Full transcript: Brett Morgen on London Real
5:40 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Brett Morgen, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker, whose work includes documentaries on The Rolling Stones, Kurt Cobain, and now the pioneering primatologist Jane Goodall. The new film Jane draws from over 100 hours of never-before-seen footage that has been in National Geographic’s archive for over 50 years. The movie has been rumored for an Oscar nod, and critics are calling it one of the best documentaries of 2017.
6:13 Brett, welcome to London Real. Thank you. It’s awesome having you here. I was a huge fan of Montage of Heck, and I’m sure people have asked you this, but what’s it like to go from seven or eight years inside of Kurt Cobain’s brain to now going inside Jane’s brain?
6:32 Brett Morgen: What a fucking…
6:33 Brian Rose: Go ahead.
6:34 Brett Morgen: What a relief. What a relief. You know, if it was the other way around, it would probably be much worse, but, you know, making Montage of Heck was really inspiring. It was a tremendous amount of joy, believe it or not, because Kurt was so creative.
6:58 But I spent a good six months on the road promoting that film, and that got to be very difficult and challenging and having to talk about him all the time, and it really wore on me and took a toll on me, and I was looking for something a little brighter or something a little more aspirational. And National Geographic found me and called me about doing this film about Jane. And, you know, sometimes we choose our films, and sometimes they choose us, and I don’t think I realized then how much I needed this film for my own soul.
7:28 I mean, the movie… A lot of people have told me they’ve cried… I was just with a reporter this morning, he told me she was crying 20 minutes into the film all the way through, but not with sadness, but with tears of joy and sort of an awe of this woman. And I think that Jane has that effect. It’s a very soothing film.
7:50 It’s a very calming film. I mean, for someone… If someone has come out of a PTSD situation like Montage with Heck, it really is the best place to spend your time. Because what we did in Montage… I mean, what we did in Jane was kind of create an immersive experience.
8:09 You know, Jane’s been on film several… She’s been in a lot of movies, but none of them really kind of capture the world through her point of view as she’s articulated it. And we wanted to invite the audience to kind of experience Gombe through Jane’s eyes as she first experienced it, using footage entirely exclusively shot in the 1960s. My blueprint, my script, was Jane’s book, In the Shadow of Man, which is a seminal book. It was read by school kids for decades now, and adults.
8:44 It’s an adult book. And the way Jane talks about nature, and the way she talks about Gombe, it’s almost like a hundred years of solitude. There’s like this element of magical realism that enters that story. You see, because what Jane viewed was a world of color, a world of magic, whereas if you and I go to Gombe, it may just be very brown or green. And so we try to present the world as she describes it, as she experienced it.
9:16 And so there’s a tremendous amount of magical realism in the film, and as a result, Jane… So as a result, you’re sitting in the jungle experiencing it the way Jane did, which is pure bliss. That’s the difference. Kurt never really arrived at that place in his life, ever really, where he was that content. Even in moments where in any other person’s life, or even in a movie, I remember in Montage of Hack, the moment Ivana broke out, that would generally be a celebratory montage for any other documentary, but in Kurt, Montage of Hack, I cut to a sequence of Smells Like Teen Spirit done by a choir that’s a somber, it’s basically a funeral dirge.
10:07 And it’s signifying his inevitable doom. And so what should be joyous isn’t. And in Jane, we actually get to experience that joy. We get to experience that sense of awe that both Jane had as well as the cinematographer Higa von Lawick. And you needed that as an artist as well.
10:27 I needed that at that point in my life, to be able to learn how to sort of breathe again and be more introspective and reflective. And Jane really helped me understand the sort of connectivity amongst the natural world and our world. And when you’re making these films, you really get very locked in and sort of lost. It’s really an amazing experience. I knew nothing about her, very little about Jane going into this.
10:58 Brian Rose: And for those who don’t know, well, for those who think they know the hearth story, you’re in for a real treat. And for those who know very little of her story, you’re kind of in for a treat because I think Jane is one of the most amazing people we have on this planet. And what she accomplished is so extraordinary. And the fact it was all captured on film, captured beautifully on 16 millimeters, it’s a true treat. I watched the film last night and I felt like I was in a time capsule.
11:35 I felt like you kind of snapped your fingers and I was watching it in real time. And again, that footage is shot and it’s these, I don’t know, intimate pictures of Jane and then the color and you can see the novelty. And I don’t know, it’s just something that’s weird. It’s kind of transcended cinema in a weird way. And I didn’t know why I felt that emotionally.
11:56 Brett Morgen: Yeah. Well, the movie is shot by a man who would eventually become her husband and he was falling in love with her as they were shooting the film. And so when we say that it’s lovingly photographed, it truly is lovingly photographed. And if you find yourself, whether you’re a man or a woman or pansexual, whatever you may be, if you find yourself falling for Jane, there’s a good reason because so is the person behind the camera. Yeah.
12:21 Brian Rose: Did you fall in love with Jane a little bit when you made this movie?
12:26 Brett Morgen: I think, no. After I finished the film I did, which I think benefited the film and my work experience. And I would say Jane, if she was here, would say the same thing. That since I finished the film, we both are enamored with one another.
12:43 Having made the film, A, Jane didn’t want anything to do with the film to start. And I was enamored by her when I saw her. When I first started looking at the images, I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. I was like, it’s like Meryl Streep when she was 26 years old. I mean, Jane was, you know, and I hate to objectify her because what she achieved was essentially, she had to overcome all of that sort of gender objectification.
13:11 But it’s just a fact that Jane physically was stunning looking. And that certainly helped sell her work. She talks about it in the film, she was well aware of it. I was in awe of her strength and her courage. But, you know, when I went to interview her for the film, she was not that, she was a bit of a contrarian on the phone.
13:38 No, no, in person. In person, in person. She was a big contrarian. She just, you know, she didn’t, she didn’t see why this film was being made, you see. She had done films.
13:48 She didn’t feel like there was anything left to do with that footage. She had never seen my work. Now, I have to say that Jane had since then, now that she’s seen the film, loves the film and thinks it’s the only film anyone should ever watch and thinks it’s the only time it’s ever been done right. But back then, she just didn’t think it was possible to do it right using that footage. It really took two and a half years of an immense and immersive sound design, coupled with hundreds of hours of color grading to take this old footage and present it in a way that felt modern and new and fresh.
