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MillimeterFade to Black: Tony Kaye, Director
Jul 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Darroch Greer
Tony Kaye, the man who brough us the inside view of racism in American History X, is an uncompromising filmmaker who does not do things by halves. Lake of Fire, his two-and-a-half-hour documentary on abortion, may sound like a cinematic root canal, but the film is both compelling and troubling, bracing and elegiac.
What's more, it is as full and rich a portrait of America — in all our confusion, violence, hysteria, and intellectual rigor — as one is likely to find surrounding any subject. No matter where your morality or politics lie on this issue, you will find something to cheer and something to deride in this film.
“When I first came to America in 1990, my intention was to make American films,” Kaye says. “I really didn't have anything else in my mind. I just assumed films were American. I had, and still do, aspirations of making films that would stick around for awhile.”
A director who made his name in the world of British advertising, Kaye directed award-winning spots for Guinness, Volvo, and Reebok. But when he arrived in America in the early '90s, he saw the country in the grips of battle. “I noticed in America, when I first came here, a divisive issue that seemed to be somewhat new because of all the riots that were going on at the various clinics,” he says. “Abortion was something that I didn't really know a great deal about, but I wanted to. I felt that it was very important. There was a lot of stuff made on abortion, but it was all from a point of view.
“I tried to sort of just make a piece that really explored everything, just from an unbiased ear and eye, and see what I could find out,” Kaye says. “And it was very difficult. It's difficult to make any film, but it's much easier if you're making a film that's about an incident or about a person. [If] you're making a film about an issue — without a point of view as well — it's an infinity. You just can go on forever. I had no idea I'd continue for nearly 17 years.”
Kaye started shooting black-and-white 35mm film himself at abortion protest rallies, prayer meetings, and inside clinics. What he has documented is nothing short of amazing. He got interviews with doctors who provided abortions, as well as with their murderers. “That is remarkable, if I do say so myself. I don't know how I got that stuff,” he says. “It tracks like a thriller. It tracks like it's been written and that it was planned. The access that I got there, not only to the person who killed people, but the person that was killed — I'm still really taking stock of what happened to me and what it is.” As a historical document, it is unmatched.
For its 17 years in the making, Lake of Fire has a remarkable consistency in look and tone. “Black and white evens things out well. Kodak are the only people that make black-and-white 35mm film stock,” he says. “There are only two types of black and white. There is fine grain, for low light, and there's a faster stock, but it's not that fast. There's not much difference really between the two. When they're edited together, I can't even tell.”
The opening sequence, a recent event in Sioux Falls, S.D., was shot in HD. Besides this and a little 16mm, about 85 percent of Lake of Fire was shot on 35mm. Kaye graded everything in a Grass Valley Spirit telecine for his high-def master. He doesn't have a print yet.
“I'm really focused on trying to bring a curiosity to the language of film that in some way provokes a dialogue,” Kaye says. “That collective dialogue is what moves things along. … I don't really think I've completed it yet, by any stretch of the imagination, but that's what I attempted to do.”
