An Interview With Andrew Jarecki

Like Steve James heart-wrenching documentary, Stevie, Andrew Jarecki's Capturing the Friedmans started out as one movie and ended up being something quite different. Jarecki originally wanted to explore the world of children's party clowns in New York City, but his debut feature took an unexpected detour into the realm of the macabre and sexually perverse.

Capturing the Friedmans, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2003, describes how a middle-class family was torn apart after police raided their Long Island home, in a child-pornography sting operation. The arrest of the father, Arnold Friedman, made headlines because he was a popular high school science teacher, who also tutored computer classes in his basement den. The case gained even more notoriety when it was alleged that Arnold and his 18-year-old son, Jesse, molested and brutalized dozens of young boys in the class.

Jarecki's unraveling of the case, which resulted in both men being sent to prison, takes viewers on a tour of the looking-glass world of crime and punishment in America at the end of the 20th Century. By the end of the documentary it's clear that one of the Friedmans, at least, was guilty of a heinous crime, but it might not have been the one that copped a plea. To this day, many people feel as if the Friedmans were victims of witch-hunt.

Jarecki didn't know what a powder keg of information he was sitting on, until professional clown David Friedman let him examine 25 hours worth of home videos he'd taken after the raids on Thanksgiving Eve. 1987. Those cassettes, along with another 25 hours of 8mm home movies taken by Arnold Friedman over the course of several decades, paint a portrait of an American family that, while outwardly typical, in fact was teetering on the brink of group psychosis. Even so, the veracity of the charges against Arnold and Jesse remains in doubts throughout the course of Capturing the Friedmans.

Jarecki has steadfastly refused to say whether he thinks the men were guilty or innocent of the charges (the cases never went before a jury). Like any good thriller, the documentary takes audiences on a roller-coaster ride of suspense and constant surprise. Unlike a work of fiction, though, Capturing the Friedmans ends without delivering any straight answers of its own … just like in real life.

The filmmaker was one of the co-founders of Moviefone, and served as the listing service's CEO until being purchased by AOL in 1999. This interview was conducted while Jarecki was in Los Angeles doing publicity, just after the film's debut in New York.

MOVIE CITY NEWS: What where your expectations going into the original project, which was a documentary on birthday-party clowns?

ANDREW JARECKI: I never thought about trying to make a particular kind of film … I try to be more intuitive. I just knew there was this interesting community of children's birthday-party clowns in New York City.

I thought there was something interesting and sweet and heartbreaking about these people. I was willing to bet that if I spent any time around them, I'd find my story.

MCN: Did you expect to see Capturing the Friedmans as a theatrical film, or something that might be shown first on PBS or Cinemax?

AJ: At the time, I didn't really think about where it would end up. I knew from experience, however, that, if I listened to the material, I'd end with something unexpected. And, that's what happened.

This story turned out to be so different than what it was when I started. Once I realized the kind of pull it had on me, I knew it could be a theatrical film, but it didn't change how I made the film.

MCN: Are aspiring documentarians gaining confidence from the mainstream success of such films as Bowling for Columbine and Hoop Dreams?

AJ: I never thought this was going to be a film for television, even when it was only about clowns. I was inspired by other documentaries I'd seen that were mostly character stories, especially Errol Morris' Vernon, Florida and Fast, Cheap & Out of Control.

MCN: Steve James told me that the reason he shot Stevie on film was because he only intended it to be an update on the troubled boy he mentored while he was in graduate school. When Stevie found himself in the middle of a serious criminal investigation, it was too late for James to switch to DV, which would have been far less expensive. I sense that the same thing might have happened to you.

AJ: We started shooting on Super 16 from Day One, because we anticipated eventually blowing it up for the screen. We didn't anticipate shrinking it down for television.

MCN: The audience I saw it with was totally enthralled with the subject matter. It might just as well have been a thriller, like Se7en.

AJ: If Capturing the Friedmans has anything in common with other break-out documentaries, it's because it's made like a theatrical film. There is nothing dry-talking-heads about it.

It's made with a visual palette that's a little bit broader, and an orchestral score. The idea all along was that we were telling a story, as opposed to espousing a position.

MCN: I came away thinking it was a contemporary horror story.

AJ: The story of the Friedmans was a family epic, spanning over a hundred years. Although the most dramatic events take place over the last 20 years, the family's history begins with that home movie of a little girl - Arnold's sister, who died very young -- dancing on a roof in New York City.

That makes it almost a classic American story.

MCN: When did David open up to you, and convince you to shift your attention away from the clown documentary?

AJ: There was that moment in the film when David, in his clown get-up, says, "There's a lot I could ... there's some things I don't want to talk about." That's actually the moment when I knew there was more to the story.

Before that, all of his stories were these pre-packaged happy-family stories ... and I didn't really buy that. I knew there was something more complex here, but I didn't know what it was.

I said to David, "You keep saying how crazy your mother is, let's put her into the film." He said, "No, you can't talk to her because she's out of her mind. She'll tell you all these crazy stories."

