Documentary Case Studies

Behind the Scenes of the Greatest (True) Stories Ever Told

Jeff Swimmer

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781623567552
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film Direction & Production

Documentary students and fans revel in stories about filmmakers conquering extraordinary challenges trying to bring their work to the screen. This book brings vividly to life the sometimes humorous, sometimes excruciating-and always inspiring-stories behind the making of some of the greatest documentaries of our time. All of the filmmakers and films profiled are Oscar-nominated or Oscar-winning. Documentary Case Studies walks readers through the fixes and missteps that today's documentary leaders worked through at all stages to create their masterworks-from development, fundraising and pre-production, through production and then post. There are plenty of "how to" documentary filmmaking books in circulation, but this book will instead deploy a personal, intimate, and candid approach to unlocking the secrets of the craft and the business by meeting filmmakers who tackle production challenges in the most resourceful and unconventional ways.

1

Food, Inc.

DIRECTOR AND PRODUCER

Robert Kenner

PRODUCER

Elise Pearlstein

Oscar Nominee, Best Documentary Feature—2009

SUMMARY

Food, Inc. is a vivid and disturbing examination of America’s food supply, finding a system that prioritizes corporate profits above employee and consumer health. A web of cozy government and business ties works to insure that safety for workers and consumers, and corporate fairness, are at the bottom of the food chain.

One day, Robert Kenner set out on a seemingly simple journey—to find out what’s on his dinner plate. He quickly discovered it was a secret and one he’d have to move mountains to crack—even slightly.

“The food world,” Elise Pearlstein tells me over lunch one day, “is a one-company town.” And like one-company towns everywhere, she goes on, the “food-industrial complex” is expert at obfuscation, enforcing lock-step discipline among its inhabitants and intimidating those who dare try to unlock its secrets.

These are undoubtedly wonderful tactics to boost the corporate bottom line, but they’re a nightmare for filmmakers like Director Robert Kenner and Producer Elise Pearlstein. So the years they spent making Food, Inc. turned into a fascinating and treacherous journey to unveil the mysterious contents of the American refrigerator.

And like so many other rich documentaries, Food, Inc. would become a film about way more than its mere subject matter. How our food is made, and by whom, is formally the engine that drives the film, and the universal subject matter and superb quality made it a box office hit. But both Kenner and Pearlstein would come to view food as more of a metaphor for trying to answer much deeper questions. “Food is the sugar coating, but Food, Inc. is really about way more. It’s about the right to know … if you live in a free society and you live in a free market you should have the right to information. But it’s not free if you don’t have that information,” says Kenner.

If there was a soundtrack for Food, Inc., it might be the sound of doors slamming in the faces of the filmmakers. At all levels of the food world, from the farmers, distributors, packagers, wholesalers and retailers, nearly all greeted Kenner and Pearlstein with a middle finger raised high in the air. And in hindsight, both came to see they may have been naïve in thinking the experience would prove to be anything else.

Food, Inc.’s story began in 2002, when Kenner read author Eric Schlosser’s groundbreaking Fast Food Nation, a bravura dissection of the fast-food industry that ripped open its greasy and cynical heart. “I thought Fast Food Nation would make a great film, and Eric had seen a film I’d made (War Letters for Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) ‘American Experience’), and we thought we should make a film together.”

Kenner had at that point a sturdy track record making blue-chip documentary films for PBS. His War Letters was a deeply moving epistolary account of war as witnessed from the front lines. He was co-filmmaker on “Road to Memphis” for Martin Scorsese’s series, The Blues, and directed the Emmy- and Peabody-winning Two Days in October (2005) for the American Experience series. He was known as a superb craftsman of ambitious and challenging fare, and set out to secure funding for his latest passion, Fast Food Nation. PBS and BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) signed on to help fund it, and he then went looking for additional funds to help develop it. At the time Participant Productions, as it was then known, was a young company quickly making a name for itself supporting both fiction and non-fiction films with a social message, including the Academy Award-winning An Inconvenient Truth. Kenner approached them with the Fast Food Nation documentary idea, and they quickly decided to back the project, and then River Road Entertainment joined as a partner.

