Digital Nation at MCN - by Gary Dretzka

Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine may have hogged the spotlight in the races for Best Documentary at most of this year's high-profile award ceremonies, but it was only one of many excellent non-fiction works released in 2002.

Leave it to Oscar nominators to find new and ever more perplexing ways to snub what many consider critics and fans of the genre consider to be the best of the rest. The docs nominated for an Independent Spirit Award were far more representative, and, even then, several fine titles were left out.

Stevie, Steve James' first long-form documentary release since 1995's Hoop Dreams, competed for a Spirit with eventual winner Bowling for Columbine, The Cockettes, Devil's Playground and How to Draw a Bunny. Among the other outstanding non-fiction releases were Standing in the Shadows of Motown, Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony, Hitler's Secretary, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, Comedian, The Kid Stays in the Picture, Daughter From Danang, Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War and Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy.

According to James, Stevie made the short list of docs considered by the academy panel, but it didn't get invited to the big dance. Hoop Dreams didn't make the cut, either, back in 1995.

If the slight bothered him, James took consolation in the Joris Ivens Award Stevie received for being best-of-show at last year's Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival.

The Stevie in the title of his wrenching new documentary refers to the troubled 11-year-old to whom James was an Advocate Big Brother during his grad-school days at Southern Illinois University. When the filmmaker left SIU for Chicago and Kartemquin Films, in 1985, he lost track of that teenager, Stephen Dale Fielding.

James returned to the Carbondale area, in the mid-90's, with the intention of renewing acquaintances with Fielding and scouting locations for a documentary on life in the state's unexpectedly beautiful Little Egypt region. What began as a modest personal project, however, slowly evolved into a sobbering140-minute feature film on the state-raised youth's inability to take control of his life, his hatred for the mother who abused and abandoned him, and the impact his bad behavior has on friends, family and the filmmaker himself.

Going into post-production, James thought he had a Stevie that offered some degree of hope for the young man's future. That optimism was quashed by the news that Fielding had been arrested in the sexual molestation of an 8-year-old child he was baby-sitting. James returned to tiny Pomona and once again became enmeshed in the kind of American family tragedy few writers, besides Faulkner, have been able to describe with the twisted edge it deserves.

It's impossible to watch Stevie without questioning many of James' personal decisions, especially his motivations for going ahead with the project once Fielding started pushing his buttons. Some of the conversations between the tall, soft-spoken Virginia native and the multi-tattooed and dentally challenged Fielding -- along with warnings from James' social-worker wife not to get caught up in Stevie's world and breezy chats with some local white supremacists - go way beyond being merely disturbing, and skew towards psycho-voyeurism .

Stevie opened March 28 in New York, and will expand into other major markets starting in mid-April. The Kartemquin Films production is being distributed by Lions Gate Films.

This interview took place at the Viceroy Hotel, in Santa Monica, a few days before the Independent Spirits ceremony.

MCN: Stevie tells a very American story, albeit one that's quite dark. What do you think impressed the international panel of jurors at the Amsterdam festival, especially considering Bowling for Columbine also was in competition.

SJ: That probably was the only time Stevie will beat out Bowling for Columbine. The Amsterdam festival has been in existence for 15 years, and, in all that time, only one other American film has won the Grand Prize, and that one was pretty obscure. Some people suggested it was America's turn.

A lot of American documentaries play at the festival, even though there's a perception that European films have an edge. It's considered to be an important place to be, if only because the judging panel is made up exclusively of documentary makers, not a mix of critics, academics and fans. Maybe that had something to do with it.

MCN: It seemed to me that Stevie crossed the traditionally accepted borders separating the subjects of documentaries from the filmmakers themselves. Did this have any impact on the judges?

SJ: I do think Stevie is a film that speaks to other documentary makers. In one way, it is a meditation on the nature of documenting another person's life, the lines we're willing to cross … and whether that line should be crossed.

MCN: That came through most clearly when, on film, you agreed to give Fielding money to help take care of some legal expenses, and, later, pleaded with him to accept a deal offered by the district attorney. This raised my eyebrows a bit.

SJ: The reactions I've gotten have run the gamut. For the film to be honest, though, it had to show those things taking place. It's the thing most of the filmmakers I've met are most interested in talking about after seeing Stevie.

Others, people I meet at festivals and in word-of-mouth industry screenings, aren't really that engaged by the ethics issue. They plug into the lives of the people they're meeting in the film, and my relation to Stevie as his Big Brother. They identify with that aspect, and, for them, it becomes a compelling and gut-wrenching film experience. They can't let go of it.

It's troubling, demanding, emotional, and makes them think.

MCN: Stevie isn't the kind of kid most fans of documentary films come into contact with on a regular basis. He's a state-raised kid, whose path through life seems pretty pre-determined.

SJ: It depends on where you grew up, but there's nothing unusual about his inability to stop giving in to his self-destructive urges. There have been a number of people I've met who say Stevie makes them think about someone they know, someone who's struggling with their addictions or other bad habits.

I've also had people come up to me and say, Who knew that this kind of thing could happen today, or that these kinds of people even existed? I got the feeling that their only contact with the people they saw in Stevie are on Jerry Springer, where people of that class and background are put on display for spectacle.

MCN: They may be considered to be white trash, but people like Stevie are the first ones to volunteer to go to war in defense of the right of Americans to drive gas-guzzling SUVs around Beverly Hills.

SJ: They write them off as hopeless cases, even after seeing the movie. I don't, but maybe I'm being naïve. I've always been struck by how complicated people are, no matter what their economic status or educational background..

Stevie's girlfriend, Tanya, completely defied my expectations. When you first meet her on the screen, invariably you make assumptions about her intelligence and her insights, which she immediately proceeds to undermine. Her friend in Chicago (who has Down's syndrome) becomes something like an oracle.

During the course of the film, the mother of the rape victim grows from being someone merely there to express righteous anger, to one of the most eloquent people I've interviewed on film.

MCN: Your wife works in the social services, and is shown discouraging you from helping Stevie in ways that could be interpreted as enabling some of his more self-destructive habits.

SJ: A few months ago, in Chicago, we had a brain trust screening for policy makers, intellectuals and people who work in the trenches of the social services, like my wife. One of the guys, who runs a halfway-house program for prisoners making their way back into the population, told me that the first half of the film confirms everything most people think they know about people like Stevie, while the second half shatters those stereotypes. That was a great compliment to the film.

If the film came off as being merely a portrait of Stevie - and I left myself out of it completely, as some people wanted - it would have been much easier to watch and they would have gotten their voyeuristic take on these people's lives. In that way, they wouldn't have felt put upon to examine how they might have acted in a similar situation.

MCN: Did you shoot on film, or digitally?

SJ:Super 16, which is odd for films that aren't really funded. But, it wasn't our intention to make the film that it became … more verite, like Hoop Dreams. We planned on doing a documentary about the world Stevie grew up in, this beautiful part of southern Illinois, which is perfect for film. I couldn't resist.

Then, when he was charged with the crime and everything changed, we decided it would be easier to stay with Super 16. We ended up with 70 hours of film, compared with 250 for Hoop Dreams.

We did take it from 16 to HD, then 35mm. We showed it in Montreal in HD, and it looked spectacular. The size of the camera has never been a problem for us.

MCN: Has the marketplace changed at all since Hoop Dreams was released?

SJ: I think we're in a Golden Age for documentary film making, and not just because Bowling was so visible. More young filmmakers are embracing non-fiction, and digital and video technology has made it easier to do.