Question authority

Errol Morris queries every query.

Illinois law requires that we ask for permission to record Errol Morris. It’s an odd question to ask a documentary filmmaker—not least one famous for filming his subjects with a device called “the Interrotron,” a camera rigged so that the interviewee is not in the same room with the interviewer; instead, the subject talks directly to the interviewer’s image, projected onto a camera.

“I should record this,” Morris deadpans. “I like the idea.”The retort is particularly appropriate given that Morris’s latest film, the long-awaited Abu Ghraib documentary Standard Operating Procedure, is not a conventional exposé but an examination of recorded material from the prison—namely, the photographs. In many ways, Standard Operating Procedure takes Morris’s landmark documentary The Thin Blue Line (1988) and spins it on its head: That film famously used reenactments to illustrate a murder case for which physical evidence no longer existed. In Standard Operating Procedure, by contrast, Morris examines a crime and finds a wealth of physical evidence—and seeks to question the evidence itself.

“One of the ironies of this story, a story of many ironies, is that there were 13 separate investigations done of Abu Ghraib…[and] we really still don’t have a clear idea about this place at all,” Morris says. “And the photographs may be partially to blame. You see a photograph, you think you’ve seen everything. You don’t stop and think, ‘Well, I’m just seeing what was photographed; I’m not seeing what wasn’t photographed.’ ”

Morris believes the photographs actually helped George W. Bush win the 2004 election. “People [first] look at the photographs and they say, ‘What the fuck is this?,’ ” he says. “Immediately it gets spun.… Again, the left says, ‘the unmistakable fingerprints of Cheney.’… The right says, ‘Nonsense. You haven’t proved that. These are rogue soldiers acting on their own initiative. They’re bad apples.’ All of a sudden, Bush has someone to blame. Why is the war going south? Because of the photographs, because of the bad apples. Why does everybody in the Arab world hate our guts? Because of the photographs.”

The film doesn’t aim to be a comprehensive portrait of Abu Ghraib, but rather an inquiry into the nature of investigation—which Morris says surprises viewers. “People want to see it as that same movie that tells you, you know, torture memos. John Yoo. Addington. Rumsfeld. Gonzales. Cheney,” he says. “It becomes a kind of mantra. It’s not as though I don’t think that stuff is important. It is important; it’s just I didn’t want to do it. I’m sorry! Hit me with a two by four!”

Nor does the film exonerate the central characters in the story, something Morris was accused of doing with his Oscar-winning documentary The Fog of War (2003), a profile of former defense secretary Robert McNamara.

“My son interviewed me [about Standard Operating Procedure],” he says. “He said, ‘Well maybe they don’t feel they have anything to apologize for.’ Now under normal circumstances, this would be seen as the most damning fact of all.… On the other hand, these people have been court-martialed, imprisoned, blamed for the failure of the war, vilified in the press.… They know that their commanding officer participated in all of this and walked away, in most instances uncharged and scot-free.”

That partially answers the question of how Morris got Lynndie England—of the infamous “leash” photo—and others to trust him with interviews. But Morris wryly dismisses the notion of needing trust in documentary filmmaking. “Trust is so much linked with hope.… I mean, every interview, every conversation with another human being is a leap into the void,” he says. “How am I really to know?…They had every reason to believe what I was saying. They had every reason to distrust what I was saying also. You know, sometimes I am amazed that people talk to me.” (After our interview, he took flak at a Q&A when he revealed that he paid his subjects, which—while ethically dubious—has reportedly become standard for his films.)

Since last year, Morris has written a popular New York Times blog whose topics often dovetail with those of the film. In September, he challenged readers to explain the chronological order of Crimean War photographs that Susan Sontag cited in Regarding the Pain of Others. The thematic linkage with Standard Operating Procedure is clear, but the blog, Morris says, was conceived independently.

“It’s a new thing,” he jokes. “It’s called philosophical marketing.”

Standard Operating Procedure opens Friday 2.

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