Postscript to the STF Peter Davis Tribute

• by Raphaela Neihausen, May 22, 2009

Written by Hugo Perez
(Photo of Hugo Perez and Peter Davis)

Last night, STF hosted a tribute to Peter Davis, a filmmaker and a gentleman, a scholar and writer best known in documentary circles for his classic HEARTS AND MINDS that earned him the 1975 Oscar for Best Documentary.  Much less known today is his landmark television series MIDDLETOWN, a series of six verité documentaries which aspired to create a portrait of life in America by telling stories that reflected 6 different aspects of American life: Getting a Living; Making a Home; Training the Young; Using Leisure; Engaging in Religious Practice; and Engaging in Community Activities.  The series was shot entirely in Muncie, Indiana from 1979 to 1982 with a team that included Peter Davis as Executive Producer and Director, Ricky Leacock as a Director, now A-List Hollywood DP John Lindley, editor Tom Haneke and others.  Originally aired in 1982, the MIDDLETOWN series has become increasingly hard to see.** Doc geeks like myself have only had the chance to see the films from the series on blurry VHS copies passed around from doc enthusiast to doc enthusiast like Russian Samizdat literature.  (One hopes that a company like Criterion might someday step in to make the films available as a DVD box-set.)

All of this is a long way of saying that those who attended the Peter Davis Tribute last night were lucky to have a truly rare chance to see Davis film “Second Time Around” on the big screen.  An intimate portrait of divorcees David and Elaine, “Second Time Around” follows the couple in the weeks before they marry each other, an emotional rollercoaster as they face the pragmatic, financial, and personal hurdles they’ll have to clear to make a true partnership work.  Masterfully shot by John Lindley and edited by Tom Haneke, Davis film is a textbook example of how to make a great verité film. 

L to R: Members of the MIDDLETOWN series team: Susan Baum, Terry Simon, Peter Davis, Hugo Perez (guest host of STF), and E.J. Vaughn

The screening led to a lively discussion between Davis and an audience that included filmmakers Nick Broomfield, Susan Meiselas, Bill Jersey, and members of the MIDDLETOWN team Tom Haneke, Terry Simon, Susan Baum, and E.J. Vaughn.  Davis discussed the production of MIDDLETOWN for most of the Q&A; the challenges he faced not just in funding and producing the series, but also in shepherding the films (5 of the 6 anyway) to their broadcast on a nervous PBS.  Just as our time at the IFC was running out, Davis threw down the proverbial gauntlet by voicing the opinion that many filmmakers today are relying too heavily on the artifice of re-enacting or recreating scenes.  To paraphrase Davis, some filmmakers today are taking real people and turning them into actors, a process that he feels diminishes the power of the stories told.  In the last few minutes before we were forced to give up the theater, the Q&A became a genuine debate about the limits to how much a documentary filmmaker could or should “stage-manage” reality for their film. The discussion ended before we could go very far down the road of answering this question, but all of those present are certainly better off for Peter Davis’ visit with us. 

For those with educational or institutional budgets, the MIDDLETOWN series is distributed by Icarus Films.

L to R: STF regulars Alejandro Martinez, Erin Marie Osner, and Evan Schlossberg at the post-film reception at 99 Below. 

Comments

It was initially disappointing to see so many empty seats in that room the other night, for this will certainly turn out to be one of the real cinema-going treats of 2009, but the post-film Q&A;felt more intimate because of it (although that one dude telling Peter Davis what he did and didn’t stage was… well, I would rather not get into that right now).

Lucky for us, and shame on everyone else for missing out (though maybe Cannes had something to do with that?). It sounds like there are no immediate plans for Icarus to release the Middletown series in a more affordable DVD boxed set edition, but maybe if enough of us complain it will kick them/someone else into gear. After having only seen Seventeen and Second Time Around, this already stands tall as the Decalogue of nonfiction. I might consider lopping off a finger to see the others. Hopefully it won’t come to that.

    – .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) (05/22  at  09:46 AM)

It was mildly disappointing, I suppose, that the theater wasn’t jam-packed, but the real disappointment is that these films aren’t available on DVD.  In an age when EVERYTHING is available for download or rental or Netflix, it’s inexplicable that we shouldn’t all be able to order up these six beauties with the touch of a button (and, okay, maybe a credit card).

As for the so-called ‘argument’ about what was staged and what wasn’t—with all due respect, you missed the point.  It wasn’t that anything was staged, and no one, not I, who got the conversation started, and not the other dude in the row behind me (who I think is the dude to whom you’re referring), was suggesting that any scenes were staged, but merely the rather obvious fact that the actions of the subjects of documentary films are of course altered by the presence of the camera. 

(My point, and I am happy to make it again, and complete it, is that the scene where the couple talks about how much money the guy spends on his stamp collection was in particular affected by the camera’s presence; that without a camera there, it is likely these two may not have recognized how silly and wonderfully trivial the conversation was; that they might not have laughed so charmingly about the whole thing… I think it’s one of the strongest scenes in a very strong film, and the moments of acute self-consciousness on both their parts contributes to the scene being so terrific.)

And by the way, not that it matters (and it doesn’t), but I happen to know that Peter Davis agrees with me on the larger point.  Other families talked politics at the dinner table; as much as Dad may like to think we talked about politics too, what we really talked about was stuff like this.

    – .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) (05/22  at  05:38 PM)

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