14:26 Brian Rose: Can you tell me what was the thing that finally made you say yes? Because I’m guessing the first time they contacted you said, Jane who? And then it’s like, do this piece and she’s not necessarily going to give you a lot of time. And a lot of things going against you. What was the thing that finally made you do it?
14:41 Brett Morgen: Well, two things. One, whether I want to admit it to myself or not, I began to question why I was only making films about men. What else was there for me to learn? I mean, there’s an endless amount I could learn. But really, in terms of my own growth, I did a film about Robert Evans, the movie producer, called The Kid Saves in the Picture, and then I did a film on The Rolling Stones.
15:08 Now, both artists represent, Bob produced all the movies I loved growing up, and the Stones were the music I grew up with. And so I looked at both those films in a way as me trying to identify a father figure. My father was a PE teacher, and I’m not very athletic, so I didn’t really relate on that level. And the Kurt film was also very autobiographical, and I think in terms of me sort of exploring issues related to my parents. My parents and Kurt’s parents were born the same year, same generational issues, same sort of narcissistic tendencies, which is not specific to them, but to that whole generation, the boomer generation.
15:46 So Jane offered an opportunity to explore something that I hadn’t explored. That was one. Morgen importantly, when I looked at the, that’s a long, roundabout answer, the more directly, when I looked at the footage…
16:03 Brian Rose: And you’d never explored a female figure in a film?
16:07 Brett Morgen: No, no, no, no.
16:08 But when I looked at the footage, it was like watching the moon landing. I mean, I instantly recognized that there were, that on one hand, the historical and cultural significance of Jane’s work was as profound as landing a ship on the moon in the 1960s, right? I mean, it was something that had never happened in the history of evolution, would never happen again. Because she saw something that changed the way we saw it. Well, not only that, she went.
16:38 Nobody had ever gone into the wild to study chimpanzees. Ever.
16:42 Brian Rose: Isn’t that strange when you hear her tell the story that she was the first one?
16:47 Brett Morgen: The world wasn’t so small back then. So going to Africa to study chimpanzees was not a simple thing.
16:54 And the fact is that chimpanzees spooked, so they would run away, and people didn’t know how to handle that. So they would go out, they would try to do it, and they’d fail, ethically. People would go out there for two months, three months, not see a champion leave. Failure was not an option for Jane. So she was going to stick with it no matter what.
17:12 And so there was that aspect. You know, here’s someone walking into nature, walking into Eden, and not only observing, but getting so close that she’s essentially invited to be a housemate with them. And then during the course of her study, they realized that it was humans and chimps should have no close contact, and that humans could never touch chimps again. So essentially, you see this person go from a total outsider to having this completely intimate experience where they’re grooming the chimps, to being un-allowed, disinvited to do that ever again.
17:51 And so this would never happen. Cinematically, what Hugo achieved, Hugo the cameraman, was can’t even be put into words. It alone is as difficult as trying to land a ship on the moon. Hugo tried to shoot color 16 millimeter by himself in Africa without the ability to see what he was doing. He had only shot one film previous to this.
18:14 It was an absolute neophyte. And technically, to create these images was, I think, one of the great cinematic achievements of his time.
18:22 Brian Rose: And you’ve shot in 16 millimeter. I shot in my current 16 millimeter, and it was a frickin’ nightmare. And you can’t do it by one person alone.
18:30 It’s just unheard of. And yet you struggled to find a frame that was overexposed and bad footage.
18:38 Brett Morgen: Oh, Hugo, because it was his first film, and it was his second film, but first big assignment for National Geographic. And he couldn’t see the dailies. He wasn’t gonna be in D.C.
18:52 When they screened them or developed them. So he insisted on making sure that everything was perfect. And there was never a shot that was underexposed or overexposed. Now, Jane hated this. Jane would see some action.
19:05 He’d go, film it. And he’d be like, no, the light’s bad. And Hugo, film it, and we need to get financing. I’m not shooting it. Sorry, Jane.
19:13 And I understand where they were both coming from. But fortunately, in time, he got all the coverage he needed and were the great beneficiaries of this beautiful film.
19:24 Brian Rose: So a bunch of freak occurrences. The fact that 26-year-old Jane, no medical training, goes there. She’s so all in.
19:31 This is what she loves to do, be with the animals. And then all of a sudden, this amazing filmmaker is paired with her to capture it, and they’re falling in love. What a crazy thing to happen. And then now you have the footage. Yeah, yeah, no.
19:44 And then I’m like 60 years later, like it was like, it was put in a freaking glass ship and sent across the ocean. And then I’m like, hey, what the hell is this? And she’s still alive. And she’s alive, yeah. And she remembers everything.
19:56 Brett Morgen: And yeah, it’s a film that spans really six decades. And I do feel that in many ways, the film was never realized. They had attempted to make the film, but the technology wasn’t there or the cultural climate wasn’t there. It’s interesting because we started this film and this film, the footage was discovered in 2014 in Washington, D.C. Now 2014 in Washington, D.C., most of us thought we were going to have Hillary Clinton, but it’s going to become the next president.
20:31 And so there’s a lot of hope and optimism in the world, I think. This is the days before Trump. And I think Trump really changed the culture. But you see, we were, you know, we’re just plugging away making our film. And then like a week before our film premiered, the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke, which suddenly brought into light the role of women in the workplace and how difficult it is for women to achieve success in the workplace and how frighteningly difficult it is to kind of overcome the structural opposition that they face today, not just mentioned back in 1960.
21:16 And here comes the story of this woman who overcame everything to achieve her dreams, did not compromise a thing. Here’s the story of a woman who did have to give up being a mother in order to have a career. That’s something that’s even, in some cultures, considered heresy today. And back then when Jane did it, it was in the early 70s, it was an anomaly. But Jane never allowed herself to be defined by societal standards and norms.
