I went down to Jasper - with Steven Miller, who ultimately became the white cinematographer on the film - about two weeks after the murder because there was a Klan rally being held there, with the idea that there was a real disconnect - the fact that there was this vicious murder of a black man by white men - and to find out what was going on. We shot some video and some stills. I saw this really complex town, much different than the sort of cliche image I had of a town where a murder like this would take place. I came back, talked to Marco about it some more, and we came to the conclusion that there was a film to be made and that the best way to attack it was with segregated crews. It seems like such an obvious idea that we assumed that somebody else would have taken this approach before. When we poked around and looked, we didn't find any films that had been done this way.

TR: Marco, when did you first feel like there was a film to be made?

MW: Whitney was, let's say initially, looking to flesh out a movie. I was responding to his ideas as we talked on an ongoing basis. There-for lack of a better way of describing it, because I don't think either of us really remembers a particular "eureka" moment-was this understanding that a provocative, challenging film could be made about race relations in this country if Whitney and I worked together. Of course the notion of looking at the town of Jasper and the murder trials and the murder as a prism through segregated lenses came out of that ongoing conversation.

Whitney had gone down there in June of '98. I didn't get to Jasper until December of '98 for the first time. It wasn't until that firsthand visit that I really could see a movie. And that's not unnatural-I mean, the notion that you need to do on-the-ground research to begin to fully own a vision of a story. Then I saw what was possible through my own eyes as opposed to through Whitney's eyes, and through the eyes of the media, which sort of reflects back on the film itself, the need to see things, to interpret, through segregated lenses.

TR: How long have you known each other?

WD: Well, longer than we'd like to admit to people, but we've known each other for over twenty-five years at this point. Marco went to school with my older sister. High school, at a place called Buxton in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and they got to be friends. My sister went to visit him in New York and brought me along as a fourteen-year-old kid. I stayed at Marco's house where he grew up. He was living at East Seventh Street at the time. Then later Marco went to school in Cambridge at Harvard. When he took some time off, he moved into my parents' house. At that time I had had a parting of the ways with Buxton, and I was living at home. So we got to know each other then.

TR: It does seem like you've known each other a long time. To share enough of a vision, even abstractly, to see the potential of a film like this out of one incident in one place takes a lot of faith and understanding of each other.

MW: I've worked on series where I've been one of three or four producers, and effectively we've been working towards a common goal, but it is very different when you don't have some sort of shared history. I think that the notion of shared history is also what gave the making of the film a certain edge and impetus. We had shared history and, at least in principle, shared experience-same types of schools, living in the same region of the country. But we also had one, at least one, distinct difference, and that was our racial identities. We certainly discovered this throughout the making of the film, the impact of that one difference and how profound it is, how it in some ways trumped the shared experience. At least shared experience allowed us to navigate the demands, if you will, of the difference.

TR: Can you talk about the positive that comes with that difference-and also about the challenge of taking advantage of different views and different perspectives, the difficulty in hammering them into one narrative, one documentary film?

MW: I would say, broadly speaking, it's very difficult. I mean, it's difficult to make a film as one director because, unless you're the editor as well, you're collaborating with somebody, so there's always an ongoing level of negotiation, explanation, discussion. Two directors doubles that, or let's call it an exponential increase in that challenge.

We began this process by editing separately, taking the material we had individually shot and culling through it, identifying potential characters, cutting scenes, sometimes making selections of materials where there'd be interviews. So we had an opportunity to acquire fuller ownership of what we had shot but, more importantly, to begin to articulate what we had experienced. That gave an initial guideline of navigating about two hundred hours of digital video material. It was also at that phase of the process that we began the task of navigating across race. Each of us worked with an editor who was of the opposite race. This wasn't explicitly by design, but as it became a possibility, we embraced that as a value to the work. After we did these selects and we each came up with about five or six hours of material, we then brought in a third editor, and we screened all twelve hours individually.

Then we spent about a week to two weeks talking about the material and just trying to get a feel for what excited the other, what excited the editor, and not so much determining at that point how to cut it together, but at least to get a feel for what the other had been doing. Whoever had material that supported the impetus for an idea, that director would supervise the initial editing of the material and work with the editor one-on-one and then bring it back and show it to the other director. There would be discussion and sometimes the original director would continue working. Or, if it was at a place that made sense, we'd talk about what would be the next scene, and the next scene, and whoever had the majority of the material would lead that through. So that's how we navigated the logistics of two directors in the room until we finally reached a rough-cut stage. I mean, I don't know if this is all quite banal to you.

TR: No, it's not. Not at all.

