INTERVIEW: Joe Berlinger
by Steve Dollar 
Rarely has a documentary made such an impact on its subject as the series of
Paradise Lost films, tracking the long and strange saga of the West Memphis Three. Over the last two decades, filmmakers
Joe Berlinger and
Bruce Sinofsky have become part of the case, which began in 1993 with the shocking and mystifying murders of three eight-year-old Cub Scouts in West Memphis, Arkansas. Amid allegations of devil worship and a highly dubious confession leaked to the press, three high school boys?Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr. and Jason Baldwin?were convicted, despite no physical evidence that linked them to the crime. On Aug. 19 last year, Echols?who had been on death row?and the other two men, now in their mid-30s, were freed after entering so-called Alford pleas, a mixed bag that allowed them to profess their innocence while pleading guilty. The deal came four months before a hearing to consider new DNA findings that were expected to force a new trial.
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, which is airing now on HBO, details the astoundingly tangled legal, political and human drama behind the 18 year saga of the WM3, in which the filmmakers found themselves intricately involved. Berlinger, who also has won acclaim for projects like the Metallica meltdown doc
Some Kind of Monster and taken on the American oil industry in
Crude, talked about the documentaries' role in the case and how it changed both the filmmakers and the community that was its focus.
Over the years, the Paradise Lost series has played a huge role in, ultimately, getting the WM3 free. How do you feel about taking the role of an advocacy documentarian? Paradise 1 started off purely as a cinematic experience. As the years have unfolded, I've come to embrace the advocacy role of filmmaking. At the beginning of my career, I would have said 'Hey, I'm a storyteller first and a journalist second.' Now I'm in for both. Films can affect great social change. The journey of this series, the motivation, has been much more advocacy than storytelling. We started this film in 2004, but it doesn't mean we were working on this film everyday. Sometimes six months would go by with nothing happening. The question became, 'When do we end the film? When do we show it?' It was literally about when would it be the most helpful. We decided with HBO, the natural time to end this film was the one positive step in 18 years.
For the first time ever, after many, many, many appeals were denied, and the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed the lower court's decision in denying those appeals, and that's been the pattern, Echols in 2007 argued that because there was DNA evidence that excluded him, it triggered this statute that says that if the DNA excludes the criminal defendants, it opens the door to an evidentiary hearing, to present not just the DNA evidence but any new evidence that's occurred over the past 17 years. The lower court felt that the DNA evidence wasn't even strong enough and that only evidence of guilt should be presented to the court, which is absurd.
So the Arkansas Supreme Court agreed with Echols. That resulted in the evidentiary hearing being granted for December of 2011. It was somewhat of an ending, in terms of cinematically having something to end the film on. More importantly, it gave us a reason for putting the film out there, which was to broadcast it in November to shine a light?to make sure the world was aware of what was going down. As it turns out, we all know what happened. Even the advocacy role still hasn't gone away because we want the film to be utilized to help fully exonerate these guys. The only way to do that is a pardon by the governor.
Did you have any inkling that they were about to be released? No. My understanding is this whole thing got negotiated in less than two weeks. The idea was presented. The state grabbed it. The details were worked out. It's not like we're that inside, and from a legal standpoint they can't tell us what's going on. On August 15th or 16th, we were in a mix, completing the film for [the] Toronto [Film Festival] that had been in production since 2004. We get the call we better get down there on Friday because something big was happening. It was intimated to us that it was as big as can be. We assumed they were getting out. We didn't know why, we didn't know how, we didn't know it would be so convoluted and complicated and bittersweet as it was.
You wonder how in two weeks the state was able to negotiate the release of these guys and the answer is: all of a sudden, the pressure of the evidentiary hearing, which was going to prove embarrassing, because it had everything that was in the film, and the broadcast of the film itself, I think was something they were all deeply concerned about. It makes me scratch my head that DNA procedures could take that long. You would think that we have a justice system based on fairness and a desire to hunt down the truth. In fact, you know, there's been 18 years of foot-dragging but when it became in the state's interest... Think about that: convicted child killers, capital murderers, negotiated out of prison in two weeks, but the DNA portion of this took almost a decade to unfold. There's just something wrong with that.
