BBC Four: Whitney has said that the two of you had different responses to the murder. How did you react?
Marco Williams: I, like everyone was disturbed and pained by it. What I said to Whitney was that it didn't shock me, nor did it surprise me. I said blacks had been brutally murdered in America for hundreds of years and that this was nothing unusual, it was part of a continuum.
BBC Four: Was that when you decided you could make a film about this particular subject?
MW: That was a seed that germinated unbeknownst to Whitney and I for a couple of months. We have known each other for 20 years and have fairly common backgrounds, at least on paper: Ivy League colleges, North Eastern raised, private high schools. Yet why did we have such strongly divergent responses to the crime? We have that response because of how we were raised in America vis-à-vis our race. Whitney and I were acutely aware that for all our common ground of upbringing, the uncommon ground of race was the trump card. It was clear to us that the murder was about race. This was a racially motivated murder. How did black and white in Jasper see it? Did they see it differently? We felt that the only way to investigate this was to recover ground: me talk to blacks, he talks to whites.
BBC Four: Were there any drawbacks to that approach?
MW: With hindsight we might have been clearer about having more common guidelines. I think I pursued a film that was to give a depiction of the black community by showing multiple characters and Whitney, while giving an impression of the white community, really focussed on a couple or three characters and their overall arc - which is quite successful. What I can say that I fully understand now, as a result of making this film and of talking about it is: Whitney did what whites tend to do in the paradigm of race, which is to look at the individual and I did what blacks tend to do which is look at the institution. I made a film about a community and he made a film about individuals. Hence, the film at times has an unevenness and yet at times is an accurately representation of race relations in this country.
BBC Four: How did the media circus that descended on Jasper affect making the film?
MW: In some ways we benefited from the B52 bomber aspect of much of the media because we got to fly under the radar screen. People just didn't notice us at times. I can't tell you how many times other media people who've seen our film have said, "My goodness I couldn't believe you got those stories we could never get. It was so great to see how that family really felt as opposed to just getting a soundbite for the news that night".
BBC Four: Were you at all surprised to how people in Jasper responded to the murder?
MW: I was initially surprised by what I perceived as an absence of rage in the black community. But I eventually appreciated it wasn't an absence of rage, it was muted rage and that in some ways became the drawing thread of the story I was trying to tell - why was there muted rage? You hear in the beginning of the film: "If it happened once it can happen again". There are all sorts of potential and perceived repercussions to speaking out and really being heard. Yet as the year progressed after the first verdict there was a visceral release of emotion, which became the opening through which the rage started to ooze out. By the third trial it was palpable.
BBC Four: From a British perspective one of the most striking things about the film are the scenes after each trial. I was amazed no one hurled anything at the prisoners.
MW: At the first trial there was a serious law enforcement presence - they were not sure what was going to take place. I think that this was a town, and in many ways this was a nation, that was stunned by verdict. I quite expected somehow or other he would get off. It's happened before, why shouldn't it happen again? People were generally inured to the experience. You can hear it after the third trial; there's a voice that rings out, "Shawn - at least you got better than Byrd." That's black woman saying that. At the beginning of the story that rage is muted, you're not sure what the repercussions are, by the end you are fully understanding the empowerment. That's as close as anything is to a rock being hurled. And that's fairly incisive remark.
Interview with co-director Whitney Dow
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