The Interrupters On DVD

Shot over the course of one year, The Interrupters are: Ameena, Cobe and Eddie, all who have stories and histories of violence and gang activity. These “violence interrupters” (their job title) use their own personal experiences and street credibility to work in the communities, interjecting where violence is prone to erupting and working with families to stop the infection and spread. Their work and their insights are informed by their own journeys, which, as each of them point out, defy characterisation.

Founded by Gary Slutkin, an epidemiologist who has worked throughout America and the world battling diseases such as cholera and AIDS, CeaseFire works on the principle that the spread of violence mimics that of infectious diseases, and so the treatment should be similar: go after the most infected, and stop the infection at its source.

Their work is fraught with moral dilemmas. They have to step between adversaries, often people they know. They need to acknowledge people’s grievances while simultaneously pulling them back from acting on them. As they venture into their communities, they confront the importance of family, the noxious nature of poverty, and the place of race. And they do it with incredible candour and directness.

For me, making THE INTERRUPTERS, feels like a homecoming. Since completing Hoop Dreams in 1994, I’ve made documentaries that have taken me to near and far-flung places - Southern Illinois, Texas, Fiji, Nigeria, and Virginia, among others - but I guess you could say my heart and soul belongs to Chicago. This film gave me a chance to return to some of the same streets and neighborhoods we traversed in Hoop Dreams. And while that film followed the fortunes of two families hoping to use basketball as a ticket out of poverty, the harsh realities of urban violence and despair suffused their lives then and now. In recent years, two main subjects from the film, Arthur’s dad Bo and William’s brother Curtis, were murdered. In both cases, these tragedies had a profound impact on the families. With the Agee’s, it led to Arthur’s mom moving away from Chicago and back to Alabama where she was born, while Arthur for a while drove his father’s car and wore some of his clothes in a desperate attempt to keep his memory alive. With William, his older brother’s death sent him spiraling down, and eventually to his calling as a minister.

Bo and Curtis were on my mind when I first read Alex’s New York Times Magazine cover story on CeaseFire (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/magazine/04health-t.html). Alex and I have been friends for about ten years. We met when an acquaintance decided we should know each other. I already knew Alex’s seminal book, There Are No Children Here. In it, he’d done something remarkable: spend extensive time with a family living in one of Chicago’s notorious housing projects. What emerged was a book that illuminated honestly and heartbreakingly the lives of two brothers exiled to the margins of our society like so many in these neighborhoods.

Alex’s NYT’s article on CeaseFire struck a chord with me in the way it vividly told the story of an organization trying to find a new way to impact what has seemed an intractable problem in these communities for decades, one that no longer made headlines, perhaps leaving people numb or resigned to it.

So I called Alex up and said, we may have found the film project to do together. He agreed so we began meeting with various CeaseFire staff and interrupters Alex had interviewed to see if a film was possible – and determine if it were plausible for us to gain real access to the work the interrupters do in the streets. Encouraged by their response and our fundraising success, filming began in earnest in the Spring of 2009. We shot over 300 hours during the next 14 months. The core team during the production phase was Alex, co-producer and sound recordist Zak Piper, and myself. We wanted to keep the crew small enough to encourage an essential intimacy and authenticity. For this reason, I also handled the camera to eliminate the need for one other crewmember. Alex had never been involved in a film like this before, but he proved to be a quick learner. Because he knew the landscape of the inner city so intimately from his other work, it felt like we were on the same wavelength from the start. And not surprisingly, he was a terrific interviewer.

The other core team member was talented editor Aaron Wickenden, who began cutting scenes in January of 2010, while our filming was in full swing. Aaron and I eventually tag-team edited once filming was largely complete. (Although we were a constant source of humor at Kartemquin Films because we never met a scene we didn’t want to film, even deep into the editing). A cynic might ask just how much editing was done given a running time of 2:45! Whether the film deserves and rewards its length is up to every viewer to decide. But for us as filmmakers, we felt it our duty to give the viewer the kind of complex, surprising, sometimes disturbing, sometimes incredibly moving experience in the theater that we were privy to over those 14 months. We want the film to be an immersive experience for the audience, one that plunges them into communities plagued by violence, while also allowing them to step back and understand it. We also hope THE INTERRUPTERS challenges viewers on their assumptions about these communities, and encourages them to care. And maybe even to act. To that end, Kartemquin Films, which has been my filmmaking home since I began with Hoop Dreams, is attempting an ambitious outreach and civic engagement campaign around the film designed to ensure the film inspires a national discussion on violence prevention and is seen by the communities most affected by the issue. This is hardly unusual for Kartemquin; it’s a commitment we make on every documentary we produce. This is just one reason why I have chosen to continue making films with them for almost twenty years now.

