Elizabeth Oldfield speaks to documentary filmmaker Rowan Deacon 26/10/2022
Elizabeth
Hello, and welcome to The Sacred. My name is Elizabeth Oldfield, and this is a podcast about our divided times, and how we navigate the very deep differences between us. Every episode I speak to someone who has a public voice or platform or profile about their own values, the journey that they’ve been on, and what they have learned along the way. In this episode, you’ll hear a conversation I had with Rowan Deacon, who is a very illustrious documentary filmmaker. She’s best known for the multi award–winning ‘Simon’s Choice’. And most recently, ‘Jimmy Savile: A Very British Horror Story’, which was in the top 10 globally on Netflix. We spoke about what drew her to documentaries, the power of storytelling about real life, and the ethical quandaries that that throws up and how you care for, and make sure you treat well the real people whose stories you’re telling. There are some reflections from me at the end, as usual, I hope you enjoy listening.
Rowan Deacon on this beautiful morning in Camberwell, I’m going to ask you something that no one really should have to answer this early in the morning, which is a big, hefty question that’s trying to get to some of your deepest values. To skip the small talk and the chit chat, I’m going to ask you what is sacred to you. And by that, I mean, deep values and principles that you’re trying to live by, things that if someone offered you money to give up, you’d feel a bit offended. But honestly, I don’t think anyone really knows. And you can take it in any direction you’d like. Just tell me what bubbled up for you as you’ve been reflecting?
Rowan Deacon
Yeah, it’s not a question that I’ve been asked before and I definitely found it difficult to think of one thing, one value or principle that I could define myself by. I sort of started with friendship, as something that’s sacred to me, but I don’t mean just friendship in the sense of long friendships, you know, or family friendships, which are obviously important but also the friendships that you build in through work, through the creative process. And those random friendships, those connections… and then I got to connection, and I realised that it was probably connection that was sacred to me. And the idea of bonding with people over things that you don’t expect, or ideas or jokes, or missions or purposes. And it’s even little things like the way that you might talk to somebody, you know, on the bus. I think those things are really sacred to me. So, then I got is other people. Are other people sacred to me? I think, you know, it’s probably connection, some form of connection to other people is something that is incredibly important, and meaningful and without which I would, and I don’t mean just being friends, I mean, connecting, do you know what I mean? Not small talk. And that’s the thing that I think that is so important to me that if it was taken away, it, life would have no meaning.
Elizabeth
I want you to just paint me a little word picture of young Rowan, what was her world? And particularly, were there any big ideas in there, political, philosophical, religious… things that shaped you?
Rowan Deacon
Yeah, so my parents were both sort of quite radical socialists. They had been part of the political student movement in ‘68. And so, when me and my brother were born in the 70s, they were very politically motivated. They had moved from London to Devon to bring socialism to the provinces, which is an audacious task. And so, me and my brother were born in just outside Plymouth and grew up in a small kind of naval, fairly conservative, very provincial town village, actually, with these kinds of parents who weren’t like anybody else’s parents in that village at that time. So, they were socialists, they believed in egalitarianism, they believed in the revolution. They were part of the anti–Nazi League. They were, they were CND campaigners. I was taken to Greenham Common when I was six, and it was only women who were allowed, my mom was a feminist. So, these were ideas that today are quite commonplace, and certainly in South London, you know, and I think if I’d grown up in South London, or Hackney, or you know, in a Northern Town, then I probably would have found a clan, but we were complete weirdos. And so, I think I was aware of that, but I didn’t ever recall it as a negative thing. I don’t ever recall it, because they weren’t ostracised. I think they were fairly kind of friendly people. And they weren’t radical in the sense that they were kind of crazy. I mean, they were academics. So, they were very thoughtful about their political beliefs. And it was always made clear to me that the belief system of people that I was surrounded by who were mostly, you know, Tory, at that time, mostly C of E, I went to a Christian school, you know, this was the 80s there were a lot of people who were making a lot of money through business. So, all of those ideas and principles were different to the ones that my mom and dad believed in. And so, I suppose I was aware of that. I haven’t quite worked out what effect that had, but I definitely remember feeling different. I definitely remember there was a boy at school said to me, because my mom had short hair and didn’t have a perm which in Plymouth in 1982 was, I mean, crazy. And she wore long, dangly earrings, you can imagine, you know, and he said ‘Is your mom… –he whispered it as if it was sort of something terrible. He said, ‘Is your mom a women’s libber?’ And I didn’t quite know what to say. And I remember it being a real moment of I have to kind of balance my trying to be accepted in a school where the idea of women’s libbers was like, ‘these are crazy people’, and my mum and dad’s principles, which are quite important. And I kind of I was starting to understand they were important ideas. And I can’t remember whether I said yes or no, I think to my shame, I might have said no, but I might have known that that was a transgression that I should have said yes. But I think I said no in order to fit in. So that’s kind of like the world.
Elizabeth
Yeah. And were they successful in bringing socialism to the provinces?
Rowan Deacon
I think history can answer that question.
Elizabeth
Plymouth is such a hotbed of revolutionary fervour.
Rowan
Do you know what? The Green Party might do better there now than it did then. You know, I mean, no, they didn’t, and their politics have mellowed, I would say. I think if you ask them, they will probably say that. And that their political ideas still influence people and have a through line. I mean, I think they still believe in the revolution and that is coming. So, it just takes a while, right?
Elizabeth
Love it. And did you feel, share that political fervour? Did that become something that was part of your own set of values?
Rowan Deacon
No, I don’t think I did, actually. And I don’t know how much of that was, I mean, politically, I’ve always identified with Left wing politics, I’ve only ever voted Labour, I think. And a lot of that might just be because I have been introduced to a lot of those ideals of the welfare state and of principles around equality and diversity and the dangers of a capitalist society. So, I think that they influenced me in a good way. But I knew that I wasn’t interested in going down that political road or that academic road. So, they influenced me in terms of my political leanings.
