Alec talks with director Joe Berlinger about his latest film for HBO Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory -- the third film in a series of documentaries about a crime that took place 18 years ago in rural Arkansas.
Berlinger says, “We made these three movies as acts of advocacy” – which is not his usual style as a long-time documentary filmmaker. “I believe the audience should be treated like a jury. You give them the information, you weigh both sides, and you let them come to their own conclusion.” These films were different, acknowledges Berlinger: “We clearly have a point of view that there is a huge injustice.”
Early in his career, Berlinger worked for famed documentarians David and Albert Maysles. He says the Maysles brothers taught him about “The act of faith about making a film about real life as it’s unfolding.” Berlinger is known for his documentary work, has dabbled in features, but says he’d “love another opportunity to do a feature at some point, but, you know, I’m just used to being the author of my own work, being totally in control.”
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I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Joe Burlinger has been making documentaries for almost two decades along with his directing partner Bruce Snowsky. Their first film, Brother's Keeper, about a murder among brothers who were struggling dairy farmers in upstate New York, won the Sundance Film Festival in nineteen ninety two. Their most recent film is also about murder. Paradise Lost three Purgatory is the third film in a series of documentaries about a crime that took place eighteen years ago. Three eight year old boys were murdered in rural Arkansas, and three teenagers were charged with the crime, Damian Eccles, Jason Baldwin, and Jesse miss Kelly. The prosecution painted the teens, who wore black, listened to heavy metal, and read Stephen King novels as Satan worshippers participating in ritualistic killings. When Burlinger went down to investigate, he found very little physical evidence. What he did find was a modern day witch hunt. At a press conference, Inspector Gary Gitchell said the case against the accused teens is very strong. That's an excerpt from Burlinger's first film about the case. His films brought a lot of attention to what was happening in Arkansas. Just last August, after eighteen years in prison, Echoes Baldwin and ms Kelly were released. This probably wouldn't have happened without Burlinger's films and support from celebrities like Johnny Depp, Eddie Vetter and others who raised millions to fund appeals regarding DNA evidence. The fact that the three were ultimately released surprised no one more than Burlinger. When he first went down to work and saw he expected to find something very different. We went down thinking we were going to be making a film about guilty teenagers, because we didn't know at the time just how we're responsible. The local press was and covering the story, and this was right around the time of the Jamie Boulger case in the UK. About a year and a half before that, a ten year old kid had lured a younger kid out into the railroad tracks in Liverpool and and just beat him to death. And so we thought there was an emerging trend of youth violence, and so we went down thinking we were going to make a real life River's Edge and we got down there and one plus one was not equaling to you know that Um, you know, I can't say immediately because it took about three months to negotiate access into their holding cells prior to the trial. But once I met once Bruce, and I met Damien, and in particular, we just felt like this was not you know, out of a one out of ten. In the film he says it's an eleven. It was like a minus one. And you started to base that thinking on conversations with the defendants themselves, or evidence and discussions with their attorneys as well all of the above. You know, you look at Jason Baldwin, a sixteen year old, scrawny kid with you know, arms that are couldn't be capable of the crime that was committed. He just used credibility. Damian Eccles, I mean, even though he was his own worst enemy in some ways, because he kind of enjoyed the attention and was, you know, a little narcissistic about the whole thing. It just didn't make sense, you know, And when you start looking at the forensic evidence, I mean, here you have allegedly a crime by three teens who are not professional killers, who brought according to the prosecutor, three little boys out into the woods and slaughtered them to death in this savage beating. And yet there was no blood found at the crime scene. And then you look at the confession, and the confession is riddled with inconsistencies and problems coaching and coaching. Um so, within months we knew that something was amiss. I found that Eccles came across as a very unsympathetic person at times, and as you mentioned the word narcissism, he never seemed to really suffer. Were there times that you were convinced Ecules really was genuine that he suffered off camera? You never really showed him, not that I needed to break down a cry. And now that's interesting, you know, because some people view echoes that way, and some people