict this stirring documentary by English director David Evans (Fever Pitch, TV’s Downton Abbey and Shameless) will be playing all over world for years to come.” This Friday it is getting its theatrical release, in New York at the Lincoln Plaza at 1886 Broadway and Los Angeles, with more cities to follow. Try not to miss it because, as I wrote then: “It takes its place in the pantheon of documentaries about how the Holocaust is viewed by people today, including by those whose parents and grandparents experienced it firsthand.”

Geoffrey Gilmore, the Director of the Tribeca Film Festival, wrote [the bracketed additions are mine], “Can you imagine what it means to grow up as a child of a mass murderer? Hans Frank and Otto von Wächter were indicted as war criminals for their roles in WWII. Nazi Governors [in Ukraine] and consultants to Hitler himself, the two were collectively responsible for thousands of deaths. But what stood out to Philippe Sands [who narrates the film and is one of the film’s three central figures] were the impressions they left on their sons. While researching the Nuremberg trials, the human rights lawyer came across the two men who re-focused his studies: Nikolas Frank [who reviles Hans for being an uncaring father and because of his war crimes] and Horst von Wächter [who shrugs off evidence and insists his father tried only to help Jews]. The men hold polar opposite view on the men who raised them.”

Horst von Wächter (left) and Niklas Frank look at a marker for massacred Jews at this site, while the emotional Sands weeps with his back toward them.

This is how Evans summarized his film for Indiewire: “Three men journey through Europe to the killing fields of war-time Poland; one of them is Jewish [the British Sands, whose grandfather’s family was exterminated in Ukraine], the other two are sons of senior Nazis. It’s about the massive swells of historical destiny and the tiny moments that stay in a person’s memory forever: about the roots of Ukrainian nationalism in the bloody turmoil of the Second World War, and about the time when an unloving father dabbed a bit of shaving foam on his little son’s nose; about a happy childhood shattered because Hitler was defeated, and about the origins of international criminal law as we now know it; about a Jewish man who escapes the Nazis, and his grandson, who wanted this story to be told.”

Evans and Sands are now promoting this important documentary. I am fortunate to have had this conversation with them during the Tribeca Film Festival.

Danny Peary: I was really moved by your film. I saw it as soon as I could, at a pre-festival screening.

Philippe Sands: I’m curious why you sought it out.

DP: There were a couple of reasons. Foremost, the denial theme fascinates me. There was a great Israeli film here four years ago called The Flat by Aaron Goldfinger.

PS: I did see it. It is a great film.

DP: If you remember, the daughter of a former Nazi was helping Goldfinger piece together the strange story of his own Jewish grandparents, who kept up a friendship with the Nazi and his wife long after the war. She claims her father was just a bureaucrat, but when he confronts her with evidence that her father was a high-level Nazi who worked closely with Adolf Eichmann, she has this sick look beneath her shaky smile. I wondered what she was feeling all through her body.

PS: I remember that well.

DP: Also intriguing about your movie is the idea of Nazis carrying on their everyday lives while atrocities go on right down the road. Some of the images in the film of these smiling Nazis really struck me hard. David, tell me why you wanted to include that.

David Evans: Because the film is about domesticity, it’s about families. Almost to an extreme the initial appeal of the film to the audience, if you like, is that it’s about a family and a familial relationship, where some members of the family happen to be senior Nazis. That was always going to be the unique spectacle of the film, right from the very beginning when Philippe said he met this guy who told him amazing stories of his childhood. Immediately you start to hear the things that Nikolas Frank says about his kindly nurse who cared for him when he was young boy and in his little story he says, “Whenever my mother came back she said, ‘I just want it to be me and the children,’ but after five minutes, she was telling the nurse, ‘No, no, no, it’s making me too nervous. you need to take them away.” Without needing to try very hard, you are immediately starting to make connections with Nikolas’s family. That’s because his stories make you think about your own parents; or you have some personal, familial connection to what his domestic life was like. So there’s this momentary forgetfulness that the person he’s talking about is the wife of a mass murderer. That’s the way into the film.

DP: Philippe, in terms of writing the script, how did you go about it? Was it written to be chronological or were you prepared to move text from one place to another as events unfolded? And how much could you predict in advance?

PS: I think the “written by” part of it is generous. I’d been researching a book to come out next year, about two different men [the international lawyers who prosecuted Nikolas Frank’s father Hans Frank, at Nuremberg, leading to his execution].   And out of that spun an article for the Financial Times. That was about my meeting with Horst von Wächter. And David read the article and thought it would made an interesting film. And what we used was the raw material from my article to construct a narrative that then wrote itself. The film originally was going to end with the scene in the Purcell Room in London, when Horst, Nikolas, and I were on the stage for a public discussion. Firstly, they had originally bailed out of such a thing, so I thought it wouldn’t happen.

DP: They both bailed?

PS: Horst bailed. And then Horst said, “No, I’ll do it.” So my “writing” is: me saying, “Come on, let’s the three of us go to London.”

DE: To be honest, it’s not the most important thing about the film but we took a lot of care over how to credit Philippe. And I think he’s being too modest because we never would have had a platform to make this film had there not been this vast reservoir of data that Philippe had already accessed—maybe doing research for his book. But when we started filming the one-on-one interviews with Nikolas and Horst, which form the backbone of the first twenty to thirty minutes of the film, we were basing them on the huge amount of information that Philippe already knew about both of their fathers’ lives.

PS: I knew exactly what I wanted.

DE: So he went to interview them with an agenda of questions, which was the basis for the rest of the film. So yes, Philippe is right that there was a jumping-off point from all that–but that was a script, really. At one stage we thought—given the huge amount of stuff you shoot for documentaries—that we could have made a very interesting film by merely expanding that first section into something more comprehensive than we allowed it to be. That could have been the entire film, but it would have been a different film. But Philippe was a writer in that respect, vis-à-vis the whole issue about him now saying, it’s not quite right to call him the writer.

