That’s a hard one because they are all your kids. My parents were Holocaust survivors so I’m really inspired by stories of people who have overcome adversity yet have a lot of hope and inspiration. Because that’s what happened to my folks. My folks both survived Auschwitz. They met after the war, they came to New York without a nickel in their pocket, yet they both had a pretty strong passion for living and wanted to give the best that they could to their kids. That’s where I get a lot of my strength from. We’re talking about the difficulty of trying to distribute a movie like this, find a buyer for it, but every time I get depressed I think about what they went through and I kind of say, “Well, you know, I shouldn’t feel sorry for myself. That ain’t so tough.”
It really puts it all in perspective.
It does and that just keeps me going. So stories like Michael Bennett, the ex-con boxer who helps young kids in Chicago, who became an Olympic boxer – I love that story. I like the Hoyts, the father who pushes his kid in the Boston Marathon. You talk about overcoming adversity, you talk about unconditional love, that’s a pretty powerful story that really symbolizes that. Then on a lighter night, I like the dairy farmer. I guess every filmmaker’s fantasy is to live in the country and make movies, and have a nice simple quality of life.
And he lives that life.
He does. And did you notice he doesn’t put LA down? He says, “I went to LA and it was great, but this works for me on a small scale, and I’m happy with that.”
I walked out of your movie going, “Real people are cool.”
We have a deep hunger for what is authentic. That’s kind of why the reality TV craze has taken off. Although there is no reality to it, it’s highly manipulative and has nothing to do with anything that’s authentic. But in my movie…I kind of describe my movie not as a documentary but as a real life authentic experience.
How many stories did you film that you didn’t get to put in?
Oh, there’s about 30 or 40 that didn’t make it. But they were all really good stories, but they just happened to be similar thematically to the ones I had in the movie. I had to make some tough choices.
Will we see any of those stories on the DVD?
Well, I don’t want to put them on the DVD because I’m keeping my fingers crossed we’re going to use them theatrically. What’s nice about seeing it theatrically is to share that emotional reaction at the end, to hear people laughing and crying in the theater. You get a sense of bonding with community. Also to see it on a giant screen because the cinematography isn’t just there to be pretty for pretty’s sake. It’s there to create an emotional sensation inside of you so that the stories have a deeper meaning. They resonant with you. I’m trying to kind of create a spiritual experience in the theater for people.
Right. Speaking of spiritual, so many of your stories did have a religious/spiritual edge to them and yet I am not a real spiritual person and I really enjoyed the film, so it wasn’t overpowering. How did you get that balance?
For me, I get a lot of my spirituality through nature, which gives me a lot of inspiration in capturing beauty. Beauty is sort of like nature’s way of having you fall in love with something. If you fall in love with something, then you’ll protect it. You also see that love in lots of the stories we have of parents with their kids.
I think it goes beyond or deeper than the kind of spirituality we talk about in relationship to organized religion. I’m not putting that down but I’m just saying there’s an underlying tone to it. When you see the great diversity of landscapes we have in this country, that’s what gives us our strength – our character. No matter what religion you have, I think you can certainly relish the treasures that America has, as far as its national treasures.
PAGE 3: Schwartzberg on Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" and Counter-Programming
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
"America's Heart and Soul" Photo Gallery
"America's Heart and Soul" Trailer, Credits and Websites