Elizabeth
You didn’t want to man the barricades?
Rowan Deacon
No, I didn’t. And I think probably it’s partly a sort of teenage rebellion. You know, as I got older, I would challenge them, I would challenge them or, you know, I married someone who is a businessperson. And I challenged them on the idea that people who are interested in entrepreneurialism or interested in making money aren’t necessarily bad people. I think that I found that sort of fundamentalism or that extremism, I bumped against that a bit. And we still have arguments today. So, my rebellion was actually to sort of question the fundamental kind of extreme tenets of socialism, which there had to be a revolution to get everybody equal, that I wasn’t sure that that was going to work for everybody. I challenged them that it was a kind of middle–class privilege to even dream of that, which I’m sure is just the sort of teenage rebellion thing. But I think I often saw both sides, if that makes sense.
Elizabeth
Which seems not insignificant in what you later chose to do. But I’d love to know, when did that vocation begin to develop? Maybe what’s the first film that you remember seeing and feeling excited by?
Rowan Deacon
So, I think, actually, interestingly, I was thinking about this because I was thinking because your question about your what values or what kind of family or ideas that you’re brought up in? How might they influence the way that you then take your life? That’s sort of interesting, because I’ve only ever thought about that on an emotional level. I’ve never really thought about it on a kind of political or philosophical or values–based framework. And it’s interesting that I sort of chose television. So, my mum and dad weren’t anti TV, but we weren’t a big TV watching family. It wasn’t like in some households where the TV is part of the culture, of your world. There were occasional things that we watched, but television was almost academics, they were probably quite bookish. They were probably a bit snobby about it. Not outwardly, but maybe because they had bigger things to worry about. In terms of their thinking, television was probably seen as just entertainment. And maybe it was because of that, that I found it intriguing. Do you know when something is sort of not there, it’s more interesting. Anyway, I do remember the first thing that I watched that made me go ‘This is fascinating. I love it!’ I think I was probably about 10 and there was a documentary that Michael Palin did, which is probably considered kind of, you know, old, sort of hat now and almost colonial in its in its premise. But he did this series called ‘80 days around the world’ where he travelled, I don’t know if you remember, and it was wonderful. He travelled around I think he did what Phileas Fogg is supposed to have done and travelled without aeroplanes around the world in 80 days, I think that was the challenge. Anyway, the point was that he was on an adventure, and he met and connected with all of these kinds of fascinating people. I mean, today, it would just be a travelogue, but it felt quite radical to me, in Plymouth in 1987. I don’t know when it came out, late 80s…? And I remember watching it and thinking, ‘First of all, this is amazing. This adventure that this man is doing is amazing!’ And then it took me like, the whole series to realise hang on, he’s not doing it on his own. There’s a whole group of people, because I think occasionally, he’d reference the crew, and be like, ‘Oh, my God, there’s people whose job it is to film this man having an adventure’. And I think it just set off my imagination that there was even a job that you could do that would allow you to go on such physical adventures, but such kind of emotional adventures as well, I think.
Elizabeth
And you were immediately drawn to, when you realised that someone behind the camera, you were drawn to that rather than being in front of the camera?
Rowan Deacon
Yeah, I think so. I think I am definitely not a performer or I’m a show off through my ideas rather than myself. I’m not very good at that role at all. In fact, I’m terrible in front of the camera. So yeah, I think it was obvious… I would always be writing; I would never be in the plays. I would always be writing the plays at school. I’d be the bossy director, even when I was eight. So, I think that’s where I naturally gravitated towards.
Elizabeth
Yeah. And you didn’t take a traditional way in, right? You didn’t go to film school? Tell me a bit about that.
Rowan Deacon
No, I didn’t go to film school, I don’t think I was even aware that such a thing existed because I didn’t know anybody who worked in television. And I didn’t know anybody who worked in, I don’t think in any creative job, because like I say, my mom and dad were academics. And I don’t think any of my friends, but I just didn’t, I think I didn’t even know that that was an option at that stage. So, I, I went to university and did English. And it wasn’t until I was at university, actually, that I kind of joined the dots of the fact that I had seen this television programme and that there was a possible route to doing that as a career, if that makes sense.
Elizabeth
And then left university, how did you find yourself making documentaries?
Rowan Deacon
I did English and was absolutely sort of what’s the word…fell in love with books and plays and stories. had them before I went to university. So, I was enamoured with storytelling, and particularly dramatic storytelling. I was obsessed with plays. I just remember being transfixed by reading plays and imagining the voices saying the play. So, I knew that this was some sort of storytelling. And then when I was at university I didn’t really know about documentaries. I’d seen things, but I didn’t really know that such a genre existed, and I saw some films by a filmmaker called Brian Hill when I was at university. And he is an extraordinary documentary maker who makes films where he works with a poet Simon Armitage, and he wrote songs for people who were in this case, they were sort of alcoholics, and they were dealing with their alcoholism in different ways. And he wrote these extraordinary… Simon Armitage, along with Brian Hill, asked them to talk about their issues through the mode of poem and song, which sounds like something that just wouldn’t work. But it was extraordinarily moving and creatively radical. And I saw two of his documentaries when I was at university and I think it was then that I was like, ‘Okay, that’s what I need to do. I need to find a way of working in that world.’ And I think I then just wrote to every single production company in London, I got hold of a handbook and I just wrote, so begging, I mean, it was really quite simple of writing begging letters I wrote to Brian Hill a lot.
Elizabeth
You wore him down.
Rowan Deacon
I wrote to everybody and got given a job. And then in television, it’s a very kind of strange industry, strange sort of cottage industry, almost, with lots of tiny companies. And there’s lots of negative things about that, because there’s no structure and there’s a lot of there’s not much diversity, and there were a lot of issues with the industry. But one of the things that’s quite exciting and positive is that you can sort of find your way. Well, if you can find your way, which I accept is the challenge, then you can move around quite quickly. There’s no, you know, you don’t have to train to be at the bar or do seven years of architecture school. You know, it can be meritocratic, but I say that within the boundaries of all of its issues with diversity.
