The Weather Underground: An Interview

The Weather Underground, Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature, was co-directed and co-produced by Bill Siegel. John K. Wilson interviewed him recently via email.

John K. Wilson: Although most reviews of your film have been very positive, and call the documentary fair and balanced (if I'm allowed to use that phrase), a few conservative critics consider it too positive about the ex-Weather Underground. You've noted that you began this film after becoming friends with Bill Ayers and trying to reconcile this friendship with his past in the Weathermen. Do you worry that you were too friendly with some of the lead figures? Or is a mainstream journalistic ideal of balance and objectivity not something that concerns you?

Bill Siegel: I can't answer your question quite as you've asked it. While I knew Bill Ayers through my work in education before Sam Green and I started working on the film, I wouldn't say we were friends. More like work acquaintances. And even in that, I'd had very little contact with Bill. Just enough where I hoped he'd remember me when I first approached him with the notion to try and do the film and see if he would talk to us. So in that sense, the reconciliation you ask of was moot.

In terms of journalistic ideals of balance and objectivity, I separate the two. I don't think it is humanly possible to tell a non-fiction story objectively, at least not with any significant detail, depth, or context. I think the best I can do is to be subjectively honest. By that I mean, anyone telling a non-fiction story has to make choices, edits, etc, about what elements to include at all, in what order, and so forth. So to think that I can remove myself from that process and still make the decisions mindfully, to me seems contradictory and mythological.

Balance, on the other hand, is something that was very important for us to try and achieve. We worked hard to shape a story that we felt represented many points of view. We knew we were dealing with a story that was very contentious and controversial, one that aroused a broad spectrum of emotions. We wanted to try and shape the story in way that would reflect that, while still leaving it open-ended enough for the viewers to make up their own minds.

In my estimation, critics that have said the film is too positive, often seem to mean not negative and condemning enough of the Weather Underground. I certainly feel there is important and valid criticism of their efforts in the film, but I think some critics really wouldn't have been satisfied with anything much short of getting a tearful apology from former members. I take the fact the film has been regarded in so many different ways, there really isn't a one sentence consensus about it, as testimony to its open-endedness and balance.

Did 9-11 and the reaction to it (especially the anger and threats aimed at Bill Ayers) make you reconsider this project, or change the way you edited it? Did you feel pushed to condemn the idea of terrorism more forcefully, or do you think the Weather Underground is fundamentally different from al-Qaeda?

For awhile after 9-11 we stopped working on the film altogether. I think we were both too numb, horrified and grief-stricken to even think about how to proceed. Once some time had passed, we looked at what was happening in the world at that point and ultimately got to a place where we felt it was more important than ever to find a way to finish it. In terms of how 9-11 shaped the film, this may sound strange, but I know that it did, but I'm not honestly sure exactly how it did. It isn't like I could point to scenes and say, "That's there because of 9-11."

I know that we did come to a recognition that it would be impossible for people to watch the film and NOT bring their own experience of 9-11 to bear upon their viewing. And I think therefore we kind of, unconsciously or subconsciously, recognized that we would not be able to reflect every person's experience with 9-11 and somehow contextualize it in the scope of the film. So in that sense, perhaps, it made our focus even tighter, and forced us to concentrate even more severely on the story we were trying to tell, certainly with heavier and more sober emotions, in ultimately defining the story we felt we were able to commit to film, limitations and all.