Did you get caught up in the whole Clinton-Lewinsky soap opera, or were you in the camp that believed it was all much ado about nothing?

Bailey: Randy, do you remember we watched Clinton saying he did not have sexual relations with that woman live on television? We were caught up in it and had no idea he was telling such a big, porky lie. The interesting thing is that it was a legal technicality. "According to the definition of sexual relations," he could say that he didn't. It was an amazing, lawyerly piece of hairsplitting. At the time, we thought he didn't. We thought that she was probably the stalker she was being portrayed as in the media.

After having done this documentary, do you feel like you know Monica Lewinsky any better?

Bailey: To be honest, does anyone ever really know anyone? You don't know anyone ever in a finite way. There's no final moment of revelation where the process of getting to know someone is complete and exhausted. She's a real person, like all of us. She's complicated, has layers, has contradictions. What she deserves is to be looked at as a real person.

Dispel one widely held myth about Monica Lewinsky.

Barbato: That she was a stalker, that she went to Washington, D.C., with an agenda, that she sought and enjoys the limelight.

Bailey: For me, there are two key details. One is we would know none of the sexual details if Monica weren't forced to reveal them in legal proceedings. I think there's a misconception that she's volunteered all this sexual detail, and she's become a victim of that specificity. We attach all this sexual detail to Monica and hold her in some way responsible for it.

Barbato: I think one other huge misconception is that this is a one-sided relationship. I think a man that would call a young woman 50 times, as listed in the Starr Report -- and those were conversations of substance and length -- that to me constitutes a relationship.

Because this film was done with the full cooperation of Monica, some people are probably going to question how you could depict her fairly and accurately. Did you ever fear that critics and audiences might think you were just shilling for her?

Barbato: Absolutely. This is a huge fear that we had and we still have. But I can tell you this: I don't think Monica is very happy with the film. [Laughs] I don't think this is the film Monica Lewinsky would have made. We didn't set out to make this film with an agenda. We rarely do. We certainly are attracted to certain kinds of people and certain kinds of stories and would love to help ourselves (and people) understand them. That's the best we can do really.

We knew when we agreed to do this film that no matter what the film ended up being like there were going to be a huge number of people who were just going to slam us. This is a subject that people have such polarized feelings about. We took a seven-minute teaser of this film to the Television Critics Association in Pasadena and there were a couple hundred TV critics there. They showed the clip and then we walked out with Monica to answer questions. Well, the audience was so hostile. There was so much rage in the room, like people are angry that Monica Lewinsky, to a certain extent, still exists.

I think it's an anger that people have at themselves for having been interested in this story. They hate the fact that the nation got so consumed by this story and they hold Monica responsible for it. For us, it was a very revealing moment.

From the moment Monica's name hit the media, she's been a gossip column regular. Do you understand the public's fascination with the comings-and-goings of this woman?

Bailey: A little bit ... yes. Unlike other celebrities, like, say, Madonna, she is a normal person. And people see in Monica their own normal selves. I actually think what Monica has done isn't so very different from what so many other people have done, and they understand and relate to that. Therein lies the curiosity.

On a personal level, how do you feel about the way Monica has used this scandal to her financial advantage? I'm talking specifically about her lucrative deal with Jenny Craig and her handbag line.

Bailey: Personally, I don't judge her myself at all. I mean, she is an ordinary everyday person who suddenly has to have an entire team of lawyers who all need to be paid. She has to find some way to pay those bills.

Your first feature film will be an adaptation of your own documentary "Party Monster," about the life of convicted club kid Michael Alig. Why did you choose this as your inaugural mainstream Hollywood project?

Barbato: Long before Michael Alig was involved in the brutal murder that he is now in prison for, we were very interested in him. He was creating this really vibrant, exciting scene in Manhattan and we think his intentions were good and interesting. Fenton and I actually started collecting footage and pitching a documentary about him long before it turned dark. And it did turn very, very dark. Obviously, it's an inherently dramatic story, but it becomes much more complicated than a simple murder story.

Bailey: It's more about a meditation on celebrity. It seems that celebrity is the great issue of our time. I think, in many ways, celebrity is a terribly corrosive thing. Perhaps in a few hundred years we'll look back on celebrity as the disease of the 20th century. It brings so much death and destruction with it. It's a Shakesperean story -- kinda like the Monica story, I suppose.

In the end, do you feel you achieved what you set out to accomplish with "Monica in Black and White?"

Barbato: In the end, we did achieve what we set out to accomplish because we set out to make a good film. That was our intention at the beginning and think that's what we did in the end. That was the overriding motivation and agenda.

When I say the name President Clinton, what's the first word that comes to mind?

Barbato: Hot! [Laughs]

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