Elizabeth
So, I wanted to ask you what feels like a very stupid question because I feel very naïve about documentaries in general, is it honestly almost a brand–new genre for me. I must have watched some, but I realised as I was preparing for this that I have not been drawn to documentaries at all. For reasons I cannot fully understand. I have now watched some of yours. And it has been quite transformative, actually. But what is a documentary? What is it? How would you describe the genre? What is it trying to do?
Rowan Deacon
Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t think that documentaries are that far away from drama, and books and novels and plays in their purpose. I mean, I think the purpose of telling stories about our world is for us to understand each other, ourselves. Storytelling is just kind of a human instinct and there are just different formats through which we tell stories. So, some people write novels, some people write plays, some people write screenplays, and make feature films in a sort of traditional sense. And documentaries are just another way of telling stories. I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that. It’s just that you’re working with a story that has really happened or is really happening. That’s the only difference, but I think that a dramatist would probably argue that the roots of their ideas for dramatic storytelling come from experiences, their own or other people’s or sometimes from real stories. So, I think that most stories even when they’re fictional, have some basis in the real world: human experience, I’d say. So, I think documentary is just another way of telling stories about the lives we live, the people we are, the world we live in, and the challenges of being human. I don’t think it’s anymore; I don’t think it’s that different from drama, really. The techniques are different, but I think there’s a kind of old–fashioned idea about documentary which is that documentaries are there to change things, that they’re political, and that they’re there to kind of raise awareness. And I think that there are films that do that, but I also think that there are dramas that do that. So, you know, there are great dramas that are very polemic, that are very political, that are very kind of campaign films. And there are great documentaries which aren’t campaign films that aren’t polemics. So, I think that a misunderstanding of the form. I think that there was a phase probably in the sort of 70s and 80s, or maybe when documentaries weren’t as popular as they are now where they were seen as kind of pieces of journalism put to film.
Elizabeth
I think that’s the baggage I was coming with, that they sat closer to news than they did to stories, and I am generally a story oriented person and do news because good citizens should rather than out of joy, but I do stories out of joy, you know, so I felt like documentaries were for people who really like picking up lots of facts to make them sound clever in the world. I wasn’t interested in that. I wanted to hear some stories and actually your films have really changed my mind about that.
Rowan Deacon
Yeah, I think there are documentaries, like if you think about things like Dispatchers or Panorama, or you know, there are documentaries which are extended news pieces, or that are investigative, that those do exist, but I think they’re just a subsection of a bigger genre, which has a lot more diversity than just those news ones. I mean, I’ve never made a news or an investigative documentary and that would just be one section of this much more kind of diverse genre.
Elizabeth
Makes me like some sort of documentary nerd.
Rowan Deacon
You are. That’s the joy. I love a nerd. I love people who are passionate about the area and then I get to learn all about it.
Elizabeth
Tell me what is your philosophy of documentary? What are the ingredients that for you make an amazing documentary?
Rowan Deacon
So, for me, I have to be moved. I think, for me, what I think the greatest documentaries do is that they emotionally move you. When I started in television, I started off in factual documentaries. So, actually, exactly you’re talking about that difference. I started making historical documentaries, they’re called history docs, and they would be about, I don’t know… I made a film about the history of Andalusia, or I made a film about the Iron Age, and they were fascinating, but I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to do. And it took me a while to go, ‘Why is it?’ It was all very in the head. They were like writing essays but doing it with film. I mean, there was creativity in that. And it took me a few years to go, ‘What is the difference? Why am I watching these other films that would be about people and humans, and not going like, I want to work in not these kinds of much more scripted, factual history programmes?’ And I realised it was because for me, it was a difference between a book which is a factual book, and a novel. And I think I wanted to make documentaries, which are more like novels, which explore complex human emotions and experiences. And so, their characters, I suppose, for me… the documentaries I like making, or the ones that I’m drawn to are very character–based. They’re about people, they’re quite psychological. They’re about what kind of emotional, psychological… what’s at work in people’s decision making and their behaviour and their actions. And I think that the combination of character, story and emotion is what draws me to making the sort of films I make.
Elizabeth
So, break it down for me. What is the process from start to end? Do you find a person first? Do you find an idea and think I need to find a person to illustrate this idea? What’s usually the germ of a Rowan Deacon film?
Rowan Deacon
It depends, it differs. Sometimes all of those things. And I don’t have a strategy. Actually, mostly, I’d say sort of 9 out of 10 times, a production company has an idea, or a story, or a contributor, a person who has something happening in their lives and they come to me. And so, there’s already a germ that doesn’t come from me. I have done that once and I actually found, you know, I’m embarrassed to say, I found it harder when the when the germ of the idea came from me. I find it easier to have it planted in my brain and then go ‘Okay, how are we going to make this into a film?’ Because an idea isn’t a film. And an idea isn’t a story. And they’re often not films, they’re just like there’s this idea… So, it depends. For example, with ‘Simon’s Choice’, there was an idea from the channel actually, that they wanted to explore the sort of issue I suppose… there’s sometimes an issue that’s currently in our times that we want to kind of find a way of exploring, and that was around the debate around assisted dying, but that wasn’t a film. We had to go out and find people who would be our story. Does that make sense? And sometimes there’s already a person and that was the difference between retrospective documentaries, which are stories that have already happened, that you’re retelling, or observational documentaries, which are stories in which we don’t know what’s going to happen, but we know this person is going on a journey that is going to be interesting, it’s going to make a story, if that makes sense. So, with ‘Savile’, it was sort of the other end of the scale. That’s a story that had happened: there was as a man who had been central to a terrible story. And again, as the broadcaster said, we are interested in doing this story, in telling the story. And so, then you’ve got to find your characters. I mean, essentially you have to cast the film. So, you’re doing a combination of casting, finding your storytellers and also, I think, for me, and I’m often doing this before I even sort of take on a film to make, I’m working out its meaning like, why am I telling this story? Why are we telling the story? What’s its meaning? Because a film might be about something on the surface, like it might be about…I made a film about soldiers in Afghanistan. I suppose on the surface that was about soldiers on the front line. I think, actually, it was about masculinity. I think it was about comradeship. So, you’re sort of trying to explore what the film is about; something on the surface, but it’s always about something at its heart. Do you know what I mean? And so, I think, for me, the structural necessity is, ‘Oh, we need some storytellers who want to do this, who will engage the audience’, and we need a story, and we need to find a way of telling the story in a way that’s going to engage an audience and compel them to watch because that’s one of the things I think is really important about documentaries that I think is interesting that your idea about them has come from this sense that they’re a bit homework–y, that they’re like what we should do if we’re kind of, you know, feeling like we should do something rather than watching, you know, ‘Selling Sunset’, or we should do some homework and watch a documentary.
