Welcome back to Moment of Truth, Movieline's weekly spotlight on the best in nonfiction cinema. Today we hear from Daniel Kraus, whose superb Work Series gets a showcase this weekend in Chicago.
Remember those seven masterpieces of the '00s you've likely never seen? Hopefully you have checked out at least some of them by now -- particularly the endlessly intriguing work of Chicago filmmaker Daniel Kraus. Since 2004, the documentarian has delivered three films chronicling ordinary Americans at their rather extraordinary jobs. Their tiles are self-explanatory and deceptively simple -- Sheriff, Musician and Kraus's latest, Professor. The films, meanwhile, are anything but.
The thing about the Work Series isn't that it hasn't been done before; Kraus cites the bard of workplace verite, Frederick Wiseman, as a prime influence on his own austere style. It just hasn't been done this well. Kraus's camera is less observational than it is kind of omniscient, blending a voyeur's compulsion with a filmmaker's rigorous attention to character and detail. Professor refines this tack in the company of Rabbi Jay Holstein, a brash University of Iowa religion instructor whose character is outsized only by the flood of ideas that dominate his life. The Holocaust, gun ownership, magic tricks, animal experimentation, binge drinking, race relations and imminent retirement somehow share one essence in a singular orbit, and Holstein's intense approach to each -- and much, much more -- makes for some of the unlikeliest drama on the scene today.
Sheriff (2004) and Musician (2007) boast similar qualities, and lucky folks in Chicago will have the chance to check all three out when the Gene Siskel Film Center hosts a special Work Series retrospective May 15-20. (Kraus and Holstein will be on hand this Saturday for Professor's premiere.) More information about the films' DVD's is available at Kraus's site, but get the word out to your own local cinema programmers to bring his unique -- and uniquely great -- work to a theater near you. In the meantime, Kraus spoke with Movieline about his projects' humble beginnings, his ground rules and why you won't get this kind of workplace payoff watching Ace of Cakes.
So you're still trailing people at work, huh?
Yeah, apparently I am.
What inspired the Work Series?
Well, it was sort of two-pronged, I guess, it didn't start out being the Work Series. It just started out being Sheriff. I kind of filmed it two ways at once; I didnt' know if I could pull off a verite portrait of the guy, so along the way I shot more traditional interviews. It sort of sat in a box for a couple of years while I went to finish some other projects -- which seems to be the pattern of my career so far. When I finally got to it, I was already a fan of [Frederick] Wiseman's, but I had gone through a pretty heavy Wiseman phase. I'd seen a couple retrospectives of his work, and I got sort of inspired to edit the film in that style. I think I cut one scene, and I thought, "Yeah, this is it." I thought to myself as I was finishing Sheriff that this was a template I could apply to other films about other occupations. It fit into something that was bothering me about documentary films in general, which was that we have all these portraits of famous people and historic events and all these things, but there's not a lot capturing what we do on a day-to-day basis. That's missing from our audio-visual record -- which seems crazy, because that's how we spend half of our lives: Working.
That said, the subjects of Sheriff, Musician and Professor are ultimately performers. They're putting on shows of various kinds for audiences, and they have public personas. Is that a coincidence?
It is a little bit of a coincidence. It isn't always going to be this way. It is true that the first three subjects -- and really the fourth, too, when you think about Preacher -- they do all have a performance side to them. But that's not going to hold. This is an important distinction though: Everybody has a "work" face. They have a personal face and a work face. Even if I [film] someone at a job where they're sitting at a machine for eight hours a day, they still are going to look and act differently at work than they do at home. There's always going to be a performance aspect when your boss is looking over your shoulder. You're going to be performing in some sense.
You seem to have very specific rules in terms of your own working method. Are they consistent since Sheriff, or have they evolved in any way?
Sheriff was, in all respects, a prototype. I was feeling it out and sort of settled on a final process in editing. But from Musician on, yeah, it's been very strict. It's been very clear. It's all fairly obvious stuff -- no interviews, no voiceovers. No sound effects that aren't organic to the project. Those are the big ones -- they cut out all the tricks, so I'm left to make something interesting.
How long are you spending with them?
Well, when I did Sheriff, that was shot over a period of years. But when I moved on to Musician, my idea how to shoot these things also solidified. It's an ideal; it's not what I'm always able to pull off. But my idea is that if I'm really good at what I do in my job as a filmmaker, then I should be able to step into a perfect stranger's work routine and in two weeks have all I need for a film. Again, that's an ideal, and that hasn't always been the case. But it seems logical to me, and I think that's mostly what I was able to do with Professor. If you add up the shooting days, it's not over two weeks.