PS (laughing): I thought it was “generous,” not “not quite right.”

DE: I’m not quite sure how we could better describe it, but I knew I didn’t want Philippe to be credited in any way as the presenter of the film. Philippe began by expecting not to be in the movie at all. Originally, he thought he would be the unseen person asking the questions.

DP: That’s what your role is.

DE: Yes, I ended up being that guy, but originally it was going to be Philippe. When he moved in front of the camera I was very resistant to–and I still am–people assuming that whatever he says is in total concert with what the film is saying, like it is when Simon Schema is in front of the camera on the BBC and whatever he says is meant to express the truth of the story. But I think it’s much stronger that Philippe is allowed to be a kind of free agent in front of the camera and have has his own emotional reasons for saying certain things and pursuing certain lines. When you get beyond the opening section of the film, I hope it’s evident to the audience that just because Philippe says something, it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the 100% truth of the film.

DP: An extremely emotional moment is when Philippe is at the Ukraine grave site and is in obvious distress. Did you ever feel the urge to walk in front of the camera and see if he was okay?

PS: No, absolutely not.

DP: Were you then thinking of yourself as being objective rather than subjective?

DE: Nearly all of the time I’m a dramatist rather than a documentary-maker. My actual bread and butter filmmaking experience is entirely television drama, and has been for years. So I felt subjective, I certainly didn’t feel objective, but my subjective gaze had to do with truth to character rather than anything else. So I never would have dreamt of intruding in a moment that was clearly intensely dramatic. Why would I do that?

DP: I know you wouldn’t do it, but I wondered if you had the urge.

DE: No! Well, I had the urge to make this moment last as long as possible, without interrupting. But you should ask Philippe about that moment.

DP: Philippe, you were in the meadow outside Lvov in Ukraine, where there is a marker to commemorate the 3,500 Jews, including your grandfather’s family, who were shot dead by the Nazis under orders given by both men’s fathers. You are standing with your back to the camera and to Nikolas and Horst, who is refusing to admit his father was in any way responsible. You were in your own space and I am sure you were angry at Horst. What was going on in my mind?

PS: That was the third time I had been to that site. The first two times I did been with a local Ukrainian friend. The three of us had just had the rather intense session in the destroyed synagogue, a scene in the film. And I was pissed at Horst, really pissed. And it was baking hot, 90 degrees, and we were being bitten to death by mosquitoes. So I’m very uncomfortable, and at that point I’m thinking, I’m with the sons of the two men who were most responsible for the massacre. I wasn’t thinking any more, I zoned out, and just moved closer to the victims in my family.

DP: You’re literally on top.

PS: It’s a huge sandpit that is filled with water, not earth. You could dive in there and pick up bones. And so it was my desire to be close to the victims. We were all miked up and if you listen very attentively, you hear a sound, and it’s not clear what it is. Actually I’m crying. And the two of them have gone to look at what is an unmarked grave. A private person put that thing up, and every five years it gets destroyed, and the private person has to pay for it to be put back.

DP: Still near Lvov, you soon attend a gathering of Nazis who are burying the newly discovered remains of German and Ukranian soldiers who were killed in World War II.   And they treat Horst royally because they so admire his father. How were you able to handle that without instantly needing to shower?

PS: That was shocking. That was shocking. We drove out there because it was Horst’s idea. He said, “Our visit coincides with the 71st anniversary of the Galica SS division. We’ve gone to the burned down synagogue and we’ve gone out to the mass grave, and he’s feeling pretty beaten up by the whole thing. And then all of a sudden, there are these guys who think he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread–and “your dad’s great!” They were giving out photographs of his dad and they didn’t know we were coming!   We turned up and they were suspicious of us—and Horst turns up as the all-conquering hero, the son of the famous governor.

DP: After watching Horst enjoy being made a hero of these Nazis, Niklas states Horst is a Nazi. Were you agreeing?

PS: No, I say later on that I don’t think Horst is a Nazi. I think he may be a weak person who justifies mass murder. I think he’s a damaged person, I think he’s a shy person. And he’s an apologist for what his father did. No doubt about that. And if being an apologist makes you a Nazi, then…

DP: You don’t think he’s going to go home and contemplate his experience with you and see the film and change his mind?

DE: There is zero chance of Horst ever changing his mind.

DP: Talk about Horst. It seems to me that he wants to be challenged over and over again about his denying his father was monster, and he doesn’t want you or Niklas to give up and go away. He’s the most infuriatingly stubborn person in the world, but he doesn’t hide. Instead he stays with you and says, “hit me again, hit me again and I’ll see if I can still ward you off.” That seems to be his personality to me. Does that make sense to you?

PS: That’s very interesting. When I met Horst for the first time, I was amazed that he would see me and then I was amazed that he opened himself up completely. He gave me access to anything I wanted to look at, he has never once said no, quite the opposite. And I really respected that. I really admired that. [Note: Horst has since donated his entire family archives in the digital form to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.]

DP: Do you feel protective of Horst?

PS: I disagree with a lot of his interpretations of what’s real, but while I’m not actually protective, I feel a protective instinct in particular because of that moment in the film when he describes being at his birthday party when he is six years old. That caught me, and I think David, very unexpectedly. That really made it clear that, “Wow, this guy is seriously traumatized by what happened. “

DE: He wants love.

PS: He is desperate for love.

DP: He misses his mother, not just his father.

PS: For me, that’s the heart of it.  It’s not about his father. There’s a moment when Niklas says his mother was a perfect Nazi, and she always thought what his father did was great. But Horst loves his mother. To me, that’s the key to Horst.

