The Reverend Carroll Pickett (whose interview I’ll post later) either fell in or was called to a ministry wherein he walked 95 death row inmates through their final hours and, ultimately, to the gurney where they were executed by lethal injection. He’s a stoic Texan and fascinating man explored in Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Stevie) and Peter Gilbert’s new documentary, At the Death House Door.

We talk about unwrapping this complicated minister and whether or not they planted a bottle of wine at the family dinner where Rev. Pickett’s children interrogate him about his job.

 

 SXSW 2008 interview: Steve James, Peter Gilbert [9:49m]: Play Now | Download

SXSW 2008 interview: Steve James and Peter Gilbert

(Written transcript available after the jump)

Paul Moore: I’m with Steve James and Peter Gilbert. You guys are long-time collaborators, you’ve done “Hoop Dreams,” you did “Stevie.” And now you guys have made “At the Death House Door,” which is basically, it meanders around a bit, but it’s really the life of Reverend Carroll Pickett and his transition from being a chaplain at a prison, where he presided over 95 executions of men on death row from 1982-1995, to his retirement, where he’s now become a huge opponent of the death penalty here in Texas.

I feel like this documentary really could have been open and shut. Here’s a guy that was for the death penalty when he started, and now he’s against it. But, you guys chose to show Reverend Pickett in his full complexity, and I’m wondering, why did you go to such measures?

Steve James: Well, I think, you’ve kind of answered our question in a way. We’re not issue-oriented filmmakers. We care about the issues that I think the films that we’ve done raise, and I think that draws us to a particular person’s story because their story has something to say.

The death penalty is a complicated issue for people. And Reverend Pickett’s journey from someone who had very compelling reasons to be for the death penalty - and you see those in the movie - to where he’s as now, is a fascinating and complicated journey.

Peter Gilbert: Yeah. I think, all of us are sort of sick of seeing the types of movies that you see a lot of times that really try to hit you over the head, about are you pro, are you against, or any issue. And again, I think, the best thing is to actually try to see someone who will open themselves up to a filmmaker and try to actually give you all the gray areas of it, rather than just, “I think this is right,” or, “I think this is wrong.”

If you see how complicated it is for one man who was so deeply involved in it, it shows you how complicated the issue is in general.

Steve: When we were first pitching this film, before IFC came on board, we pitched it to another network, which I won’t say who. But, the executive of that network was like, “No, no, it’s fascinating, but what I really want to do is I want to be inside the death chamber when the guy’s executed.”

And it’s like, ‘OK, well, number on, that’s never going to happen. Number two, that’s not really the story here.’ But I think Carroll is a fascinating guy. As you said at the beginning of this, he’s a complicated man and I think that part of what was so appealing to us about his story among the many things, was how a guy like that had managed to survive that job.

And you can’t say he survived intact. I think, he clearly has been damaged by it, and he would tell you that. I think, the film shows that. But, he has somehow survived it in a way that a lot of people didn’t. It’s interesting, it’s always fascinating to try to do a do a film where you try to peel back the layers of who somebody is, who doesn’t just lay it all out there for you. He’s not a guy that spills his heart out and is emotional.

Paul: How did you guys decide the death penalty and Reverend Pickett?

Peter: The short story is that the Chicago Tribune approached us through the two reporters you see in the movie, Maury and Steve. And they were doing an investigation into what they thought was the wrongful conviction and execution of Carlos DeLuna. And they thought that we might think it would make a good film. And it would, and it is obviously an important part of the film that we made.

But in the course of telling us about Carlos, they told us about Reverend Pickett, this minister who presided over 95 lethal injections, ministering to the men, including the very first one done anywhere. Who came home and recorded these tapes of what he had been through that evening. And how Carlos was the one guy who had haunted him the most, perhaps, of the 95.

And when we heard about Reverend Pickett, we felt like, that was going to be the spine of our story.

Paul: So, you guys, I think there’s kind of a funny scene in the movie, well it was funny to me because I was thinking about this decision that you made. And maybe, this is just me reading into it, but it seems like you guys sort of created a scenario where Reverend Carroll Pickett’s children, whom he’s notoriously avoided talking about work with through their whole lives, it seems like you gave them a bottle of wine and put them at a dining room table together.

Steve: [Laughs] Well, we did not bring the wine. But I think, what is interesting about that is, he was going to visit them, and we were really interested to meet his kids. So, what started in many respects as just an opportunity for us to get to know Carroll better by getting to know his family, and by wanting to interview them about growing up with him, that was a big part of the impulse for us wanting to go there initially.

We did get that, but it turned into this whole other thing, which is when documentary becomes a special experience, I think, for filmmakers. Because we didn’t know that they had never spoken, really, about it. Carroll did write a book, and we figured if nothing else, after having written his memoir, they probably had that discussion.

But, as it turned out, they didn’t. They all read the book, but they never had the discussion until they got at the dining room table there and one of his daughters launched into it. It was an amazing moment for us, and it was an amazing moment for them.

Afterwards, Carroll told us that - a week or so later - he told us that each one of his kids had called him and said they were so thankful that that weekend had happened.

Paul: And speaking of the stories that you tell, that you gravitate toward, it seems to me… I keep seeing this sort of this recurring theme of, particularly men, who are abandoned by their fathers, and then sort of adopted into an institution that kind of fails them. Maybe, I’m reading too much into it, but it seems like with Hoop Dreams there was this school system, in Stevie there was this foster-care thing, and here there was this prison system that all these fatherless men go in to.

Even Carroll Pickett in some ways is without a father.

Steve: Absolutely.

Paul: And it seems like you guys go to great pains to explain the relationship between the father and the son in all of these movies. Why do you keep coming back to this? Maybe, it’s just a gut thing.

Steve: I’ll just speak for myself on this, but for me, I’ve always been fascinated with family. I feel like family is the most important relationships we have in forming who we are. It’s the most complicated relationships we are going to have. What happens in a family says a lot about who we become and who we are.

And so, I don’t think it’s a conscious thing. It’s like we don’t set out to consciously tell stories that, I think, have something larger to say about the world we live in, but those are the stories we gravitate to. And so I think, in that sense, if you’re going to spend years with someone to tell a story, then you’re going to eventually get to that place of really delving into their family and those forces that shaped their lives.

Peter: I think I can say this for Steve, and I say it for me, my father and my mother - especially I have to say my father, influenced… There isn’t much that I do where I’m not sort of subconsciously thinking about how he would deal with it or what he would think about it.

For better or for worse. I’m just saying that presence sort of doesn’t go away.

Steve: The one thing that I hope that the films that we’ve done avoid is that kind of simple, stupid Freudian pop psychology, like you see so often in narrative films where everything is so neat and simple. “Well, of course he is this way because his dad is that way.”

People are way more complicated than that.

Paul: Steve James and Peter Gilbert, thank you very much for talking to me.

Peter: It was great to be here. Thank you.

Steve: It was great to be here, thanks a lot.

At the Death House Door
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