Deadline’s Doc Talk Podcast: Errol Morris On His John Le Carré Film And How He Offended The Documentary Police: “I Did Things That Were Considered Illegitimate”
deadline.comDocumentary filmmaking legend Errol Morris has built his extraordinary reputation on two principle foundations: what might be called dramatizations (he rejects the terms reenactments or recreations) and interviews of incredible insight and verve.
He has conversed with a fascinating array of people — Robert McNamara, Donald Rumsfeld, Steve Bannon, owners of pet cemeteries, a woman accused of kidnapping and raping a Mormon missionary, to name a few.
Now, on Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, it’s our turn to interview Morris, about his latest documentary, The Pigeon Tunnel. In the film, which is about to premiere on Apple TV+, the director trains his lens on perhaps his most elusive subject yet – the spy-turned-novelist David Cornwell, known to the world by his pen name, John le Carré.
Morris tells Doc Talk why his encounter with Cornwell made him question the very nature of documentary interviews. And he gets into whether any person who was once a Nazi can ever be considered an ex-Nazi (a conundrum that confronted Cornwell when he was posted to West Germany as a spy in the middle of the Cold War).
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