As in many of his earlier works, Frederick Wiseman takes a long, slow, immersive look—without commentary, without interrupting—in his newest documentary, a portrait of life in a rural town, population 1,083, in central Indiana. In anticipation of the November 2–3 screening of Wiseman’s Monrovia, Indiana, we turned to another master of the slow look, Twin Cities–based photographer Paul Shambroom. A Walker collection artist, Shambroom has offered nuanced views of some deceptively banal-seeming topics, from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to domestic nuclear weapons facilities to, most fitting for an examination of Wiseman’s documentary films, municipal meetings in small-town America. Here, their recent conversation.
Paul Shambroom
Why this subject of a small Midwestern town? And then why this town? Why Monrovia?
Frederick Wiseman
I wanted to make a movie in the Midwest, and I wanted to make another movie about a small town. I’ve made movies in 17 states. The only time I’ve been in the Midwest for a movie is for Public Housing (1997), and that’s a bit different than a small town. And I got to Monrovia because a friend of mine had a friend who taught law at the University of Indiana in Bloomington, and he said, “Come out! I’ll introduce you to my first cousin who lives in Monrovia, and you can look around.” So I did, and he did, and I met the cousin, and she’s a very nice woman. She’s the town undertaker, and because she’s the town undertaker, she knew everybody, and she lived in the town all her life. So she introduced me around and vouched for me, and I started shooting a couple months later.
PS
The word “dry” might be a pretty accurate term for your films. There’s not a lot of your own voice or assumptions, at least on the surface.
FW
Oh, I disagree with that completely. I’m making all the selections and I’m structuring. My point of view is expressed indirectly by choice of sequence, by the way it’s edited. There’s no exposition. My technique is more novelistic than it is journalistic. I always like to go into these subjects with a clear head and an open mind. I don’t like the idea, which some people do, of imposing a preconceived view on material.
PS
Yeah. I find it’s sometimes hard to avoid. It’s something I have to fight with. I think I’m going to see and experience one thing, and it’s always delightful when it’s something unexpected.
FW
Well, for me, it’s always different. First of all, I don’t know what to anticipate, and second of all, it’s always a surprise because I really don’t know anything about the place.
PS
How long did you spend there shooting?
FW
About 10 weeks.
PS
What’s your life like when you’re there? If you were making a film in your way about Frederick Wiseman making a film, what would it look like? How does your day begin?
FW
Because it would never be made, I don’t even think about it.
PS
Well, do you spend time in the town when you’re not shooting? Do you always have your camera person with you?
FW
Once we’re there, we’re always ready to shoot because you never know what’s going to happen. Nothing is arranged. The only thing I know is, say, there’s a town council meeting at 7 at night, but I have no idea what they’re going to talk about. Or I may decide to go into a restaurant on Friday night, but I don’t know whether there’ll be anybody there or what’s going on in advance. I’ll just say: Friday night, restaurant night. I direct, and I do the sound, and I work with a camera man, and the assistant carries the extra equipment, the lenses, and changes the cards and that sort of thing.
PS
Okay, so that’s all single camera. It’s remarkable to me how un-self-conscious and really kind of oblivious to the camera people seem to be in Monrovia. How do you achieve that? How long does it take for that to happen?
FW
Really, it happens instantly. It’s never been a problem. I’ve never had a problem with people either looking in the camera or acting for the camera. I hate that people don’t want their picture taken, they say no or walk away, and I don’t think most people, unless they’re really good actors, can suddenly become somebody different. And those people aren’t good enough actors, and if they were, if generally people were good enough actors, then the acting pool for Hollywood and Broadway would be bigger than it is.
PS
There’s a café scene where there’s a guy just holding forth. He’s just going on and on.
FW
Oh, that’s what they did every morning. There was a group of older farmers that started coming at 6:30 and came in up to 10:30—and different people, different times—and they called themselves the Liars Club. Just a way of getting together and bullshitting with each other.
The first time I showed up at that café, more or less the same people were there every morning. I sat down and had a cup of coffee and explained what I was doing. They had already heard of me because in a small town like that the word spreads very quickly when you’re making a movie. And, as I always do, I tell them what I was doing. And after I had my coffee, I got up and said, “Well, I think we’ll start shooting now,” and we just started to shoot and they continued. And I think I must’ve done that, gone in there three or four different mornings.
PS
Yeah, yeah, in the small town, they probably know you’re there just because you drive in and it’s not a car they recognize.
FW
That’s right.
PS
You’ve been doing this a long time, and we’re in a different climate now, both politically—blue state, red state—and also in terms of how people regard the media. Of course, you’re not media, but in my experience, people don’t really make that distinction. Someone with a camera kind of falls in that category. Have you found any change in how people treat you?
FW
No. Shooting is no different now than it was when I started in 1966. The attitude of the people is no different. The equipment, of course, is different.
