'Nobody Speak' documentary; 'The Salesman'; rethinking youth theater

In the last few months, we've seen quite an uptick in aggravation against the press. And I think essentially what Trump has created is a kind of wave of hostility in some ways. And that has panned out in all sort of things. I mean, we saw Dan Heyman, the West Virginia reporter who was arrested for asking a question of the Health and Human Services secretary, Director Tom Price. We had John Donnelly, the reporter who was pinned against the wall of the FCC for trying to ask a question there.



We had this incredible scenario with Greg Gianforte, when he body-slammed a reporter for doing what, really, a reporter should be doing -- asking a question about the new healthcare law to a then-congressional candidate, now member of congress. And so that was a really, really disturbing act of aggression not just against the press but against the public, really, who has a right to know what their positions are.

I think the short answer is, they were all things I was thinking about simultaneously. But really, I thought about making the film just about Peter Thiel for a while. I was kind of, in parallel, captivated by this trial that was simmering in this courtroom in Florida between Hulk Hogan and Gawker Media. I thought it was a really interesting back-and-forth. I thought there were some pretty big ideas about the First Amendment and privacy under foot. Part of it was salacious, part of it was highly principled. You never quite really knew when it would be either. So at the end of that trial, the verdict was a real shocker for me — $140 million dollars. That was staggering. Really it was like the axe coming down on Gawker's head. It forced their bankruptcy and they ended up going out of business.

The idea of funding litigation is not new. Sometimes people do it for financial benefits. Sometimes even entities like the ACLU funds a particular case, even for a political purpose. But what happened here is this series of behind-the-scenes chess moves, which was really the result of a nine-year grudge on the part of Peter Thiel. The secretive way in which he did it really did create a frightening blueprint. This doesn't have to apply to a website that you hate. It doesn't have to be on the right or the left. There's no reason that somebody couldn't use this same technique to go after Breitbart News or the New York Times. 

Even following the Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker case, you understood that some similar things were at work in the landscape that was happening all around — this bizarre contentious political landscape. When you look at the rise of Donald Trump, it is based in some part on an assault on the press — an all out war on the press. When you look at candidate Trump, we understood it was probably going to be part of the movie right away, the way he was treating the press. The way he was berating them and calling them scum. He was blacklisting some, saying to the Washington Post, BuzzFeed and others, You can't get press credentials in the normal way. He was actively encouraging his supporters to turn on the press. And yes, some of the reporters did feel physically threatened. Some of the news organizations had to beef up their security actually. 

One of the weirdest things for me, as a filmmaker, was we understood that this thin-skinned, highly litigious billionaire was fitting perfectly into our theme. The day after the election I went into the office and screened the film, and I realized this is a radically different film than I thought I was making 24 hours [prior]. It used to be cautionary or something. But this was different. He's now in charge of the executive branch, which is the most powerful institution in the world. 

First of all, I'm slightly optimistic right now in the sense that I do think that there's legitimate criticisms of the press - that it's gotten too corporatized, that it's gotten too cozy with power, that for too long it maybe traded softball stories for access to power and celebrity.



And that's made the media -- quote, unquote “the media,” very broad term -- not particularly well liked. I mean, they don't poll well, people say they hate [the media]. They love the media that they listen to but they don't like the media in general. So I think there's genuine hatred for the media and I'm slightly optimistic that now there's a reason to stand up for it. There's nothing like a common enemy to understand what you were there for in the first place. And there does seem to be a kind of push back and an understanding about what the role is of a media -- to speak truth to power, to really question abuses of power.

"I'm sorry I'm not with you tonight. My absence is out of respect for the people of my country and those of other six nations whom have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the US."

The most important thing that I can say is human beings of different colors, races, religions are far more similar to each other than they are different. And that it would behoove him to focus on their similarities. 

The people of Iran have a great deal of information about the people of America, as opposed to the people of America, who know very little about the people of Iran. I had to spend a few hours at the airport in Tehran [recently] and I was watching people at the airport. And I realized that they were all intently watching all the TV monitors and they were all looking at their mobiles, following the election news from America. This is actually a very positive curiosity, to want to know one another. But not through the media. In Iran, Arthur Miller is extremely well-known. Other American writers and playwrights are extremely well-known, as are American filmmakers. Maybe one reason for this is, since the politicians are warring with each other, the people have — on the contrary — tried to find a way of approaching each other.

What has occurred — the phenomenon — is that the picture they have of Iran has to do with Iranian politics, and they impose that on the notion of the people of Iran. But these are two very different images. The people are utterly different. It is my belief that each film has the capacity to show a small section of the society in which it's made to the rest of the world. Of course, this is a relative picture of that society. But with a number of films, you can arrive at a multidimensional, fuller picture of that society. 

A certain number of commercial films get made that are just for pure entertainment. They rarely have problems. There are a number of independent films that are made, as well. Some of them meet with some difficulties. This is a challenge between the filmmakers, vis-a-vis the system, to make the film that they have in mind in spite of the limitations. These very limitations have resulted in the filmmakers developing a very unique language over the years that stands out compared to films made elsewhere. Just by way of example, in [my] film, I could not have shown the scene with Rana in the shower and the man entering. But, unconsciously, by virtue of not being able to show that scene, it turned into my discovering a new film language. This is not meant as approbation of the limitations. In the long-term, limitations are always going to destroy creativity. But we can't deny that it has also led to some original filmmaking.

What’s really interesting is that the feedback I’ve received from audiences in Iran and in America are extremely similar, but they don’t resemble the feedback I’ve received from audiences in Europe. This is something I could have guessed might happen, because in emotional terms these two peoples resemble each other enormously. In Europe when they see this film they watch it as an audience, but in Iran and in America when they see this film they can see themselves in the film. I’ve always said that where these two cultures are concerned on the emotional plain, their similarities are far greater than their differences.