Connect with Deadline online!
https://www.facebook.com/deadline/
https://twitter.com/DEADLINE
https://www.instagram.com/deadline/
https://www.facebook.com/deadline/
https://twitter.com/DEADLINE
https://www.instagram.com/deadline/
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00Welcome to For the Love of Docs, Deadline's virtual event series presented by National
00:12Geographic Documentary Films. I'm Matt Carey, documentary editor at Deadline.com. We are
00:18thrilled to bring you the powerful documentary, Never Look Away, directed by Lucy Lawless.
00:24This is the story of CNN camerawoman Margaret Moth, who shot some of the most compelling
00:30war footage ever documented for a news network. On top of that, she was an extraordinary and
00:36complex human being with a fascinating personal story. We are with the writer, producer, director
00:44Lucy Lawless, and with writer, producer Matthew Metcalf. Thank you so much for being with
00:49us.
00:51Thanks for having us.
00:53And congratulations on this really remarkable film. Interesting, Lucy, how you start this
00:59off with this relationship that Margaret had with Joe Rusci, 17 years old he was at the
01:06time, really sets up your subject, Margaret Moth, as certainly an unorthodox person. But
01:14tell me about taking that creative approach.
01:16Well, I didn't want to do a linear story, you know, Margaret Moth grew up in New Zealand,
01:24went to school, x, y, z. Very boring. And we decided that the strongest place to start
01:30was mystery woman shows up in Texas, can't remember anything about her past. Takes up
01:37on a, you know, a sexual relationship with this too young chap. Because all of those
01:42things are lean in moments, you know, you want to, you've got to hook your audience
01:45for the first 20 seconds. Otherwise, they're going to change the channel, they're going
01:48to, you know, you can't expect them. They're not here for a lesson. Do you know what I
01:54mean? I don't have a captive audience. So it's a little bit of the shock and awe of
01:58as I know about when you're creating a television show, you need shock and awe, you need to
02:06start a buzz. Anyway, just we took that lesson and applied it to this. Also, it makes you
02:13understand immediately, this is not a hagiography. This is a different kind of film. And it's
02:19going to take you on an unexpected journey.
02:21Absolutely. Matthew, I was wondering how challenging it was to find so many people who were part
02:30of Margaret's life. I don't imagine it would have been very easy to find Joe, for instance.
02:36You know, there's never a guarantee that family members are going to want to talk, but this
02:39really helps give us a picture of her. And so it's quite critical.
02:44Look, all credit has to go to Lucy for her ability to reach out and bring these people
02:51on board. Documentaries are so funny. They're very challenging for the people, for direct
02:57family, for direct friends. But I certainly can speak for myself, and I know I can speak
03:02for Lucy when I say this, every documentary I've ever produced is a commitment to respect
03:08and truth to those people that you interview. You have to feel that they're going to feel
03:13that they've been treated with respect and dignity. And so one of the most nerve-wracking
03:17parts of any film is when you show it to those contributors for the first time, and you're
03:21kind of conscious you've got to meet them at the end of the film and say, how was that?
03:26And so I felt particularly proud on this film that everyone who watched it made a point
03:31of coming up to Lucy or myself and saying, thank you, you were true to what we were saying.
03:38But again, it was Lucy who brilliantly reached out to these people and brought them on board.
03:43I want to give a little credit there to Joe Duran, who was Margaret's best friend, because
03:47he actually wrote to me first. And it was through him that we were able to get access
03:53to Christiane Amanpour, who spoke very, oh my gosh, we spoke to her, Matt, on the day
04:00that Russia invaded Ukraine. And all the journalists, including Joe, were pinned in the red. They
04:07wanted to get over there. They knew their colleagues were in imminent danger. Our trauma
04:13bonded to the job. So they want to get there. It was exceedingly generous of her to give
04:18us 40 minutes of her time that day, that's all we had, because I think she wanted to
04:22speak for a fallen comrade. So very grateful.
04:26Yeah, and obviously it was such an extraordinary pairing of the two of them, and very poignant
04:32to hear Christiane Amanpour talk about her sense, you know, telling Margaret, I've just
04:39put you in terrible danger. This is in Sarajevo, and I'm never going to do it again. And tomorrow
04:46they go and do the same thing. Now, I would also add that I don't think there would have
04:51been any way for anyone, Christiane Amanpour or anyone else on planet Earth to prevent
04:56Margaret Moth from shooting and exposing herself to danger. But it's a really telling
05:02moment.