21:58 And she’s always lived outside of that. So going back to Kurt Cobain and the Stones, I mean, she is a rock star. She’s lived life by her own rules. She’s bucked all sorts of status quo. And I think now, as this film comes out into the world, it’s an inspiring story for children about following their passion, whether it’s science, filmmaking, or music, whatever it may be.
22:22 I think it’s an important story for parents about listening to our children. And I think it’s an even more important story of our time for women to see a story of another woman who’s a hero, like the year of Wonder Woman, Patty Jenkins. I mean, Jane is a real-life superhero who did things that no man could ever do and yet refused to define herself by her gender. To this day, she’s very uncomfortable with the phrase feminist. She doesn’t see herself as a feminist at all.
22:55 Brian Rose: And I don’t view her as a feminist. And I think that’s why she’s such an amazing role model, that she refused to be defined by gender. And why do you say she did work that a man couldn’t do?
23:17 Brett Morgen: Well, in order to be successful with the chimpanzees, it required a certain constitution and a certain degree of patience. Jane is almost monk-like and her ability to be quiet, to observe.
23:38 Her father was a race car driver, an endurance race car driver in Europe in the 40s and 50s in race and lemons. And Jane’s talked about that before, that she was born with this constitution. She could sit out in the middle of the African sun all day and subsist off nothing more than a half a cup of water. There’s one shot where she’s sitting in a tree and I’m thinking, I could probably sit in that tree for about 12 minutes until it started to hurt my legs and it looks like she would sit there for a day.
24:09 Brian Rose: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And on top of that, she could sit out there without allowing the bugs to affect her, without being scared by the animals. I mean, she really felt like she belonged there. Nothing was going to hurt her. I don’t think any man on earth who had an ego could have done what Jane did, who two months into it could have still said, I’m not returning.
24:33 Most men would have said, this is ridiculous. This can never be done. I’m going back to the university.
24:38 Brett Morgen: It took a while. By the way, Leakey understood this.
24:41 That’s why Leakey sent Diane Fosse into… Leakey always sent women in to study the ringentangs and the gorillas and the chimpanzees. I think he also knew… Well, also, men are much more aggressive than women and are more threatening to the animals. So, a male would pose much more of a threat and intuitively would know how to assume some of the more passive roles that women would have.
25:12 Jane couldn’t have looked them in the eye. Nobody taught her this. We know it now, but back then, she was making it up. No man was able to succeed at doing this. This was something that it took Jane Goodall in order to do.
25:24 She’s the first and only person to ever do it under those circumstances.
25:28 Brian Rose: How do you go about writing this script? I mean, did you know from the get-go that, okay, I want to try to make this about Jane’s experiences, Jane’s life, and try to draw the parallels? Or is that something that just becomes more and more evident as you saw the footage?
25:43 Brett Morgen: There were three things.
25:44 One, she wrote this book called In the Shadow of Man, which was a tremendous blueprint. And I work in nonfiction for the most part, and part of why I do that is because it’s more tangible. It’s less abstract for me. It’s probably more abstract for other people, but for me, it’s more tangible. And so, like, the kid stays in the picture.
26:03 I enjoy taking this 800-page book and adapting it and whittling it down and finding the through line of action, which Jane had in the shadow of man, which was very useful. Evaluating all the footage that was shot, it became clear to me almost immediately that this was like Eden. And that, in many ways, I set about to do a modern telling or re-examination of Eden. And in that story, of course, it doesn’t end up with a happy ending. And with Gombe, it didn’t look like he was going to have a happy ending either for the same reason.
26:44 You know, Jane enters the fourth.
26:46 Brian Rose: Before Jane comes in the film, the movie opens up with this montage of nature. And you see the symmetry and harmony between the insect world and the mammals and the plants and the trees and everything else. And the last image…
26:58 Brett Morgen: Those were Hugo’s shots of the insects.
27:00 Hugo’s shots, yeah.
27:01 Brian Rose: I was like, did he take those?
27:03 Brett Morgen: Every shot in the film is Hugo’s. These insect shots are intense. And then those were for a never-before-seen film that he was intending to make called The Insects of Gombe.
27:13 Then the last image is of a snake on a log, and you hear the sound of a boat underneath it, which is the sound of human intrusion. And then Jane arrives. And until Hugo, you know, Jane’s there, and she arrives into this Eden-esque world. But from the second she steps foot there, it would never be the same again. Now, she didn’t totally destroy it.
27:32 In fact, in the long run, Gombe has been preserved and is flourishing. And humanity gained all this great knowledge. But that particular family of chimps that she first encountered, half of them were decimated, you know, by disease that came with human contact. So that was literally… Look, I told you I wasn’t in awe of Jane when I started this film.
27:56 So I didn’t go into it with this, like, reverence.
27:59 Brian Rose: Which, like you said, is the right way to make a documentary.
28:02 Brett Morgen: In this case, no, sometimes you need to be in awe of your subject, and sometimes you don’t. Everything’s a little different, you know? I would imagine if I was doing a more hateful character, it would be important to try to find more love.
28:16 Brian Rose: Were you in awe of Kurt Cobain when you made that?
28:20 Brett Morgen: Well, Courtney comes to mind, because you see, if people have seen Montage of Hack, it was critical that we presented Courtney through Kurt’s eyes, not through the public’s eyes. The public has been very hateful towards Courtney. Yeah, judgmental about Courtney, since she entered the scene. But Kurt was in love with her.
28:42 And in fact, if you follow the logic of Montage of Hack, one of the reasons that led to his ultimate is his inability to be on this earth anymore, I think, was betrayal by Courtney. Or perceived betrayal, betrayal, however you want to look at it. And so you have to understand that he loved her to understand why that would impact him so much. So that was a challenge there. You know, there’s an old line from John Ford.
29:09 I love John Ford films. And John Ford said something about like, you know, he had to find something human to appreciate even in the most, you know, even in the most villainous character. Which, now going back to Ford’s work, that’s kind of an apology, because for the first half century of his work, that’s just totally not true. And the Indians, Native Americans, are often presented slightly two-dimensional. It was later in his career when he did Cheyenne Autumn.