With Participant’s support in place, Kenner brought on Elise Pearlstein as producer. Pearlstein had produced a wide range of innovative non-fiction at that point, having just completed work on director Jessica Yu’s avant-garde hit documentary “Protagonist,” and a series of hard-hitting segments with veteran newsman Peter Jennings’ unit at ABC.

Kenner was now set to make a documentary about Fast Food Nation. But during development, his concept of the film began to stretch. “Eric’s book was so successful that people thought they could avoid industrialized bad food if they just didn’t eat it.” In other words, Schlosser’s book, alarming as it was, could too easily be written off by consumers: “Fast food may be awful, but it’s okay, I don’t eat it anyway.”

Kenner worried that this let people off the hook too easily. And just as Kenner’s team were ruminating over how to broaden the scope of the film, Americans were reeling from an unlikely health scare. In September 2006, a batch of organic spinach contaminated with deadly e-coli virus would end up sickening hundreds and killing three.

Kenner said the e-coli scourge, in supposedly healthy food no less, stiffened his resolve to “broaden out from fast food to the supermarket, because it could affect more people.”

Pearlstein concurs. “The spinach outbreak really showed people who think of themselves as enlightened, healthy eaters that they weren’t immune from the problems in the food supply,” says Pearlstein.

In essence, the filmmakers realized that the industrial supply lines meant that ALL food has become fast food, and that would become the focus of their film.

(Fast Food Nation would ultimately become a film but not in its original shape. In 2006, feature director Richard Linklater would turn it into a technically innovative, semi-animated drama.)

Pearlstein and Kenner updated the treatment to reflect its expanded scope and reached out for advice from beloved storyteller and advice-giver on all things food, author Michael Pollan. His mega-selling “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” had come out in 2006, and the filmmakers detected a changing mood in America about what people eat. Americans now seemed to want to know what was really in the food on their plate, how it was made, and what it could do to them—healthful or otherwise.

A new kind of national conversation about food was taking shape, and the two wanted the film they were developing to become part of that discussion. With the brilliant and telegenic Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan helping to guide them along, they set out for the heart of America’s food supply.

Kenner had recently finished a documentary where access to subjects and locations was, fortunately for him, relatively easy, and he went into Food, Inc. with his fingers crossed. But his reception could hardly have been more different.

“We had a film where people just didn’t want to let us in, which was opposite of my last film. People put down walls, even if they were friendly,” recalls Kenner. By the time Pearlstein came on board during pre-production, Kenner was already receiving the cold shoulder from many of the food industry’s major players. He was getting worried.

But Pearlstein had in recent years come off food industry films where doors had, for various reasons, flung open for her and her team. “I came in really confident, because I had done a documentary with Executive Producer Craig Leake and Peter Jennings that looked at how Frito-Lay was globalizing the potato chip. We had quite full cooperation from Pepsi (Frito-Lay’s parent), and they showed us their internal meetings, strategy meetings, inside their factories, and they were really transparent. And the film wasn’t a love letter to them. It asked hard questions, but they participated.” It was likewise with a film about the Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest that she had done. Its parent, General Mills, cooperated fully.

Kenner appreciated the enthusiasm. “We’ll get (the food companies) to talk,” she told him. “ ‘I know we will.’ Robby was not as optimistic … and I would say we definitely had unforeseen challenges.” And that is probably an understatement. Despite schmoozing, dining and pressing the flesh with food executives who’d cooperated in the past, and those who they hoped would work with them, it was a nearly unanimous “no.”