MW: At the rough-cut stage I think we were at about three hours, two and a half hours. This is now maybe a year, not quite a year, into the editing, eight months maybe. We then each took about three weeks, I think it was, to work separately with that pile of clay, to have perhaps the only opportunity the film afforded to give an interpretation without having to explain it to the other. Whitney was keen to observe that-I don't know through what confluence of events-he had sort of nailed the first half, and I had nailed the second half. When we say nailed, we mean just making it make sense to the other. Then we slogged through another three or four, five months to make it work. That's when we really got to work in the editing room together. There was lots of creative tension, racial tension, emotional tension that went on in trying to make a final film out of it.

WD: There have been, I think, other productions that used predominantly black crews or predominantly white crews for different things. But having, through every level, shared responsibility, shared control-I mean, that's the thing that it really came down to. We were in a unique position, doing it with Independent Television Service and having the final cut. I think that if we'd done it at another place, with an executive producer, it would've ultimately been a different film.

TR: There's an ease in the scenes, or an authenticity in the scenes, that I think is the result not only of two crews, but of the way the scenes are cut, the way they get juxtaposed. It's not a simple story. Most stories from the South about race tend to be pretty one-dimensional, whichever way. This film isn't. I mean, I think that there is a clear point of view that comes through, but it's very, very complex, and the editing contributed enormously to that level of nuance.

MW: I think that what you're saying - just to amplify - is a comment on the outstanding craft exerted or executed by Melissa Neidich, the editor. I mean, certainly the approach to the storytelling allows for great candor, very emotional and direct thoughts and feelings. Sometimes they are subtle, but they're still explicit. The integration, the interwovenness of it-there's a gesture here, a gesture there that says as much as the words themselves. Sometimes those gestures contrast black people and white people, and they're similar gestures and, if you really looked at that moment, you'd shudder and say, "Wow, look at where there are things in common, but look at how different the people are feeling."

TR: There's a woman in the film who makes a comment that Jasper has a lot of skeletons. Having been there, for the duration, how important do you think your approach as been in getting a film that gets people to talk about the hidden truths, skeletons or not?

WD: Well, I think for me it was in not having to, in effect, tell a balanced story in some way. To act as advocates for our characters and not have to balance the other side of the equation allowed us to get very, very close to the people and very immersed in the ways they were thinking and not have to think, "Is this true?" Also, we had small crews. We each were either down there by ourselves or with the cameraperson or doing audio. It really allowed us to spend a lot of time with the characters. With any documentary where the filmmakers spend a lot of time in the community-and we each spent about a hundred days there over the course of that year-you necessarily generate some pretty close relationships with people.

MW: Our film has a reflexivity to it that is at once apparent and evident and at the same time kind of invisible. We make the approach to telling this film's story explicitly clear at the beginning, so you can't help but be aware that there is a design that is to yield-we're not really sure, but the presumption or the conclusion is-a great level of intimacy. We're always present, but we're not present. Know what I mean? So in that way I think that the film is able to get below the surface, not necessarily to excavate the skeletons in the most explicit way but to make apparent or give you some impression of what those skeletons are. In fact those skeletons should really be seen metaphorically as the skeletons that we as a nation have.

The woman who says Jasper has a lot of skeletons in the closet says this trial is going to reveal them. What's wonderful about it, she doesn't say what those skeletons are, and we don't at the end of the film or anywhere else say, "And this is the skeleton." It's the overall complex of race relations that's fraught with skeletons.

TR: It's the past. And more.

MW: It's the past. It's the present. I mean, I'm always pointing out or reminding audiences that there are very few scenes in the film where blacks and whites are together in a communal way, and I say, well, that's a reflection of our culture and society. I say to the audience, "How many of you share things with somebody across race outside of the workplace?" That, you could say, is one of the skeletons. It's not the literal skeleton of a suspicious murder but it's still the same fabric.

TR: Right. So how have people in Jasper, after seeing you all for a hundred days, responded now that the film's made?

WD: They haven't seen the film yet. We're trying to do a follow-up piece of the project that would include showing the film and potentially creating a companion show to go with it. We want to do it closer to the [PBS] broadcast when there's some real sort of urgency to it. So far people are curious about it, and they've talked about it, and some of the people who didn't know of our approach have heard about it. Most of them think it was a good idea. Whether they'll think it was a good idea after they see the film remains to be seen, but they're all curious to see it.

TR: How important at this point is their reception to you?

WD: For me it's very important. What is important is not that they like it - I have no idea if the people I spent time with will like it or not - but that they will feel that it's accurate. Even if they don't like that I've put it up there, that they say, "Well, yeah, you did capture the essence of what we were thinking about at the time."