29:38 And some of his latter work that he took on a more gentle tone. But I think it’s true. Anyways, going back to Jane. I think that, yeah, today I stand in awe of her, completely in awe of her. And it started off as Eden.
29:56 Brian Rose: She goes in, hoists it.
29:58 Brett Morgen: Yeah, well that’s one, naively, innocently. She didn’t poison it, just, you know, it was a series of circumstances. There was a story that we were telling about her science, of course, and then there was a more important story about parenting and about female empowerment and about mothers, about moms. That was, and so we kind of wove those three.
30:25 Usually what happens is, after I’ve read all the books I’m going to read and screen through all the footage I’m going to screen through, I break away and write the script. At that point, it’s pouring out of me. I mean, I think I’ve written most of my movies in a day or two.
30:38 Brian Rose: Wow. Do you not let yourself write until that time?
30:40 Brett Morgen: Yes. All in your head. Exactly, so I’m ready to burst. I’m ready to burst. Because deep into the screening, I’ve already locked into what I’m going to be able to make out of this footage.
30:48 So the last half of the screening process is just making sure it’s going to play itself out. Okay. Because the screening process, you’ve got to remember, goes for two months. So, you can say I’m writing in my head during that entire two-month period. You know, where I’m trying to check the angles, make sure that we’re going to be able to land this where we need to land it.
31:06 Brian Rose: Do you see the movie in your head?
31:08 Brett Morgen: Yeah, no, it starts with an attitude. It always starts, well, yes. They start with, all my films start with me writing down a series of words to describe the subject. And then that becomes the style of the film.
31:21 Okay. And that’s why each film looks different than the next. The styles become the personification of the subject.
31:34 Brian Rose: Some of those words for Jane?
31:38 Brett Morgen: Jane was passion, probably first and foremost.
31:43 Connectivity, gentle. You know, that sort of stuff, which really sort of embraces the sort of mise-en-scene of that film, whereas Kurt was everything but.
31:54 Brian Rose: What kind of words for Kurt would it be?
31:57 Brett Morgen: See, now I can’t remember the exact words anymore. And so you get the words in your brain.
32:03 I get the words in my brain. I mean, Bob Evans, I remember very specifically, was like, you know, kitschy, romantic, sexy. And that’s what the kid sees in the picture is.
32:13 Brian Rose: Okay. And do you talk to anyone about your ideas, or is it all in your head?
32:17 Brett Morgen: No. I’ve never had a collaborator like that. I mean, I did actually, when I started my career, I did my first film with someone, and so that was great. And then since then, I kind of don’t, which is fine, because I don’t really want anyone’s input at that point at all. In fact, I absolutely do not want anyone’s input.
32:37 I find that to get to this station in life where you have final cut over your films is a privilege. It is a privilege that I have worked and fought tirelessly to achieve. And I preserve that, and I hold on to that sanctity. And I don’t like to see it. People ask me, like, I ran into a filmmaker when I was doing Montage.
33:05 And she said, oh, you’re doing that film. You must have seen my film. And I said, what’s your film? And she told me the name of her film. And I said, well, why would I have watched that?
33:14 And she goes, because it’s considered the greatest rock and roll film of all time. And I looked at her and I was like, why would I want to watch it? What’s that to do with Kurt Cobain and my film? Like, I’m sure your film is about whatever narrative your film’s on, my film’s on whatever narrative my film’s on. And I could tell you that I don’t like to look at other films for inspiration, documentaries, when I’m working on a film.
33:37 My fear is that I’m going to see something and I’m going to like it so much, I’m not going to want to do it. Because I take pride in the fact that my films, that each film is rather unique. And I don’t understand. Like, I did this film that kids see in the picture and then people started doing the photo animation. I don’t understand.
33:59 Like, I even haven’t done that photo animation since that film. Like, I never wanted to do it again. It had been done. And I think what’s exciting in film, and particularly documentaries, unlike fiction, where the language has only evolved in baby steps since the Great Train Robbery. I mean, you could go from Potter to Spielberg and it’s literally grown like that.
34:28 But documentary is the wild, wild west. Anything goes in documentary. It’s the most experimental genre of cinema. Morgen constraints give you more freedom somehow. Yeah, I guess.
34:40 You know, I mean, it’s like because you could look, you can do this film a myriad, a hundred different fucking ways. And unlike cinema, unlike dominant cinema, where you generally are tied down to putting the camera on either this side or that side of the action, there are no rules. There literally are no rules. And that makes it really fun and exciting and fresh. And one of the things I love about nonfiction, there’s this question that people ask, like particularly when you’re doing subjects of people that have been well-traveled.
35:11 So you’re doing a film on The Rolling Stones. What are you going to tell me that’s new? What are you going to tell me that’s fresh? Or you’re doing a film on Jane Goodall. So what new information did you unearth?
35:21 Well, I’m not a journalist, okay? If I thought that someone had done, if I didn’t think there was space for me to make the films I’m going to make, I wouldn’t make them. But the reality is most people who came to documentary came out from a journalistic standpoint. I’ve approached documentary from a cinematic standpoint. So my question is always, how can we tell this story in a uniquely cinematic manner?
35:53 What can we offer that can only be achieved in film that you couldn’t write a book about? Because otherwise write a book, okay? Books are way better for biographies. You get 800 pages. You know how many hours that is in film time?
36:08 That’s like 150-hour-long film, okay? I get 90 minutes. So it’s either going to be Cliff Notes to History, it’s either going to, or Wikipedia, I mean the worst documentary by a picture, Wikipedia entries, and they travel, they go, oh, well, they have this hit record there and they have this hit record there. So I’m always asking myself, what can I do that’s specific and unique to cinema to bring this story to life? And in the case of The Stones, I’d read a bunch of books about them and I’d seen the films, or there really hadn’t been a film that kind of transcended a moment in time because all their films were really like The Ultimont or The 65 Irish Tour or whatever.
36:51 So I thought there was room and a space. With Jane, there was clearly an opportunity to do an immersive movie. I mean, nothing like it had ever been done using this material. So that’s kind of, that’s what’s exciting to me.
37:04 Brian Rose: You said the word immersive, you’re known for this intensive, immersive style.
37:09 Yeah.