Elizabeth
It’s like kale versus cupcakes.
Rowan Deacon
Exactly. I just think that documentaries should be more like, no, not like cupcakes.
Elizabeth
Kale flavoured cupcakes?
Rowan Deacon
It should be delicious and good for you.
Elizabeth
I do actually quite like kale.
Rowan Deacon
But anyway, you asked me about what the process was. That’s kind of, I guess, a bit of that process.
Elizabeth
And you mentioned casting. And in the process of preparing for this, I realised that’s another thing that has put me off documentaries, in that I have an extraordinarily overdeveloped pastoral sense in that, often, if I’m watching someone who I know is a real person, in a film or piece of television that I have accidentally stumbled across, I spend most of the time worrying about them. Are they okay? Are they being taken advantage of? What are the repercussions for the fact that they’ve just said that on film? Sometimes even go check social media to see like, what level of trolling they’ve got. And then I think ‘I can’t be responsible for that person’s well–being; I need to let them go.’ So, I have quite a strong…and I think part of it is that I worked in television briefly. And, you know, I’m a words person that anyone who has listened to this podcast will know about it…but the producers that I worked with were decent people, but they all had stories of basically, mistreating contributors, trying to get them to say the thing you need them to say for the sake of your film, even if that’s not what they wanted to say, or they necessarily thought when they showed up. You’ve basically got your script, you need someone to say ‘yay’, to this thing, or ‘boo’ to this thing, or he was evil, or she was great, or whatever it was, and just rerunning the interview, and asking it nine different ways until you get them to say the thing that you want them to say. And I don’t know whether it was a particularly bad television, or they had happened to have bad work experience. But my over overriding impression was of a slightly ruthless culture around contributors. Now, I know that that is not your approach. How do you go about making sure that people whose stories you’re telling are doing that ethically, I guess, in line with your values?
Rowan Deacon
Yeah, I think that’s really so interesting to hear. I mean, that’s basically just bad documentary making. I think that probably does exist in faster turnover, whereby I mean, there’s like pressure on time and money and budgets. I always think that when you watch films that have been, and I wouldn’t even describe them as films…I suppose that would be for programmes. I think we sometimes call constructed reality now, where you ask people to go and experience a thing that they wouldn’t ordinarily experience. So, you’re producing a situation for them normally to kind of create conflict. There was a kind of fashion for those sorts of films on television for the last 20 years, I suppose, or the kind of Love Island or contestant–y type of contributor. I don’t doubt that there is a structure whereby people have a script where they have cast someone in their head, and they just need the person to then match the script. I just don’t think those films are very interesting, or they are the ‘cupcake’ television. And I don’t think that they’re interesting. They’re entertaining, but they’re fairly 2D. And I think that they don’t get to the nuance and complexity of human beings. But I mean, I don’t even think they’re trying to. In terms of contribute to care, if there’s anything that keeps me awake in the process of making a film, it’s my responsibility, and the trust that I have built up with people that I’m making it with. I think it’s really useful in documentary that there is no contract with those people, there is no payment with those people, that you are asking people to take part in a film, and you have to, at the very beginning, understand completely why they’re doing that. You have to understand that they’re not doing that to please you, they’re not doing it because they want to be famous, you need to understand that there’s a reason. Because if they’re motivated to do that for a reason, that’s their own reason, not my reason, because my reason is I want to make a great film, right? I want to make a great film, and I’m thinking this person is going to be great. I don’t want them to be doing it for that reason. And I think that the best relationships with contributors work when they also have a reason that’s their own. Does that make sense? So, I think that you can sniff out very quickly, and certainly you know, when I was less experienced, I made films with people that I think in retrospect, I realised that they weren’t sure why they were doing it. And that often that led to people being kind of unhappy in the process and dropping out of the filmmaking process. And so, I think I’ve learned that you sniff out very early on any sense of exploitation, that if I’m exploiting or overly persuading, you know, if you’re doing a lot of persuading, ‘Please take part in my film’, then that relationship is just not equal. I suppose if you can kind of sense, what I am saying is that it keeps me awake. And I think that that’s really good. It keeps me from… it becomes a kind of guiding light in the edit. In terms of I have to admit, I always obviously show the films to people before I become public. And that viewing is very important, because it’s the one which is always most nerve wrecking, where the people who you’ve made the film about get to judge whether you have represented them in a way that’s true. And it’s not always the truth, because that’s what’s crazy, you know, but there’s a truth that you found, and that they recognise themselves. I think that you have to have a part of you that you don’t have where you’re like, ‘I have to accept that these people are making their own decisions’. So, they’re grown–ups, and they’re not vulnerable. And you know, it’s different if you’re working with people who have kind of mental health issues, or they’re children. I think then there’s a different set of protocols, or they’re in hospital being operated on… there are lots of different kinds of [cases] but if they are adults, then you have to accept that they are making their own decisions and that you’re not responsible 100%. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to do it. The other thing I think I’m conscious of and that I do make clear to people is that I am there as a filmmaker, as a journalist. I’m not there as a friend, as a therapist, because I think there’s an interesting exchange that goes on in filmmaking where people have asked questions from someone who’s outside of their world and hopefully, if that’s that works, that relationship and if that interview works, they are honest with you, and therefore you get something interesting. And I am aware that that structure can be in itself exploitative, because maybe people had never been asked those questions before, and now they’re doing it. And the purpose that they’re doing it is not therapeutic, because I’m not a therapist. And this isn’t just serving their growth or their self–learning, it’s to make a programme for other people, it’s for the audience, it’s not for them. Does that make sense? So, I think that I’m clear with people that I’m there as a as a journalist. Yeah. I mean, not that I have to say that, but that if there’s any ever sense that that is misunderstood…
Elizabeth
Because I can totally see why that happens, and sometimes it happens in the podcast. I think whenever we asked someone to tell their own story, and we listened deeply, something almost sacred happens, right? There is some power in that, and some people are very used to it. But for a lot of people, the dignifying of being asked to self–reflect and tell your own story can feel like a gift, and can feel like very deep friendship, right? So, I can imagine that that’s very helpful to have those boundaries of like, – yes, this is possibly a very deep, emotional, intense experience, but let’s remember that it is primarily for the film… to just kind of keep it contained.