DP: Now let me ask about Niklas. At the end of the last scene, after a whole film of his saying only negative things about his father–except for one time Hans Frank tenderly and inexplicably put shaving cream on his nose–there’s suddenly a moment when he starts to be a little apologetic about him. Was that a shock to you when he did that?

DE: Niklas is a funny mixture, and watching that part of film always reminds me very, very vividly of his very enigmatic disposition. All the time we were making the film, I was scrutinizing the three of them, when I was filming and when I wasn’t filming. I was thinking, “What kind of mood are they in, what kind of material are we likely to get?” And often Niklas was at the same time very giving and open and equally very unpredictable in terms of the kinds of emotions that flickered through him.

DP: He seems consistent in the movie until the end, so is that true?

DE: Well, I’ll give you an example from that sequence, which I think of as being very characteristic of Nik. He’s sitting there very, very gravely, and he said—and this is not some sort of distortion brought about by the editing–“Now that I find that I’m here in my father’s cell, I do feel a certain amount of pity.” And in response to that, Philippe, understandably empathizing: says, “Is it more intense given that we’re doing this on the actual anniversary of your father’s death?” And Nik says, “No!” Like: “What a dumb thing to ask, no it’s not!” He goes very blithely, “In fact by now he was already dead!” Then he says, “There’s another thing I want to tell you that’s really funny.” And now I’m thinking, “Oh, where is he going with this?” That was very much Nik’s personality. He looked like he was near tears, then he tells us a story about his father kneeling, and he’s very critical of organized religions, so he gets in a little jibe: “I bet that Catholic priest loved it when he opened the door and my father was kneeling.” That’s what I mean–one moment he’s very sad, then he cracks a joke, then he’s making jabs at the Catholic church. He’s just a bit hard to figure out..

DP: I’m surprised by that. Philippe, do you agree with David’s take on Niklas?

PS: Yeah. I’ve had to manage a very complex relationship with him. What David didn’t say is that Niklas also likes to be in control of what’s going on.

DP: And it frustrates him that Horst refuses to listen to him and change his mind about his father.

PS: Not just Horst, he was trying to get control of all of us. There were times when I’m wondering, “Is Nicklas playing me?” Or: “Is Horst playing me?” It’s not a hierarchical relationship Niklas and I have where I say what he should do; everything has to be worked out. There’s give and there’s take. So one moment Niklas will say, “Okay, you can use this video footage.” And then he’ll have second thoughts. And we’re like, “Oh my god, here we go again.” And then there’s a month and a half of trying to negotiate with him. Maybe, I’d send him an email with a comma in the wrong place, and he’d interpret it to mean something that was not intended. So you’re treading on broken glass.

DP: So Horst is actually an easier person.

PS: In a curious way. This did come up after the stage debate in the Purcell Room. We wondered whether Horst was just more comfortable—his life’s a bit easier. And yet at the end of the day I don’t think that’s where it ends up. Niklas is very tough on himself, and Horst is not in the same way, not in the same style.

DP: Usually when you make a documentary with living people you want them to see the film. Do you care if Niklas and Horst see the film?

PS: Yeah.

DE: I may well be setting myself up for a fall here, but I wouldn’t like it if either of them felt like they had been misrepresented. The film was made in an atmosphere of mutual trust, which I’ve never ever tried to exploit in the editing process, during which I have a vast amount of power and nobody has the ability to go against my choices at that stage. But I don’t believe I’ve misrepresented Horst; in fact I went out of my way to make sure that whenever he said something that seemed completely, baselessly contentious, I really tried to go out on a limb to make sure that we gave him the opportunity to give what he said some sort of context so somebody watching the film would understand why he might have made that remark. Otherwise what he said could be used to make him look like a kind of black-hearted psychopath, which Philippe knows he is not. But sometimes he could be his own worst enemy, as when he suddenly turns around at the site the Jews were massacred and talks about Austrian casualties there in the first world war! Still I very much like to think that Horst would watch this film and recognize that the portrayal of him is fair.

DP: Is it meaningful for you two to be at Tribeca with the film?

PS: Very meaningful for me. My wife and I live in London but she is a New Yorker and our kids were born here in Manhattan. So it’s like being home. Of course given that there is a big Jewish theme, New York is a pretty logical place for it to play. But it’s not a film only about Jews and Nazis and Poles. It’s a film about a more universal theme–fathers and sons and how that complex relationship turns out.

DE: I have to say that we began this film with a great deal of enthusiasm, but with a very modest sense of what it might become. And to be here and to be having conversations like this one, and to have had the big premiere yesterday, it really feels like an accolade. I’m just delighted to have a premiere at a festival of this importance.

PS: It was incredibly intense yesterday. I’m a teacher in a classroom and a lawyer in a courtroom, and so I know when you’ve got a room and I know when you’ve lost a room. The room where we played our movie had real tension. You looked down on this sea of faces and you know from the way they are looking at you of the experiences they’ve been through.

DP: Finally, Philippe, on screen you are in despair that Horst won’t change his mind and admit to his father’s crimes, but is it important that he change his mind?

PS: No. I would have preferred that he change his mind because it would have made me less frustrated. But that he doesn’t makes for a better film.

TFF: A Devoted Father Rescues His Innocent Son from Prison in the Shocking Documentary Dream/Killer

Playing at Festival

TFF: A Devoted Father Rescues His Innocent Son from Prison in the Shocking Documentary Dream/Killer

(from Sag Harbor Express Online May 22, 2015)

Ryan Ferguson, when imprisoned for murder.

