Entertainment
A tribute to documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman
A few weeks ago, we lost a giant in the world of filmmaking. Celebrated documentarian Frederick Wiseman died February 16 at age 96, leaving behind a truly extraordinary body of work. David Pogue spoke with Wiseman last year about his life and legacy:
A Frederick Wiseman documentary doesn’t have a film score. There’s no narration. No text identifying the people or places. No re-enactments. Not even interviews! They often depict meetings, phone calls, and conversations. And these movies are up to six hours long.
Not the ingredients you might expect for masterpieces. At a retrospective last year at New York’s Film at Lincoln Center, one moviegoer, Ainsley, characterized the appeal of Wiseman’s films this way: “He got out of the way and just let things happen as they are.”
In 2016, Wiseman was awarded an honorary Oscar. In accepting his honor, he said, “It’s as important to document kindness, civility, and generosity of spirit as it is to show cruelty, banality, and indifference.”
Wiseman told us last year he didn’t like the term “documentaries” very much: “No. I like ‘movies’ better. It’s simpler. Maybe because when I grew up, documentaries were supposed to be good for you. And I thought what used to be called a documentary could be as funny, as sad, as tragic as a fiction film.”
In his 96 years, he made 44 documentaries without ever telling you who’s speaking, what you’re seeing, or how to feel about it. “You have to answer it yourself,” he said. “My job as an editor is to provide you with enough information in the context of the film so that you’re stimulated to pose that question, and you can answer it yourself.”
Wiseman grew up in Boston, and went to Williams College and Yale Law School. Then in 1966, he filmed an inside look at a state prison for the criminally insane. He called his movie “Titicut Follies.” It caused a sensation — and changed his life.
He filmed prisoners – some half naked – and guards being pretty abusive. And no one told Wiseman to turn off the cameras. “No,” he said. “Once they gave me permission, I had access to everything.”
But “Titicut Follies” was so shocking, and politically embarrassing, that a Massachusetts court banned it.
Years passed. “And then in the mid-’80s, I saw an article that said, ‘Titicut Follies Judge Dead.’ I don’t say that I was displeased with that news!” Wiseman laughed. “I brought a new action in front of a new judge. And ultimately it was cleared.”
Wiseman’s movies go behind the scenes of institutions: a high school, a hospital, a police department, a welfare office, a domestic-abuse shelter. Four of his early films Wiseman described as some of the most depressing films ever made. “There are aspects of some of the early movies that are depressing,” he said. “There are also aspects that are extremely funny, in my view. I mean, if you have a sick sense of humor!”
Zipporah Films 
For all his movies, Wiseman served as his own soundman. He also did no research before filming. “Shooting the movie is all chance,” he said. “You never know what people are gonna say and do, which is one of the reasons I have to shoot a lot of film. And for most of films it’s 100-150 hours.”
Does the presence of a film crew subtly affect the way people behave? “Well, that’s the eternal question,” he said. “I don’t think people are good enough actors to suddenly change their behavior.”
After shooting those 150 hours of footage, Wiseman would spend eight to ten months alone in the editing room where, as he freely admitted, he shaped the story. “The notion that these movies are ‘The Truth’ is completely phony,” he said. “It’s one person’s version. It’s my version of a welfare center. Somebody else spending any time in a welfare center would make a completely different movie.”
Zipporah Films 
Over the years, Wiseman was occasionally asked to make a trim or two, and he always refused. He said, “It may be pretentious of me, but I think when I find a form for the material, that’s the movie. They’re not isolated sequences.”
In 1971, “60 Minutes” wanted to air his film “Basic Training” – if he’d cut out 30 minutes to fit the time slot. “And I said no, because it wouldn’t be the same movie,” he said. “So, it wasn’t shown.”
What does he think his reputation is with these people? “I hope they’d say, ‘He’s a very nice guy, but he protects his movies,'” Wiseman said.
Wiseman’s movies were never what you’d call theatrical blockbusters. They might play in 60 ot 70 theaters. But they did play on television. “PBS has shown everything,” he said. “PBS has helped me in every single film I made.”
But did they ever say, “Come on, Fred, six hours is too long for this one”? “Well, they said it once or twice, but I said, ‘No.’ And I won!” Wiseman said.
Over the decades, his movies seemed to become more optimistic. For example, his 2020 movie “City Hall” showed how hard the staff of Boston’s mayor worked to improve city life. But Wiseman wouldn’t admit to any kind of shift – no trendline from darker to brighter. “It’s totally random,” he said. “When I’m looking for subjects, you know, it’s a question of what interests me at the moment.”
His last movie, “Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros,” about a fine-dining restaurant in the French countryside, came out in 2023. You can watch all of his movies, for free, on Kanopy.com; you just need a library card.
Meanwhile, they still teach Wiseman in film schools; they still put on Wiseman festivals; and when we visited his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his shelves were lined with awards.
“I mean, I obviously like the fact that the films were recognized, and that I get awards, or critics write intelligent reviews,” he said. “But the satisfaction is not that; the satisfaction is the work. I love working. And I love making movies. And I never get tired of sitting in front of the editing machine.”
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Story produced by Robert Marston. Editor: Emanuele Secci.
When Sting comes back to his hometown these days, it’s not to the same place he left more than five decades ago. The city of Newcastle, tucked up in the northeast corner of England, now presents a tranquil vista where modern architecture spans calm waters. But for centuries, Newcastle was a hard-scrabble, noisy, industrial powerhouse. It built ships.
And Sting, a boy from a working-class family, was given some fatherly advice he didn’t want to hear: “He’d say, ‘Son, go to sea. See the world, make something of yourself.’ Of course, I disappointed him!”