37:09 Brian Rose: If you had to describe it, what would it be? And when I look at Montage a Heck, I mean the things you’re doing in there, like animating Kurt, I mean, I don’t remember ever seeing a documentary that did that. Is that what you’re talking about, The Wild West?
37:22 Brett Morgen: Yeah, a little bit.
37:23 Like the fact that I used a different style of Montage a Heck than we used in Kids Days in the Picture, which is a completely different style than the Stones film. Every film kind of, you can draw upon different tools. And we’re not talking about locations or wardrobe. We’re talking about things as grand. Is your story being told through talking ahead interviews, or is your story being told through reenactments?
37:49 Is your story being told through animation? I mean, there’s just a myriad of ways to approach the same subject, and you can mix them all into one pot, which you really can’t do in fiction. You know, outside of American Splendor, a couple run while they’re running, and maybe like a handful of films that we can put on, on a hand that pews natural on killers, that mixed media. You know, that’s just not a thing you do, and the reason you don’t do it is it pulls you out of the movie.
38:16 But in documentary, like my movies are made, as I said at the beginning, they’re junkyard constructions. They’re made with scraps, and oftentimes that style will work. And that intensive immersion is trying to get inside the subject’s head. Intensive immersion, yes. One of the reasons, going back to why I wanted to do the Jane Goodall film, is that when I read In the Shadow of Man, Jane talked about how she rejected this idea of objectivity.
38:41 And this is not something learned. She didn’t go to school and said, I’m going to reject this doctrine. And she didn’t know there was a doctrine of objectivity until later. So she went to Cambridge or Oxford later in life. At the time, she thought that in order to study the chimpanzees, she wanted to learn how they thought, how they…
39:07 She wanted to get inside their skin. She named them. At the time, scientists thought that you were supposed to give them numbers. You weren’t supposed to, by naming them, you might get crossed the line in terms of getting too close to them. But Jane wanted to get as close as possible to them, not just physically, but in terms of understanding them.
39:30 So she would sift through their feces. She would explore what they eat in the reading, everything she could do to try to understand their patterns. I’ve done that with every movie. Going back to the kid’s face in the picture, that was the whole, I lived with Evans for a year, even though we didn’t shoot one frame with him. The idea was I wanted to know what music he liked.
39:50 I tried to make a movie as if he was making it. If Bob had skills to make a film, that’s what I intended to do with the kid’s face in the picture. All my movies are essentially, all my biopics are essentially me trying to do an autobiography from the subject’s point of view if they had the filmmaking chops to tell their story. So I like to think that if Kurt was doing, well, the only differences if Kurt did his autobiography would have been much more non-linear than Montage effect.
40:22 It would have been much more like the audio cassette Montage effect. But that would have been to his death for me, I think.
40:28 Brian Rose: What adjectives would you use to describe yourself as a filmmaker? Because when you spend a year with the subject without shooting a frame, is obsessive the right word or are all filmmakers obsessive?
40:38 Brett Morgen: I think we’re all obsessive.
40:39 I think I’m a bit of a tsunami.
40:42 Brian Rose: What does that mean?
40:44 Brett Morgen: I mean, I think I live life to the extreme. Look, I’m very much like my films up to Jane. I’m not subtle.
40:54 I can be, yeah, I’m not a subtle person. I charge into situations head first. I can be quite volatile. And I’m very emotional. I’m very dramatic.
41:19 I cry much more than a man my age should. So I have a tough facade and an incredibly emotional sentimental core, which is the essence of all my movies, really. They’re all about these tough, these rugged individuals who I try to find something on the inside that’s some emotional core that I can really present. I think with Jane, I had some health issues when I was putting Jane together, some major health issues. And I had to change my life or I wasn’t going to be here today.
42:05 And so I had to calm down. I had to basically throw away everything that I was in terms of how I was living my life, all my habits, and try to listen more and get a little more in touch with things. And then here I am making this film about Jane.
42:24 Brian Rose: Is that the female energy of Jane, maybe?
42:27 Brett Morgen: Well, yeah. Jane’s got some female and male energy, for sure.
42:32 She could be pretty astray. But yeah, for sure. There was a moment where I was recovering from some health issues last year and I found myself in that tree with Jane, so to speak, sitting in a very similar type of tree, spending my entire day watching clouds coming in and out and feeling connected, feeling the forces of nature and the connectivity that we all share. And it was really important that Jane was the film that I was working on at that moment in time.
43:14 Brian Rose: And that’s connected to nature, to your fellow humans?
43:17 Brett Morgen: Connected to everything. It’s connected to just stopping and listening and breathing.
43:21 Brian Rose: And do you think those qualities you described about yourself, kind of intense on the outside, emotional on the inside, is that how you make those films as well? Does it need a director like you or a writer like you to make those types of films?
43:33 Brett Morgen: Look, I think… Here’s the best way, because it reminds me. My lawyer, John Sloss once said that I am the… either the highest brow, low brow person who knows or the lowest brow, high bar person who knows. And I’ve always loved that, because I do find that to be very much how I feel like I’m entering things.
43:51 I think that the success of my films has a lot to do with how sensitive and emotional I am. I think that if you… Again, I think it is kind of singular, because they’re bombastic and they’re fearless in terms of the stylistic execution. And yet they’re very sensitive to the subject. So I do think that it takes…
44:18 I think if I was less emotional, the films wouldn’t have the warmth that they exude or they attempt to exude. And I think if I was less abrasive and less fearful, they certainly wouldn’t be as stylistically as audacious as they are. But a lot of that… Yeah, I mean, this all gets very deeply psychological. I suffered from a lot of the stuff Kurt suffered with about shame and ridicule.
44:47 And so I tend to think as I go deeper into my career that I have to work harder than the next person in order to maintain it. This was not easy for me. This was not given to me. I was told when I went to film school in 1989 that I was to find something else to do with my life that was never going to amount to shit, literally by my teacher at NYU. And he was right. He wasn’t a jerk.
45:16 I wanted to be a director from time before I could speak. I wanted to make films. And so I sort of think I’m interested with the sense of entitlement. Well, since I’ve always wanted this, then this is mine. But what you realize really quickly is someone who’s making their first film, you didn’t really even have a passover film in your earlier life, could step into the game and just knock you off your chair.