By Danny Peary

Dream/Killer fits my category Movies That Should Play in Sag Harbor.  For now, Andrew Jenks’s fascinating and disturbing documentary about our faulty justice system is playing on the festival circuit.  Thirty-year-old Ryan Ferguson was one of the nicest people I met at the recent Tribeca Film Festival.  After I interviewed him and his father, Bill, Ryan and I ran into each other a few minutes later and we chatted about basketball and life in Florida.  He was polite, cheerful, and so easy to hang out with, that I was almost tempted to take him up on his offer to play hoops with him and his dad sometime. Our conversation was like any other I’d have with a cool, respectful, and likable thirty-year-old sports fan.  In fact, I momentarily forgot that not long before, as the movie details, Ryan spent nearly ten years in a Missouri prison on a trumped-up murder charge, and that if his amateur-detective father hadn’t devoted his life to finding evidence to help celebrated Chicago lawyer Kathleen Zellner overturn the conviction, Ryan would be in prison for another thirty years.   What I still find amazing, a month after meeting Ryan and doing the following interview with him and the remarkable Bill Ferguson, is that he seems stable rather than tortured that he was deprived of a third of his life, and that he bears no ill feelings toward the witnesses who were manipulated into lying about him in court, including his friend, Chuck Erickson.  Still in prison because of his coerced confession, Erickson said on the stand that he remembered how he and Ryan murdered Columbia Daily Tribune sports editor Kent Heitholt—but more likely it was something he dreamed.   Any anger Ryan and Bill have is reserved for then-D.A. Kevin Crane who, with help from a few deceitful police officers, framed Ryan in order to get a conviction in the high-profile case and be in line for a judgeship.  If Bill is the hero of his movie, then certainly Crane is the villain.

Ryan Ferguson and his father, Bill Ferguson.

Danny Peary: You two received a standing ovation at the world premiere of Dream/Killer here at the Tribeca Film Festival.  Why do you think people were so moved by your story?

Bill Ferguson: I think the movie resonated with the audience. They could see that Ryan had been badly ill-treated and that the judicial system in Ryan’s case was exposed as being corrupt.  Ryan, I think what really resonated was our connection and fight together, that you and Mom and I and our family said that what happened to you was unacceptable and that we were going to change this and get you justice. We were going to do the right thing and fight together—that to me was the most important thing. That’s what’s so meaningful to me, and I think that’s a beautiful thing you don’t see that very often. Unfortunately a lot of family members aren’t there for one another, and I don’t know how people get through this life without their families because I certainly couldn’t.

DP: Ryan, at the screening,  how hard was it for you to watch this movie?

Ryan Ferguson: It was pretty difficult, specifically watching the trial. That was the worst week of my life.  I really didn’t think there would be a trial, because I still believed in the legal system.  I was sure they would just look at the facts and say, “This guy’s innocent, there’s no case, let him go.”  But then I end up in trial, and it’s like I was in a fishbowl, and these people are looking at me like I am some kind of creep, a shark, you know. And I’m this completely normal person sitting there and if I had lunch with anyone on the jury and it would have been fine, but they were all looking at me with this disgust. And every camera was on and people are trying to take away your life. To go back and watch that was the hardest part.  It brought up so many emotions.

DP: As a viewer, it was heartbreaking to see titles come up on the screen saying you had been in prison two years, five years…then nine years.  Bill, you lived those years one long day at a time, always giving Ryan encouragement.  But when you were alone, did you have lots of moments of despair, or were you really exactly the way you portrayed yourself to him?

BF: I think that is the case.  What energized me was that I kept finding new evidence, new police reports, new information, new research.  Then I would go to the prison and I would share that with Ryan and we would plan what was going to happen the next week, where I was going to go, who I was going to interview, what I’d discover at the crime scene.  So our new strategy kept us going.

DP: But it took almost ten years.

BF: That’s true, there’d be periods of time that not much would be going on. I’d be waiting to hear back from some people or whatever.  Still I don’t think I ever reached a low point.

RF: I don’t think we ever allowed each other to get to a very low point.  We had very frustrating days when we were very upset, and we’d start getting low, but then we stopped.   What’s really interesting–and there’s no way to convey how important this was– is that my father came to the prison every week and my mother came every week and we spent a tremendous amount of time together, so we felt like we had a fight, we had some control, and we could continue our research and find more facts and prove my innocence.  And any time we didn’t have anything to discuss about the case, we would make sure we were in a good place mentally, by talking about doing good things and growing together.

DP: If you had a terrible, terrible, day, would you tell your parents?

RF: Absolutely.   There were certain things I wouldn’t bring up, because there’s no need for them to fear for my safety unnecessarily–if something bad happens it happens. But yeah, most things I would definitely discuss because I knew that they could deal with it, and I knew that if I didn’t talk to them about it, I probably wouldn’t be able to deal with it. Thankfully I had that with my family. I don’t know how prisoners make it without their families. I’m very impressed with the guys in prison who have no family support and are still sane. Because without my mom and dad I would have given up.

DP: You say in the film that you were able to get along with even the toughest prisoners because you were a good basketball player.

RF: That’s right.  It broke down barriers.  My father and I used to play basketball and when I’d play he was there with me, in every bounce of the ball  We still play together–you should play with us!

DP: What percentage of the other prisoners that you met said they were innocent?

RF: It wasn’t a high percentage, actually.  It was less that I would have suspected. I met thousands of guys in there, and maybe a hundred said they were innocent. And a lot of guys that I became close with, especially in higher-level camps, admitted to the crimes that got them imprisoned but had difficulty dealing with the fact that they had done the crimes and how they had ruined their lives. They were always trying to better themselves. They took responsibility, they wanted to grow and get past it, and were looking forward to going out into real life and doing productive things.

DP: Ryan says he believed in the justice system before he was arrested in 2001.  Did you?