Rowan Deacon
Yeah, I think so. I mean, they often become friendships beyond the film, but in the process of making the film…I think the other thing, to answer your question about contributor care, and exploitation, I think I’m constantly reminded by engaging with people whose stories I’m telling, that there is dignity, essentially, and the sort of sense of affirmation and pleasure that can be taken in sharing our stories. So, I think that the exploitative framework isn’t a helpful one to go in with. And also, when I worry about that halfway through her film, ‘Oh, my goodness, have I have I treated this person fairly in the film?’ I don’t mean outside of the film, that framework is always in place for treating people with respect and sort of dignity around the process of filmmaking. But in terms of how I’ve represented them in the film. I think I know that the film sounds really, oh, my God, this sounds sort of pretentious in a way, but the film ends up being the sort of gift back, do you know what I mean? And, mostly, I’d say, 99%, people are really pleased with the story being told in an elevated and dignified way. Does that make sense? And it’s not even always easy. Sometimes they’re showing their worst sides, and sometimes they’re showing vulnerability, and sometimes they’re revealing complicated motivations and, shameful behaviour. But I think that as long as the film is compassionate, and I think the most of mine are, then that engagement in that process for people is ultimately kind of fulfilling and interesting, and worthwhile. It’s not a negative thing in its final products.
Elizabeth
Yeah, I want to go back to this idea of truth. And you said something fascinating to me. In a previous conversation, you said you’d gone early on in your career to film someone you didn’t particularly like, and you found yourself in the edit, almost, with the temptation to edit to show them as you saw them at their worst side. And you said, you can’t do that in the edit because the film will fight you. Which was just a line that has really stayed with me. There is a truth that if you were trying to impose a truth on the material that you’ve got, the film will fight you. And it felt like you almost felt that there was something almost mystical or deeply philosophical about that process of putting your material together and how you represent people. Can you unpack that a bit more?
Rowan Deacon
Yeah, what I mean by that is that, you know, you were talking earlier about how you could interview someone and then utterly misrepresent them. You know, editing is an incredibly kind of powerful tool where you can, if it’s convenient to your storytelling, you can misrepresent them, basically by moving their words around, essentially, or sorts of knocking off some of the nuances and simplifying them; and if I’ve ever been asked to do that, because sometimes the process of filmmaking isn’t like, you have a lot of people that are involved in the film that come in and kind of view and say, ‘Oh, you know, I think the story would work better if so and so did this, or if so and so said this.’ And what I mean by the film fighting itself is that if you start to misrepresent people, their motivations, what they’re really saying to you, you smell it in the edit, it fights itself, because it doesn’t feel authentic. I really believe that in the process of sources trying to take what people have said, and how they’ve behaved and the actions that they’ve done, and to weave it into a story, which is actually a process of condensing… it’s not a process of researching. It’s a process of sculpting, and really condensing because these stories are huge, maybe chronologically, maybe emotionally, and you’re trying to put it into 60 minutes or 90 minutes. And in that process of ‘condensement’, you have to find something that is true to the hours of things that they’ve said, otherwise, it doesn’t feel real. And I’ve done it because I’ve been asked to sort of make someone a bit more like this, and then it just… it’s a touch thing, I suppose. You just feel that they’re not people anymore. They’re just voice pieces for a story rather than people. Does that make sense? And I think that the engagement that we have with documentaries is often through the characters that are telling it. And they have to feel that they’re authentic to what they’re saying, rather than just voice pieces to a story that the director wants to tell. So often you go in and think that someone’s one thing and they turn out to be something else. And the job of the filmmaker is to then make sure that the film represents who they really are, what the story really is.
Elizabeth
Yeah. You mentioned that you don’t make nor are particularly interested in campaign films. And it is clear why from all the things you said, but you have made a film called ‘Simon’s Choice’ about euthanasia. I’ve been reading all the reviews, and it’s funny how surprised people are that you didn’t make a campaign. You can read the reviewers coming to the film hoping that you are going to affirm their position on this, realising that you’re not going to do that and then feeling very moved and I think enriched by watching it. How much when you going to a film like that are you thinking: society needs to know more about this or needs to think through this issue? How much is ‘I need to know more and think through this issue?’ And what’s the kind of relationship as you navigate something as ethically knotty and painful as someone’s decision to go to Dignitas to end their life?
Rowan Deacon
Yeah, I think with ‘Simon’s Choice’, me and the production company, the BBC, set out from the very outset to try and make a film that was not a campaign film. Now, that was partly a BBC thing.
Elizabeth
Yeah, they’re not allowed.