view echoes very differently, very sympathetically. I mean a lot of people. You know. The amazing thing about this story, I think he's ultimately sympathetic be cause he's innocent as a character. No, I mean, I think he didn't do himself any favors when he took the stand, you know, well, I think he kind of enjoyed the attention, and as he explained to us, in a subsequent film. You know, he just never imagined that he would be convicted for these rumors and ghost stories. He just believed that it would be made right. I mean, the interesting thing for me is just this worldwide explosion that these films created. And it was people both famous and not famous, regular people and people like Johnny Depp who all said, like, you know what, that guy could be me. I dressed a little different, I acted a little differently the other I was the other, and in the right circumstances, I could have been that guy. And so I think he did evoke a lot of sympathetic feelings from people. But the culmination of this long two decade is doing which you made three films. These men walked out of prison for time served in exchange for copying this plea? What was the state of Arkansas let them out under what's called an Alfred plea. It's a rarely used legal maneuver. It's incredibly bizarre. Uh. It's disheartening that this was the resolution. You know, on the one hand, of course, we're all delighted these guys are out of prison, but not but not exonerate. And that's the problem. The Alfred plea is where you profess your innocence, but for legal purposes you plead guilty to lesser charges. So the charges were reduced from capital murder, which is the death penalty or life without parole, to first degree murder. And because they had spent eighteen years in prison, they were they were sentenced to time served. Also, there's a suspended sentence hanging over their heads that if they ever violate a crime, they will have to serve more time for these murders. Are you planning on a fourth movie? You know? We people keep asking that, and you know we we we made these three move is as acts of advocacy. A fourth movie feels like we would be kind of milking it, you know, And I'm not sure I want to go down that road. I honestly don't agree with you. Really to be the last chapter of this is what did wrongful conviction and wrongful incarceration due to them? Life for them freezes there as a young man and their body keeps aging. But you wonder what kind of development they have then you release them out into the world. And I mean, god knows. The state of Arkansas had the least generous public defender approach towards this case. Was their council public defender at first, well, some of them were public defenders, and some of them wanted to take the case on, but they did not get the kind of representation that you would expect. I mean, it's in fact, one of the great tragedies. And what people should focus on with this story is that it has taken eighteen years, millions and millions of dollars provided by people like Peter Jackson and Eddie Vetter of Pearl jam and Johnny Depp three Natalie Maine's three very relatively expensive documentaries from HBO. I mean, there's something wrong with our legal system where this is what it takes to get somebody out of prison, and why don't they have that kind of defense right from the get go? You know, maybe there is a four paradise last four if we want to exonerate these guys because the Alfred plea, it's deeply disturbing. You have three guys who are wrongfully convicted, spent their entire adult life up till now in prison for a crime they didn't commit, and the State of Arkansas is making them plead guilty so that a they won't be sued for wrongful convicting, so they're not going to get any compensation and be that means the state of Arkansas is not looking for the real killers. I mean, the people of the state of Arkansas should be disgusted. And you know just how slowly the wheels of justice grind forward the simplest things like this DNA action. You know, in two thousand one, Arkansas passed a DNA statute which allows you to go test new evidence, and they argued for several years whether they could even do the test, and then the state wanted a particular crime lab. I mean literally for six years it took to get these d n A results out. However, when it came time to craft this Alfred play, when they were fearing the HBO broadcast and when they were fearing this evidentiary hearing that was coming up in December, and literally in six or seven days they are two weeks something like that, they banged out this this Alfred place. So you know, when it's in their interest, they can make it happen pretty damn quickly. Why didn't you abandoned it after the first That's a great question. I was both Bruce and I were just absolutely tortured at the idea these guys were still rotting in prison, and you know, the case was, but the movie didn't come out until those guys have been in prison already for four years. It just haunted us, you know. On the other hand, going back and revisiting this is a depressing story. I feel like I lost like my fatherly innocence by covering this story. And what I mean by that is, you know, my first kid was born while we were