MW: I expect there to be divergent responses to the film, and I also expect perhaps most of the black community to feel comfortable with it, but when I make a film, I don't really - that's not my overriding investment. I guess I should say I would be concerned if repeatedly people had some real issues with my films. I would certainly want to take a look at what I am doing, but I don't invest that in the making. I think there's value, of course, in the town seeing this film, yet they may not get it. That would make perfect sense to me that it would be too close to them.

I don't know if they will be able to see the larger ramifications. I would imagine that would take time, probably in the privacy of their homes, just speaking with people that they know, that they trust, that the feel comfortable with. I do regret at this stage that we've not been able to show it to Jasper in advance of the final screening and in advance of finishing the film, even though we hope to be able to do productive things with a screening of the film in Jasper. I wish that we had given them a chance to see it earlier, because this is a recurrent question. People want to know how the town has responded, and we're never able to say.

TR: There are films that one could make about a town that would fail if they were controversial, but I don't know that you could make this film and not have some people have problems. It's such a loaded topic.

MW: Exactly.

TR: All of this points to something. How do you see the film, the life of the film, now? What do you hope to do? There's bound to be this feeling that you're ready to move on to something else, at times at least.

WD: Well, I think there's no question that after working on it for almost four years now that it's be nice to be working on another project with the same scope. We also feel, or speaking for myself, a real obligation to the film and to the process that we undertook, to take it to the end, and that means really giving it the best launch we can. So there are a lot of things that we're working on toward the broadcast and post-broadcast. We've been marshalling our wide range of outreach resources both within the PBS system and outside of that, so that the film doesn't just go up and then go away. Ever since we conceived of the idea for the film, it's sparked discussion. There's a way we can put the film to work so that at least the discussion will be productive. We can take it to places where people are trying to figure out ways to deal with the racial gulfs in their community and see if it can go to work.

MW: We're working on an outreach campaign - to see how to sustain the impact of the film beyond just a screening at a film festival where people ask questions and then go home, or more passively where you watch it by yourself or maybe with somebody else during a broadcast. There may be great agitation for discussion but no opportunity for it. So we certainly are looking to partner with those who do this kind of work. We've had conversations with a myriad of organizations. Facing History and Ourselves is an organization that works in the education domain, high schools, principally. We had a brief conversation with the Anti-Defamation League. They're interested in policy and policy reform, particularly around hate crime. Lots of different types of places, looking to see if we can do something that perhaps has not been done before to create a multifaceted outreach campaign, get this film into people's hands, and facilitate discussion, helping them come up with direct action in the domain of race relations. As Whitney has said, it won't simply be "make the film, move on," although we'd like to do other work.

WD: Working together was a unique experience, and I feel very privileged to have had that experience. We've learned a lot through this process. We've learned the art of dispassionate warfare. It'd be a shame to waste that and move on to other things. At the same time we are individuals, with individual ideas, and have worked extensively in production beforehand, before we did this, and would also like to do our own projects.

TR: Looking at that broader picture, what's the role of documentary film? Why should we put so much time and passion and energy and money into these things?

MW: Or perhaps your question should be, why aren't we putting more money into something that is so critical? To me, one way of answering is that documentary is akin to teaching. Documentary - the form, the genre, the concept - takes viewers, audiences, on journeys to places they might not otherwise get to experience, see, or witness, and through these experiences derive a better understanding about themselves or, let me say, a better understanding about the society or the world, and so ultimately about themselves. I recall reading a New York Times article after the Doubletake/Full Frame Festival that took a thesis that documentaries were the new kind of history books, or history lessons, of the day. I thought that was an interesting idea. That's not exactly why I think it's important. I don't think it's necessarily about reframing history or making history more presentable to people. But I think it is about exposing and exploring our culture and, sure, the cliché does make sense: Reality is stranger than fiction. Reality is more potent than fiction. It's all about trying to get a sense of who we are.

WD: It seems like we're in a real sort of documentary renaissance right now. My feeling is that narrative film has become so formulaic that there's no sense of wonder or surprise. How often do you start watching a film and know in the first ten minutes exactly how it's going to turn out, and sort of just go along for the ride. It look great and it feels good, but ultimately the infinite permutations of the human experience are represented in documentaries.

If you got a hundred documentarians together and asked them why they make documentary films, you would hear a hundred different stories of how people came to it and why they came to it. For me, in the circumstances that I grew up in, it was presented as a higher calling. I'll be really, really corny. I keep a quote up on my bulletin board from Robert Kennedy about living in the most privileged nation on the earth and using your privilege and opportunity to seek private pleasure and gain, but ultimately you'll judge yourself. That's unless you use your gifts to make the world a better place.

Since this interview, the filmmakers have returned to Jasper to screen the film for the participants.