Rowan Deacon
They’re not allowed. But actually, it also set us up with a really, really interesting challenge. Because I think that, as you can imagine, people who are going to use assisted dying clinics are often fairly polemical in believing that it’s the right thing to do. And we know that this is a contentious issue in society. So, we set out trying to find a way of representing all views, partly because of a BBC need for impartiality. But actually, I think it went beyond that. Because I think what we did is we started meeting with hundreds of people who were in the process of going to a clinic. And I suppose we started with a framework that we wanted the film to, in a complex way, show all sides of this debate. So, I think in terms of where I started, I probably started out with a fairly kind of knee jerk, liberal idea that – of course, people should go to a clinic to if they want to. I think that was probably how I started out in it. What’s complicated that and why I think the film is interesting is that I set out to find somebody who would challenge my beliefs, if that was my starting point; that I wasn’t interested in making a film about somebody who was like, ‘Yeah, and it’s fine. I’m going to do that.’ And the question was, how are we going to do that? So, you know, the quick way of making that film would be to find someone who’s going to attend it, and then find someone who disagrees with it. But we wanted to find a story. And so, as we started talking to people, and I actually spoke to him actually earlier. I spoke to a friend whose dad had gone and started to understand my friend’s position, about how he felt very, very complicated about his dad’s decision…ambivalence. And we started listening to the other people in families, and started listening to children and partners and friends, and realised that actually, the complicated nature of this story isn’t about people: one person who holds one view and one person who holds another. It’s actually about who do we owe those decisions to about the end of our life, it became a question about individualism, what we owe to ourselves and what we owe to each other. And so, in Debbie and Simon, and I think the reason why that film was successful was because Debbie and Simon were extraordinarily interesting and compassionate, and people who were able to share quite complex and difficult ideas with me. But in Debbie and Simon, we found somebody who was absolutely committed, Simon, to not end his life in a palliative care situation where he was going to be vulnerable and unable to speak and unable to move, because of his disease. And in Debbie, she was brought up a Catholic, so she had quite a strong value system around how we die anyway, but also her daughter Chloe, had died of cancer at 18, which is an unbelievable tragedy and challenge for someone to go through. That happened two years previously. And I realised from speaking to Debbie, that her understanding that her daughter, Chloe had experienced palliative care and died naturally meant that she, for obvious reasons, found it really difficult to accept Simon’s choice, but they love each other, they love each other very much, and they want the best for each other. And so, the film is about, it’s actually not really about love, about death. It’s about love. It’s about it’s about how do you find that balance of something that you need for yourself and something that you need for those people around you? And I think that what was interesting about it is that we had both. Obviously, it’s a contentious political issue. And we had both sides of the debate kind of gunning for us, I suppose, from the beginning. Because they were saying, ‘Well, you should be making a campaign film that is saying one thing or the other.’ And what was interesting was, in the end, both sides felt the film represented their views. And that was the challenge in that: it was to show that through people’s lived experiences, these political hot potato issues are often… they’re not black and white, they’re often more complicated. And we can really only understand the complexity of them and the greys, through people who are living that. I suppose for me, that’s why documentary is so important because it gives the viewers an opportunity to live in those people’s shoes for a while, to walk in their shoes and to sort of see things from exactly not a polemical politically worked out idea, but just from how human beings experience the world, rather than through campaigners arguing that this is the right way of thinking, because I don’t think that’s how you change people’s minds or complicate people’s minds. So, the idea for that film is that somebody who believes in dying might come to it and be challenged by that. And that somebody who thinks that assisted dying is a wrong and bad thing might come to it and have their ideas challenged. I mean, I’ve probably said that something that I’m fence–sitting, but I think that the complexity and nuance of human beings is endless and that sometimes the polemical structure or the right and wrong structure through which things are argued in social media and the news is unhelpful.
Elizabeth
I wanted to talk about ‘Savile’, which is the most recent film that you’ve made and is everywhere on Netflix. What are you hoping to do by telling that story, which is important and horrific, but in different ways pretty well–trodden?
Rowan Deacon
That’s a really good question. And I assumed an odd about doing, ‘doing Savile’ as Netflix put it. But the reason that I wanted to make the film is yes, it is well–trodden. But I also think that it’s obviously an extraordinarily important story in our history. So I suppose its significance in terms of how it was a watershed moment in, you know, British culture in terms of our attitudes towards sort of sex abuse, towards celebrity, towards safeguarding, you know, it was the precursor to Me Too in this country, it was the sort of beginning of many of the culture wars we’re living through now in terms of kind of attitudes towards sexual assault, and consent, and gender. So, its significance couldn’t be understated. I felt that the reason I wanted to make it is I think that there’s quite a lot of myths that have grown up around the Savile story. And I was interested in needling some of those myths. And I think one of the ways we as a culture, as a nation have dealt with it is to make him pure evil. Because it’s so horrific, what happened, it’s so unbelievable, it’s so unthinkable that a man who was in the public eye and who was, you know, one of our most loved and respected celebrities for 60 years was also a prolific paedophile that is almost unbelievable at you. I mean, you couldn’t write a screenplay that would kind of feel realistic if that were the case. And I think as a society we have found a way of coping with that by demonising him to the extent that he is actually the devil. And I don’t think that that is a helpful way of trying to understand how it happened. So, I think there has been a lot like you said, it’s well–trodden. I think there have been important films made that have told the victims’ stories and have heard victim experiences. And that has been a necessary part of our sort of healing and learning process as culture with Savile. But I didn’t feel that there had been a film that had comprehensively and emotionally and experientially asked Britain to understand how this had happened. I think we understood it journalistically. ‘Oh, it was because he was so powerful, it was because there was no safeguarding in hospitals, it was because we didn’t understand sexual assault, it was because, you know, we didn’t understand what paedophile was…’ there are lots of intellectual answers that are given. But do we really understand what that means emotionally as a society, and the role that we all played in a kind of terrible kind of complicity, I