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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
Why did you pick this person? And this issue?
When I sat down with Sheila Nevins at HBO, who runs the documentary unit there, we talked about the idea of doing something about a woman on death row. At that point, when we decided we wanted to do something, there were 55 women on death row in America. I just started looking at the different cases. There was a certain kind of case I was looking for. I didn't want to do a case where the person said they were innocent. If the person has claims of innocence, then it's very clear the death penalty is wrong. It's a simple slam-dunk.
I was interested in somebody who had said they'd done it -- then look at the morality of the death penalty in that situation. In looking at the list of names, I came to Wanda Jean Allen. The issues in her case, which were so timely, interested me. When I flew down to Oklahoma and met with Wanda Jean, I was so taken with her and her legal team. And they were willing to work with me.
Did you have some sense that'd she'd be executed, because of the facts and circumstances of her case, the state she was in?
I had a sense that there was a very strong possibility that she would be executed. When I get involved in these cases, I become very sympathetic to the people I'm working with. I became sympathetic to both the victims and to Wanda Jean. And I began to develop sort of unreasonable hopes. The state of Oklahoma clemency board had never granted legal clemency. Yet I, like her legal team and like Wanda Jean, walked in there that day believing there was a shot that she could get clemency. You kind of get swept up in the emotions of it. After the clemency board turned her down, it was pretty clear what was going to happen. My intellectual mind said that she most likely would be executed, but emotionally you begin to have hopes that something will intervene.
Was it a deliberate decision to present her as a sympathetic figure?
You know, you walked into a room and Wanda Jean was extremely charming and charismatic. She had done some terrible things, but a human being is not equal to their two worst actions. She had a whole range of behaviors and capabilities that was more worthy than the two murders she committed. Basically, when I make films, I don't make films about people I dislike. I find that too unpleasant and morally compromising. So I generally have to find something I can relate to and I do bring that out to the audience. Bringing out her humanity, bringing out what was likable about her, was important to me. If I were just to bring out the negative parts of Jean, it's a less interesting story. And it's just not true.
How do you see where Americans stand on the issue of capital punishment? How might this film affect that?
When you ask, "How do people in American generally think about this?" I say they don't. They don't think about what people are like who are on death row. I think that's part of the political incentive -- to keep these folks unknown. That way we'll think, This person is totally different from me, this person is not like anybody I know, and it's OK that they go quietly into the night.
I think by showing that these people are human beings, that they're not equal to the worst thing they ever did -- maybe some of them need to be kept behind bars, but it's really not such a huge social price to just keep them behind bars and not kill them -- that's the goal.
People sit on juries. You hope that people, somebody who sees this film, will think about this. It takes a unanimous vote to get a death penalty verdict. So you hope that one person sees the film and says, "You know, it didn't really accomplish much to kill Wanda Jean." That's the hope.
Was there anything about the issue of the death penalty that you learned or that you were surprised by in making the film?
Because I've been down this road a couple of times in filmmaking, I've been exposed to the deliberations of the boards and the machinations of the midnight executions. The thing that I felt overwhelmingly during the making of this film, because we did spend a lot of time with the victims, was this lingering question, "In whose name is this execution being carried out?" That's the emotion I kept going through, a ticker in my head. The state would claim the execution is carried out in the name of closure and retribution for the victims. And it was so clear that wasn't what was happening here. I found the victim's family not unanimously believing this. It was very moving. They really clarified my feelings about how the death penalty does or does not serve the victims.
