Davis Guggenheim (INTERVIEW)
Davis
Guggenheim
The
“He Named Me Malala” Interview
with
Kam Williams
Prime
Time with Guggenheim!
Philip
Davis Guggenheim is an Academy Award-winning director and producer
whose work includes Waiting for Superman, It Might Get Loud, and An
Inconvenient Truth, which won the Oscar for Best Documentary
in 2007. The following year, Davis produced and directed President
Barack Obama's biographical film, A Mother's Promise, and he also
made The Road We've Traveled for the Obama 2012 presidential
campaign.
In
2013, he directed Teach, a two-hour television special about what's
working in America’s public schools, namely, that at the heart of
every great education is great teaching. Besides documentaries, Davis
has directed episodes of many television series including Deadwood,
NYPD Blue and 24.
He
is married to actress Elisabeth Shue who landed an Oscar-nomination
for her stellar performance in Leaving Las Vegas. Nevertheless, she
might still be best known for her breakout role as Ali in The Karate
Kid. The couple have three children: Miles William, 17, Stella
Street, 14, and Agnes Charles, 9.
Here,
Davis talks about his latest opus, a feature-length documentary about
Malala Yousafzai and her father Ziauddin Yousafzai. He worked closely
with Malala and her family, filming their life in Birmingham,
England, as well as their travels to numerous countries around the
world as they talked about the power of education and its ability to
transform a young person’s life.
Kam
Williams: Hi
Davis, thanks for the interview.
Davis
Guggenheim :
Thank
you, Kam. Where are you located?
KW:
In
Princeton, New Jersey.
DG:
My
brother-in-law, Andrew Shue, used to live there. Did you ever run
into him?
KW:
Yeah.
It's a funny story how we met. He was jogging past me one day as I
was putting out the garbage. He stopped to ask if I knew anything
about the house next-door which had a "For Sale" sign on
the lawn. He looked so familiar that I asked him if we'd met before.
He said "No," and that he was new to town. But when I kept
insisting that I knew him from somewhere he introduced himself and
said he was an actor on Melrose Place.
DG:
[Laughs]
That's funny.
KW:
Are you
related to Eileen Guggenheim-Wilkinson of Princeton who is on the
University's Board of Trustees?
DG:
No
relation. I'm not related to the rich ones. I'm related to the sock
and shoe peddlers.
KW:
I
noticed that you and I have Brown University in common.
DG:
That's
cool. did you like it?
KW:
Yeah, I
was there in '75, the year of the black student takeover.
DG:
I just
went back and didn't recognize it. Providence was a darker, more
gnarly city when I was there in the Eighties.
KW:
Well, I
was very moved by He Named Me Malala. The movie made me cry as much
as I Am Sam and Life Is Beautiful did. and in my review, I called it
the best movie of the year so far.
DG:
That
means a lot to me, Kam. Thank you very much.
KW:
I told
my readers I'd be interviewing you, so I'll be mixing their questions
in with mine. Editor/Legist
Patricia Turnier says: I am Canadian and I have to tell you that I
loved Party of Five, especially Neve Campbell. How long did it take
to finance, shoot and complete production on He Named Me Malala?
DG:
From
the first day, until now, it's been a little more than 2 years. I was
shooting and editing for 18 months, which is a really long time for a
documentary. This one was the most difficult movie I ever made.
KW:
I
can understand how, since it involved so much travel. Plus, you
worked hard to interweave those animation sequences so seamlessly.
But I hope you consider it well worth the effort. I expect the film
to get nominated for an Oscar. Patricia also asks: What
was the most rewarding aspect of making this film about
Malala?
DG:
Actually,
one of the most rewarding moments came recently when we screened the
movie for 6,000 public school girls from a variety of backgrounds and
some of the tougher neighborhoods in L.A. I didn't know whether
Latino and African-American girls would respond to a film about a
Pakistani girl. It turned out to be very emotional for them. The
atmosphere was very charged. And it was a beautiful and gratifying
moment for me to see how universal the story is, and how girls feel
like this movie was theirs.
KW:
I felt like it was mine, too. What would you say is the most
surprising thing people will learn about Malala from the movie?
DG:
They
may have heard that she was shot on a school bus or that she won the
Nobel Peace Prize. But those things aren't what make her
extraordinary. What is so moving to me is that she made a choice to
speak out and risk her life for something that was so precious to
her, her school. She made that courageous choice, and that's what
makes her extraordinary. And her father made a choice to not stop
her, and that speaks to me and makes we wonder whether I'd have the
courage to do that.
