'When you have a four-year-old celebrity it says interesting things about fame'
Screenjabber's Robert Hull talks with director Amir Bar-Lev about his controversial documentary My Kid Could Paint That, in which a four-year-old art prodigy and her family find themselves part of a brutal media circus — and the filmmaker becomes a character in his own movie.
How did you come across the story in the first place?
I read a New York Times piece and it intrigued me on a number of levels. When you have a four-year-old celebrity it says interesting things about fame and about the way the media works. But when you have a four-year old prodigy in painting, in abstract painting, there’s this extra layer of questions about how abstract painting is judged. But the cinematic part of it was that this is a very likeable, seemingly innocent, family who are confronting these issues. And it seemed like it would be a documentary about someone who had won the lottery. You always hear that it’s a mixed bag at best when somebody wins, and often their friendships change, their relationships change, and that’s what I thought I was getting into.
Have you found that everyone has a different ‘take’ on the movie?
Yes, absolutely. I have to be clear, I didn’t set out to make an open-ended film. I am glad that it is an open-ended film, but if I had a knockout punch in my footage I would have to put it in the film. It would be unethical to omit it just because I wanted to make a good mystery movie. And it would have been wrong to sit in the edit room with a bean counter going, ‘one for, one against, one for, one against’ just to make a good mystery.
Is it the most complex or difficult film you’ve made, just from the emotional aspect of it?
Well, I’ve only made two films and I would say that from a moral and ethical standpoint this one is hopefully the most challenging one I’ll ever do (laughs). I’d like things to be a little more cut and dried maybe next time. I recently saw The Great World of Sound (2007, US indie comedy directed by Craig Zobel). It seems to me that there are documentary elements in it, where they are doing auditions with musicians, and I think — I may be mistaken, but I think — that those musicians didn’t know exactly what context they were in. So when you watch it, the entertainment value, the drama, is heightened because you really are sensing that you are watching two things at once here; you are watching a tense interpersonal interaction and also an entertaining film. There’s the drama and then there’s the fact that you know that real people sat in a real room have navigated a tense interpersonal situation. The same goes for My Kid Could Paint That, there’s a story but you also have to remember that it really happened. Even though there’s a lot of artifice and construction in any documentary, the reality is that this interpersonal schism actually happened and is happening to this day.
Would you say that the relationship between you and the Olmstead has totally broken down?
It’s very strained. They have seen the film, of course. I sat them down and showed them it just before we premiered at Sundance, and they were unhappy with it.
What was the feeling like in the Olmsteads’ living room as you filmed them watching the 60 Minutes documentary (the one that discredits them and Marla)?
Terrible. I was sitting there saying to myself, ‘Is it possible that I’ve been filming a lie.’ And actually saying to myself, ‘Impossible. There’s just no way.’ Because I felt that I’d already filmed Marla painting. Also, I did not feel, and still to this day have a very hard time accepting, that those two people would be involved in anything like that. I knew I was no longer a fly on the wall. And I also knew that my story had just gotten quite interesting. And I knew that they knew that too.
Did you think you learned anything about truth while you were making this film?
There’s no objectivity in documentary filmmaking. I spent a year of time with the Olmsteads and I turned it into an 84-minute movie. There are scenes that in actuality were four hours long, which I turned into a three-minute sequence. There’s no formula that I could pore those four hours through and suddenly come out with a three-minute scene. But, that doesn’t mean there’s no truth.