editing this film, and I would be sitting, you know, at the editing bay looking at the most horrific autopsy photos and crime scene footage. You know, I would go home at night after having these images like emblazoned on your brain, and I would drop the you know, the door of the crib and pick up my new infant who was just arrived a few months ago, and holding my child and thinking about these eight year olds and thinking about the gross autopsy footage that I had looked at. I mean, it was just an emotionally draining experience making these films, and so it was a very considered decision to go back and to do it a second time and a third time. And you know, during the second film, I had my second kid. Your life's going on and there's isn't. I mean, it just tortured me. But you know, like every hallmark that my child would go through, you know, kindergarten, middle school, high school. I think, my god, these guys are still rotting in prison. I just felt we had a you know, we had a moral obligation to keep telling the story. But was there ever a moment where you and your principal staff, your your your real Cadrea people you did this film with even in your mind, you just raised a glass to each other and said, we got these guys out of prison. Oh yeah, we we We did some pretty hard party. We did some pretty hard partying in Toronto, and really felt good about about what you must feel amazing though it's luck. You know, we're filmmakers. We made films, were paid to make films. We deserve some credit. The people who really deserve the credit are the tens of thousands of people, both regular and the Johnny Depps, who have given us, you know, big sums of money or little sums of money, who selflessly have advocated for decades for their release. Lorie Davis knew nothing about this crime or this case, saw the movie and she was living in Brooklyn as an architect, just couldn't get it out of her mind. Started writing to Damian, went to visit Damian, fell in love, married him, and you know, they've been married for fourteen years. Most of that time obviously he's been on death row and she has been a tireless advocate for his release, and she's a big reason he's to prison. That must be so bizarre and I can't imagine. I can't imagine either, because they really you know, look, she's a wonderful person. It's just one of those bizarre things you could never like, you know. Script. I'm Alec Baldwin. More from my conversation with Joe Burlinger is coming up in a minute. You're listening to here's the thing you had said. There's a quote I had from you where you said, there's a fine line between being a storyteller and being a manipulator. We're in this film, were in any of the three films involved? Was did you feel that you had did a little bit of equation? Uh? Um. I believe the audience should be treated like a jury. You give them the information and your way both sides, and you let them come to their own conclusion. But with each passing film, we felt like we were moving away from pure storytelling and more and more into advocacy, and we certainly wanted to get people riled up about this. So, you know, I'm not sure we are manipulating people, but we clearly have a point of view that there is a there is a huge injustice that needed to be you know, it's interesting the first film, you know, good of the people who walked away from the original film thought that they were guilty, and we let both sides have their say, and I think there's just been a progression towards, you know, more overt advocacy, which is kind of in conflict with my overall filmmaking philosophy, which is to treat the audience member like a jury member and let them make the decision about the events they're seeing. Now, where did all your career begin? You you were in advertising Originally, I had a brief stint to the very big any of my career working in advertising. And actually I was a language major in college and spoke fluent in German. But I worked in the Frankfurt, Germany office of Ogilvie and Mayther That's when I got the film bug, you know, because I started producing. I started producing television commercials there, and the first time I walked on a film set and saw cameras and lights and action, I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. And then what happened? And so I came back to New York with Ogilvie and was on an American Express campaign as a producer, and we hired these guys called the Mazel brothers who didn't give me shelter and great provision, and we hired them to do, uh, some television commercials, to do some unscripted documentary style TV commercials and David Mays for American Express and what were those commercials? Like, It's actually a campaign that I think ended up not airing. It was kind of an but now they did a lot of commercials actually that quite good, but document you know, kind of documentary style. Anyway, I kind of hit it off with David Mazel's he's the brother who passed away quite a few years ago. They were looking for somebody to market their services to Madison Avenue and I was looking to get into the film business. And now I was a guy who had a couple of years of Madison Avenue and so just over lunch we kind of cooked up the