If Albert Maysles’ name doesn’t immediately register as one of the most significant American moviemakers of the last half-century, this comparative lack of recognition can only be explained by the predictable short shrift afforded documentarians in relation to their fiction director counterparts.

Maysles has been creating (often in collaboration with his late brother, David, and such other filmmakers as Charlotte Zwerin) some of the most memorable non-fiction films ever produced in this country. During the fruitful period of 1969 to 1975, the Maysles brothers were responsible for three films which would prove to be enormously influential as examples of outstanding documentary cinema, as well as socio-historical artifacts of lasting importance: Salesman (1969) and Gimme Shelter (1970), both directed by the Maysles brothers with Zwerin; and Grey Gardens (1975), directed by the brothers with Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer.

As Albert Maysles will often attest, the collaborative nature of his work is a crucial component of their realization, a tradition which continues with the remarkable new film, Lalee’s Kin: A Legacy of Cotton, which Maysles created with Susan Froemke and Deborah Dickson. Although this multi-director process would seemingly allow for a more objective and well-balanced overview of the moviemakers’ choice of subject matter, Maysles—like so many other documentary moviemakers—has faced controversy and accusations of exploitation and manipulation throughout his career, most famously with Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens. Both Maysles brothers studied psychology in college (the subject of Albert’s first film, 1955’s Psychiatry in Russia), before embarking upon careers in cinema verité documentary moviemaking (or “direct cinema,” as it was labeled by its American practitioners), beginning with Youth In Poland (1957).

Yet the Maysles’ approach differs from other verité documentarians, moviemakers like Frederick Wiseman, in that the material which is recorded so passively and objectively with the camera is often shaped into a more dramatic and identifiably pointed whole in the editing room, incorporating some techniques that other verité documentarians might be relucant to embrace (on the commentary track for the Criterion Collection DVD of Gimme Shelter, co-director Zwerin even expresses some ambivalence toward the infamous climactic freeze-frame/zoom on Mick Jagger).

Gimme Shelter remains the Maysles’ best-known work, though its status as the definitive chronicle of the apocalyptic decline of the peace-and-love ’60s was not something its three directors could have predicted. Undoubtedly constructed as another in a series of performer/artist studies that the Maysles shot throughout the ’60s (Gimme Shelter was preceded by films on The Beatles, Marlon Brando and Truman Capote), Shelter was transformed into a historical horror show by the tragic events that erupted at the Rolling Stones 1969 free concert at the Altamont Speedway. Zwerin and the Maysles (who replaced Haskell Wexler as the project’s directors) use a flashback structure—the Stones sit in the editing room and comment on the footage as it unfolds—which, combined with our knowledge of the events, lends Shelter a tone of dread and unease which even permeates the spectacular concert material.

Shelter was recently released on special-edition DVD by Criterion Collection/Home Vision, and they have also just issued two other Maysles masterworks equally worthy of investigation. Salesman , which was created by the Maysles and Zwerin just prior to Shelter, is a sobering survey of door-to-door Bible salesmen, and one of their rank who begins to deflate under the constant rejection. It’s a potent exploration of American masculinity and capitalism that makes the sales techniques in Glengarry Glen Ross seem like they belong in a motivational training film. A wry thread of gallows humor also infects Grey Gardens, the Maysles’ intimate portrait of the elderly Edith Beale and her flamboyant daughter Edie—relations to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis—living a hermetic existence cloistered in a dilapidated, feline-filled East Hampton estate. The claustrophobia and tedium potentially inherent in the material is largely overcome by the moviemakers’ sensitive affection for their colorful subjects, and by the endlessly entertaining “performances” given by the mother-daughter team.

After spending much of the past two decades creating documentaries on artists and classical musicians such as Christo, Vladimir Horowitz and Jessye Norman, Albert Maysles has returned to the arena of sociological study with his strongest work in years, Lalee’s Kin, co-directed with Froemke and Dickson. The moviemakers explore the cycle of American poverty by balancing the story of an African-American great-grandmother struggling to provide for several generations of offspring, with the ongoing efforts of a Mississippi Delta school district to overcome illiteracy. Lalee’s Kin excels through confronting the grim realities of rural poverty without ever romanticizing its characters or offering easy answers to difficult questions. MM recently spoke with Albert Maysles about Lalee’s Kin, and about the remarkable documentary career that has preceded this new work.

Travis Crawford (MM): How does the choice of subject matter for your documentaries typically arise? I’m thinking not so much of your performer and artist studies, but rather films like Salesman and Grey Gardens.

Albert Maysles (AM): Each one is different, really. Salesman was at a point where my brother and I were inspired to break through to almost another genre of film. We had just made a film about Truman Capote (With Love From Truman), and we were thinking about expanding the genre into something that you would see at the cinema—not just a feature-length documentary, which there were plenty of at the time, but a documentary that could really be called a ‘feature,’ just as Truman called In Cold Blood a “non-fiction novel.”

My brother was having lunch with Bill Fox, Truman Capote’s editor, and he asked him what would be a good subject for a non-fiction feature, and Fox said, “What about door-to-door salesmen?” My brother and I talked about it—we had both done door-to-door sales—and we knew there were all kinds of possibilities if you find the right people. We didn’t know yet whether we should do it, until we found out that there were 4,000 guys out there selling the Bible! That they would be selling this as a product rather than a spiritual testament made it all the more interesting, so we just had to find the right guys.

MM: Did you ever feel any sense of conflict between your cinema veritéroots and this new goal of creating more dramatically appealing features?