How did you meet and approach Jay Holstein?
I was a student of his as an undergrad at the University of Iowa. Approaching him was hard; he was very intimidating to an undergraduate such as myself. But he was always in the back of my head as a potential subject. But you know: When you have an experience with someone like Holstein in your first class of your very first semester of your college experience, his figure looms larger as the years pass on. I was a little intimidated -- actually a lot intimidated -- to contact him again. More than any other subject, he impacted me so greatly. So I had to just man up. I started with an e-mail, which is less confrontational. It's getting easier and easier with subjects because I have a body of work. I just showed him Sheriff and Musician, and that was really all I needed to do.
In the last few years, from Ace of Cakes to Deadliest Catch, we've seen a boom in workplace "reality" as entertainment. Do you watch those shows at all? How do they impact you, if at all?
I have seen an episode of one of the cake shows -- I can't remember which one. I haven't seen Deadliest Catch. They don't impact me much. Really, nothing impacts me, which is kind of a weird feeling.
Do you ever compare or attempt to reconcile those shows with what you're doing? I mean, it's all workplace-based entertainment in the end.
One of the things that I think sets my work apart is that I'm really interested in the "off" moments. If I were making a movie about someone who was an administrative assistant, I'd be less interested in the "on" moments -- when you're doing the job. It would be more like, "OK, I've got five minutes; I'm going to surf the net." That's the "off" moment. In Musician, it was the loading of equipment that was the "off" moment. To me, it took up way more of Ken Vandermark's life than playing music. What Ace of Cakes or Deadliest Catch would leave on the cutting-room floor are exactly the things I'd put in my movie.
What can you tell me about the Chicago series?
It's a retrospective of the three films in the Work Series so far, and then the Chicago premiere of Professor. Holstein and I will be in person on the first night. We played Musician at the Siskel Center back whenever that came out, and we got a good response. Now that it's three films, I think it feels more like a "series." It makes sense that people see the films as a group now. Hopefully there'll be more of that. And it's logical to do it in Chicago since... Well, I'm here.
Do people ever pitch themselves to you as subjects?
I get tons of pitches. I have an Excel spreadsheet that would blow your mind. I don't know how many there are; it's a lot -- 90 percent of which I have no interest in whatsoever. I think I probably have gotten a few self-pitches, and I guess categorically I wouldn't say I'm against them. But it's a little at odds with the people I've profiled so far. None of them would ever have pitched themselves. But it's an interesting question. I think I have gotten a few.
Like who? Or what?
I can't really remember, actually. But it was nothing I was interested in doing.
So Preacher is next, but what's down the line? Are you thinking three or four or more films ahead at this point?
There's two ways to think about that: At some point when I was doing Sheriff, I thought about the series, and I came up with categories. I know you'd love to hear those categories, but I have no idea where that list went to. But I came up with roughly 10 categories and how various jobs could kind of be shoveled into these 10 categories. And so that was sort of a device that helped me think about what jobs I wanted to have for my first 10 -- or maybe my only 10. That way I didn't do Professor and Teacher in the first 10. I didn't want to do Musician and Actor. There's too much overlap; they've been done. I wanted to have disparate categories. So I've sort of been mentally committed to doing 10. Anything is possible. Who knows? I could do less, I could do more. But I'd really like to do 10.
The biggest thing about the Work Series that anybody can see -- and it's what bothers me the most -- is that I have four men in it right now. That was not the intent; it was supposed to be much more demographically diverse than it is by now. I had a couple subjects drop out on me at the last second. And I had a couple of films I had to move on, because both the subjects are kind of old and could retire any time. So these four came together not really in the order I preferred. All I can say is rest assured: The demographic breakdown will even out. It will just kind of feel uneven at first.
Wait a second. Ten films, two weeks to shoot... Why the hell do we have to wait three years for a new Dan Kraus movie?
Ha! I love that question. Um, because I'm doing other things? There's two things to blame here, and neither are my laziness, because that doesn't exist. The main thing to blame is that I'm writing novels now, and they're eating up my life. I edited Professor between drafts of my second novel, and it almost like vacation. I did that for pleasure. My documentaries are so radically different from the books I'm writing that to move back and forth is really pleasurable. And I also have a job. I just don't have time. If this were all I was doing, then yeah. I could bust out a couple a year. But that just ain't gonna happen.