idea, Okay, let me come work for you. I'll get your more commercial business. And and oh I got them a lot of commercial did that for about five years. So I was like, what did you learn from them? The act of faith of making a film about real life as it's unfolding, which sounds like, well, what's the big deal, but you know, I mean the idea of capturing human drama in all its ambiguous glory as it unfolds before the camera is first of all an incredible way to make a film, and secondly to have faith. And I think we take that cinema verite movement a little bit for for granted today, I think people are better actors today than they are were forty years ago. This is where reality shows are are awful because they are not unscripted. It's like it's like the stage predation and natured documentaries. They get these people all wound up and then they throw them in the room together. But where you can get unvarnished and real verity insights into people, it's often only I find where those those steaks are that high, like in a courtroom. Yes, exactly. Uh, you know, it's it's the last Serengetti, you know what I mean, absolutely, it's it's it's you know, our dirty little secret. No coincidence that many of the films I've worked on are about legal cases. You know. The first big feature doc that Bruce and I did was Brothers Keeper to tell people about Brothers Keeper. Brothers Keeper was the story of four brothers who lived in a shack and lived in a way that people might have lived like two hundred years ago, no running water and a little more eccentric than how people might have lived two hundred years ago. Where were they located? Central New York State? And we had, you know, read in the New York Times that this guy had been arrested for this murder he allegedly you know, suffocated his bed mate brother another you know, these guys were in their late sixties, and the state police had gotten a confession out of him. Um. The local community, however, felt he was innocent, that he was semiliterate, semi retarded, and this incredible display, this old fashioned Americana display of support, and sued. So the locally equivalent of Eddie vetteran Natalie Mayne exactly. What's amazing obviously the polarity of it. I'd love you to comment on this, where you've witnessed the worst of self aggrandizing and self serving human behavior, especially from public officials, and then you've seen the best of people coming to the aid of their fellow man. I mean, I use those words exactly. You know, when I was talking about this film up in Toronto where the film premiered, I have seen not just the dichotomy between Brothers Keeper and Paradise Loss. Where in Brother's Keeper the town assumed the best of their citizens and came to their defense. In Paradise Lost, they assumed the worst and you know it became a witch hunt. So when you look at your biography, Brother's Keeper and three versions of Paradise Lost and other documentary films you've done are peppered in between a lot of air disparate kind of work you've done in television with Oprah Winfrey specials and that kind of class. For that's for Sunday, We Love, We Love, and Blair, which too, that's something we'd like to forget about Blair, which too, we'll tell us about Blair, which um, well, my whole idea was to make fun of the whole idea. And everyone was excited about the movie. We thought it was funny and scary and and clever, and literally, at the twelfth hour, a new marketing person was hired. They you know, decided that the movie needed to be scarier and to have, you know, more blood. And even though the whole point of the scares and the original blair, which was that there were no it was it was all psychological, and I kept saying, why do you want to show these things? And so they literally recut the movie and re shot some pieces, and the movie that was released bears very little resemblance to the movie I shot. And that's been my one and only experience making a Hollywood movie. And I guess you could say that's why I make documentaries. Where do you fire? Where? You know, you know what it's I'd love, in other opportunity to do a feature at some point, but you know, I'm just used to being the author of my own work, being totally in control. You know. Obviously, you have people you report to and people you collaborate with, working for somebody, you know, but you know, I just find the creative freedom of what I do, and I mix it up. You know, I do TV commercials and television, so so that's how you do the one for them, one for me. Kind of switch commercial commercials. Yes, commercially, my bread and butter are TV commercials and kind of web content. And I always have a few things cooking, um commercials, couple of commercials, a couple of TVs. Get back at a trial for nine years exactly my daughter. You know, my daughter's going to college next year, so I gotta I gotta start paying for that. So you're like attic a spinch with a camera and a lab set. Oh I like that. Can I use that? No, don't, because then you're gonna have to set up an eight hundred number for all your request with people talking with Joe Burlinger about his film Paradise Lost three Purgatory. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing