As a writer and director, do you use a different approach when working on a documentary compared to the way you approach a regular movie?
I've been making films professionally since 1991, and my first documentary (Solo Flight: The Genius of Charlie Christian) is still in print from VIEW Video ... it raised enough funds to mark the hitherto unmarked grave of the seminal electric guitar player.
But I think in recent years my approach has changed, and that change has happened since/just after finishing the Lugosi doc. From Solo Flight thru Fiddlin' Man and Lugosi: HD, I approached things too much as a historian, possibly. Privileging rare clips/interviews with those who hadn't been/etc., above the concerns of fictional film, which would be things like narrative form, three-act structures, and so forth.
I think doing the mockumentary film, Chair (about Lugosi's Chair, which is a hidden feature/easter egg on the DVD) made me begin thinking more about emphasizing the story being told over the tools used to tell it (like, say, rare clips or the like).
This has impacted more recent work of mine, particularly Banned in Oklahoma (which is out through the Criterion Collection on their Tin Drum DVD), Seawood (a just-finished film about Alzheimer's — a case study), and my movement more and more into fictional film (like Wit's End, a feature comedy). So it has been a transition.
As for Bela, that was probably simultaneously the best and worst topic for me to do — the best because of my love for his work, my lifelong interest in him, and my knowledge of the subject (I had previously written Lugosi: His Life in Films, on Stage, and in the Hearts of Horror Lovers, a 1997 book for McFarland, recently back in print in paperback). But I say it was also the worst choice because I was/am too caught up in minor details, adoring, say, an extremely rare clip when most viewers wouldn't necessarily know whether it was rare or not.
At any rate, my love for Lugosi continues. I have a book (that Dick Sheffield helped on) called Bela Lugosi, Dreams and Nightmares that is brand new... it is literally due out in print on February 20 of this year, in just a few weeks.
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