1964 Man-On-The-Street Interviews

This is one of the first professional documentaries I made–not so long ago. 1964! I got a job as a young documentary filmmaker to go into the streets and asked people what they thought the word brother would meant. My client was the National Conference Of Christians and Jews. They wanted me to make a public service announcement which at the time, television stations gave to nonprofit organizations This is one of the first professional documentaries I made–not so long ago. 1964! I got a job as a young documentary filmmaker to go into the streets and asked people what they thought the word brotherhood meant. My client was the National Conference Of Christians and Jews. They wanted me to make a public service announcement which at the time, television stations gave to nonprofit organizations for free. Remember at this time, almost everybody had never seen a 16mm camera and almost no one had ever been filmed. So me and my soundman colleague coming up and asking people questions like this was something people were very unfamiliar with. And the civil rights movement was in full swing, so some people thought that this was a political question why wasn't really asking back on the question at all. I put the film together for a Christmas party at the company that I worked in, a company of young documentary filmmakers. Someone suggested that I should enter it in a film competition and I went for the big folks–the Chicago Film Festival. Very important at the time. My little four-minute documentary won first prize! $3000! So I entered it in about 25 film festivals and I won a prize in each one. Clearly the film touched a subject in a way viewers had not seen before, especially film festival goers. This short film helped me on my way to become a professional “one-man band” “man in the street” documentary filmmaker.