“We essentially heard: ‘It’s just not in our interest to talk at all’—that was a new development,” says Pearlstein. “Even in the few years that had passed from when I had done the other documentaries, there had been kind of a mind-set change, a clamp down on transparency.” Pearlstein attributes it to “blame coming at the food industry for soaring rates of obesity, law suits, food outbreaks and fear.” In other words, the very factors that ignited their enthusiasm for making the film in the first place were now making it look nearly impossible to make.

Some of the companies agreed to talk but only with promises that the stories would show them in a positive light—obviously, a non-starter.

Years later, Kenner still smarts at some of the close calls they had in terms of access. “I really wanted to film in the International Flavor Factory. It’s like Willy Wonka. It’s in New Jersey and it’s where they create the flavor. I love the woman, and she had loved ‘Fast Food Nation’ … she said she only had one concern. ‘If I let you in, will I be fired?’ And I said, ‘that’s a very valid concern.’ She sent the limo to get me but ultimately was scared.”

So thorough was the drumbeat of rejection that Pearlstein was growing worried too. “I was kind of scared … we had a deal to make the film and we knew we had to make the film, but I thought … how are we going to deliver?”

But at a certain point, the rejection parade turned from frustration—to determination. They became even more emboldened to tell the story, no matter who refused to participate. Kenner: “The more we were turned down, the more I realized that these companies are not interested in having consumers see where their food comes from. And the more we were turned down, the more you realized there was something interesting here.”

To get footage inside the various farms, factories and slaughterhouses without industry help, they would have to rely on undercover footage. But a 1990s trial involving Food Lion supermarkets put a chill on the Food, Inc. team and made that proposition much more difficult. Courts had ruled against ABC News when some of their reporters posed as Food Lion employees and then shot and broadcast clandestine footage. Because of the Red Lion case, “our lawyer told us you can’t go in to expose a place if you’re not actually already working there and have a valid reason for filming the conditions. If someone has filmed there already, then it’s okay.” Kenner will not discuss details of how they pulled off getting their secret footage but says it was based on their lawyer’s advice: they shot none of it and acquired all of it.

Pearlstein puts it bluntly: “The food industry has a real interest in keeping the process hidden from the public because if the public saw, they wouldn’t like what they saw.” Food, Inc.’s undercover footage is grisly and unsparing—blood-curdling noises coming from slaughterhouses and chicken coops, indifferent fork lift operators trying to force lame downer cattle onto the kill lines, and all manner of animal carcasses being sliced to bits with giant saws and blades. No wonder Variety said Food Inc. “does for the supermarket what ‘Jaws’ did for the beach.” Even the bloodless footage—never-ending and spirit-numbing assembly lines of various popular foods being packaged and assembled—leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

As gory as much of that material is, the filmmakers originally had pushed that even harder. “Participant was good at saying, ‘How much do those gory scenes help advance the story?’ They were saying, ‘a little goes a long way,’ ” recalls Pearlstein. In the end, Kenner found a happy medium, reminding himself why he wanted to expose the ways of the food industry in the first place: “You don’t want to make a film where people have to close their eyes, but you want to make a film where people have to open their minds.”

The filmmakers also decided they needed to make industry rejection a part of their film, but they weren’t interested in turning the cameras on themselves. So after most of the film’s key scenes exposing some kind of industry malfeasance, text on screen appears announcing that Company X refused requests for an interview. After the first few times of using this device, viewers come to expect it. Company snubs become like punctuation marks ending many of the film’s chapters—a little going a long way, indeed.

Today, the filmmakers suspect that many of the companies who snubbed them may, with hindsight, even regret the decision. According to Pearlstein, even Monsanto, who comes across in Food, Inc. as arch and bullying gene police, may wish they’d participated, as indicated in a Business Week article around the time of the movie’s release. A hypothetical Food, Inc. sequel, she believes, would field a much stronger corporate line-up. But she’s also realistic. “Food companies are in a very difficult position. They know that consumers want more transparency, but I don’t think they quite know how to do it.”