People ask me, “Wasn’t it incredibly dangerous and depressing?” The truth is we never felt in any true danger, in large part because of the respect commanded by our interrupter subjects in their communities. Cobe, Ameena, and Eddie took good care of us. They are extraordinary people for the lives they’ve lived and the lives they’ve saved. Two men and one woman - ex-gangbangers, convicts and street players – who’d once been part of the violence they were now bravely trying to interrupt. And I was never depressed by what we filmed either. Maybe its because Cobe, Ameena, and Eddie inspired us with their own personal stories of redemption, and by giving us a chance to witness firsthand their impact on other people’s lives. And maybe it’s because they are such a joy to be around. I’ve told Cobe that he should have his own cable show in which all he does is call people on the phone to chat. He’s one of the most generous, and sweet people I’ve ever met, making it impossible to believe he’d done three stints in prison for everything from selling drugs to attempted murder. Eddie has to be one of the most sincere and thoughtful subjects I’ve come across. A man who committed the ultimate act of violence, and now commits himself so completely to helping others. And Ameena, who can take over every room she walks into with her charisma and personality, yet is also one of the most private subjects I’ve ever filmed.

In any long term filming process, trust between filmmakers and subjects become paramount, the key to access and intimacy. It didn’t happen overnight. It rarely does. In this film, the initial challenges were for people in the communities to understand that the film crew wasn’t tied to the police, and that the interrupters’ real focus in any mediation was on helping them, not filming them. We had an understanding with our interrupters that if a situation seemed potentially too dangerous or if our being there would compromise the mediation, we would stand down. This became an issue with Eddie in one of the Latino neighborhoods beset by gangs when he was told that we weren’t welcome there anymore. The more time we spent with our interrupters hanging with them even when a crisis wasn’t imminent – going to Cobe’s son’s football games or Ameena’s daughter’s birthday party - the more comfortable they became with us and the camera. That then translated to the streets where it was important that people understand why we were there, why we wanted to film them. Ultimately, they trusted the interrupters and believed we were not there to vilify and judge, but to illuminate and understand. That’s pretty much been my guiding principle as a filmmaker, and Alex’s as a writer. Nowhere was that more true then with this film.

Making THE INTERRUPTERS was a gift. I became a documentary filmmaker because I wanted to understand people and communities other than the ones I’ve lived in. The best film experiences are akin to living inside a rich and surprising novel. Your own personal life and day-to-day worries tend to recede and pale in comparison as you bear witness to the lives and often profound struggles of others.

One of my favorite anecdotes from making the film occurred the day of the tense Englewood incident that is early in the film. In the midst of all the chaos, someone stole some of our film equipment that was stashed inside the CeaseFire Englewood office. When we discovered the theft, six interrupters sprang into action, jumping in cars and zooming off to find the young man someone had spotted trotting amicably away from the scene minutes earlier with a strange looking bag (or camera bag) over his shoulder. I was touched by their efforts and felt that this showed how much the interrupters had embraced us as friends, not just filmmakers who continually “stalked” them, as Ameena would often rib us. Minutes after they rode off, Ameena returned with the young perpetrator. At her urging – and who can possibly resist Ameena? – the young man handed the bag back over to me along with an sincere apology. Such was the respect he had for her.

Perhaps the most memorable moment for me was when we filmed Cobe taking Lil’ Mikey to the barbershop to apologize to a family and patrons he’d robbed at gunpoint three years earlier. That one scene is a microcosm for the whole film. Through that mother’s eyes we saw who Lil’ Mikey once was, capable of terrorizing a family and scarring them to this day. And we saw Lil Mikey today, determined to walk back in and sincerely apologize so that he can move on with his life in a completely positive direction. And months later when Lil Mikey finally landed a job at a day care center, we filmed him tenderly helping put small children down for their naps. A class X felon had befriended each of those precious children, even knew whose special blanket or pillow was whose. I had to wipe away the tears as I filmed. With Lil’ Mikey - and Ameena, and Cobe, and Eddie - we met people in this film that have done terrible things in their lives, but who now have found their way back to their true selves.