PS
I’m really surprised to hear that because in my experience, just in the last couple of years, people are much more suspicious of cameras. They feel they have a right to privacy that legally they may not have, but they feel an intrusion even if you’re friendly.
FW
I have not experienced that yet. I may, but not yet.
PS
Can we talk about your style of editing a bit? It’s been really consistent for a long time. There’s no voiceover, there’s no interviews, there’s no extra material, there’s no panning through still photos like Mr. Burns. It’s just very straight. Do you think that there’s a limit for the duration of a cut that people will sit through?
FW
No, no, no. The duration of a cut is like everything else, determined subjectively by me, whenever I think it’s the right time.
PS
There were a couple of speeches or remarks in the city council that went on for quite a while, and also the funeral at the end, the minister’s remarks.
FW
Well, that’s because I thought the content was important.
PS
Your editing, the sequence and structure is, of course, deliberate. But it’s also very dry, I guess I would say.
FW
Well, that’s in the eye and ear of the beholder. I didn’t think it was dry. You’re talking about the hydrant sequence?
PS
Well, the whole film. In both dramatic films and in documentary films there’s traditional narrative structure. There’s characters. There’s drama. There’s resolution. I love that in your movies those element are very subdued; I think that’s a big part of the appeal—they seem so unmediated on the surface.
FW
Oh, but it’s very mediated.
PS
Yeah, of course, but unless you think a lot about how films are made, it doesn’t appear that way. It’s almost as if a robotic camera has dropped into this town from another planet and it’s just kind of panning around, seeing what there is to see.
FW
Well, I don’t know that I would agree with that but anyway…
PS
To me, there’s a benefit in that your voice is not omnipresent as it is in a lot of documentary film.
FW
Well, I think it’s omnipresent, but it’s indirect.
PS
Yes, it’s quiet. It’s humble. I think of these as being very humble films because what’s interesting to the viewer is the voice of the town and the look of the town.
FW
Right, I think that’s right.
PS
Can you talk a little bit about still photos and your style of photography, or your DP’s style of photography? There’s an awful lot of beautiful fixed camera shots.
FW
Well, yeah. Because the landscape is important, there are probably more tripod shots in this movie than in many of the others because when we’re riding around the countryside, you can take all the time you want to set up the shot, and you can find the right position, and look at various … not only look at, but shoot, various alternatives. So we would spend whole afternoons just roaming around, looking for nice shots of the countryside and the fields, the houses, the cornfields, the soybean fields, the roads, etc. Those shots, you have time to compose those shots, whereas in a meeting of the town council, you don’t have much time to compose it because you’ve got to frame it up and have it steady as quickly as possible.
PS
You’re from the Boston area. Did this landscape seem alien to you?
FW
No, not alien, I thought the landscape was quite lovely.
PS
It’s flat, and it’s beautiful. I guess I would describe the film using these terms too….
FW
Well, I think they describe some of the shots in the film. I don’t think they describe the film.
PS
When you’re shooting, how do you know when you’ve shot enough?
FW
In a day, or the sequence, or the film?
PS
All three.
FW
Well, when a sequence, I usually shoot the whole sequence. At city council and the town council meeting, we shot the whole meeting, and when I think the conversation is less interesting, we shoot cutaways. And that’s always the case. My feeling is if you think a meeting is worth shooting, you shoot the whole thing because it’s completely unpredictable. What’s going to happen is completely unpredictable, and the worst thing you can do is stop and start, because inevitably, when you turn the camera off, the most interesting thing will be said.
PS
As far as the film as a whole, how do you know when you’ve got what you need?
FW
Well, it’s just a sense that you’ve got enough. I keep track of the sequences that are shot. I look at the rushes almost every night, and when I think we have enough, we stop, and it may be conditioned by the fact that I don’t like the mattress in the motel, I’ve had enough of that.
PS
You did all the shooting in 2017, and I would suspect that Monrovia is a very red-state area, a very Trump-supporting area. Did politics come up in conversation?
FW
Never. Never. Never. I never heard people talking politics between themselves or with me, and there were plenty times I was around and the equipment was turned off, but politics simply didn’t come up.
PS
Did that surprise you?
FW
I think there are a lot of political aspects to the film, but they’re expressed indirectly.
PS
Yes, and people tend to be polite, I think.
FW
Very. Very.
PS
We know that small towns have problems. They have addiction issues—there’s been meth, and now opioids and poverty and health issues. Did you make any effort to either seek out any of that or avoid any of that?
FW
No, I certainly made no effort to avoid it. I didn’t see much of it. I think it was a reasonably well-off town. According to Wikipedia, and I don’t know if it’s accurate or not, the mean income was $65,000.
PS
You said that there is, of course a political content in the film. Are you comfortable discussing what that would be for you?
FW
No. I’m not. I think whatever political ideas the film may have are in the film.
PS
I’m not surprised by your answer, and it’s exactly what I would’ve said, but I thought I’d ask you anyway.
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