suppose. And so, the reason why I wanted to make the film was because very early on, I was like, the only way to do this is to sort of grapple with Savile himself, which was something that hadn’t been done because there was a sort of understanding and understandable feeling from the BBC and from other broadcasters that already we were ashamed of how much oxygen and airtime we had given him over decades. What we mustn’t do now is put him back on television. So, all of the archive footage of Jimmy Savile had been kind of embargoed, and basically, it was kept under lock and key, there was a sort of alarm system that went off at the BBC, if anyone inquired for a Top of the Pops that had Jimmy Savile presenting it. And I thought that in itself it was interesting, because I thought that was both understandable because, of course, we don’t want to traumatise victims by putting Jimmy Savile on television all the time, but I also thought it was about shame. I also thought it was about the sense of shame that we have. And I thought that it was probably time, 10 years on to explore that shame and to have a look at that footage. And it took a long time, it took six months, but we persuaded the BBC and then other broadcasters that we would do it responsibly, and that we would dig out this footage and look at who he had been and what the relationship had been with us as a society and us as individuals. And from that we then started finding people who were in the footage, people who had been friends with him or had been performing alongside him, or who had produced him, and I think in doing that, in finding this kind of archive footage was sort of evidence of something that had been perhaps forgotten about the kind of society that we were in, the kind of conditions in which he operated that meant that he was able to operate. And I think that that’s why the film was worth making, because it isn’t about what he did. It’s not a victim testimony film. Although there is an incredibly important piece of testimony in there from one of his many, many victims. It’s a film that asks, ‘How did this happen? And what role did we all play? And what our culture and our values and our society that its misogynistic, fame obsessed, ignores what children say? What role did we all play in allowing this inadvertently to happen. So, it was more of a sort of myth–busting exercise and also a challenge to myself… you know as you mentioned, why film someone that I sort of found rather unlikable? Most of my films are about people that are admirable, or I respect or admire in some way, and obviously Jimmy Savile can’t fall into that category. But I actually thought, ‘Well, let’s take a look at him though.’ And I thought that taking that I mean…it sounds ridiculous, to take a compassionate stance is politically dangerous, it was a high wire act, I think, to make the film and it was the film that gave me most nightmares. ‘Oh, my God, what am I doing? I’m making a film about a prolific paedophile.’ But actually, one of the things that I think was interesting in the process was I talked to, I was deeply aware that the film wasn’t a victim testimony film, and that was perhaps problematic in itself or not problematic, because I knew that it was the right way to do it for me, but I wanted to make sure that I was hearing from people who had been survivors of sexual abuse, either from Savile himself or others. And so, I linked with lots of people to an organisation actually, that helped people who are making films kind of learn about other people’s experiences. And I spoke to lots of survivors of sexual abuse, about what I was doing and about its purpose. And one of the things that came out of those discussions was the sense that actually the demonisation of Savile, the posthumous demonisation of him as literally the devil was unhelpful because actually, those people know that their perpetrators didn’t appear to the world as monsters, that they didn’t appear to them as monsters, and that that complicated behaviour that perpetrators have which is to be likeable, to be charming, and actually to be both things: to be someone who is both capable of achieving great things, which like, I know we’re not allowed say it, but weirdly, he did, complicates the experiences for survivors and as actually happened, perpetrators were enabled. And so, I thought if we ignore the fact that this guy was charismatic and likeable and respected, and how he managed to be that, then we’re ignoring how this happened, and those survivors kind of gave me permission to tonally address Savile in a way that wasn’t using creepy music. It uses warm music at times, it shows him being likeable. And publicly people haven’t said that but privately people said ‘I smiled at the Jim’ll Fix It section’ it was almost like a heresy to say I found him quite charismatic, but I don’t think it should be that’s the point, right? That’s what we did. We did and we do, and if it’s not like when Savile was slain and found out child abuse ended, you know, so the idea that we became a kind of totem and once we destroyed him, we are well the evils are cured well they’re obviously not, and so a hiding from the relationship that we actually had with him I felt was dishonest and in my sort of desperate search for authenticity and sort of some kind of honesty with the film is I felt that was like critically important and had arguments throughout with Netflix who wanted a more ‘monsterising’ version of Savile because they knew that this was a risk, I think. It was a shorthand, ‘Well let’s just make HIM a monster, put the scary music on. Why does this feel like a biopic? You’re making a biopic of Jimmy Savile, Rowan!’ And the editor and the team that I was making this with were convinced that that was the only honest way to deal with this subject matter.
Elizabeth
I want to ask about that moment when the film went out into the public because, you know, it’s so clear that one of the things you’re doing with your films, this is my interpretation, is a deliberate moral complexifying thing of saying ‘The world is not black and white; we are not black and white and our tendency to want to locate evil outside of ourselves… So,’ I would have known,’ or ‘I know exactly what I think about pain and death and love and loss’ without feeling the weight of how difficult some of these things are is. We are more fully human, when we allow that black and white thinking particularly, about other people to fall away, even though it can be scary. And you made this film that was at least partly in that thread, although not saying that Jimmy Savile was anything but a heinous child abuser. When you put that out on Netflix, which is this global audience, which as we know, it’s not a publicly funded broadcaster, does not have quite the same heritage of the depth of kind of ethical rigour, and their key metric is how many clicks we can get…You put out a complex film on a very provocative subject, on a slightly less complex platform. What was the experience of then being the public face of that? Were you braced for a lot of kickback? Did you worry about being cancelled? How did you navigate that time?
Rowan Deacon
Yeah, I was definitely more terrified, apprehensive about this film than any other party. Because yeah, like you were saying, Netflix is a global channel, who are very, very good at marketing. I think there’s good things about that actually, because it means documentaries get seen. But… how did I feel? I was incredibly apprehensive, and I found that I couldn’t talk publicly about the film until an audience have received it. Because I think I just needed to know that the high wire act had been received in the way that it was intended, and I didn’t know whether it would be. And so, I expected more kickback actually, than we got, and I think I expected to be cancelled.
Elizabeth
To have some career repercussions.