45:44 I mean, I was at film school with Steve McQueen, you know, the English director, not the actor. He was in my class at NYU.
45:51 Brian Rose: He was at film school there. Yeah, he went to NYU. He went back.
45:55 Brett Morgen: Yeah, he bailed. He quit after his first year. But, you know, if I remember right, I don’t think Steve had much film experience prior to that.
46:03 Brian Rose: Hunger, was this from the first movie? Yeah.
46:06 Brett Morgen: But this was before hunger. This was in 92, 93. But I watched people come in and just knock me to the ground with their first film. And you realize that, like, you know, there’s always someone who’s going to be better than you and more adventurous than you and more anything than you. And so I just, my, the key to my success at this point, if one wants to call it success, is…
46:32 Brian Rose: These success secrets are only available on the London Real Academy. Become a member and get access to live shows, exclusive courses, my webinars, bonus content, meetups, live events, an amazing community, and much, much more. Now back to the rest of the show. Yeah. Talk to me about your relationship with National Geographic.
47:08 Brett Morgen: 1888, this magazine was started.
47:10 Brian Rose: Yeah. It’s probably all the opposite of the characteristics you just described about yourself. You know, this is a huge brand, lots of funding. I remember the magazines on my mom’s coffee table as a kid with the yellow border.
47:24 Brian Rose: Why did they choose you to make this film? Because they were looking for you, I think. And what’s it like working with them?
47:32 Brett Morgen: Well, they chose me, I think, because they saw what I’ve been able to do with archival films in the last 22 decades. So they were fans, you know, going back to the kid season picture.
47:43 And I won’t work with anyone without Final Cut, which I didn’t, you know, we did one phone call. They wanted to get on a second call. And I was like, I can’t, you know, unless you guys agree to Final Cut, I’m not getting on another call, which I didn’t think they would ever do. In fact, I didn’t even begin to do research because I’m like, this isn’t going anywhere. Because they’re such a huge company and a brand.
48:02 It’s the face of the brand. It’s Jane Goodall, you know. But they agreed to do it, which was amazing and power to them.
48:11 Brian Rose: Now, I grew up, my father was a school teacher. The only magazine, we had Sports Illustrated and National Geographic.
48:20 He saved every National Geographic, which is interesting. I don’t know if they did that in your house.
48:25 Brett Morgen: What the hell? How could you throw them away?
48:27 Brian Rose: Well, I don’t know.
48:28 They’re beautiful. I don’t know. But it certainly was like, left a strong impression on me.
48:38 Brett Morgen: The Elmer Burr scene. I can’t believe we didn’t have Philip Glass do a new version of that.
48:47 It’s actually one of my greatest regrets with this film. And I was conscious of it at the time. It couldn’t go at the beginning. And I felt at the end it would be the wrong emotion for when you leave the film to go back there. So I was enamored when they called me.
49:04 I was definitely enamored. And I feel a tremendous amount of pride working with National Geographic. And there are not a lot of networks that are going to give a filmmaker their most valuable asset and tell them to do whatever you’re going to do with it and indulge every whim of mine, every step of the way. And I can be quite obtuse. There were no notes passed back and forth between us and them.
49:33 The only thing was the title of the film, which I wanted to call it, In the Shadow of Man. And they wanted to call it Jane. And I sort of was like, I’m being very stubborn on everything else. So I’ll acquiesce on that point.
49:45 Brian Rose: I thought that was your idea. It’s such a cool name.
49:48 Brett Morgen: I did not want it to be called Jane at all. I liked In the Shadow of Man because, you see, when Jane wrote the book in the 60s, she was referring to the chimps. And for me, it was referring to women. So I liked it. And this was years ago.
50:02 I came with that title not because of the Harvey Weinstein shit. So, yeah, it’s all been a bit of a dream. You know, it’s been amazing. And I think one of the things with this movie is none of us expected much. You know, we had sort of humble aspirations for it.
50:20 And it’s done taking on a life of its own in the States. Or it’s, I think, now the third highest-grossing documentary of the year. And we opened today in the UK. And we’re just very excited for people to experience this film. It’s the rare movie that plays 5 to 80, that you can bring your kids to during the day and take a day to at night.
50:46 Brian Rose: I think you got a bit of what I call the Downton Abbey effect as well. I think the Brits are always kind of looking like, what’s going on over there in the UK and with the accent and the history. And a lot of the footage you’re using, even of London, I thought was really exciting. I think that gets Americans interested.
51:03 Brett Morgen: Yeah, it’s interesting.
51:04 You know, I think Americans have embraced Jane, perhaps. I don’t want to get into this. But I do feel like Americans have embraced Jane a little more than people in the UK have traditionally. And I’m not sure why that is exactly. Even from the get-go, you know, Jane’s also sort of alluded to that.
51:28 It’s an interesting thing. I don’t know if it’s gender-specific. I don’t know what it is. But to me, I don’t know. I’m not a student of British history.
51:37 But I don’t know what woman has left as great of an impact on our globe as Jane English woman of the last hundred years.
51:45 Brian Rose: Yeah, that’s a very interesting point. Maybe it was not in the educational institutions. And so it was always kind of this, eh, whereas maybe that maverick can exist in America because it’s a country formed by those. I don’t know.
51:59 Brett Morgen: Like, I have the world’s greatest respect for Richard Attenborough. I mean, like, in awe of Richard Attenborough. I wouldn’t really compare him to Jane. They do very different things in a similar genre. But, you know, I was, like, surprised to read reviews where they compared her less favorably to Richard Attenborough for our film, just going, like, do you guys understand that, like, I don’t think Richard Attenborough goes and spends years living with a, I mean, totally different vocation.
52:30 But I think Jane is, I think Jane is someone that, whether you’re English, American, Russian, I don’t care where you are on this planet, she is the UN ambassador for peace. She is one of the most important, I think Jane has contributed more to this earth than just about anyone walking around right now. And, you know, it gives me great comfort and hope to know that when I go to sleep at night, that Jane’s out there working somewhere. Which she is, because you could barely get a few days of her time and she’s off, she said she hasn’t spent three weeks in a single place for the past 50 years.