AM:The drama was never contrived or faked—the American Salesman was going into a decline, and that was the drama. I’m one of the minority of documentary filmmakers who thinks that you can tell the truth. Most of them will always claim that it’s contrived to their point of view, and certainly you’re manipulating in the editing—but I don’t believe that stuff at all. That’s one reason why I think films like Salesman will last forever.

MM: Most directors would be reluctant to share the responsibility—not to mention the credit—with other moviemakers, but you have co-directed many of your films with two or three other individuals. How does this collaborative process work?

AM:I’ve always had a problem with the word “director.” I think the term “filmmaker” is more appropriate, but that doesn’t even describe it that well either. To my mind, the best thing is to list the filmmakers whose responsibilities as editors, camera people and producers are such that the very character of the film depends on their special contributions.

MM: And were most of these creative roles very clearly delineated on your documentary projects?

AM:Well, my brother certainly wasn’t “just” a sound person, and I wasn’t just a camera person, either. We shared overlapping responsibilities in financing and developing the film. And the quality of the work of our editors—like Charlotte Zwerin—was so extraordinary that you have to give them a filmmaker’s credit.

MM: Certainly when you embarked upon shooting Gimme Shelter, you couldn’t have been aware of the enormous cultural impact the film would have, but did you start to become conscious of this during the editing process?

AM:We were pretty much convinced of that. When you pay so much attention to detail, I think it’s very likely to have a lasting quality. A film like Woodstock, for example, was so pre-conceived that eventually people will come to see its lack of authenticity: the whole film was programmed to show how wonderful the “flower generation” was and, in the meantime, there were two or three deaths, and thousands were taking bad drugs—the effects of which are still apparent. This would not be surprising if you see Gimme Shelter, but it would be a big surprise watching Woodstock.

MM: With some of your work—particularly films like Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens—you’ve undergone criticism, and charges of exploitation. Where do you think this originates?

AM:There are so many popular films which are exploitative, so some people—in good conscience—feel an immediate aversion to that sort of thing, but they’re not that discrete about knowing the difference between something that gets under someone’s skin in a respectful fashion and explores truth and exposes some vulnerabilities, and on the other hand, something which is exploitative.

In an exploitation film, it’s about getting hurt. In our culture, we use the word “vulnerable” to describe the exposure of true feelings in delicate areas so that the person might get hurt. When you think that way, it plays into the notion that if you disclose personal elements, a person will be hurt. But it’s quite the contrary: chances are, by opening your mind and heart to someone you trust, you gain something that’s very healthy. Truthfully, people would much rather disclose—it’s okay and you won’t necessarily get hurt—but there’s this Victorian predisposition in our society that one must keep secrets.

Another thing I should mention—this is a guess on my part, but I think it’s a good guess—filmmakers who are afraid that they might exploit somebody will probably do it. It’s something Freud came up with: you fear the thing that you want to do.

MM: Have you ever received any feedback from the subjects of your documentaries after they had seen the films?

AM:I haven’t really talked to the Stones, but someday, I’d like to chat about it and see how they felt about it. But certainly in the cases of Salesman and Grey Gardens—my brother and I were probably the closest friends that Paul [Brennan, the central figure of Salesman ] ever had. Our relationship continued until the time he was dying in a hospital that happened to be located across the street from where I was brought up. And when we finished Grey Gardens, we brought it to them at the house and projected it. Afterward, there was a pause, and then the daughter Edie turned to us and said loudly, “The Maysles have created a classic!” Her mother died about a year after the film; on her deathbed, her daughter asked her what more she would like to say, and her mother told her, “There’s nothing more to say—it’s all in the film.” That’s as good a compliment as you can get.

MM: How did your new film, Lalee’s Kin, develop?

AM:HBO came up with the idea that we should do a film on poverty, and they agreed that we might focus on the welfare reform bill that was coming up. It developed into something much more than that; the very poor family that we chose—the main character, and most of the family—were illiterate, so issues of education became a point. But I see that film as an extraordinarily sensitive insight into what it is to be poor.

MM: There were scenes in the film where it was difficult to believe a camera was present, and I was wondering how you manage to do that. How do you work your way into your subjects’ lives so that they forget the camera?

AM:It’s never been a problem for me, somehow. Part of it is that I feel confident that I should be there—that I’m doing something for them simply by honestly sticking to the notion that I can get who these people really are.

MM: What projects are you now developing?

AM:There’s a project I’ve been working on now for almost a year—half-hour portraits of filmmakers. I’ve finished one on Scorsese, which brought me to Rome; I’m in the middle of one on Robert Duvall, which took me to Argentina; I’m also doing one on Jane Campion, which brought me to Australia; and also one on Wes Anderson. There’s also another project on a historical subject, about a trial where someone was wrongly charged with a crime which they had nothing to do with. A Jewish guy who was brought to trial in the Ukraine in 1913 on charges that he killed a Christian child to take his blood to mix it with matzas to celebrate Passover; it’s an ancient accusation without any basis in fact whatsoever. And the third project is about trains, but it’s really about strangers that I meet on trains in various parts of the world—finding out the purpose of their trip and their stories. Once again, I think that particular format could maybe be as new as Salesman was; it’s like a collection of short stories, with the train as a connecting metaphor for life itself.

MM: Well, you’re about to turn 75, but I gather the word “retirement” isn’t going to be entering your vocabulary anytime soon.

AM:(laughs) Not if I can help it!! MM