KW:
Lastly,
Patricia says: I have been a fan of your wife [Elisabeth Shue] since
the Eighties. She went to Harvard. You went to Brown. Many young
people think it is possible to make it in Hollywood without an
education. Please share how your college background helped you become
a respected filmmaker?
DG:
That's
a very interesting question, Patricia, because my older son is
applying to college, and I now find myself considering what college
means from the perspective of a father. There are specific skills I
brought to filmmaking. I didn't go to film school, but I believe that
more important than attending film school is developing the ability
to write, to conceptualize and to express yourself. And, you learn
those things in college, and also to develop your voice and your
point-of-view. Many people think that you need to master certain
technical skills in order to succeed as a filmmaker. It's my theory
that the technical know-how is always shifting and can always be
acquired. More important to me is finding people with something
meaningful to say who can express themselves.
KW:
Alice
Hay-Tolo says: In
the movie, Malala's mother did not seem to encourage her daughter in
her crusade for rights for young women which
was in striking contrast to her father. Is she old-fashioned in her
views, uneducated, or simply detached from what her daughter was
trying to achieve. Or is there some other explanation?
DG:
She's
not at all detached. In fact, she's very proud of her daughter, and
wants Malala to do whatever she wants. Because the mother is a little
bit in the background in this movie, people read a lot into it. But
it was really more about her choice to be less on camera. In her
culture, displaying yourself on camera is considered to be immodest.
But I've seen her stand up in many gatherings and say how proud she
is of her daughter. And Malala's pushing her mother to learn to read
and write English, so they're very aligned, even though they come
from different generations and have different cultural choices.
They're very much in support of each other.
KW:
Ilene
Proctor says: Malala is obviously a very old soul. How has she
managed to maintain her sanity and humility when she's surrounded by
so many people worshipful of her?
DG:
[LOL]
That's a great question, Ilene. She is an old soul, and she has this
quiet poise about her. At the premiere, all the adults were getting
worked up, spinning around, and acting like children, and here's this
teenage girl who has a serenity and calmness about her. I don't know
how she does it. A clue might be found in the birthday card her
mother gave her when she turned 18, saying "Happy 3rd Birthday,"
the point being that it's been 3 years since she was shot. I think
there's something very powerful about being given a second chance in
life. It enables you to focus on what's most important. Malala feels
like she's been given a new life and she's very focused on what
really matters.
KW:
Sangeetha
Subramanian asks: How
do you choose what documentaries to make?
DG:
Hmm...
That's another good question. I'm very picky, Sangeetha. Perhaps the
most important part of a movie is choosing whether to do it or not. A
great, compelling story comes along very rarely. I'm always looking
for a personal journey and for a story that transcends the specifics
of an issue.
KW:
Speaking
of great stories, I loved your documentary Waiting for Superman, and
I was surprised when it wasn't nominated for an Oscar. I guess it had
to do with a political backlash after the picture got pigeonholed.
DG:
Awards
are very weird. Sometimes you get them when you don't deserve them,
and vice-versa. You never know. I've learned not to focus on them.
Even reviews can be confusing. My focus is really on getting people
to see the movie.
KW:
Attorney
Bernadette Beekman asks: Are any of the proceeds going to assist
Malala's goal to guarantee girls 12 years of education?
DG:
I don't
believe there are going to be profits from the film. But the partners
involved, Imagenation Abu Dhabi, Fox Searchlight, Participant Media
and I are very focused on Malala's mission, on helping her build her
schools and on getting her message out..
KW:
David
Roth has a question about your treatment of time in the film. You
decided not to treat the sequence of events linearly but rather to
group material based on sub-themes around family relations, living in
England vs. Swat, the situation in Pakistan, the assassination
attempt, etcetera. This approach had you moving back and forth in
time. I get that the images of the blood-stained bus and talk of bone
fragments in the brain and the assumption she was going to die added
dramatic impact to the end of the film. But it also risks diluting
the effect of the earlier segments. At long last, my question: What
were you hoping to achieve by choosing this approach over a more
linear treatment of the material?
DG:
A
chronological treatment of the movie didn't seem to have a dramatic
shape to it, since you'd have the shooting of Malala in the middle
and then you'd devote the balance of the time on her life in England,
in Birmingham. To me, movies build toward a moment and, if they're
really good, they build towards a character making a choice. I wanted
the movie to build towards her deciding to risk her life and speak
out for what she believed, and towards her father's making the choice
to not stop her. I knew that to build the film that way I had to cut
time. It made for a very complicated story structure.
KW:
Finally,
what’s in your wallet?
DG:
[Laughs]
A lot of credit cards.
KW:
Thanks
again for the time, Davis, and best of luck with the film.
DG:
Hey, it
was really a pleasure talking to you, Kam. You made my day.
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