05:03Margaret felt that she always made very calculated risks, that she was not at all reckless. And
05:08let's face it, the only time she got maimed was when she was sitting in the back of the
05:13car going towards work with her colleagues. So just, you know, she wasn't a wildly reckless
05:19person, but she felt she calculated the odds. And for the most part, she won until calamity
05:26came calling.
05:28One of the most important decisions you make, of course, and I think is a key one, is the
05:33creation of these dioramas. I don't think I've really ever seen done in a documentary.
05:40Can either of you talk about those dioramas and how they were created?
05:44I'll give you a little bit of background. So, you know, when Lucy and I started talking
05:50about this film, you've always got the challenge of every documentary of what are your pictures?
05:55What are your images? And when you've got a war zone, when you've got something on such
06:00a large canvas, on such a large scale, it's how do you show that? Then one of the things
06:06that I had recalled was that I grew up in Canberra, Australia. And in Canberra, Australia,
06:12at the Australian War Memorial, they have these dioramas of the First World War, because
06:18when people, you know, after the First World War, they needed a way to show the citizens
06:22of Australia what the soldiers who had gone over to Europe and the Middle East had experienced.
06:27And of course, there was very little, by the way, of movie footage and pictures. And so
06:31they built these huge dioramas in the Australian War Memorial that would show particular events.
06:39Those dioramas have been there now for about 100 years. They're that effective and they're
06:44perennially popular. So I remember saying to Lucy, you know, there's these things in
06:49the Australian War Memorial, perhaps we could build our own version of that to show this
06:56aspect of the story. So I got some pictures off the internet and I sent them to Lucy and
07:00Lucy was like, that's really cool. So collectively, we all rang up Sir Richard Taylor at WETA
07:07and went, here's one out of the bag for you. Can you build a series of giant dioramas?
07:13And it's important to note that on a scale basis, the Sarajevo set, for example, was
07:23about a bus length by a bus length. So it's not small. These are huge cardboard cities
07:30effectively built that had to sit in a huge studio in order to sort of fit them. But that's
07:36the story of how they came about.
07:38And then the budgetary constraints were what gave you your style. You know, if you have
07:42unlimited money, you're just going to have too many explosions or whatever. When you
07:46have really strict budget constraints, you are forced to make some unconventional choices.
07:54So we decided, I'm going to put colours together that don't want to go together in nature.
07:59So the skin will be green and the light will be apricot and the backgrounds are black because
08:04we can only afford a black curtain. So it'll look like a midnight sun in, you know,
08:09Scandinavia or something. Anyway, it gives this uncanny feeling because you want to put
08:14the audience in this uncanny world of imminent danger and then compress it with sound and
08:19make it submarine. And all of this comes from my childhood. And because I don't know if
08:25you guys remember this, but in the 70s, of course, you're both too young, but there were
08:30tons of submarine movies. And that's the most one of the scariest environments of all is
08:36when you're, you know, things sound juddery and, you know, I just wanted a submarine
08:43feeling. So that's how we subliminally put the audience in a state of tension.
08:50Well, I think you absolutely do that. And it's remarkable to me that, you know, this is
08:57your directorial debut with this film. And interesting, I think perhaps other people
09:03might think, well, as an actor yourself, you might want to dive into a scripted or
09:09fictional project. Why did you gravitate towards documentary as your first directorial
09:16project?
09:17Well, I think Matt and I were saying, well, how could we tell this story? You could do it
09:22with actors, but COVID hit. And I was terrified. I thought, what if we never get the money?
09:29Everybody might be dead, people already had died, or they'll forget or whatever it is. So
09:36I ran off with a friend and started interviewing people, which was a bit injudicious. And we
09:41didn't know what we were doing. But I'm quite glad because a lot of that made it finally.
09:45But Matthew very cleverly managed to pull together the package, pull together a great
09:53team. And we went back and revisited some people. And indeed, Jeff Russi, her lover,
10:00who starts and ends the film, died at Christmas. And he was such an important part of the process.
