HERE'S A BRIEF AUDIO EXCERPT FROM THE INTERVIEW: CLICK HERE

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PR: How do you feel about being compared with Michael Moore and his film "Fahrenheit 9/11"?  Your film includes a lot of facts that people may not be aware of.
 

KK: First of all, let me ask you, have you seen the film? 

PR: Yes.

KK: Well then you know that this film, "Giuliani Time", is very different from Michael Moore's approach, whether it was "Roger & Me", or "[Bowling For] Columbine", or "Fahrenheit 9/11".  He is in his films, and he brings to the world and to his films his spontaneous and not-so-spontaneous experience of chasing after Roger Smith or going after Charlton Heston.  Our film, "Giuliani Time", is a much more traditional documentary, if you will, in that vein.  There isn't a conscious attempt to [make it a subjective film], to make it a Kevin Keating film, or my co-producer Williams Cole, film.  Our effort here is really, I think -- one, it's a historical impulse.  In a way it's a very traditional documentary in that there was an enormous amount of research that we did.  Books that had to be read, essays that had to be read.  You know we shot 300 hours of film.  We had 300 hours of archival material, both network news stuff and historical material that went all the way back to the [1930's].  As you see from the opening of the film, this film is not just about Giuliani, but Giuliani as an instrument of undoing the progressive work of the New Deal, and Roosevelt and LaGuardia, what made New York City a great city during the Progressive Era.  So with Michael Moore -- not that he's short on history -- but a lot of what Michael Moore's films, what makes it compelling in a variety of ways, is Michael Moore.  I think my personality is absent from "Giuliani Time".  I think it's really much more in a way, academic, focused much more on the subject, the subject being Giuliani, and Giuliani embodying the effort to destroy the legacy of the New Deal, to destroy the social democratic impulses of our city.  So in that way I'm very unlike Michael Moore, but the audience I guess, is similar.  We're trying to get out to everybody who thinks.  Everybody who is concerned with society and social change.  So in that sense there is some similarity. 

 

PR: One of the things about the film is how favorable the press is to Giuliani.  That jumped out.  Did you face any resistance from the press and Giuliani when researching?

 

KK: There was some examination of the press.  We had press credentials.  On occasion I would go down to City Hall to the press conferences that Mr. Giuliani had.  We interviewed a journalist by the name of Dan Jannerson, from Newsday.  Great interview.  The main voice of the film is Wayne Barrett from The Village Voice, a wonderful investigative journalist, and he did do the investigative work that unearthed a large part of the revelations that are brought forth in the film about Giuliani's family background.  There are a number of things that Wayne Barrett -- doing old gumshoe digging -- he should have gotten a Pulitzer Prize for his book that was published in 2000.  And thank goodness it was, because it certainly brought a lot of information into our awareness and into the film.  But the press itself -- the New York press -- one of the wonderful things that has happened since this film has come into being released is the New York press has basically stood up on its hind legs and it's shouting.  There was a front page article in the New York Times Arts section [several weeks ago].  And ever since then there has been an avalanche of interest.  The Daily News -- huge articles, all news pieces about Giuliani's problem with this film, and reconsidering what happened before 9/11.  So I think in a way that the press was rolled over somewhat for Giuliani while he was in power, but that's not the journalists per se, that was more, I think, the editors and the management of the newspapers.  You know, The New York Times endorsed Giuliani both times.  All of them, all the newspapers invariably endorsed Giuliani.  So it was a little bit of both.  I think you had the working journalists had a bad taste in their mouth having to put up with his rancor and his nastiness, and him laughing alone in a room full of people that didn't know what he was talking about.  We didn't actually look too carefully -- it was a little bit beyond our purview to examine the functioning of the press, but we certainly did integrate Wayne Barrett and some others.  Antagonistic press -- I can't say that anybody from The New York Post would have talked to us, but I can't say that we actually actively cultivated that kind of thing.  We had so much to do. 

 

PR: So in terms of the researching of the film itself, how long did that take you?  Obviously you've been very busy with it yourself.  How long a time period did it take?

