Reality Bites

Albert Maysles has never been the kind of filmmaker likely to receive an invitation to sit on the central panel of Celebrity Squares yet his influence on visual culture is simply inestimable.

Fact is, if you've ever thrilled to Paris Hilton's knicker-flashing on The Simple Life or learned meaningful new ways to employ the word 'fuck' from The Osbournes, then you're worshipping at the Maysles altar - worshipping through the misbegotten, cretinous spawn of the great man's oeuvre - but worshipping nonetheless.

"I'm not sure the producers of those shows learned anything from us," laughs the seventy-two year old. "Those shows are entirely commercial goofy entertainments. They're not interested in true biography. They just want to get as many swears as they can possibly bleep out."

Surfing the nouvelle vague, Mr. Maysles, together with Robert Drew, Richard Peacock and D.A. Pennebaker (Don't Look Back) formed the Drew Collective in the fifties, and with it the Direct Cinema movement. Like cinema verite, these pioneering filmmakers utilised lightweight cameras and handheld tripods.

Though Albert eventually worked with Jean Luc Godard on Montparnasse; Levallois - a segment of the 1965 nouvelle vague anthology, Paris Vu Par - the cinematic aims of Direct Cinema were rather more in keeping with Lumiere than Melies; seeking to capture the world as the case is, without pre-planning or staging or interference. Their methodology would eventually become known as fly-on-the-wall filmmaking.

"I had come back from making my first film about mental institutions in the Soviet Union," recalls Albert. "I went into that knowing nothing about film except that we were in the middle of the Cold War and there were literally no images of ordinary Soviet people - the people we would be fighting in the event of conflict. I hitchhiked to New York, somehow persuaded CBS Studios into lending me a camera, and went there not even knowing how to get permission to film in the USSR.

"I eventually crashed a party at the Romanian Embassy and met all these Soviet dignitaries and one of them just gave me a number and told me to call it, and sure enough, everything was sorted. It was only when I got to the Soviet Union that I realised the limitations of post-synchronised sound. But with the Drew Collective, on our film, Primary, we started using new technologies and synchronised sound recording and that in itself was very exciting. It offered new possibilities for capturing life."

"These new innovations dovetailed sweetly with Direct Cinema's attempts to change the nature of documentary by eliminating authoritative voice-overs and interviewer questions, and Albert soon teamed up with his brother David, to produce some of the most fascinating documents of the twentieth century, including portraits of John F. Kennedy, Mohammed Ali and The Beatles in America.

If these films caught the optimism of the sixties zeitgeist, the Mayles Brothers' Gimme Shelter - which documented The Rolling Stones' 1969 tour and the notorious killing of a spectator at Altamont by Hell's Angels hired to police the event - closed the decade with an appropriately bitter aftertaste.

One person, however, was less than enraptured with the results. Famously, Gimme Shelter provoked the wrath of Pauline Kael, then the film critic for The New Yorker, who, without justification denounced the film as fraudulent and accused Maysles of complicity in murder.

"At that time, The New Yorker didn't even have a Letters To The Editor section," explains Albert. "So while I contacted the magazine and pointed out all the inaccuracies and unfounded allegations in her piece, we had no forum to air our grievances. To this day, I don't know why she did it. She would occasionally just write things with no other purpose than to make herself look clever."

(He is, of course, in good company for the lady had it in for Orson Welles in much the same manner – "Yes, indeed, there were a good many points scored off Orson Welles for no particular reason.")

Happily, the Maysles Brothers reputation has not been otherwise assailed and contrary to Ms. Kael's criticisms, Mayles' art has always displayed a remarkable fondness for humanity, often recalling the painter Edward Lear's professed methodology for successful portraiture – "I just look into their hearts."

"I have the terrific advantage of liking people," says Albert. "It's important to like people and gain someone's confidence and trust when filming or doing anything else for that matter. I'm not sure that someone like Michael Moore exercises that kind of empathy. I think he's better just making direct addresses to camera."

Unwittingly, Albert recently shared these opinions with the right-wing yahoos behind Michael Moore Hates America. "I didn't know who they were and at the time I told them I hadn't seen Michael Moore's movies - I had just read about them. They edited that bit out and took various remarks out of context. We tried to stop them using the footage, but we were unsuccessful. But it doesn't matter. The movie doesn't seem to be going very far."

Hailed as an inspiration by everyone from David Lynch to, er, Michael Moore, the Maysles' most influential and revered works feature rather less prominent folk than the likes of The Fab Four. Albert's extraordinary ordinary documentary subjects include Grey Gardens' Beal family; a demi-aristocratic mother and daughter playing out Oedipal tensions in their dilapidated mansion, the shockingly disenfranchised American underclass of Lalee's Kin, and the Boston based collective of door-to-door bible salesmen of Salesman.

This latter documentary became the brothers' breakthrough film in 1969; its portrayal of salesmen as robust cowboy-inspired individuals who seem to have climbed right out of a Rockwell frame in order to pray on unsuspecting housewives has been praised by Norman Mailer amongst others, as saying "more about America than any other film." Certainly, watching it now, the central themes involving the commodification and mass-marketing of spirituality have taken on a whole new relevance under the current US administration.

"Oh yes," chuckles Albert. "I've come to realise the significance of sharing a country with seventeen million individuals making literal interpretations of the Bible. It's just unfortunate that there's one of them in The White House."
Interestingly, in common with Albert's father, the indomitable Bible-hawker Paul Brannan from Salesman was once a postal clerk.

"They were both people who should have been more than they were," explains Albert. "My father should have been a musician - he was incredibly talented - but like Paul, circumstances got in the way."

Just as this insight into frustrated potential informs Albert's pursuit of the everyday, his background as a former lecturer in psychology in Boston University has provided a perfect grounding for his intimate approach to his documentary subjects, many of whom he keeps in touch with.

"I was just the other day at a screening of Salesman in Chicago, and Kenny, one of the Bible salesmen was there for the question and answer session. Well, he stood up and did his thing for fifteen minutes, same as ever. Paul Brannan will always be a friend, as will the Beals.

"Just recently, I met with Jerry from Grey Gardens - remember the marbled fawn? - and he's a taxi-driver in New York city now. So I shot some footage of him for a couple of hours and that'll be going on the scrapbook DVD that my daughter is putting together. Sadly, Granny from Lalee's Kin - the twelve year old who was desperate to go to school and make something of herself - has gotten pregnant, so there go her hopes and dreams."

Surprisingly, Albert's closeness to those he films has never led to lengthy shoots; a fact made all the more remarkable when one considers his refusal of preconceptions and dramatic staging.

"I've just gotten lucky," he says. "Grey Gardens took six weeks. The rapport with the Beals was instant. Gimme Shelter was also six weeks. I got great footage of Marlon Brando in the space of just two hours. Ha! Marlon Brando - there was an interesting fellow to spend a couple of days with"

Though Albert's brother David died in 1997, Albert has continued their work and is currently making films about long-distance trains, the Dalai Lama, conversations between two and three-year-olds and an autobiography.

His approach to all these projects retains the same noble philosophy that has characterised his entire output to date - "My mother always spoke of the need to see the good in everybody. That's the most important thing you can do. Loving people is essential to my way of doing things."

Albert Maysles was in Belfast last week to teach a masterclass as part of the Belfast Film Festival.