F3S: Your body of work gives the impression that you as a director are drawn to powerful, threatening, bizarre and dangerous people. Do you think that’s applicable here?
NB: I think this film is very much to do with the political and racial system in the United States at the moment, and it’s very in keeping with Ferguson and the Hands Up United movement, and I think there’s a groundswell at the moment of white and black people asking questions about racial politics in the United States and questioning what real advances have actually happened since the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties. Why is it that black communities are still so impoverished? They don’t really have much of a hold at all in the political process, and have been systematically alienated from really having any form of representation in American politics. Even people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who are the quasi-black leaders, are completely distrusted by the black movement. It’s interesting that people from Ferguson refused to share the platform with those figures, and in many ways I think the black political movement is being bought off.
F3S: How much do you typically care about what your films say about their subjects? Do you enter into the filmmaking process with a preordained approach, or are your films purely objective and explorative?
NB: I care completely, and that’s the whole reason for making the film. I try and go into it with an open mind. When I went into making this film, I didn’t subscribe to all the theories that the police were somehow involved in the murders. I thought that was all too much of a conspiracy theory. Interestingly enough though, at the end of the film after I’d spoken to Lonnie’s son Chris Franklin, who said that his father for example had a lot of fans within the law enforcement, I had taken a much more extreme position myself, where I felt that the police had enabled the murders to happen, if not sometimes participating in them themselves. I don’t know if the police specifically knew it was him, but I felt that they had tried very little to actually get to the bottom of it. Even when they had witnesses basically pointing them to the very house that Lonnie Franklin lived in, they made such little attempts at following through with what turned out to be an extremely reliable and accurate eyewitness. You have to ask them questions about their sincerity in finding the murderer.
F3S: Is there any particular theme that you take into consideration when looking for new subjects or films to work on?
NB: I think most of the films I’ve done focus on one thing but have also been about other things as well. Tales of the Grim Sleeper is ostensibly about Lonnie Franklin, but really it’s a portrait of this community and its political system that was prior to what it is at the moment. I think something like Kurt & Courtney (1998) was also to do with freedom of speech and the way in which big corporate bodies have monopolised people like Kurt Cobain simply because he was worth so much money. I’m very protective of that kind of film being made. It’s easy to make films about blue-collar crime and that sort of thing, but it’s very difficult in the United States to make films about people with money.
F3S: You’ve been making films for a few decades now. How do you think the documentary filmmaking landscape has changed in that time? Are there any noticeable new challenges you’ve come across?
NB: Funnily enough I’m not a great expert on that. I think as a documentary filmmaker you tend to just keep your nose pretty close to the grindstone. I’ve noticed that people who I’ve worked for in the past, like Channel 4, have changed a great deal in the time that I’ve known them. I think it’s interesting that, for example, Channel 4 aren’t really making great documentaries anymore, and Netflix are now coming in and making a whole lot of great documentaries. Those influences are there and you just need to keep up with the times. Sky has obviously come in and started to have an impact on documentaries, so I guess institutions see themselves differently and assume different identities depending on what audience they are chasing at a particular time. I think that, commercially, documentaries have never been more viable or more successful, but I think it’s become harder. People expect to find documentaries on Netflix, HBO, etc., and don’t necessarily expect to go to the theatre and see them, so I think the theatrical side of it has become even harder, in my experience. Even a current film like Citizenfour (2014), which is doing the rounds internationally, has not been an enormous success theatrically. It’s hard to think of a recent documentary that’s made a huge amount of money or attracted a big audience, other than Michael Moore’s films but they were some time ago. What people tend to do now is go to Netflix and watch your back catalogue as well, so what you’ve lost in one way you’ve very much gained in another. Films are lot more accessible now and have a lot longer lifespans than they used to have.
F3S: Are you working on anything currently or have anything in the pipeline?
NB: I’m working on a series based on Ronan Bennett’s book “The Catastrophist”, which I’m excited about but is as usual taking much longer than we imagined. I’m also just currently looking for another documentary to do as well, though I’m not quite sure what the subject will be yet.
F3S: Lonnie Franklin is still standing trial. Are you still keeping up to date and participating with the case, or do you take a step back now that the film’s finished?
NB: I might follow it up. It’s something I’m considering. You don’t want to do it just because it’s there. I do feel, however, that it could move in an interesting area and it could be fascinating to follow it through.
Nick Broomfield’s Tales of the Grim Sleeper is currently being screened across the UK until 3 March 2015 across cities including London, Bristol, Norwich, Liverpool, Oxford, Canterbury, Glasgow and Ipswich at cinemas including Curzon and Picturehouse branches. The film will air on Sky Atlantic in March.
Words and interview by Edward Frost