KK: The idea was presented to me by a colleague and a friend, a guy named Michael Ratner, who's the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.  And you may be aware of what they are doing now -- as in bringing the lawsuits about the Guantanamo [Bay] internees, the torture situation around the world, rendition.  They're very active and have been for many years.  Michael Ratner came to me with the idea in late '98.  The impulse was to do a short film, something in the order of a half an hour, something informational, with a small amount of money.  Money was raised, and I brought in my colleague Williams Cole, the co-producer and Peter Tooke, the editor, came in a little later.  We did research for about six, eight weeks, reading all the basic texts.  There was first a general orientation into the history of New York City and the mayoralties, and then Giuliani specifically.  When we started [former New York Police Commissioner] Bratton had just had his book called "Turnaround" published, and it was an enormously fascinating and radical description of what had happened to the police commissioner with Giuliani.  So that's where we started and there was a process of immersing ourselves in the book.  But then Amadou Diallo was killed, about less than a week after started shooting, so it kind of short-circuited a fuller, penetrating historical thing.  And we were caught up in events.  And it was from the killing of Amadou Diallo in January, February 1999, until we finished the film, practically.  Almost weekly there was another event, another enormous -- whether it was the eviction, Giuliani's attempt to evict the Brooklyn Museum from its building because they had the Sensation exhibit with the display of a painting that he found offensive though he never saw it, to the killing of Patrick Dorismond -- there was always some large, huge event in the news that we would then get caught up in.  While we were shooting and gathering, something else would happen, [then] something else would happen.  There was an endless sequence.  That's why the film took over five years to make.  And to answer your question about research -- we had to read all the paper texts, the various books on government policy, whether it was welfare, whether it was policing strategies, a range of issues that we tried to address in some depth.  But it's a very complex -- and as you can see with the film, it's very dense.  So it requires two hours of pretty close reading.

 

PR: Absolutely.  There's definitely a lot of things in your film, a lot of things to think about and understand.  Again, how many years did you say it took [to make "Giuliani Time"?]

KK: Well we started in the fall of '98, and we finished in late 2004.  So almost six years.

 

PR:  And during that time, did you get any feedback from Rudy Giuliani's camp?  There's a "Draft Rudy Giuliani for President" assault that's going on with the film.



KK: (laughs)  Yes.  No -- I did have a meeting with Sunny Mindel, his press officer.  I was summoned down to City Hall and basically after we had written probably 12 to 15 official letterhead requests for interviews with the mayor, I was summoned down to Sunny Mindel's office and had a conversation with her where she basically said, "we know who you are and ok, this is what you want to do, well I'll pass that on to the mayor."  And I said, "well, look, Sunny we don't have to do a sit-down formal interview with the mayor, he and I are contemporaries."  He and I are only separated by a few months in age.  I was born in New York.  There's an opening montage with a black-and-white television sequence with [a bishop] going off about communism -- that was in my house too, as I'm sure it was in his house.  I said to Sunny, "how about if we just ride around in the back of his SUV with him for a couple of hours? And I want to talk to him.  What does he think of Elvis?  Did he go to the Brooklyn Paramount to see the Isley Brothers, and the Everly Brothers and all those rock and roll acts that I did when I was 12, like me and my friends -- was he like that?  Can we just do it on contemporary cultural stuff?"  Well, she chuckled and laughed and said, "well I'll pass your request on to the mayor.  And of course that was the last thing we ever heard."  I'd still like to do it -- I'd still like to have a conversation with him.

PR:  Well perhaps that might happen once the film is released.



KK:  Well I think they're caught flat-footed.  They've got a big problem.  I'm looking here at my computer.  [In one week] there were 15,000 hits on "Giuliani Time" [the website].  The film hasn't been reviewed yet, really.  This is all news stories.  This is all coming out of an avalanche from The New York Times to The Daily News, which is a huge tabloid here.  The attack in The New York Post -- it's been -- we're the lead on all the news broadcasts [recently].  It's been enormous.  I think a lot of the press has just been waiting for an opportunity to reconsider, post-9/11, to reconsider "Giuliani Time".

 

PR:  Wow. 