BF: Not completely.  I’m a curious person and I consider myself an amateur, armchair historian.  I’ve always been interested in the justice system and read a lot about it, and I always knew that it was imperfect.  I knew about all these cases when innocent people were found guilty.  So when this happened to Ryan, I was not surprised.  And I knew we had to take action immediately.

DP: Do you believe that Kevin Crane, the D.A. who built the false case against you, thought you were innocent and didn’t care?

RF: Exactly.

BF: Here’s what happened with Crane. Whenever the detectives arrested Ryan and Chuck for murder, they told Crane that they had their fingerprints, although they did not.  They said they had blood to match Ryan and Chuck’s, which was untrue, and they said they had the car spotted at the scene.

DP: So it was one lie after another.

BF: It was all assumptions. And they said, “We have eye witnesses.”  So to Crane it seemed like a slum-dunk, they’re definitely guilty.  But then, as it went through the process, they started making discoveries that made it harder to prosecute.  For instance, they found out that their eye witnesses, until they manipulated them, could not identify Ryan.  Also, the fingerprints didn’t match, the DNA did not match, so there was no evidence to convict them. Crane was at the point that he’d either drop the case or go forward. He had this decision to make, and he decided to go forward, and that’s when he started coercing Jerry [a convicted child molester] to lie. That’s when he started creating false police reports in order to make Chuck [who had suffered a blackout at the time of the murder] confess that he and Ryan committed the murder.

DP: Obviously Crane had experience railroading people into jail by creating false evidence and bringing in bullied or manipulated eye witnesses to lie.

RF: Just another day at the office.

BF: He’s good at what he does. He’s very good.

DP: And now he has been rewarded with a judgeship.  Could you have done anything different at the original trial besides hiring a better lawyer?

BF: Well, that would have been helpful right off the bat if we had done that.

RF: But there’s no way we could have known that he wasn’t a good lawyer.

BF: We’ve had people in similar situations contact us and we tell them that the key to your solving the case is to get hold of the discovery.  If it goes to trial, you’ve got to get the trial transcript.  Then you’ve got to take that information and dissect it, and make a timeline and timeframe, and then you put it all that together. Then you’ll see who the witnesses are and who you need to follow up with. You ask: What part of the story doesn’t make sense?   What’s missing?  If you do that, all the information will percolate to the top and you can start to solve the case.

DP: We are told that in our justice system there is “the presumption of innocence.”  But it’s interesting that the reality is: you’re innocent until you’re arrested.

BF: That’s right. I haven’t heard that before.

RF: Me, either.  It’s true.

BF: I like that. Unfortunately.

DP: And how do you prove you’re innocent once you’ve been found guilty?

RF: They don’t want to hear it.  Any witness that is for your side is not credible. Any witness for the state is incredibly credible.

DP: And they get the worst witnesses.

RF: Right, and they’re supposedly credible.  But a little old lady, she’s not credible?  She had a bad day or something like that?

DP: You had the one reliable female eye witness who would have said on the stand if asked, “That’s not him.”  But your bad lawyer was afraid to ask her if you were the person she saw.  Do you think her not being able to identify you would have been enough to get you off, looking back?

RF: I think that when the detectives chose to falsify the police reports and convinced Chuck to lie on the stand, that was when it ended. The case was over at that point, it didn’t matter what anybody else said at that point. Because they had Chuck believing he committed a crime and had him pointing a finger at me for being his accomplice—and the jury just couldn’t see beyond that.

BF: What people really don’t realize is that once you’ve been arrested and interrogated, they’re not interested in justice any more, they’re only interested in what’s going to support the prosecution in getting a conviction.  There was a person that would have been a better suspect, but since they’d already arrested Ryan and Chuck, they decided not to pursue him.  They went in the other direction.

DP: Ryan, you forgive Chuck?

RF: I do. Chuck and Jerry were lied to, threatened, and manipulated by the authorities.  When they testified against me, they had a lot to gain—literally less jail time and their own freedom at some point.   And then when they chose to come forward, because of their consciences, and admit that they lied, they knew they might be subjecting themselves to thirty years in prison for perjury. There’s nothing more powerful than that.

DP: Did you always forgive him? Or did it take a lot of time?

RF: I’m very pragmatic, so once Chuck admitted that he had lied on the stand, I forgave him, because I knew that ultimately the authorities were responsible for my going to prison–not Chuck or Jerry. They are victims as well, both of them.

DP: After your release, you ended up moving from Missouri to Florida.

RF: Yeah, it’s unfortunate that I can’t live in Columbia and I can’t live with my father.  I love that town and a lot of the people in it, but I could never be comfortable there, again.

DP: But why Florida, which also has a dreadful judicial system?

RF: I have family in Florida, so that’s why I’m there.

DP: Andrew Jenks, the director of Dream/Killer and I talked about the burden he had those times when he spoke to you while you were in prison.  He didn’t want to give you too high expectations in regard to his film.  Were you thinking, this documentary is going to get me the attention I need to get me out of jail?  Or had you been in prison for so long and suffered enough setbacks that you didn’t have high expectations on anything?

RF: The latter. You already know. You have it down perfectly. There’s that level. No highs, no lows. To survive, that’s where you have to end up being, and that’s where I was. After ten years. And so I had no expectations of it helping me get out of prison. Hopefully, now the movie will provide an opportunity to spread awareness about my case and other cases, so we can change the legal system.  It helps me and it helps others, that’s it.

DP: Bill, are you doing more work for others like you did for your son?

BF: I am and it’s amazing.  I do think I have a knack for this.  I’m working on about three cases now, and I’ve got ten other people calling me but I have to tell them that I just don’t have the time.  They think I can solve the their cases immediately, but of course it takes time.  And I actually have a real job.  One case  Ryan and I worked on it together and appeared with the gentleman in court.  And he’s free now.

