Interview: "U.N. Me" Co-Director Ami Horowitz on Being the Right-Wing Michael Moore, Deceiving Interview Subjects and Why Conservative Documentaries Usually Fail
Two documentaries opening this weekend are what I like to call “party pooper” films, by which I mean they rain on the parade of otherwise positive causes, the kind that many doc fans enjoy supporting (see my latest Movies.com column on this growing subgenre). One of these films, U.N. Me, actually asks, “Is the world’s solution part of the problem?” by investigating the faults of the United Nations.
Co-directed by Matthew Groff and Ami Horowitz, the latter appears on screen as the first-person investigative protagonist who takes on a jestering approach reminiscent of Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock, Sacha Baron Cohen and others. Last week I chatted with Horowitz to discuss this comic style and why he’s had trouble getting the film respect from the traditional documentary audience.
Here's our conversation:
Aside from the fact that it’s a very necessary exposé, what was your reason for making this film now?
I had an epiphany, to be honest. And the inspiration, oddly enough, was Michael Moore. I was sitting in my apartment on the Upper West Side in Manhattan on a Saturday night and watching Bowling for Columbine. I’d seen it before so I was drifting off a bit, and for some reason the U.N. popped into my head. And Rwanda and Sudan began floating in my mind, and it really got me upset, infuriated. The other thing, which I didn’t like, was that I felt very small.
At the time, I was an investment banker. Who was going to listen to me? I felt very powerless. I looked over at the screen and saw Michael’s big mug and thought to myself, this is a really entertaining, engaging medium. It’s one way to get your view across if you do it properly. From that moment, I knew that was the direction I wanted to go in, and this was what I wanted to do. I quit my job and immediately started making U.N. Me.
Would you like to be the conservative Michael Moore? We could use one given that the documentary community overall is more left-leaning. I don’t think this is a right-wing film necessarily, but outside of this project you are considered a conservative journalist.
People don’t usually ask if I want to be the conservative Michael Moore. They say I am the conservative Michael Moore. I have no problem with that.
To talk of this conservative/liberal issue for a moment, I don’t think this movie is conservative. In fact, I’m the only person involved in the movie who is a conservative. My editors, my writers, my cinematographers, my interns -- I don’t know the politics of my P.A.s -- were all liberal. So you’re right to think this is not a conservative film. It’s not, and it wasn’t meant to be. Now, my personal politics are conservative, and people certainly have been yearning for somebody who could take that role. Conservatives have tried to do documentary and failed miserably at it, in my view. The reason they have failed is actually very simple: they have failed to include and integrate humor into their work.
We’ve banned the word “documentary” from my office. We use -- I force them to use -- “docutainment.” The key is to use humor, but humor is extremely hard, I’ve found. I didn’t realize that. To make somebody cry is quite simple. You can’t manipulate somebody to laugh. It’s either funny to them or it’s not. So that was a really important part of this process, and that’s why we brought in writers from The Onion and Michael Moore’s writers and editors. We put together a phenomenal team around us to make this thing.
You're an investigative journalist so it makes sense to take that role on screen, but are you typically also a jokester or is that just for the purpose of entertainment here?
The principal of my high school would probably say I was. But no, not really. It’s what I felt was necessary for this movie. If I thought the best way to get the point across in this movie was a straight-up documentary of nothing but power, then I would have done that.
It helps that while it’s an important issue, it’s not all entirely pressing since it covers some past or consistent problems with the U.N. It’s not a heavy issue film. But in the end, you do want people to be outraged and become involved. Can you talk about this balance of the satirical entertainment with the need to engage more than just with jokes?
It wasn’t about the medium. It was about the message. In other words, I didn’t decide to quit my job as a banker and become a filmmaker. I decided to quit my job as a banker so I could expose this issue. I wanted to find the most effective way to get my point of view across and I just found the “docutainment” arena was the best way. I was just looking to be a funny guy.
And I disagree. I think it’s very pressing, maybe one of the most pressing things we face. Yeah, we talk about Rwanda, which happened years ago, but it’s as a prelude to discuss Sudan, which is today. And really to open a discussion to human rights in general, which are being abused in horrific ways as we are speaking. I think issues like that are completely pressing. Iran getting a nuclear weapon happening today, and if we don’t stop it, it will be a dark day for the world. We do highlight issues that happen in the past only to underline what’s going on today.
Maybe what I mean is that it doesn’t seem current because it’s so ongoing, which is probably why people haven’t really paid attention and addressed the overall fault with this organization that’s been around for so many decades. In fact, while watching U.N. Me, I kept wondering why a film like this hasn’t already been done before.
The U.N. seems like an obvious target to me. But after the couple death threats I got... maybe people realized before I did that it might not be the smartest target to take on.
I was also pretty shocked that I hadn’t heard about the film before seeing it covered recently at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood site. And that’s not where I normally hear about docs, since most are left-leaning. You finished the film a while ago, so I wondered why it hadn’t been on my radar.
I’ll be honest, the documentary world doesn’t really like me. When we had discussions with the documentary crowd, the different festivals and bloggers, people were very, very cold to me and very, very cold to the movie. My guess is that a lot of them looked at it and said, “This is right-wing propaganda. So we’re not going to do anything to help it. And you are a carpetbagger and don’t belong in our world. So we’re not going to have anything to do with you.” It got pretty messy.
But as we already discussed, this isn’t really a right-wing cause necessarily, right?