KK:  This is great.  It's just, it's really wild.  And so fantastic.

 

PR:  It must be quite a leap for you personally.  In the past, you have done a lot of cinematography.  You've worked with Barbara Kopple.  And you've also been involved with the documentary "When We Were Kings", featuring Muhammad Ali. 

 

KK:  That's right.  Leon Gast [the "Kings" director] was my old partner.



PR:  Right, okay.



KK:  Well if you're going to ask about directing, let me tell you -- Leon Gast, who did "When We Were Kings", where I was the cinematographer -- we went to Africa together -- Leon Gast and I were partners and co-directed a film called "Hells Angels Forever", together, back in the '70's.  So that was actually the first film I directed.

PR:  Okay.  For you, did you find -- beyond the research -- any personal challenges at all, other than just the research -- knowing the public's -- at least in New York, their kind of view of the subject matter of the person that you were doing the documentary on.  Was there anything personally that you found challenging?

 

KK:  Yes.  Bankruptcy.  I bankrupted myself and my company.  We're hanging on by our fingernails.  You know, Williams Cole, the co-producer, Peter Tooke, the editor, who could barely find work and held on for all these years.  You know they weren't paid fully as they could be otherwise.  We all had financial, severe financial duress, but the one thing that kept going was, that we never quite knew -- you see this, the style of filmmaking here is connected to "Harlan County, U.S.A.", Barbara Kopple and I started out in film together.  We were working with the Maysles and referred to as social change documentaries, or "cinema verite", or "direct cinema" if you will, that has been my schooling, my apprenticeship, my entire lifelong career, has been, and in one way or another, shaped by, and that's what I was trained to do.  And this film ["Giuliani Time"] I think, is a manifestation of that kind of adherence to truth and not fiction, and the idea of using film as a weapon in the culture wars.  I think this is an example of a serious effort to do what I learned early on, which is about using cinema for positive social change, and in this case contemporaneously.  I think this film is now -- this incredible amount of publicity [in recent weeks], is I think, encouragement to other filmmakers.  Look, you can look at your surrounding environment, your world, examine it, examine it on film, and it's possible, possible to do something coherent, and serious, and lovely, and it can have an impact.  I think this film is having an impact on Giuliani's run for the president.  That's what the news, the lead in The New York Times was.  I mean, there's not been any reviews.  The film has been around the world.  I'm doing BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) in a few days and interviews about this.  It's about Giuliani's positioning himself for the presidency.  It's about the legacy of the Bush administration, to whom he welded himself at the hip in the opening of the film.  You saw it, he declared, "thank God George Bush is president."  Well you know what?  We're going to make sure the world knows that's what he thinks.  And this little film will hopefully keep on keeping on.  It's getting out there.  And it's all over the place!  And that's what we make films for.  We've realized, already -- the film's not even opened yet, and we have realized a dream, which is to call attention to Giuliani, post-9/11.  And it's doing it wonderfully.  I think the film is doing its own work.

 

PR:  Absolutely.  If there's anything to ask, there's just this one last question for you.

KK:  Sure.

 

PR:  You talked about the status financially, of the company.  In light of that, what might your next project be?

 

KK:  Torture. 

 

PR:  Aha.  That's in terms of what's going on in Abu Ghraib and other places around the world?

 

KK:  Yes.  How the U.S. has taken the lead in being the torture regime.  That's what my gut tells me, it needs to be done.  Certainly, many, many filmmakers, fine filmmakers, serious folks, are doing that, but just reflexively, just intuitively, my feeling is that torture is what needs to be stopped, it needs to be illuminated, it needs to have a light shined on it.  And I don't know, maybe I can find a way of doing it uniquely and comprehensively and seriously, that if I can contribute to mitigating in some small way that's what I was trained to do.  And that's maybe what I will do next. 

 

PR:  Alright.  Thank you very much.

 

KK:  Well, that's it?

 

PR:  Actually, yes. 

 

KK:  (laughs)



PR:  We can certainly keep going.  There were maybe just a couple more questions.

 

KK:  Let me get rid of this phone call.  Hold on, I'll be right with you. 

(Leaves for a moment.)