Is there a trepidation about becoming part of the story, breaking the fourth wall? Breaking that fourth wall is something we wrestle with all the time. While I love the work of
Michael Moore and
Morgan Spurlock, I'm not comfortable with making myself a character. We don't start off being part of the narrative, but when you naturally become part of the narrative then you can't avoid being part of the story. It's a tough line breaking that fourth wall. The
Paradise Lost series, particularly
3, could be superficially written off as an exercise in pomposity because we are very self-referential in terms of the impact of the films. But that's missing the point, and the point is why does it take three well-funded HBO documentaries, a two-decade commitment to the story and well-heeled celebrity financial contributions to give these guys the kind of defense that they should have gotten when the trials first happened. Basically, it's about money and justice, which is an age-old theme in this country and becoming a bigger and bigger problem.
While establishing the innocence of the WM3, the stepfather (John Mark Byers) of one victim is implicated. And here, in the third film, you have him trying to implicate another stepfather. Was there concern about demonizing individuals in the same way that the West Arkansas media and community had demonized the WM3? Very concerned, but also, again, and maybe I'm just kidding myself, I believe the suspicion directed toward Byers in the first and more in the second film, is not a concoction of the filmmakers. It is the filmmakers following a story. We're filming strategy meetings and other people's suspicions towards Byers in the first film. In the second film, the
WM3.org people hired a forensic investigator to pursue this human bite mark evidence, which has been since discarded as a theory. But at the time, that was the prevailing theory and a lot of suspicion was aimed at Byers. I think we had a responsibility to Byers in the third film to show his change of heart and to show that a lot of that suspicion might have been misdirected. Similarly, we didn't say to Byers, stand up on a soapbox and point a finger at another father. Cinematically it's fascinating, and reportorially we're covering a story.
One of the unexpectedly amusing aspects of the documentary is the almost time-lapse display of local TV news reporter hairstyles and mannerisms, which emphasize the passing of decades. How was this reflective of other changes? The local media became a lot more professional in how they cover the news. They grew up with this case, and became more open to digging up answers as opposed to just kneejerk reporting without any context. There's definitely a change of attitude and that was accelerated. Over the years, the children who grew up with this case, as they became of thinking age [recognized] the absurdity of the Satanic hysteria that gripped not just that region but the country in the late '80s and early '90s. The FBI in 1993 or so demonstrated that none of the unexplained child abductions or homicides that had been previously ascribed to Satanic cults could be demonstrated to be that. All that stuff, with the passage of time, just felt silly.
The story really takes a turn when members of community that had once demonized the West Memphis 3 begin to champion their cause. Attitudes have changed tremendously, to the point where?one of the great ironies in this case?the activist generation really made the WM3 issue an issue for John Fogleman. He was the prosecuting attorney, who shortly after the case in 1994 became a judge. He had put up a "tough on crime" sign right near the murder site, really benefited from the notoriety of the case, and became a judge. In 2010, he ran for the Arkansas Supreme Court and lost. Part of the reason he lost, we believe, is there were activists picketing his campaign, and they made the WM3 an issue. That did not go unnoticed by the power structure in the state.
Despite that, do you still get turned a cold shoulder? There are some people, including one set of parents, that believes this is all a hoax by liberal, left-wing media and Hollywood. I love when I'm lumped in with Hollywood. I live an hour north of Manhattan. When we went down for the August 19th hearing, I was very impressed with how many people came up and said thanks for sticking with us, it's shameful what happened in our state. When we went down for the second film, doors were slammed in our faces and people were upset with us.
The attitude was that we came down and mis-portrayed the community and tried to portray everyone as a bunch of rednecks, which I don't believe we did. Making that second film four or five years after the first film came out was a very difficult task. That's one reason I think that it's the weakest of the three. We had lots of doors shut in our faces, limited access, and people were definitely not happy with us. As the years have unfolded, there was a growing warmth, reception and appreciation.
Now that the WM3 are free, do you think the mystery can be solved? It would be great if it was possible. We've been trying for 18 years to figure this crime out. Some of the best forensic pathologists have done the hard work to figure out who didn't do it. Nobody has really been able to crack the nut of who did. This may be one of those crimes that never gets solved. For 18 years, it's been an enigma wrapped in an enigma.
Posted by ahillis at January 14, 2012 2:35 PM
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