BBC Four: What led you to the decision to shoot the film with separate black and white crews?
Whitney Dow: The murder really affected me in a way that I think affected a lot of Americans. It reminded us about something we hoped was in the past. But the murder had so many earmarks of an old-style, traditional American lynching that we knew it wasn't as much in the past as we thought. On the other hand what Marco was upset about was that this was something that had been going for years, it's not something new. In effect my shock met with his indifference.
Secondly, there wasn't a really functional language in this country to discuss race any more. It's either politically correct crap or it's angry yelling. We thought we should create a virtual dialogue where people wouldn't actually be talking to each other, they would be listening in vicariously on conversations that the other community was having.
BBC Four: How did the collaboration work while you were in Jasper?
WD: We wrote a manifesto for ourselves so the thing would have a reasonably similar to feel to it from both sides. Then we really went off and did our own thing for year. We stayed in different hotels, didn't acknowledge each other on the street, nobody knew we were working together and really just tried to immerse ourselves in own community. We didn't watch each other's footage for that entire year.
BBC Four: Haven't you had some negative reaction to the fact that you used segregated crews?
WD: Most of the negative response comes from those who say, "You're perpetuating the division, you're exacerbating the differences." It's usually from white liberals who are uncomfortable with the idea that their humanity is so unsullied by any sort of prejudice that they would have the same access to any community they went into.
I'll tell you an interesting story that hit home that we'd done the right thing. I went down there six months before Marco to develop the idea and spent a lot of time interviewing people in both black and white communities. I spent a bit of time at a black auto body shop where these guys talked, drank beer and hung out. They were very welcoming and said how pleased they were that someone was going to tell the story of Jasper and what the South was really like. When we started the project in earnest Marco spent a lot of time in that body shop. When I looked at his footage, they'd lied to me about everything. The level of distrust was so high that no way would they give this white guy with a camera anything that would potentially be dangerous to them.
BBC Four: The American title of the film Two Towns of Jasper hints at the subtle racism in America...
WD: Subtle and really identifying something. What's interesting about Jasper is that it's like a lot of American towns and cities, especially in the old factory belt. It has a large black and white population, almost 50-50, they govern together, Jasper has a black mayor, half the city council is black, people work together, they meet in public spaces together. But at the end of the day they go home to their separate communities. That's what we were getting at - not that it's a totally divided town but there were these two towns that exist within the same space.
People always ask the question, "How has the town changed?" The white community say, "My god, the changes have been incredible. We've looked at ourselves, we've worked so hard to be more attentive to the needs of the black community." The black community say, "Absolutely nothing has changed. You're more polite to me? I couldn't care less. My mortgage rate is still three points higher than yours, my bank has no black tellers, there are no black businesses downtown." No matter how good the white community feels about its self-examination it's still effectively two towns.
BBC Four: As a Brit, one of the most incredible things for me in the film was how staged it was outside the courthouse after the killers were convicted.
WD: I was standing next to a reporter from the London Times and he turned to me and said, "Do they always just take them in a pick-up truck?" His jaw dropped. They could park the truck right next to the stair but they park it much further away. It's all staged for the news media. It was so important for them to show the world that they were doing the right thing. The world has seen so many images of small Southern towns doing the exact reverse.
Interview with co-director Marco Williams
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