DP: What is it like being at the TriBeCa Film Festival, weird or great?

RF: It has been pretty amazing to me. I love New York, I love the people, I love education, and I feel like people at TriBeCa are passionate about life and want to learn more and grow more.  I love being in this kind of environment.

BF:  It’s been part of a door opening and more and more regular people being able to see that there are problems with the justice system.

Evans and Sands Discuss Fathers and Son in A Nazi Legacy

Playing at Festival

Evans and Sands Discuss Fathers and Son in A Nazi Legacy

(from Sag Harbor Express Online May 14, 2015)

Philippe Sands and David Evans.

By Danny Peary

A Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did fits my category Movies That Should Play in Sag Harbor.  Having seen it a the recent Tribeca Film Festival, I predict this stirring documentary by English director David Evans (Fever Pitch, TV’s Downton Abbey and Shameless)  will be playing all over world for years to come.  It takes its place in the pantheon of documentaries about how the Holocaust is viewed people today, including those whose parents and grandparents experienced it firsthand.  Geoffrey Gilmore, the Director of the Tribeca Film Festival, wrote “Can you imagine what it means to grow up as a child of a mass murderer? Hans Frank and Otto von Wächter were indicated as war criminals for their roles in WWII.  Nazi Governors [in Ukraine] and consultants to Hitler himself, the two are collectively responsible for thousands of deaths.  But what stood out to Philippe Sands [who narrates the film and is one of the film's three central figures] were the impressions they left on their sons.  While researching the Nuremberg trials, the human rights lawyer came across the two men who re-focused his studies: Niklas Frank [who reviles Hans for being a uncaring father and because of his war crimes]  and Horst von Wächter [who shrugs off evidence and insists his father tried only to help Jews].   The men hold polar opposite view on the men who raised them.”  This is how Evans summarized his film for Indiewire: “Three men journey through Europe to the killing fields of war-time Poland; one of them is Jewish [the British Sands, whose grandfather's family was exterminated in Ukraine], the other two are sons of senior Nazis.  It’s about the massive swells of historical destiny and the tiny moments that stay in a person’s memory forever: about the roots of Ukranian nationalism in the bloody turmoil of the Second World War, and about the time when an unloving father dabbed a bit of shaving foam on his little son’s nose; about a happy childhood shattered because Hitler was defeated, and about the origins of international criminal law as we now know it; about a Jewish man who escapes the Nazis, and his grandson, who wanted this story to be told…”  During the festival, I relished the opportunity to have this conversation with Evans and Sands.

Horst von Wächter (left) and Niklas Frank look at a marker for massacred Jews, while the emotional Sands has his back toward them.

Danny Peary: I was really moved by your film. I saw it as soon as I could, at a pre-festival screening.

Philippe Sands: I’m curious why you sought it out.

DP: There were a couple of reasons.  Foremost, the denial theme fascinates me. There was a great Israeli film here four years ago called The Flat by Aaron Goldfinger.

PS: I did see it.  It is a great film.

DP: If you remember, the daughter of the Nazi was helping him piece together the strange story of his own Jewish grandparents, who kept up a friendship with the Nazi and his wife.  When he confronts her with evidence that her father was a high-level Nazi who worked closely with Adolf Eichmann, she has this sick look beneath her shaky smile.  And I just wondered what she was feeling all through her body.

PS: I remember that well.

DP: And the other aspect is the idea of Nazis carrying on their everyday lives while atrocities go on right down the road. Some of the images you have in the film of these smiling Nazis really struck me hard. David, tell me why you wanted to include that.

David Evans: Because the film is about domesticity, it’s about families. Almost to an extreme the initial appeal of the film to the audience, if you like, is that it’s about a family and a familial relationship, where some members of the family happen to be senior Nazis. That was always going to be the unique spectacle of the film, right from the very beginning when Philippe said he met this amazing guy and of the stories he was telling.  Immediately you start to hear the things that Niklas Frank says about his kindly nurse who cared for him when he was young boy and the little story he says, “Whenever my mother came back she said, ‘I just want it to be me and the children,’ but and after five minutes, she was like, ‘No, no, no, it’s making me too nervous. you need to take them away.’” Without needing to try very hard, you are immediately  starting to make connections with Niklas’s family.  That’s because of the way his stories make you think about your own parents; or you have some personal, familial connection to what his domestic life was like.  So there’s this sense of momentary forgetfulness that the person he’s talking about is the wife of a mass murderer. That’s the way into the film.

DP: Philippe, in terms of writing the script, how did you go about it? Was it written to be chronological or were you prepared to move text from one place to another as events unfolded? And how much could you predict in advance?

PS: I think the “written by” part of it is generous. I’d been researching a book to come out next year, about two different men [international lawyers who prosecuted Niklas Frank's father Hans Frank, at Nuremberg, leading to his execution].   And out of that spun an article for the Financial Times.  That was about my meeting with Horst von Wachter.  And David read the article and thought it would made an interesting film. And what we used was the raw material from my article to construct a narrative that then wrote itself. The film originally was going to end with the scene in the Purcell Room in London, when Horst, Niklas, and I were on the stage for a public discussion.  Firstly, they had originally bailed out of such a thing, so I thought it wouldn’t happen.

DP: They both bailed?

PS: Horst bailed.  And then Horst said, “No, I’ll do it.”  So my “writing” is: me saying, “Come on, let’s the three of us  go to London.”

DE: To be honest, it’s not the most important thing about the film but we took a lot of care over how to credit Philippe. And I think he’s being too modest because we never would have had a platform to make this film had there not been this vast reservoir of data that Philippe had already accessed—maybe doing research for his book.  But when we started filming the one-on-one interviews with Niklas and Horst, which form the backbone of the first twenty to thirty minutes of the film, we were basing them on the huge amount of information that Philippe already knew about both of their fathers’ lives.