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All Sting did was become one of the most successful songwriters and pop performers of his generation, starting with his 1970s band The Police, and through many variations since. His most popular songs – “Every Breath You Take,” “Roxanne,” “Message In A Bottle,” “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” “Fields of Gold,” “Shape of My Heart” – have streamed in the billions.
Asked if he keeps score of awards won and albums sold, Sting replied, “The answer is, enough. I have had more than enough success and affirmation. I don’t actually need any more. It’s lovely, but it’s not something I particularly think about. I don’t think of myself as a celebrity. I don’t like to. I like to think of myself as a working musician with a story to tell” – a story about his hometown.
“I just wanted a bigger life than the one I was being offered,” he said, “and it was only later that I realized that where I’d been brought up was actually a gift.”
How so? “Because of these very profound symbols to wake up to every morning: A gigantic ship hanging over the street; an army of men walking to work; the ship being built, launched into the river, out to sea. Those are very powerful images for an artist. I wanted to honor where I came from, because what they gave me was a sense of identity, a work ethic. So, I wanted to repay that.”
Sting’s musical (which he’s been working on for more than a decade) is called “The Last Ship,” and it recounts the demise of Newcastle’s shipyards. Now he’s taking it on tour, with the advantage of added star power – namely, Sting, and his good friend, Mr. “Bombastic” himself, Shaggy.
“The Last Ship” 
The reggae star told us he’s never done anything quite as bombastic as “The Last Ship”: “Not quite on this scale,” he said. “I’m still sitting here and I’m saying, what have I gotten myself into?“
Why Shaggy? Working together has paid off before, when he and Sting won a Grammy for best reggae album in 2019, for “44/876.”
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“I immediately knew Shaggy was the perfect man for the job,” said Sting. “He has a great sense of mischief, a great sense of joy, but he’s also a natural actor.”
“He knows me better than me!” Shaggy said. “I was like, ‘I can’t really,’ and he was like, ‘No, you can do that.’ And then I’m doing it and I was like, I hate admitting that he was right!“
The show has already played to sold-out halls in Europe and Australia, and is set for a run at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. An earlier incarnation of “The Last Ship” played on Broadway in 2014. The show has had its book revised.
Asked why the project has meant to much to him, that he has stubbornly pursued it for more than a decade, Sting replied, “I’m tenacious. If I believe in something, I will stick at it. And I do not conflate commercial success with excellence or quality at all. I think this play, even though it’s set in the 1980s, has something to say to people now. All of us are in danger of losing our work to AI. All of us. “
Asked if he wants to be taken “seriously” as a theatre composer, as distinct from his pop career, he said, “I’m very grateful for the pop career, and it was a certain time in my life when I was of a certain age and looked a certain way and made a certain kind of music. But it can’t be my entire life. I don’t want to be just defined from how I was at the age of 25. I’m 74 now.”
Sting, born Gordon Sumner, was given his stage name because of the striped yellow-and-black top he used to wear that someone said made him look like a wasp. And there’s been plenty of buzz about his career ever since, including about the real meaning of his biggest hit, “Every Breath You Take.”
“Some people interpret that song as being a very romantic love song, or it’s about a stalker – this obsessive watching, I’ll be watching you,” said Sting. “I don’t contradict people in their individual interpretation of the song. I think it enriches the song. I think gives it its power. It’s about both things.
“Some people get married to that, so God bless them!”
Sting’s life has been about many things. Now it’s about coming home – spiritually at least – as when he came with our cameras to a Newcastle pub. “They have come to bring me home, to shoot some local color, which would be you,” he told the crowd. “So, please be as colorful as you are!”
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If ever there was a “local boy makes good” story, this is it. And everybody here seems to know the words to “Message In a Bottle.”
We asked Sting if he ever thinks of taking a vacation. “Explain that concept to me,” was his response.
But why is he still doing this? “Because I like to work,” he replied. “Could I retire? I’m not sure I could do it. I haven’t developed that skill to just sit and do nothing. Perhaps I’m afraid of it. I haven’t prepared myself for it. But while I’m still fit enough to do my work, I will continue. At some point, I hope I have the objectivity to say, OK, you’ve done enough. Go and sit on the farm.“
Could he do that? “I’m not sure!” he laughed.
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Watch an extended interview with Sting (Video)
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Story produced by Mikaela Bufano. Editor: Carol Ross.
See also:
“Sunday Morning” remembers some of the notable figures who left us this week, including songwriter David Allan Coe, famous for his country hit “Take This Job and Shove It.”
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The royal family was saved from a devastating disaster as an alleged plot for murder was foiled before it could have been executed.
According to AP, a 33-year-old man was detained on Friday and was found in possession of suspicious items which had a connection to a plot to harm Princess Catharina-Amalia and Princess Alexia of the Netherlands.
The investigation indicated that the man had allegedly been targeting the 22-year-old Amalia and 20-year-old Alexia for a February date in Hague.
The suspect is expected to appear in court on Monday, according to the court scheduling order published on the website of The Hague Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Moreover, it stated that the suspect was in possession of two axes” with the words ‘Alexia’, ‘Mossad’, and ‘Sieg Heil’ carved into them, and he allegedly had a handwritten sheet with the words ‘Amalia’, ‘Alexia’, and ‘Bloodbath’”.
The news comes just days after Amalia, Alexia and Princess Ariane had come together with their parents King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima to partake in the official celebrations in Dokkum, for King’s day celebrations.
Although, it seems that even though the news had understood to cause some distress for the royals, they appeared in good spirits despite it.
This is not the first attempt to hurt the Dutch heir to the throne, Princess Amalia as threats to her life intensified. She was forced to give up her school life and couldn’t leave the house as an “enormous consequence of her life”.
The Royal House has not yet issued a statement on the latest threat.
Sting embarks on “The Last Ship”
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