53:10 She’s on about 300 days a year and she doesn’t sleep and she’s, you know, she’s just a time zone’s better than anyone being ever encountered. I mean, she’s miraculous. But she is dedicating her last breath to making this world a better place. And I hope, I’m not optimistic, but it would be nice to think that we would come to a time where she wouldn’t have to do that anymore and we could take up the fight for her. But I don’t think that’s going to happen in her lifetime and she recognizes that and one of the nicer moments that we shared together, we did our Los Angeles premiere at the Hollywood Bowl for 18,000 people.
53:58 And Jane’s son Grub flew out and was very emotional evening. It was incredible. I mean, it was the first documentary to ever play the Hollywood Bowl. I mean, to sell out the Hollywood Bowl and, you know, it was just incredible. 18,000 people on their feet for nine minutes, you know, at the end of the film for Jane.
54:19 She was the last one to leave. Her and I were there until the very end of the evening. And I walked her to her car and I said, oh no, she looked at me and she said, we did good, didn’t we, Brett? And I said, we did Jane. We did very good.
54:35 And she got into her car and I kissed her goodbye. And I said, you know, there will come a time where your legs give out on you and you aren’t going to be able to travel 300 days a year. And hopefully this film can do some of that traveling for you. And she put her hand on mine and said, I know. I know.
55:02 You know, and it was a powerful thing because it was not why the film was made. But seeing the way audiences have responded to the film, it really does have a profound impact on people, I think.
55:14 Brian Rose: So you feel like in a weird way, this is a special film for you because you’re taking her message on.
55:20 Brett Morgen: Yeah, and that was never the intent. I don’t make social messages, social message films.
55:25 I think it’s enough to entertain people for 90 minutes.
55:28 Brian Rose: But this film has some added value. I think this film has a lot of added value. Talk to me about fame because you’re probably going to get a little more famous in the next few months when you’re already fairly famous. But this is possibly going to get the Oscar nomination, et cetera, et cetera.
55:44 And you said you’re a little bit like Kurt Cobain. And I remember at the end of Montage a heck, I looked at it and it was just I thought to myself, the fame killed him and then I thought to myself, we killed him. Now, we could probably have another hour discussion about that. But I was just wondering, how do you deal with being in the spotlight? Do you deal with it? Do you enjoy it?
56:02 Brett Morgen: Well, I don’t. I’m like a documentary filmmaker. So to me, I’m not in the spotlight. And I don’t think documentary filmmakers are in the spotlight. We’re like, we’re definitely not like cultural commodities.
56:13 I think like Michael Moore, there’s a couple of us are. So I don’t think it’s anything that I have to give too much thought to.
56:20 Brian Rose: Okay. So it doesn’t bother you. You can do it.
56:22 Brett Morgen: I would hate to be in that situation. And fortunately, I don’t expect that to ever be a good thing.
56:28 Brian Rose: Was that a wrong conclusion I had about Montage where I felt like we did this to him. You uplifted him this high and he couldn’t deal. He assumed by seven years old.
56:38 Brett Morgen: Okay. Yeah. I mean, look, he chose the worst vocation in the world for someone with his condition. But I don’t think he had a chance in life. I think that he didn’t have the tools needed to, he wasn’t given some of the fundamental tools that we all need growing up to help us navigate.
57:01 And that’s why we spent a lot of time on his childhood in that film because I felt like everything was, you know, Montage effect to me was like a boomerang. I felt like it’s basically a two act film and they’re the same act in a way. They mirror each other. It’s all these problems are established in the first act and they all come to fruition in the second act. Right.
57:23 You start to see all the damage that was inflicted upon that kid. And it’s devastating. It’s devastating, you know, but I don’t think he had a chance. Right.
57:33 Brian Rose: Where do you go from here?
57:35 Is this the time you take a break for a year or so? Do other people pitch you? Do you just wait for something to find you? I’m almost curious.
57:44 Brett Morgen: Well, I have a, I did a show from Marvel, believe it or not.
57:48 Like another weird call. The last couple of years, I got a call from National Geographic because they saw Montage effect asking me to do Jane. And then also because the Montage effect, I got a call from Marvel asking me to do this superhero show called Runaways, which just launched in the US two days ago. But so that’s how that’s just launched. I’m the pilot director and executive producer.
58:20 Brett Morgen: Yeah. I’m just going to keep doing films on people that inspire me. I prefer to do nonfiction than fiction. I’ve stuck my toes in the waters of fiction. The last year I did two pilots.
58:37 I’m fine if I never do it again. I tell you it is a lot harder to do documentary than fiction. A lot, like incomparable. And the fact there’s an Academy Award for editing fiction, but no Academy Award for editing nonfiction is insane. It’s utterly insane.
59:01 And I have the world’s greatest respect for editors. But let me just say this. When I came back from shooting a fiction show, I was able to throw an assembly edit in four days. Now, the assembly edit needed to be nurtured and loved for several more weeks and months or whatever. But you can’t do that in a documentary film.
59:21 There is no freaking way you’re throwing an assembly edit in four days. It is an entirely different part of the brain. I love documentary filmmaking. I love nonfiction film. I use direct commercials.
59:33 I’m done. I’ve retired from directing commercials. I’m basically retired before I started doing fiction at nearly 50 years old. I’ve tried it all and I could tell you that there is no greater challenge than documentary filmmaking. And yet nothing is rewarding.
59:51 And not financially in the ways that society comes to think of. But just as an artist, it’s unbelievably rewarding to make these films to breathe new life into these older, these subjects that you didn’t think you were going to see. I liken it to when the Beatles show, The Peppers came out this year. I bought the five disc set. And there were like two albums of outtakes.
1:00:16 And I put them on and got in my car and pulled off to the side of the road and sat there, dazed for two hours, going, I never, ever, ever imagined I would find myself in a recording studio with the Beatles in 1967 on every road. I never thought it was going to happen. And here I am, through the power of this medium, and I’m transported to this place. It’s magical. And so my relationship to the Beatles was deepened and enhanced by that experience.