PS: I knew exactly what I wanted.

DE: So he went to interview them with an agenda of questions, which was the basis for the rest of the film.  So yes, Philippe is right that there was a jumping-off point from all that–but that was a script, really.  At one stage we thought—given the huge amount of stuff you shoot for documentaries—that we could have made a very interesting film by merely expanding that first section into something more comprehensive than we allowed it to be.  That could have been the entire film, but it would have been a different film. But Philippe was a writer in that respect, vis-a-vis the whole issue about him now saying, it’s not quite right to call him the writer.

PS (laughing): I thought it was “generous,” not “not quite right.”

DE: I’m not quite sure how we could better describe it, but I knew I didn’t want Philippe to be credited in any way as the presenter of the film.   Philippe began by expecting not to be in the movie at all.  Originally, he thought he would be the unseen person asking the questions.

DP: That’s what your role is.

DE: Yes, I ended up being that guy, but originally it was going to be Philippe.  When he moved in front of the camera I was very resistant to–and I still am–people assuming that whatever he says is in total concert with what the film is saying, like it is when Simon Schama is in front of the camera on the BBC and whatever he says is meant to express the truth of the story.  But I think it’s much stronger that Philippe is allowed to be a kind of free agent in front of the camera and have has his own emotional reasons for saying certain things and pursuing certain lines. When you get beyond the opening section of the film, I hope it’s evident to the audience that just because Philippe says something, it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the 100% truth of the film.

DP:  An extremely emotional moment is when Philippe is at the Ukraine grave site and is in obvious distress. Did you ever feel the urge to walk in front of the camera and see if he was okay?

PS: No, absolutely not.

DP: Were you then thinking of yourself as being objective rather than subjective?

DE: Nearly all of the time I’m a dramatist rather than a documentary-maker. My actual bread and butter filmmaking experience is entirely television drama, and has been for years. So I felt subjective, I certainly didn’t feel objective, but my subjective gaze had to do with truth to character rather than anything else. So I never would have dreamt of intruding in a moment that was clearly intensely dramatic. Why would I do that?

DP: I know you wouldn’t do it, but I wondered if you had the urge.

DE: No! Well, I had the urge  to make this moment last as long as possible, without interrupting. But you should ask Philippe about that moment.

DP: Philippe, you were in the meadow outside Lviv in Ukraine, where there is a marker to commemorate the 3,500 Jews, including your grandfather’s family, who were shot dead by the Nazis under orders given by both men’s fathers. You are standing with your back to the camera and to Niklas and Horst, who is refusing to admit his father was in any way responsible.  You were in your own space and I am sure you are angry at Horst.  What was going on in my mind?

PS: That was the third time I had been to that site.  The first two times I did been with a local Ukranian friend.  We had just had the rather intense session in the destroyed synagogue, a scene in the film.  And I was pissed at Horst, really pissed.  And it was baking hot, 90 degrees, and we were being bitten to death by mosquitoes. So I’m very uncomfortable, and at that point I’m thinking, I’m with the sons of the two men who were most responsible for the massacre.  I wasn’t thinking any more, I zoned out, and just moved closer to the victims in my family.

DP: You’re literally on top.

PS: It’s a huge sandpit that is filled with water, not earth. You could dive in there and pick up bones. And so it was my desire to be close to the victims.  We were all miked up and if you listen very attentively, you hear a sound, and it’s not clear what it is.  and actually I’m crying. And the two of them have gone to look at what is an unmarked grave.  A private person put that thing up, and every five years it gets destroyed, and the private person has to pay for it to be put back.

DP: Still near Lviv, you soon after film a gathering of Nazis who are burying the newly discovered remains of German and Ukranian soldiers who were killed in World War II.   And they treat Horst royally because they so admire his father.  How were you able to handle that without instantly showering several times?

PS: That was shocking. That was shocking. We drove out there because it was Horst’s idea. He said, “Our visit coincides with the the 71^st anniversary of the Galica SS division.  We’ve gone to the burned down synagogue and we’ve gone out to the mass grave, and he’s feeling pretty beaten up by the whole thing. And then all of a sudden, there are these guys who think he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread–and “your dad’s great!”  They were giving out photographs of his dad and they didn’t know we were coming!   We turned up and they were suspicious of us—and Horst turns up as the all-conquering hero, the son of the famous governor.

DP: After watching Horst enjoy being made a hero of these Nazis, Niklas states Horst is a Nazi.  Were you agreeing?

PS: No, I say later on that I don’t think Horst is a Nazi. I think he may be a weak person who justifies mass murder.  I think he’s a damaged person, I think he’s a shy person.  And he’s an apologist for what his father did. No doubt about that.  And if being an apologist makes you a Nazi, then…

DP: You don’t think he’s going to go home and contemplate his experience with you and see the film and change his mind?

DE: There is zero chance of Horst ever changing his mind.

DP: Talk about Horst.  In my opinion, it seems that he wants to be challenged over and over again about his denying his father was monster, and he doesn’t want you or Niklas to give up and go away.  He’s the most infuriatingly stubborn person in the world, but he doesn’t hide.  Instead he stays with you and says, “hit me again, hit me again and I’ll see if I can still ward you off.” That seems to be his personality to me.  Does that make sense to you?

PS: That’s very interesting.  When I met Horst for the first time, I was amazed that he would see me and then I was amazed that he opened himself up completely.  He gave me access to anything I wanted to look at, he has never once said no, quite the opposite.  And I really respected that. I really admired that. [Note: Horst has since donated his entire family archives in the digital form to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.]

DP: So you feel protective of him?