Rowan Deacon
I don’t think I’ve got public enough profile to even be cancelled, no one would notice, but I think I worried about it being embargoed. I worried that people would sort of refuse to watch it and would make a statement about refusing to watch it. Because I had experienced just how toxic the name Jimmy Savile is. And the idea that I was making a film that kind of put him centre stage, you know…
Elizabeth
Profiting off pain or something, that was the fear that people would say.
Rowan Deacon
Yes, that we were exploiting pain, that we were dragging up a painful story for the purpose of entertainment, I suppose; that the film deliberately was not a worthy hand wring–y testament film, you know, a sort of ‘for the fallen’. It was it was a compelling, watchable piece, which one of the reasons why it’s watchable is that Jimmy Savile is front and centre, that’s got a complex moral position. But I was incredibly nervous because there were no guarantees about how that’s going to be received. I mean, I knew that I had sat with it, and was comfortable with it. I knew that I had fought against Netflix, actually on quite a lot of issues, because I knew what was coming for us. And I knew that we had to be defended, and the only way the film could be defended, and it’s not defended on every point… I think there’s two bits in it that I would have changed anyway, that’s small point. But I felt like it had to have purpose, and I think that it does have purpose and that in the end, actually, my worst fears weren’t founded. There was of course, some criticism, and there was criticism that I think the harshest one was that the film won’t help anyone who has suffered from sexual abuse, it won’t help anyone who’s being sexually abused. I take issue with that. I mean, I take issue with it because if people wrote to me who had been sexually abused, and you know said in one case, a man said that he watched the film, this is someone who’s outside of the UK, who obviously in the UK, we all know the story… So, I think that outside of the UK it kind of was a new story for people. And someone outside the UK said, this was the first time that he realised that he needed to talk to his wife about what happened to him as a child. So, I disagree, even if it’s one person, right? And that’s just the person that wrote to me. I disagree with the fact that it doesn’t help people who have gone through those experiences. And also, maybe it helps people who haven’t gone through those experiences understand more about those experiences. Maybe that wasn’t the purpose. I mean, so I think that’s quite a high bar to put on a film that it must do this one thing. So, we did get a little bit of criticism, but actually, mostly it was well received and watched and accepted as something that had purpose in it. But… sorry, to answer your question: I practically felt like I had to sort of go into hiding for a few days. I mean, not that anyone recognised me, but I felt like we had walked a moral tightrope, and that I just hoped that its intention was going to be received in the way that it was intended.
Elizabeth
Rowan, thank you so much for speaking to me on The Sacred.
It really made me laugh, Rowan’s description of growing up the child had kind of Revolutionary Socialists in Plymouth and being asked if her mother was women’s libber, because she had short hair, and no perm. I really remember the period where my mum and all the other mums at school had a perm. There’s so much that will stay with me and from this conversation about what documentary is and this episode is slightly different in that I’m not talking particularly to someone who sits on one side or another of the various different divides. But I’m really trying to dig into the role, documentary, and storytelling in general play and how we see other people and how we understand the world and understand what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes. And I really have been awoken to this particular genre as something that doesn’t feel like homework as we talked about that. But, you know, Rowan wanting to make documentaries that are more like cupcakes and kale, but not like cupcakes because they are actually also good for you. And it got me thinking that sometimes my media consumption swings between those two poles, that I feel I should kind of look clear–eyed at the state of the world. And I should listen to The Economist’s podcast and understand climate modelling and kind of not shirk my citizens responsibilities to understand the world, but I do it because I should, and then that can be very overwhelming, and gives you a particular view of what the world is like right now framed because of the framing that news–lead media works from. And then I escaped from that into my beloved Golden Age detective novels or Georgette Heyer, or something really kind of mindless on Netflix and sort of go back and forth between the kale and cupcakes. Although to be clear, I really do like kale a lot, and I find cupcakes too sweet. What’s the equivalent for me between, you know, Ben and Jerry’s and low–fat cottage cheese maybe would be my personal framing. I was left with the thought that really great documentaries, like actually all really great art, a brilliant novel, or a play, maybe music but I’m interested in how that is slightly different; definitely poetry helps me hold that midpoint between really paying attention to the world as it is and to other people’s lives as they are, and turning my attention outward, away from the comfort and safety of just a sort of numbing that’s the worst type of entertainment, I think does for me. But it does it in a container that somehow feels also enriching and life giving and deepening and therefore kind of tolerable longer term. It makes me feel more fully alive. I think there was a lot in there about the ethics of what great storytellers do and I really am fascinated by this idea that the film will fight you if you basically try and mischaracterize someone. And that the job of a good documentary maker and I guess a good journalist is to tell the truth as clearly and as carefully as you can. With so much material, you have to be very selective and discriminating in the best way. But there is a logic, there is an authenticity, there is such a thing as truth in storytelling that I really liked the way Rowan seems to be paying close attention to. Yeah, I would recommend getting hold of ‘Simon’s Choice’ if you can, although it’s, it’s quite tricky. It’s not publicly available now. But I think it’s an incredible thing to have made a film about an issue that complex that really didn’t just please one side or the other, that really revealed the pain and complexity of this issue, and in so doing, I think so many issues, that we really do want it to be simpler than it is. We do really want it to be more black and white than it is no matter what side we come from. And the reason these neuralgic issues are so enduring is that they are not simple or easy to resolve. And finally on Savile, again, I’d really recommend you watch it. I did not want to at all for aforementioned reasons, but it is not as she put it ‘for the fallen’. It’s not ‘for the fallen’ film. It’s very clever. And actually, the first part is quite enjoyable to watch in a way that’s quite discomforting because you remember that Savile was really enjoyable to watch. He was really beloved, he was funny, he was silly, he was a national treasure. And the complexity there, and the care with which they did treat the victims, survivors is really very impressive and was not as gruelling as I was expecting, whilst still being incredibly effective in the point I was trying to make. That’s all from me.
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