1:00:53 And so doing what I do, archival filmmaking, in which you dig into the archives and you present something that people think they know or that they’ve seen or heard millions of times and suddenly they’re seeing it new. In Montage of Heck, when we played Smells Like Teen Spirit, you were watching that video for the first time. It gets a totally different experience. And you’re seeing things that you didn’t even know were part of it. When we did the Stones film, we reappropriated the Jumping Jack Flash video and reedited it from scratch.
1:01:25 And again, I think we were able to bring new light to that story. So I think documentary filmmaking is the vacation of our time. It’s the most satisfying thing. Listen, it’s an all-access pass to subjects that you’re sort of intrigued by and fascinated by, which is like, I don’t know anything better. I mean, really, it’s a blessing.
1:01:53 Brian Rose: Yeah, but before we go, I want to ask you about score. Again, I was watching a rough cut of our film this morning, and I was like, I was watching Jane last night, and the score with Philip Glass and everything, and we were all debating about how much the score matters in a film. And I just wanted maybe to get your thoughts on how you thought about creating that, how you went about choosing him, and how much does the score matter in a film right now?
1:02:18 Brett Morgen: Well, my movie is…
1:02:19 In the seven feature-length films I’ve made, there’s probably less than seven minutes of silence of where there’s no music. I go wall-to-wall music. I have to have music. It keeps me alive in the other realm. I don’t believe there’s ever too much.
1:02:34 Brett Morgen: Okay, occasionally there’s too much music, but not often.
1:02:37 Brian Rose: Is that what it’s about maybe keeping you alive in the other room, because you spend so much time?
1:02:43 Brett Morgen: Yeah, I personally find that it kicks me into gear, man, when a cue comes in. But Jane was conceived as a cinematic opera. From the moment the film came into my reality, I knew because there was no sound elements.
1:02:56 So I felt that we were going to… It was going to need score to sort of tie it together. And I love strong musical voices, and so I reached out to Philip Glass, who came on board, and then after he delivered his final cues, we went back and re-edited the entire film to his score, which is something I’ve never done before.
1:03:15 Brian Rose: Yeah, that’s fascinating. So you locked picture, gave it to him…
1:03:19 Brett Morgen: And then locked picture, and then I have to go back. And then locked it. Actually, it’s worse than that. When we signed off on all of his written cues before he went to the orchestra, I locked picture to those. So that was the second time I locked picture.
1:03:35 Then when he gave me the final, final recordings, they didn’t mix them the same way that they had given me the temp mixes. And so the instruments I had cut to were no longer audible, and I had to re-edit the entire film again. At that point, I was cursing him. Every moment I was in the edit room, I was cursing his name. I mean, every night, I had to go back to work.
1:03:53 That’s where I didn’t want to go back to work at 2 in the morning.
1:03:56 Brian Rose: When you have to re-edit something…
1:03:58 Brett Morgen: Yeah, that I was just like, dude, why am I here? Why is the editor not here? The editor left nine months earlier for another job.
1:04:05 So I’m sitting in my office at 2 in the morning, editing the fricking film for the third time this year. This is not that long ago. I can’t keep my assistant there until 2 in the morning, so he’s left at 9 o’clock. And I’m sitting here in the middle of the night by myself for the third time editing this movie. But it needed to happen because I needed to choreograph the edit points as well as the animal movements as well as their vocalization to Philip’s music.
1:04:34 So it all had this kind of magical, realistic harmony.
1:04:38 Brian Rose: And it works. I mean, the first 20, 30 minutes of the film, I mean, you’re in this kind of weird Disney world. And you said that when Jane saw it, she was kind of taken back to those moments herself.
1:04:52 Brett Morgen: I start by putting music on before I cut.
1:04:55 I have to put music on. It guides me. And almost every editorial decision I’ve ever made in any film has been entirely influenced by the music that I have when I’m cutting the film the first time. Okay. Yeah, but that’s, to me, is the tone.
1:05:11 What mood do you want to convey in the scene? Drop in the track. When we did the kid’s days in the picture, the way we cut that film was we cut Bob’s audio and we put music underneath it. And before there was one image cut, it was an audio play with music.
1:05:27 Kurt wasn’t that different. Stone’s film wasn’t that different. I mean, the first thing I do with these music docs is figure out the, I write the songs into the script. So, in a way, you’re hoping the music is telling you a story as well. So, yeah, I think music, for me, is inseparable.
1:05:50 There’s, in fact, it’s just not, it’s never meant to be supporting. And Jane, more than anything, it breaks the world where music is supposed to be supporting the film, and in this film, the images are supporting Philip in a way. Philip wrote an opera for Jane Goodall’s life, and the film illustrates it. It’s one way of looking at it.
1:06:11 Brian Rose: Finally, advice for upcoming documentary filmmakers, whether they’re 20 in NYU right now or whether they’re 30 and they haven’t made their film yet and they were told they were shit.
1:06:23 Brett Morgen: Well, I already did that. I knew you were going to ask this question. I just buried that into this hour and a half interview. So, they’re now going to have to go back and rewatch it if they haven’t figured it out by now.
1:06:31 Brian Rose: Amen. I love it.
1:06:32 I wouldn’t expect anything less. Brett, the movie, it’s really, it took me into this weird world. And I met Jane, and I got to sit down with her and also the juxtaposition of the young Jane and the old Jane, and then, again, this film that was color graded by you after you found it in the vault and brought to life with this score. I haven’t felt like that in a while. And I’ve seen a lot of films and I should know better to let someone get me to that level and you did it.
1:07:01 So, congratulations. Thank you. It’s a beautiful piece. I know it’s in cinemas here in the UK now. I’m guessing it’ll maybe come out in that geo in the future and then in America.
1:07:09 And I’m wishing you all the best with the Oscars and everything. Thank you so much. And again, love your work from the past. So, thanks for letting us inside your brain. Awesome.
1:07:18 And as we say on London Real, it’s about the journey. I’m going to send you a copy of our doc and maybe you can give me some criticism. Yeah, very good. All right, thank you so much. Thanks, man.