PS: I disagree with a lot of his interpretations of what’s real, but while I’m not actually protective, I feel a protective instinct in particular because of that moment in the film when he describes being at his birthday party when he is six years old. That caught me, and I think David, very unexpectedly. That really made it clear that, “Wow, this guy is seriously traumatized by what happened. ”

DE: He wants love.

PS: He is desperate for love.

DP: He misses his mother, not just his father.

PS: For me, that’s the heart of it.   It’s not about his father. There’s a moment when Niklas says his mother was a perfect Nazi, and she always thought what his father did was great.  But Horst loves his mother. To me, that’s the key to Horst.

DP: Now let me ask about Niklas.  At the end of the last scene, after a whole film of saying only negative things about his father–except for one time Hans Frank put shaving cream on his son’s nose–there’s suddenly a moment when he starts to be a little apologetic about him.  Was that a shock to you when he did that?

DE: Niklas is a funny mixture, and watching that part of film always reminds me very, very vividly of his very enigmatic disposition.  All the time we were making the film, I was scrutinizing the three of them, when I was filming and when I wasn’t filming.  I was thinking, “What kind of mood are they in, what kind of material are we likely to get?” And often Niklas was at the same time a very giving and open and equally very, very unpredictable in terms of the kinds of emotions that flicker through him.

DP: He seems consistent in the movie until the end, so is that true?

DE: Well, I’ll give you an example from that sequence, which I think of as being very characteristic of Nik.  He’s sitting there very, very gravely, and he said—and this is not some sort of distortion brought about by the editing–”Now that I find that I’m here in my father’s cell, I do feel a certain amount of pity.” And in response to that, Philippe, understandably empathizing: says, “Is it more intense given that we’re doing this on the actual anniversary of your father’s death?”  And Nik says, “No!”  Like: “What a dumb thing to ask, no it’s not!” He goes very blithely, “In fact by now he was already dead!”  Then he says, “There’s another thing I want to tell you that’s really funny.”  And now I’m thinking, “Oh, where is he going with this?” That was very much Nik’s personality.  He looked like he was near tears, then he tells us a story about his father kneeling, and he’s very critical of organized religions, so he gets in a little jibe: “I bet that Catholic priest loved it when he opened the door and my father was kneeling.”  That’s what I mean–one moment he’s very sad, then he cracks a joke, then he’s making jabs at the Catholic church. He’s just a bit hard to figure out..

DP: I’m surprised by that. Philippe, do you agree with David’s take on Niklas?

PS: Yeah.  I’ve had to manage a very complex relationship with him.  What David didn’t say is that Niklas also likes to be in control of what’s going on.

DP: And it frustrates him that Horst refuses to listen to him and change his mind about his father.

PS:  Not just Horst, he was trying to get control of all of us.  There were times when I’m wondering, “Is Nicklas is playing me?”  Or “Is Horst playing me?”  It’s not a hierarchical relationship Niklas and I have where I say what he should do; everything has to be worked out. There’s give and there’s take. So one moment Niklas will say, “Okay, you can use this video footage.” And then he’ll have second thoughts.  And we’re like, “Oh my god, here we go again.” And then there’s a period of a month and a half of trying to negotiate with him.  Maybe, I’d send him an email with a comma in the wrong place, and he’d interpret it to mean something that was not intended. So you’re treading on broken glass.

DP: So Horst is actually an easier person.

PS:  In a curious way. This did come up after the stage debate in the Purcell Room.  We wondered whether Horst was just more comfortable—his life’s a bit easier. And yet at the end of the day I don’t think that’s where it ends up. Niklas is very tough on himself, and Horst is not in the same way, not in the same style.

DP: Usually when you make a documentary with living people you want them to see the film. Do you care if Niklas and Horst see the film?

PS: Yeah.

DE: I may well be setting myself up for a fall here, but I wouldn’t like it if either of them felt like they had been misrepresented. The film was made in an atmosphere of mutual trust, which I’ve never ever tried to exploit in the editing process, during which I have a vast amount of power and nobody has the ability to go against my choices at that stage. But I don’t believe I’ve misrepresented Horst; in fact I went out of my way to make sure that whenever he said something that seemed completely, baselessly contentious, I really tried to go out on a limb to make sure that we gave him the opportunity to give what he said some sort of context so somebody watching the film would understand why he might  have made that remark.  Otherwise what he said could be used to make him look like a kind of black-hearted psychopath, which Philippe knows he is not. But sometimes he could be his own worst enemy, as when he suddenly turns around at the site the Jews were massacred and talks about Austrian casualties there in the first world war!  Still I very much like to think that Horst would watch this film and recognize that the portrayal of him is fair.

DP: Is it meaningful for you two to be at Tribeca with the film?

PS: Very meaningful for me.  My wife and I live in London but she is a New Yorker and our kids were born here in Manhattan.  So it’s like being home.  Of course given that there is a big Jewish theme, New York is a pretty logical place for it to play.  But it’s not a film only about Jews and Nazis and Poles. It’s a film about a more universal theme–fathers and sons and how that complex relationship turns out.

DE: I have to say that we began this film with a great deal of enthusiasm, but with a very modest sense of what it might become. And to be here and to be having conversations like this one, and to have had the big premiere yesterday, it really feels like an accolade.  I’m just delighted to have a premiere at a festival of this importance.

PS: It was incredibly intense yesterday. I’m a teacher in a classroom and a lawyer in a courtroom, and so I know when you’ve got a room and I know when you’ve lost a room. The room where we played our movie had real tension. You looked down on this sea of faces and you know from the way they are looking at you of the experiences they have been through.

DP: Finally, Philippe, on screen you are in despair that Horst won’t change his mind and admit to his father’s crimes, but is it important that he change his mind?

PS: No. I would have preferred that he change his mind because it would have made me less frustrated.  But that he doesn’t makes for a better film.