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Kyle Patrick Alvarez is the director of "The Stanford Prison Experiment," a new feature film about the notorious experiment regarding the relationships between prison guards and prisoners conducted by psychology professor, Philip Zimbardo.
The original 1971 experiment took place in a fake prison set up in the basement hallway of the Stanford University Psychology Department building. Zimbardo's subjects were 24 students assigned to either act as guards or prisoners for the 14-day duration of the experiment. Zimabrdo assigned himself the role as superintendent.
After only six days, the study spiraled out of control. Ethical concerns involving psychological and physical abuse from the prison guards and Zimbardo himself prompted a graduate student, Christina Malsh, to tell Zimbardo to terminate the experiment.
Almost half-a-century later, the experiment maintains its notoriety. Zimbardo has since used his work to continue discourse on the subject, and he even contributed to defense cases in court trials related to Abu Ghraib.
The film, which was 13 years in the making, premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. During production, Alvarez worked closely with Zimbardo and studied video footage from the actual experiment to maintain authenticity.
"Meeting Dr. Zimbardo, meeting Phil, was one of the first things that I did," Alvarex recalled. "I went up to Stanford and spent time there in that hallway. You go down to the basement of Jordan Hall and there is a plaque that says, This is the site of the Stanford Prison Experiment. The production designer came up with me and we measured out the space. We measured out the walls, took color samples, measured each of the rooms, and we rebuilt it.
"We made some minor changes, but in terms of the video footage I was given access to everything. It amounts to less than four or five hours. Video was really expensive in the '70s. There is quite a bit of audio. I listened to a lot of that. The [film's] writer, Tim Talbott, 13 years ago had done a lot of the heavy lifting — really listening through everything and building the story. So when I was paying attention to those things, I was really looking more for the feel of it or things that might have slipped through the cracks in the process — certain lines of dialogue ... that had to be included. We used that to build the costumes, to build the sets — it is very very accurate."
Alvarez recently came to The Frame's studio to chat with host John Horn.
We should explain who John Wayne is. The veteran western actor does not make a cameo. There is a prison guard who is especially sadistic and creates a John Wayne, or almost "Cool Hand Luke" prison guard, demeanor. Tell us a little bit about that character and his role in the experiment.
Yeah, it was a real situation. He put on that uniform and it kind of made him think of Strother Martin in "Cool Hand Luke." He just started putting on this accent. When I read the script I thought, Oh this must be exaggerated. Then you look it up and you're like, No, this guy did this. He put on this awful Southern accent and took on a character. The experiment is a lot about the power of role playing — how easy it is to fall into a character. In a lot of ways he did that. He took on what he thought would be the persona of an intimidating guard and therefore became an intimidating guard.
In the making of the movie — in casting actors who are playing guards and playing prisoners and putting them in this physically confined space that replicates where the experiment itself took place — were you at all interested in whether or not the actors would start buying into the characters just as the students did 40 years ago?
This sort of disappointing answer to that is that I was interested in avoiding that. I didn't want it to get out of control. I think a lot of these younger actors have that kind of energy and tenacity to say, Oh I want to throw everything into this and maybe take a method-y approach. But I've always been sort of a realist in terms of what it really takes to get through a day of production. We were shooting 12-15 pages a day and moving really fast. There wasn't going to be time for that level of experimentation.
A weird thing actually is when I sat down with the actors ahead of time, I said to them, Look you're a professional role player playing someone who is an unprofessional role player. Let's keep that separation. You guys are actors. Yes, you're young, but I'm going to trust you to take this in a professional route. Everyone sort of showed up everyday excited about what they were going to do. Whatever it might be, they were sort of thrilled because they could be very open with each other, talk about it between takes, and make sure everybody was comfortable.
(L-R) James Wolk (as Mike Penny), Kyle Alvarez (director) and Billy Crudup (as Dr. Philip Zimbardo) in Alvarez’s "The Stanford Prison Experiment.".Photo courtesy of Steve Dietl.
One of the amazing things in your film are re-creations of exit interviews that were done following the actual experiment. One in particular, that involves John Wayne, is probably as chilling as anything that he actually does during the experiment itself. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Those exit interviews — especially the one you're referring to, which is the final beat of the movie — were re-created almost verbatim. You know, it is one of those instances where the material in real life is so strong. They put one of the prisoners and this John Wayne guard opposite each other and they had this really fascinating conversation that really we just abridged a little bit.
Michael [Angarano] and Ezra [Miller], the two actors in the scene, were listening to it, trying to absorb it. I never wanted them to mimic it. I think that is the wrong thing to ask of an actor — you're just asking them to be a robot. They loved the material so much that whenever there was something of the real thing to hold on to, I think that was actually really invigorating for them.
How involved was Phil Zimbardo in the making of the movie?
Very much so. He read every draft of the script. He was on set, [but] not everyday. He is a really busy guy, actually. I spent a lot of time with him, a lot of time on Skype with him, and a lot of time in person with him. He saw cuts of the film. It's one of those relationships where you want to do everything justice, you want to stay true, and you don't want to make a movie in opposition with someone because you don't have to. Phil is actually one of those guys who is very self-aware of what happened those days. He takes a lot of responsibility for it. You know, when I first started the script I thought, If he's involved — is he okay? I don't want to put any of this through a rose tint. That wasn't the case at all.
Did you have any disagreements? because there are certainly psychologists and social scientists who think that whatever lessons were learned by the experiment, Zimbardo's conduct within the experiment was unethical.
I was very clear early on I was not interested in making a movie about ethics. Inherently it is about ethics, but I wanted it to be very objective. I wanted to sort of say, This is what happened these six days and you can choose to judge the actions or not. So there is not a lot of conversation in the film about, Oh, is this experiment ok? Is it not okay? Should we have ever done it in the first place? I think people are still arguing it today. 
(L-R) Billy Crudup as Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Nelsan Ellis as Jesse Fletcher, James Wolk as Mike Penny and Matt Bennett as Kyle Parker in Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s "The Stanford Prison Experiment." Photo courtesy of Steve Dietl.
But do you have a conversation that you think the film should stimulate?
Yeah, what is really interesting to me is that I think there is a lot to be said about looking at situations where there are power issues — whether we're talking about police brutality, we're talking about incarcerations, or we're talking about war. I'm using some of Dr. Zimbardo's words here, it's really easy to say, Oh, it is one bad apple. It's really easy to look at Abu Ghraib and say it was that one person who did bad.
What is really the more compelling, and I think more compassionate, point of view is to say, Well, maybe it is more the barrel that is bad. That is his primary thesis about all of this. In order to not accept the fact that we as human beings are capable of bad, we want to blame the individuals as opposed to looking at us as an entire species, looking at the entire institution, or looking at the situation and saying, Well, maybe we set that person up for that kind of behavior. Maybe we need to have a broader window of compassion or empathy when people do bad.