MCN: Elaine seemed to be the sanest member of the family. The tension between them is palpable.

AJ: David had been on Candid Camera when he was 3 years old, but didn't have it on tape. It was the moment in his life that he was the most famous, and he was frustrated he couldn't see it.

If I could get him a copy of the show, he'd let me talk to his mother.

MCN: So, you still didn't know you were looking at a family crisis of epic proportions?

AJ: I dug out more of the story from Elaine, and from visiting Jesse in prison. The interesting thing about family secrets is that not everyone in the family wants to keep them secret.

After talking to Elaine for quite a while, I decided to tell David that I was taking the movie in another direction completely. It took him quite a while to get used to that idea, but eventually he said, "You should know that, in addition to the 25 hours of home movies my father shot on 8mm film when we were kids, there's another 25 hours of home video that I started shooting after the police showed up."

MCN: The first set of home movies makes mom, dad and their three sons appear to be as normal as any American middle-class family. Arnold, who was a professional musician after graduating from college, would play the piano and the boys goofed around as if they were born into a vaudeville or circus family.

AJ: That's right. They were all showmen, with a borscht-belt sense of humor.

MCN: David's videos, on the other hand, demonstrated that there was nothing normal about the Friedmans.

AJ: The police would have you believe that they agreed to him videotaping all this stuff because they were all crazy and disconnected from reality. But David argued, "Look my father's going to jail in six weeks, so, of course, I'm going take video tapes of him."

David told me that he wanted his kids to be able to see their grandfather. Not long after he started shooting the home videos of Arnold, the case exploded and Jesse became the central focus.

He said he couldn't stop filming, because he needed to make sense of the whole thing.

MCN: I would have liked to see the Candid Camera material.

AJ: Like some other things, it didn't quite fit.

MCN: Did you ever feel compelled to add your own point of view on what you were learning and observing?

AJ: No, I always felt that I only needed to present the story as it came to me.

MCN: Even if neither case went to trial, you seemed to be saying that the charges were based on flawed evidence.

AJ: The one boy who's shown saying he was molested by the Friedmans was the only person who said he'd had a personal recollection of being molested. That, to me, was interesting.

There were kids from the computer class who told me they were only a small part of the case, but that they'd heard some things about Jesse hurting other kids. Then, I'd look at the records on my lap and see that this kid, who said he didn't really know anything, had 25 sodomy charges next to his name.

That disturbed me because it was clear that these people, who were so significant in the case presented by police, didn't even know they were involved in the case. The fact was, the police had 100 percent of the information and no one else had any.

MCN: The police didn't seem as if they were evil or manipulative, though. Contrary to what David said, Elaine didn't seem as if she was crazy.

AJ: The police thought they were doing their job ... that this guy was a danger to society and had to be stopped. And, Arnie was a pedophile … he went beyond just thinking about it.

But you could also believe that Arnold Friedman was this intelligent guy who would go to great lengths not to be caught, so why would he involve his son? If it wasn't visible to his son, where was the police case?

MCN: It was strange that Arnie copped a plea without insisting on a deal for the son.

AJ: That's the kind of thing you always see on TV, isn't it? Fact is, though, the DA said there never was a deal on the table, because he didn't need one.

The DA had Arnie on the pornography charges … he couldn't go before a jury because of the other incidents.

MCN: The family pretty much forced Arnie to cop a plea, even though he continually denied abusing any of the kids in his class.

AJ: Hindsight is 20/20, so you wonder why the Friedmans let Arnold plead guilty and let the finger, then, get pointed directly at Jesse. On the other hand, how could they have let Arnold and Jesse stand together, in front of the jury box, and let everyone think how twisted a family this was. That seemed equally bad.

In hindsight, it seemed as if it was big mistake. But, then, the judge has said there was never a doubt in her mind that they were guilty ... despite the fact that there was no trial. It was the same judge who indicated to the district attorney that she would give Jesse consecutive jail terms. So, it wasn't surprising that Jesse was willing to plead guilty, as well.

MCN: The boy who said he was abused indicated that it was only after he was hypnotized that he realized what happened. Couldn't a good lawyer have torn him apart in a cross-examination?

AJ: There were a few things that weren't included in the film. The police apparently were willing to keep arresting acquaintances of Jesse who had taken the computer classes and now were over 18. They threatened to send them to jail on these minor offenses, unless they testified against Jesse.

If they did testify against Jesse, they could plead guilty but receive no jail time.

MCN: Did you catch the filmmaking bug from your experience with MovieFone?

AJ: No, I'd made a short film before and directed plays at Princeton. I wanted to do another film ... something light, which is what the clown thing was supposed to be.

MCN: Speaking of which, is David still able to find work as a clown?

AJ: Yes, but the movie only opened two nights ago in New York. He thinks the movie has the potential to have a negative impact on his career, so it was a generous thing for him to do.

MCN: Is he a good entertainer?

AJ: David's a bit sarcastic and has a lot on his mind. But I'd hire him for a party.

June 10, 2003