For every decade since the 60s, there's a landmark in the history of independent film with Robert M. Young's name on it. After roaming the world as a journalist and documentary filmmaker, Young shot Nothing But a Man in 1964, a gritty realist drama about a black railroad worker in the Deep South. He was so involved as the cinematographer he's often credited as a co-director with Michael Roemer. In 1977, he directed not one but two vital indies of Latino cinema, Short Eyes, based on Miguel Piņero's adaption of his own powerful play, and Alambrista!, winner of the Camera d'Or at Cannes. The stand-out films of the 80s are The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez; Extremities, a commercial effort in which Farrah Fawcett surprised the world by showing she could act; and, judging by his own comments, a personal favorite, Dominick and Eugene. His work with Sundance would result in a great moment in his life - working with his son.
And now, here in the mid-Naughts, his latest film, Human Error, which he talks about at length here, will be screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival (October 7 - 17) on Saturday, October 9, at 9:30 pm, and on Sunday, October 10, at 6:45 pm. Robert M. Young will also be appearing on a panel on October 9 entitled "The Future of Independent Film in a Global Economy."
Human Error
How did you find the thing that you love to do?
I've been making films all my life. My dad was an editor and my mom was an assistant editor around the time of the First World War. My father founded a film laboratory in New York, the oldest lab in the world with the same management. I had a kind of theatrical [background], Tin Pan Alley and that kind of thing, and I wanted to make films. My dad didn't want me to make films. He wanted me to go into his business because he thought I was too idealistic and too naive to be in the world.
Instead, I went to MIT when I was sixteen. I went because my father wanted me to be an engineer. I did terrible there. I was at the bottom of the class. I enlisted in the Navy when the war came and I went off to the Pacific for two years. I became a Photographer's Mate. Then, I came back and I went to Harvard. I was in the first post-war class at Harvard which was a really interesting class since almost everyone had been in the service. I majored in English literature and I started making movies. Then, after I got out, I formed a cooperative with two other guys and, for six years, whatever we made we put in the pot and whoever needed it the most took it. So I had a skewed beginning. I mean, I was very young, for MIT and then the war. I never dated any girls. I came back, at 21, and I would play "spin the bottle" but that was about it. And now I'm in the world and I'm very naive about it. Getting into films was really more about my life rather than a career. I never set about it as a career.
Even the earliest things that you were working on were quite successful...
Well, things were successful...
Nothing But a Man, obviously.
Right, but my first films were documentaries. I spent six years making films about life in the sea and I did a lot of different kinds of documentaries that took me in to different places. I lived with with Eskimos one winter. I lived in an elephant camp in India where we caught wild elephants and trained them. I followed a man-eating tiger for months with a hunter; I crossed the Kalahari desert with bushmen. I've done a lot of things like that. In 1961, I sneaked into Angola. I was the first journalist in Angola and I walked 400 miles behind the Portuguese lines and came out with the first story of the War. I got the Polk Award for that. Those are the kinds of things that I did. I was very involved in the civil rights movement. Then, in 1962 with Michael Roemer, we wrote Nothing But a Man, which is in the National Register of Films and it was Malcolm X's favorite movie. That opened the area of fictional film to me but I went back to documentaries for thirteen years.
I was tremendously naīve. I thought that it was immoral to have an agent. I thought that it was wrong to have anybody telling you what you ought to do, for money. Actually, during that period for one year I made something that turned out to be a commercial and it was excellent. They loved what I had done so much and when they asked me what I got paid I said, "A hundred dollars a day." Everybody laughed because no one could make any money if I only made a hundred dollars a day. I ended up making about a half a million dollars that year, and then I quit cold turkey. I had offers to go and be part of commercial companies but it frightened me. I made so much money that I became arrogant. It frightened me. Since I wanted to make longer, storied films, I just quit. I went and lived on an Indian reservation and I sailed around the Galapagos Islands. So I'm a little bit different.
You've had a charmed life in a sense.
I've had a very lucky life. I made the film that inspired Jaws, by swimming with sharks while they were feeding, and I've seen a lot of interesting things in my life; and I've crossed the Kalahari and I've walked from central Kenya all the way to Lake Turkana, near the Sudan border. I've seen a lot of interesting things in my life and I've learned a lot. I studied acting with [Lee] Strasberg. I was in his private class. I love acting and I love actors. It was very transformational for me to be in his class. I love telling stories, too, and I'm a camera man, but I'm probably kind of an amateur at everything.
Do you prefer to work with actors who are versed in Strasberg's method?
I don't even think about it that way. I've worked with people with all different kinds of backgrounds, I think maybe because I love them. I hope that doesn't sound sloppy. I usually get very good performances from actors. I think it's very important if you care about them and respect them. Respect and understand how to help them. I don't mean that in a condescending way, because very often it's the very first meeting you have with the actor that sets everything up. I have a very strong aesthetic. Not indicating [anything] about it, being about a situation and being experiential. I usually communicate with them and then I'm encouraging, to allow them to really even surprise themselves about what they're going to do. I'm very supportive and, since I'm a cameraman, I know what the camera's going to do. I don't have a formula like, "Big shots and then I move in for coverage." I say, "You put the camera where the story is," so my question to myself is, "Where is the story?", moment by moment, and that's where I put the camera and that's the way I shoot it. I do a certain amount of coverage to protect, because later on you might need to tighten the scene, but beyond that, I make my choices right away.
On the set?
Yeah, on the set, and with the actors.
Do you storyboard much at all?
Not in the conventional sense. Some things I have in my head because I think that they're complex and I'll storyboard them. I like to be able to take the actors on a location and see what they do, but I have to have a plan because I don't think that it's right to force the actors to have to figure out the whole thing for themselves.
Coming into the situation, I want them to be aware of the situation and be their characters, but I have suggestions for them and I'll give suggestions to them so that they can play them out. But I'll never tell an actor, for example, "Stand here." If I see in my mind's eye that this is where they really need to be, then I think, if that insight is correct, that it comes from the same place as the story. Then I'll explore if perhaps two lines should to be switched, and now, they'll really be saying it here. I try never to violate the psychological reality or the physical reality. I try to find a way in which the story has to happen and I look for the locations that force that, too. Locations that are really reverberations of the story - that's why the person would be standing there and, psychologically, this is the moment when this person would say this to this person. It may be that it's awkward then. I may see that gives me an opportunity to put something else into the scene that interrupts them but it has to be something that generates out of the scene, and now, I get to have happen what I visualized, but it works. I'm used to making documentaries and I'm used to being in situations where things happen and I have to catch them quickly, so I even stage some of my scenes that same way. I make a reality then I move into it with the camera and I shoot quickly. That's my life and that's the way I work.
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