10:08So yeah, time was of the essence. I guess that was another reason to do it by documentary,
10:14time was of the essence.
10:16Matthew, you have another striking visual element in the film is Margaret Moss' artwork.
10:23I thought this was stunning. It's like, made me think of Tim Burton. I mean, this is not
10:29random jotting. This is to me, really, Edvard Munch. I mean, this is, really seeps into you.
10:38And I guess that again, was Joe helped facilitate getting that, but your reaction to seeing that
10:47artwork and really the window that it opened up on Margaret.
10:50Well, look, Lucy was really instrumental in that. She started talking to me about the artworks
10:57before I'd ever seen them. So Lucy had seen them. And it was Lucy who wanted to find a way
11:05to go into Margaret. And she started talking to me, she'd say, Matthew, you've got to see these,
11:10you've got to see these drawings that she did in her childhood. They're
11:14Hieronymus Bosch-like. She's really gone to a dark place. And then Lucy took it a step further
11:21and wanted to represent that, especially post the shooting as this world that Margaret retreated
11:28into. Because all of us, when we experience trauma, often go back to our childhood.
11:34And I think Lucy did that brilliantly. And I really have to admit, that's one of the joys
11:39of producing is often you get ideas brought to you and you cock your head and you're like,
11:44how's that going to work? But those are the moments that I've learned as a producer,
11:49you have to lean into because the fact that you're going, how's that going to work,
11:55tells you that it's an exciting idea. And I remember walking down to the studio when
11:59Lucy was filming some of those. And I was even more a little bit like, this is interesting.
12:04This is going to be really interesting. But once it was in the edit and on the timeline,
12:09I was like, this is so cool. This really works. It shows the pain. It takes us back into Margaret's
12:14world. And it's part of what the joy of documentary is, which is to remove the
12:19layers of an individual, the layers of a personality. You do include some really
12:24graphic photos and she's shooting war, but then there are really disturbing images of her
12:31terrible, terrible injury, which of course could easily have been fatal. It's a wonder it wasn't.
12:36But I wondered about your decision to include these very unvarnished images.
12:43Matthew, do you remember this? We really had big colloquy about this.
12:48We did.
12:49Oh, I can imagine that.
12:51Because I wanted more. I wanted the truth, the full truth. And then go ahead, Matthew,
12:56what did you say?
12:57Well, I think that, look, one thing that I remember I very much encourage was sometimes
13:04less is more, sometimes not lingering and instead just showing 12 frames. It's enough because
13:12everyone knows in that millisecond what they've seen. And it's more powerful to let it sit in
13:18the imagination than it is to linger on it. So we deliberately did that in places as well.
13:24Yeah, the line was ultimately, Matt, that you draw the line at the point at which people
13:30start to vomit in the cinema. You can't have that. And so I was like, you know what? You're right.
13:38We pull back a little more. So that was the line.
13:42And one obvious question for you, but her courage in returning to work,
13:50you know, it's kind of unfathomable almost to go back to war.
13:57It's really, well, it says everything one needs to know, I guess, about Margaret Moth.
14:04I think it became her raison d'etre because she'd lost her beauty, her teeth, her tongue,
14:09her standing in the community. What else was there but to tell the story? I think
14:14through that terrible personal calamity, she learned to love the world. And she found her
14:22children. Here's a woman who never wanted to have them, who went to great lengths,
14:26went to court to ensure that she could get sterilized and never have children.
14:33But she found them in war. And it's in a horrible way, the making of her.
14:39Hmm. Well, it's a remarkable film. And as someone who worked at CNN, I was
14:47at the same time as Margaret Moth. Now, I was not in the field in a war zone. I was in Atlanta,
14:54but I was on the receiving end of those images. You see how they are incredibly important. But
15:01for Margaret's story, we see the incredible risks that war photographers are willing to take
15:08to inform the public. And it's a vital service that they do, and sometimes at terrible,
15:14terrible cost. But it's a really incredible film. It is Never Look Away. We've been joined by the
15:21writer, director, producer, Lucy Lawless, and by the writer, producer, Matthew Metcalf. Thank you
15:27so much for being with us on For the Love of Docs. Pleasure. Thank you so much. Join us next
15:33week for another film in our series, For the Love of Docs, presented by National Geographic
15:39Documentary Films.