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November 7, 2008
Eloquent Nude: The Love and Legacy of Edward Weston & Charis Wilson
Joan & Irwin Jacobs Theater
7:00pm
Free to MoPA members, $6 students, $8 general admission

Interview with Director Ian McCluskey dowload here
Conducted by MoPA Director of Photography Carol McCusker

CM: Tell us a little bit about yourself, and your interest in photography and documentary filmmaking. IM: My background is in creative writing, with an emphasis on literary non-fiction.  I discovered documentary in a university course during my last year of grad school.  A class project turned into a career in documentary film.  I’m now the director of NW Documentary a 501c3 non-profit in Portland, Oregon that exists to foster the art and craft of documentary storytelling.

Director Ian McCluskey sets lights for interview in home of Charis Wilson

When I first read Charis’ writing in the introduction to Edward Weston: Nudes, and her account of modeling for Weston, everything came into focus.  Like any aficionado of the writing craft, I fell for her prose, her casual tone, sharp details, and above all, wry humor.  Still, it’d be a decade later when I discovered her memoir Through Another Lens in a used bookstore.  By then, I’d found a career path in documentary.  I was eager for a new story.  The Portland Art Museum had a Weston exhibit on display.  The curator of Photography encouraged me to research the potential for a Weston documentary.  A quick web search and email to Kim and Gina Weston propelled the quest.  And with help from Charis’ co-author of her memoir, Wendy Madar, I was on the phone with Charis herself.  That clinched it.  There was no question in my mind that Charis, then age 90, and in extremely frail health (actually on hospice), needed to have her story recorded on camera.

CM: How did the idea strike her?  IM: When I asked Charis if I could come down and record an interview, she said: “Sure—but try to come on a sunny day.” Charis has a warm and open personality, and if health permits, she is always open to meeting a potential new friend.  Apparently some “filmmakers” had approached her before, but she had declined.  For whatever reason, we seemed like kindred spirits, or (at the very least) very sincere, and she opened up her home for our small crew.

Charis Wilson, high school yearbook photo, 1932

At the time, we weren’t expecting to have to rely upon reenactments as a form of storytelling.  But the more we researched, the more evident it became that the most significant moments in Edward and Charis’ relationship had happened alone, and were never recorded.  I asked everyone—family, friends, archivists—where we could find the “home movies” that are so ubiquitous (and so essential) to the documentary filmmaker.  Apparently, these home movies never existed, and we would have to fill in those holes on our own.

Had I proposed reenactments from the start, Charis never would have agreed to the project, she later told me.  But upon seeing them for the first time, she said, “That’s not acting, that’s living.”  She thanked us for giving her the home movies she never had and helping her nonagenarian mind time travel back to the 1930s.


CM: Documentary films are often done for the love of it – have you found a market for this film that surprised you?

IM: The projects I had done prior to Eloquent Nude were screened locally at the Portland Art Museum and broadcast on our local PBS station (KOPB).  We were thrilled that Eloquent Nude did both.  In fact, when at least 2,000 people showed up to watch the premiere at the Art Museum, it became the largest film event in Portland’s history.  The film then screened at local movies theatres for 5 weeks.  Since then, it’s traveled to some of the most prestigious film festivals and major museums.  Each time we are utterly amazed at the full-capacity crowds.  Just this past week, I attended a film festival in Naples, Italy, where Eloquent Nude screened to nearly 1,000 people in a grand opera house.  The week before, it screened in the tiny Morris Graves Art Center in Eureka, CA.  We packed at least 300 people into the main hall, the largest event the center had hosted; folks stood on tables to see and some folks even watched through the windows.  I can’t describe the emotional power of watching the film among 100s of people.  It amazes me to think of the documentary when it existed only as a hard drive full of digital files in my house to a film that has toured around the world.

Nude, 1934 (Charis Wilson)

CM: Regarding sponsorship for the film --- who was willing to back it?

IM: Before the project was even a project, I was packing around a big pile of books on Weston, reading all of them for research, and telling people proudly that I had been invited to interview Charis. Over coffee, as I excitedly explained the interview opportunity, a friend reached into his pocket and pulled out a wadded bill.  “For gas money,” he said.  And that’s how it started.  Five, and ten, and twenty dollars… a local camera store pitched in, as did the high school that both Charis and I attended in Portland.  We raised enough for the first adventure, and then with the interview tapes shot, we started fundraising for the second series of interviews.  We applied for grants (some we got, others not).  We held fundraisers, a silent auction, and sent out newsletters.  Individuals gave what they could, and helped in ways that they could.  There was a shared feeling of “this story needs to be told, and we need to make it happen.”

Nude, 1934 (Charis Wilson)

CM: The intimacy you created with Charis is quite touching; how has it continued?  IM: Against all of her doctors’ orders, Charis made the long trip from her home in Santa Cruz to Portland to be part of the grand premiere.  She joined us again in San Francisco for the screening at SF MOMA, and at Santa Cruz Film Festival, and in Carmel at the Center for Photographic Art.  So, we’ve been really thrilled that she has been able to attend at least four public performances of the film.  We also like to call her before a screening to ask if she has anything she’d like to share with the audience.

Recently, when we were invited to screen at the Morris Graves Art Center in Eureka, we were sponsored by a generous arts patron, Bill Pierson, who was willing to fly us directly from Portland to Eureka.  Instead, we flew to San Jose, rented a car, and headed over the mountains to have lunch with Charis and her daughter Rachel.  We had a lovely afternoon, and then drove the remaining 350 miles to get to our screening.

CM: Did anything about making the film surprise you?

IM: Every part of this film, beginning to end, was a refreshing surprise and small miracle.  What are the chances that the original wooden “shack” built atop the Carmel cliffs in the middle of the Depression would still be standing on what is now some of the pricest real estate in America?  And that Edward’s grandson lived there, a photographer himself, and generously welcomed us to come and film and make use of the family archives?
What are the chances that we’d find perhaps the only running 1937 Ford V-8 standard sedan a mere 40 miles from us, and the owner willing to donate the car’s transport and use in the high desert?  What are the chances that not one, but every family estate and major museum donated their rare archival material to our project?  What are the chances that a woman who looks exactly like a young Charis would be married to the sound engineer, and that a local photographer would look hauntingly like Edward, and both fine people would agree to donate their time to head up to the mountains and to the coast to camp, hike, and film?  We found the Ansel Adams look-alike working at REI.  We found an expert on clothing of the Great Depression willing to gather vintage dresses and sew costumes by hand.  In the process, we met people we’d never imagine meeting, traveled to places we’d never been, and were given absolute pro bono access to everything we asked for.  That doesn’t happen in filmmaking. But it happened for this project.  Literally, hundreds of people offered up what they were able to give to ensure that this story was not only told, but told the way it deserved.

CM: Future projects?

IM: A story that is as complex, honest, and tender as Charis and Edward Weston is a rare discovery, but I am now open to new ideas and the next story that needs told.  I’m always interested in stories of historic and cultural significance.  I’m drawn to tales of artists, bohemians, and eye-witnesses to American history, but I can’t say what the next story will be. That’s part of the joy in non-fiction filmmaking.  So often it starts with someone sharing a personal story, a family story, or uncovering a lost shoebox of faded photographs.  I’m eager for the next adventure.