Celebrity skin

THE EYES HAVE IT Morrison, Sharpton and Abdul-Jabbar open up for The Black List.

Photograph: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders for HBO

On paper, HBO’s The Black List: Volume 1 fairly screams Black History Month: Twenty-two African-American superachievers speak about their lives and times; cue gospel choir and martial trumpets. Luckily, the canned epiphanies never come. The documentary’s format is refreshingly simple: Luminaries face the camera and tell their tales as if addressing a single friendly acquaintance (you, the viewer) rather than a sea of black ties at an NAACP fund-raiser.

Cool­—but how did the program’s creators get such formidable figures as Vernon Jordan and Serena Williams to open up? Director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, a documentary filmmaker and portrait photographer, credits his interviewer, series cocreator Elvis Mitchell. “He lets people talk,” Greenfield-Sanders says. “He’s brilliant at letting a conversation go in a certain direction. He really doesn’t have a list of questions. He’s a master. No one’s better than Elvis.”

Mitchell laughs and shrugs off his partner’s praise, citing their shared disinterest in standard mythmaking. “I think our subjects knew we weren’t there to push an agenda or sell a product.” Mitchell’s initial impulse was to avoid Black History Month syndrome. “I agree that those kinds of programs can be ‘good for you’ like beta-blockers, cod-liver oil and church on Sunday morning. We could have talked to various experts in black studies and African-American history, but I’m more interested in hearing directly from the people who’ve been in the trenches.”

In Mitchell’s solo projects (including the public-radio series The Treatment and the Turner Classic Movies program Under the Influence), he’s a front-and-center interviewer; in The Black List, he goes unseen for the duration, save for a voiceover introduction explaining that the title aims to reverse that phrase’s usual, negative connotations. “I didn’t want a bunch of shots of me nodding,” Mitchell explains.

To that end, The Black List: Volume One—the first installment in what the filmmakers hope will be a series—consists mainly of tight close-ups and medium shots. The subjects address the Inquisitor, a modified camera (similar to the Interrotron, a camera used by Errol Morris in such film as The Thin Blue Line and Fog of War) that makes it seem as though each speaker is looking directly into the viewer’s eyes. This technique lends already compelling interviews an astonishing intimacy: Toni Morrison quietly describes the allure of creativity. Colin Powell takes delight in the tradition of black servants who survive by not letting on that they are smarter than their masters (a comment that Spike Lee would have followed with a shot of Powell standing humbly at Dubya’s side). Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is doe-eyed and boyishly idealistic at 60. Bill T. Jones projects an improbable combination of refined poise and street knowledge, in the mold of his hero, James Baldwin. Louis Gossett Jr. imparts lion-in-winter showbiz wisdom, exemplified by a true-life parable about black actors that sends a chill down the spine. Al Sharpton mounts a once-and-for-all defense of theatricality as an effective political tool. And then there’s Chris Rock’s Chris Rock–ness.

Greenfield-Sanders’s lighting complements Mitchell’s straightforwardness, urging us to regard the speakers as people first, icons second. Television rarely scrutinizes black faces with such candor and concentration. “If you look at my portraiture,” the director says, “it’s all about simplicity. It’s about one light, a simple backdrop. The concentration is always on the person. It’s never on fancy lighting, never on me as a photographer. I thought that if I could make a film that way, it would be fascinating. We played it last night to a very good audience, and people applauded in each section. I never imagined it would happen.”

The Black List premieres Mon 25 at 9pm on HBO.