Well, the movie is not right or left leaning. The cause is now changing to become more right and left, but in the past it has been more of a right-wing cause. My guess is people on the Left are a little more hopeful that the human condition can work together to solve those problems. Maybe the Right is a little more jaded about that. I don’t really know.
You break the film up into four huge faults of the UN: incompetence, humanitarian aid scams, the lack of a definition for terrorism and the human rights council hypocrisies. Are there more topics or problems you wanted to include and these just fit a nice structure? Or did you know these were the four main stories going in?
The sort of four-act structure is something came out through the editing process. Most of the issues that we talk about -- not all, but most -- were issues that we were aware of going in. But the way we broke it down ended up coming together in the editing room. As you know, many documentaries come together in the editing room.
Let’s talk about the incredible access you get in the film, both within the walls of the U.N. and to some of the people you managed to interview. Did you have to deceive people regarding your intent? I know you employed cinematographers who worked on Borat and Bruno...
It depends on who the interviewer is. For instance, we got unprecedented access to the U.N., to the people and the facilities. There was no deception there. That was based primarily on Ted Turner. You may not know this, but Ted Turner is one of the most powerful lay people at the United Nations. He gave the U.N. a billion dollars, which is commendable. A waste of money, but commendable. I pitched to him and his group about the movie. I was not deceptive -- let’s just say, slightly cagey. I simply said that I was looking to make a movie that showed the world what the U.N. is all about. And they took it the way they took it. And they are the ones who offered me all the access.
Now, when it comes to the bad actors we interview, the Iranian people and the Sudanese people, that was primarily deception. That was me calling up and saying, “I hate America. I want to show America for the blood-lust country that it is. Can I get an interview?” So they’re happy to interview with me when I said that.
Did it ever come out in your jokey tone during interviews where these people would get upset with you?
There were times when it got uncomfortable. I think they were trying to figure out in their heads why I’m taking this tact. But if you notice, the questions are not attacking them head on. They’re almost agreeing with their position, but saying it in a jokey way. They knew something was going on. I asked the Sudanese guy about gay men being executed on their first offense but lesbians on their third offense and what’s the difference there. That’s a pretty harsh question. He didn’t take it that way. He thought I was just asking about the process. “What’s your process on killing gay people?” It’s absurd.
What is your desired goal, if the film is to make a difference, to put an end to the U.N. or inspire massive reform? Not that the U.N. is going to just go away, but do you see the organization as a lost cause and their faults being more than the good they do at this point?
You may have noticed that we don’t take a position on what the solution is. We set out what the issues and problems are, and we don’t say what we should do to solve them. It’s much easier to do that. But laziness aside, the reason we didn’t do that is because we wanted the audience to come up with their own solutions. I think that a bottom-up approach is better than a top-down approach.
Now, if you’re asking me for my personal suggestion of what we should do, I would say, we don’t need a new organization. We have one that can work properly. If you read the U.N. charter, it’s a beautifully crafted document, one of the great documents of the 20th Century. My strong preference would be to reform it. The next obvious question is, do I think that it can be reformed? The answer to that is, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
I am a short-term pessimist and a long-term optimist. It’s impossible for you to spend the amount of time I have discussing this issue and spending time with these people and not walk away completely jaded. I can imagine someone watching this for 90 minutes would walk away jaded.
What documentaries have been influential on you. You mentioned being inspired by Michael Moore, but do you have any other favorites?
Yeah, most of Michael’s stuff clearly have had influence on me. I would say my favorite documentary of all time is One Day in September by Kevin Macdonald. I’m a big fan of that. I love The Fog of War, and it’s one of the reasons I pursued [Doug Abel] to edit my movie. He was perfect because he edited The Fog of War and also the first season of 30 Rock. It was the right sensibility I was looking for. I like Spurlock’s stuff. I think he’s really talented. I could name a lot of movies by people who worked on my movie, because that’s why I called them. Some Kind of Monster is just phenomenal. Nick Broomfield is always fun to watch.
For such a conservative guy, you seem to enjoy a lot of left-leaning films.
There isn’t any choice. Obviously politics matter, but when it comes to what I’m looking to be entertained by, the politics don’t bother me. Michael Moore and I have become friendly during this process, and did I believe in his cause in Bowling for Columbine? Not really, but he knows how to put together... He took the medium and turned it on its head. He invigorated it. He recreated the genre, and I totally appreciate it. That’s why I named my business is Disruptive Pictures. He was sort of disruptive technology when it came to documentary film. That was awesome. I stand on his shoulders when I do my work. I’m better, but that’s because I stand on his shoulders. Very large, wide, meaty shoulders.
What's next? Do you want to keep making first-person investigative documentaries like U.N. Me?
I don’t know where I go from here. It all depends on people seeing the movie and my investors getting their money back. If they don’t, my full-time job will be hiding from them. But sure, I didn’t mean to be a filmmaker. I meant to get an issue out. Having said that, I have been bitten by the filmmaking bug. I love it. It’s what I want to do. So I’m really open to anything, narrative features, or other “documentainment” movies. I’m pretty sure that if I did another documentary it would be in this sort of first-person style. I don’t think I would do something that wasn’t in my voice. Unless you want to pay me a lot of money to do it.
U.N. Me opens in limited release nationwide this Friday (see theater list here) and will also be available through iTunes and video-on-demand outlets the same day.
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