Food giant Wal-Mart is one of the very few exceptions. They decided to participate. Frequent media punching bags, Wal-Mart comes in for a not unflattering portrayal in the film. Jovial Wal-Mart representatives in modern country garb are seen on the move on a picturesque farm, looking to lock down high volume deals for organic dairy products. Both the characters they meet on-screen and viewers alike have to almost do a double take to reconcile the negative stereotypes of Wal-Mart with the well-meaning and earnest buyers who appear in Food, Inc.

Pearlstein explains: “Not that we sugarcoated or tried to make [Wal-Mart] look good, but given the opportunity to actually have a huge corporation in this film we wanted to do right by them and let them make their point well. That’s what we always said to people: ‘Give us your best spokesperson to make your point.’ ”

One of the lone industry reps who did agree to present his point-of-view is Richard Lobb, with the National Chicken Council. After showing viewers footage of a typical, vast chicken operation, he speaks plainly to the heart of capitalism: “I try to produce as much as I can for the lowest cost.” His parting rhetorical shot lingers in the air, as obvious as it is on point: “Somebody explain to me what’s wrong with that?” After the film was released, the Council criticized it for being “one-sided, negative and misleading.”

But penetrating giant corporations is challenging no matter the goal or context. What most surprised and frustrated the filmmakers was how far down the food chain, so to speak, the veil of silence was thrown. They were surprised when all of the major food companies refused to go on camera, but what they weren’t prepared for was that even the farmers refused. “That just did not occur to us,” recalls Pearlstein. “Because of the consolidation in the food world, there are only a few companies that really control everything, and all of the farmers are dependent on those companies … it’s a total monopoly land, and if you piss them off, you’re out of business.”

One chicken farmer who is interviewed, Vince Edwards, typifies the kind of farmer the film sets up as the norm—reluctant to challenge his corporate master, Tyson. Edwards cuts his screen time woefully short. After a candid and sometimes awkward few words, he tells Kenner he can’t show them inside any of his operations, implying that there could be consequences from Tyson but careful never to overtly say that. “We’d thought there was a difference between the company and the farmer,” confesses Pearlstein.

Chicken farmer Carole Morison, on the other hand, decides that her story needs to be told regardless of the consequences and gives an extensive interview to Kenner and a walking tour through her raucous—but relatively tidy—coops. “Carole was ready to talk, and she and the industry were butting heads so it was a matter of time … I’m not saying she lost her contract because of us but it certainly didn’t help.” Her contract was technically not renewed because of her refusal to carry out expensive upgrades demanded by the company, but her disgust at her financial plight, and her defiance toward her masters, is vivid. Carole Morison’s gritty visage is burned into viewers’ minds long after the credits roll.

Pearlstein recalls her experiences with the commercial farmers as especially illuminating. She came to realize that she and Kenner were not only trying to de-mystify the production of food but in essence they were attacking even more fundamental American myths about how we see our relationship to food. “Th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents 
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Food, Inc. – Director and Producer, Robert Kenner and Producer, Elise Pearlstein
• 2. Man on Wire – Director, James Marsh and Producer, Simon Chinn
• 3. Super Size Me – Director and Producer, Morgan Spurlock
• 4. Twenty Feet from Stardom – Director and Producer, Morgan Neville
• 5. Spellbound – Director and Producer, Jeffrey Blitz
• 6. The Act of Killing – Director and Producer, Joshua Oppenheimer
• 7. GasLand – Director and Producer, Josh Fox
• 8. Undefeated – Director and Producer, Daniel Lindsay and Director, T.J. Martin
• 9. Restrepo – Directors and Producers, Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington
• 10. Sergio – Director and Producer, Greg Barker
• 11. Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision – Director and Producer, Frieda Lee Mock
• 12. Sound and Fury – Director and Producer, Josh Aronson and Producer, Roger Weisberg
• 13. Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport – Director, Mark Jonathan Harris and Producer, Deborah Oppenheimer
• Conversation Points
• Sources
• Index
• Imprint