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Haskell Wexler: The Last Indie Rebel
As the director’s cut of Latino is released, the Oscar-winning moviemaker/social philosopher looks back on his long career
Haskell Wexler
So much has been written about Haskell Wexler over the years that I’m going to keep this intro brief. Suffice it to say that Wexler is simply one of our greatest living cinematographers. He’s in a class by himself as much for his fearless sense of justice as for his groundbreaking technical innovations, but it’s his lifelong commitment to putting his lens where his mouth is that makes Wexler such a unique source of inspiration to so many moviemakers.
From his pre-teen days filming striking union workers in 1934 Chicago to shooting the 2011 documentary Bringing King to China, Wexler has always wielded his camera with the belief that it is every bit as capable of influencing hearts and minds as the written word. Though he has won two Academy Awards (for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1966 and Bound for Glory in 1976), like so many iconic artists, Wexler’s greatest artistic achievement may be himself.
From his groundbreaking, self-financed anti-establishment feature, Medium Cool (1969) to the workers’ rights documentary Who Needs Sleep? (2006), Wexler’s social conscience has been his career-long guide. But he was perhaps never as fearless as when he made his second film as writer-director, 1985’s stunning Latino.
A direct product of his rage at the U.S. government’s attempted overthrow of Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime, Wexler filmed Latino in a war zone, capturing realistic footage at great personal risk in an attempt to increase American awareness of the political upheaval occurring in Nicaragua at the time. The strategy backfired when the film was suppressed by its distributor. But now, Cinema Libre Studio has done its part to correct that injustice by releasing a director’s cut of the film on DVD.
As Wexler approaches his 90th birthday, this lifelong vegetarian is still vital and brimming with energy, working on several new projects and writing a regular blog. In 2011, he even won a seat on the board of the International Cinematographers Guild.
I recently spent an afternoon with Wexler at his office in Santa Monica, where we discussed Latino’s initial reception (at home and abroad), socially-conscious moviemaking and the reason for the film’s re-release.
Tim Rhys (MM): When Latino first came out, it didn’t get the release that you wanted. Do you feel like the American public wasn’t ready for it?
Haskell Wexler (HW): Latino was made when there was a secret war in Nicaragua. We had great difficulty in being able to physically even get to Nicaragua, because the State Department put the word out that renting equipment was impossible. The rental companies wouldn’t rent us equipment because the insurance wouldn’t cover it, so I had to buy lighting equipment. I had to get a Chinese ship, because no U.S. ship would transport the equipment we needed, like uniforms, lights, cables and cameras.
When the film was completed, the first time it was shown was in Washington D.C. and the conventional media, including The Washington Post, weren’t sure how to deal with it. They didn’t present it as a dramatic film, but as a sort of attempt to do a documentary. Therefore, it was not worthy of attention. The Post had a pretty harsh review which, fortunately, they allowed me to reply to. The reviewer was challenging my patriotism, and I felt I had to say that I made Latino as a patriot. I said I didn’t think that conducting a surrogate war—paying mercenaries to destroy educators and co-op farms and an elected government in Nicaragua, and to do that with American equipment and American trained personnel—was what America was all about.
MM: What was the reaction to your reaction at that time? Did you get public support for your point of view?
HW: The way media deals with something like my film is to ignore it. Fortunately, George Lucas came [on as an executive producer] after I’d shot the film… and we got an invite to the Cannes Film Festival, where it was very well received and got an award called “a du regard.” The rest of the world knew a great deal about the Contras and the situation in Central America.
MM: The American public was largely unaware of the situation at the time, right?
HW: By the time the film came out, it was just being revealed. Ronald Reagan, as you’ll see in the director’s cut, was describing the Contras as the moral equivalent of our founding fathers. And [his statements] had a twist that I hadn’t seen in films or in State Department statements up to that time: That it’s okay to kill people, because they deserve to be killed.
I’m oversimplifying, but in narrative movies we have good guys and bad guys. Once we decide who the bad guys are, it’s okay to do anything to them. And the more technically advanced [the manner] we dispose of them is, the better it is. That it’s actually better for them because, in the long run, we’re making them more advanced, more civilized and more “democratic.”
MM: You said that the way the media dealt with a film like this was to ignore it. Do you feel as if the release of Latino suffered a kind of de facto sabotage? Or do you really believe the media just didn’t know how react to the film because it was fiction that almost played as documentary?
HW: The system never has enough space for little pictures. It’s not the kind of movie that will incite masses of people to fill theaters. It was made under extremely difficult situations; we were actually under fire many times. We were shooting in towns where, just four or five days before, what we were reenacting in the scene had actually happened. The wounded were just a week away from actually being in that situation with the Contras.
So even though the blood was put on by our makeup person, I didn’t have to give them direction as to what expressions they should have on their faces. It was very close to reality.
MM: The footage you shot is incredibly realistic.
HW: I had actual information about the way the Contras had tortured people from a man who had been tortured by Somoza’s government. He told me, ‘No, no. You put the electrodes over here, and the best way is metal bedding.’ The CIA had a manual for the Contras on torture techniques and ways to uncover suspects, usually potential leaders, including Catholic priests active with the Sandinistas.
MM: Did you envision all of this before you got there? Or was most of it conceived on the spot, similar to the way that Medium Cool was filmed? You were there for five months, right?
HW: Yes. I had asked Skylight Pictures—Pam Yeats and Tom Sigel— to go in with the Contras. So they made a little film with the Contras. And they’re both fluent in Spanish and they have scenes where the head of the Contras shows them all the big cases of ammunition and material that was given to them by the U.S.. And I was down there with Ginger Varney, who worked for LA Weekly at that time. I was in Honduras with American Green Berets. And that was where I got the idea, because some of the Green Beret guys were Latinos from L.A..
MM: Were some of them sympathetic to the cause of the Sandinistas?
HW: No. None of the Green Beret guys. They were soldiers, they were doing their job and they liked the excitement.
MM: You mentioned some of the difficulties you had getting equipment. What were some of the other challenges of this shoot? I imagine there were heat and insects. Talk about what you dealt with during those five months.
HW: The film was sabotaged by the CIA from word one. All the equipment had to go on this Chinese ship. I had a UCLA student who went down with the equipment and got it unloaded.Turns out he was a plant by the CIA and was screwing things up. Our trucks were sabotaged and parts were stolen. In addition, there was a guy on our crew named Marvin. He was hit as part of a Contra invasion. I have a photo of him right here. It says “Marvin, friend of Haskell, killed during filming of Latino.” He was really good worker on the film. But the Sandinistas had armed everybody—women, children—to try to defend themselves. And you see a scene in the film where the young girl shows the young boy how to handle an AK. I learned to do that, as well, but I was very careful never to carry a weapon because I didn’t think that was right… that’s not why I was there.
MM: How close were you to the actual fighting? What was your physical proximity during the majority of the shooting?
HW: The way the Contras worked is that they would make forays into Nicaragua. And then, as in the film, they would sometimes recruit people or get them to do their work for them. It’s not that the Sandinistas were angels or some great, super-progressive force. They weren’t, but the connection with the Church and with non-Soviet socialism was good. But Somoza had been there. And that whole system of business and keeping workers down and exploiting them didn’t just disappear because some mostly well-meaning people wanted to change things. And they were literally under attack. Making a feature film with that background is difficult. You have to concentrate on your characters and try to deal with the practical obstacles.
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This story was published in the Winter 2012 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
Haskell Wexler: The Last Indie Rebel / As the director's cut of Latino is released, the Oscar-winning moviemaker/social philosopher looks back on his long career
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