 

KK:  Are you still there?

 

PR:  Yes.

 

KK:  That's another one, that's another call from ABC News. 

 

PR:  Incredible.

 

KK:  It comes in, it just doesn't stop.  And the thing about it that's so wonderful is that it's not about the artistry of the film -- it's about the proposition of the film, which is to examine carefully the pre-9/11 history of Giuliani in New York City, and what happened when he was here.  And then I think we extrapolate from that.  We don't want that in a national office.



PR:  Do you feel that you will get some response, more directly from somebody in the Giuliani camp once the film does begin to make its way around?  Based upon the film itself, after people have seen it, they would probably in the camp that would want to respond to you directly about the film.


KK:  Did you happen to see the Tucker Carlson show that I did [recently]?

 

PR:  No. 

 

KK:  Well, that's why they have a problem, "they" being the Giuliani people.  They cannot just say that it's dismissible, that it's old history.  The first round of responses from Giuliani's office was, "we haven't see it, they're old charges, and we're not going to bother."  Then I did the Tucker Carlson show [called "The Situation With Tucker Carlson"], a national show, and I insisted that Carlson see -- do you know who he is?

 

PR:  Yes.


KK:  Okay -- well you know what and who he is.

 

PR:  Yes. 

 

KK:  He didn't have his bow tie on.  But anyway, in advance of the show I told him that I wouldn't do the show unless he saw the film.  Well, he did see the film.  And that made for a very lively conversation between Tucker and I.  And I had to basically admonish him for a couple of things.  And it was lively.  And it got very serious very quickly.  And that put the word out to the Giuliani people -- they'd better get hip to this because this is national, this is serious, this is not a dismissible -- this isn't even a Michael Moore movie, in that, in that derogatory way that they use that term.  This is a serious film.  And what happened is, there's an AP [Associated Press] article that went out [a few days ago].  And in that article they had a response from a professor named Fred Siegel, who just recently wrote the most recent book on Giuliani, called "The Prince of the City", which is basically is another further quasi-academic attempt to genuflect and to put forward that [Giuliani] was Machiavelli's Prince, that he really was worthy of all this adulation and praise.  So they've ratcheted up the people they're going to put out to counter me.  And that's fine, because I think what I'd really like to do is to get Giuliani in a discussion somewhere.  You know, maybe he and I can meet at Tim Russert's show [Meet The Press].  Or - see he's never confronted -- whether it's Tim Russert, or [Chris] Matthews -- all of them genuflect -- he goes on those shows -- do you realize that they didn't ask him any questions in front of the 9/11 Commission about what happened?  They all told him what a great job he did.  They didn't ask him about why didn't the Fire Department [of New York] have the same radios so they could hear from the helicopters of the Police Department circling the Towers as they were going down and to get out of the building?  Why did Giuliani place the Emergency Management Center in the target? [Keating's emphasis.]  Did you know that the Emergency Management Center was in Seven World Trade Center?

 

PR:  Yes, I was aware of that.



KK:  Well, evidently the 9/11 Commission didn't think that was of interest.  They didn't ask him about it!  So anyway, the press gives him a pass, all the time.  All the time, all the time.  This film I think is the first opportunity for him -- they -- to be actually confronted, with, whether it's policing or welfare, or any other of the First Amendment violations -- the arresting of the artists, all that stuff -- it's the first time he's ever been forced to respond.  So, Fred Siegel [one week].  [Another] week, maybe it'll be Sunny Mindel who might answer some questions.  And then who knows, maybe even he [Giuliani] will. I'm planning on hoping that every time Giuliani appears, with Ralph Reed, in Georgia, the Christian guy?, that the local Democrats will get smart enough to have a counter event and screen the film!  Put the film up on the side of a truck outside the Ritz Carlton in Atlanta.  Use the film to counter Giuliani's appearances, supporting all these people for Congress and the Senate.  So I don't know.  I think they're going to have to get more serious, more direct about responding to a lot of the information in the film.  So in that way it's working too.  I can always see them [the opposition to Keating] ratcheting it up.
 

-- END OF TRANSCRIPT --

 

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