Documentary Now! (2015–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - Kunuk Uncovered - full transcript

Good evening.

I'm Helen Mirren,

And you're watching
Documentary Now!

For the past 50 years,

Documentary Now!
Has presented audiences

with the world's
most thought-provoking cinema.

This season, to celebrate
our golden anniversary,

we take a look back at the films

that helped shape, change,
and innovate

the world of documentary.

We begin with a story
of an inuit, a director,



and how you can't always believe
what you see

in the 1985 film
Kunuk Uncovered.

In 1922,
director William H. Sebastian

introduced American audiences
to an eskimo named Kunuk

in the now-classic film
Kunuk the Hunter.

It was groundbreaking cinema,
a box office success,

and has been credited
with creating the genre

that we now call documentary.

But questions about Kunuk
have always lingered.

What was the relationship
between filmmaker and subject?

Were the actions depicted
real or staged?

Was the first documentary
a documentary at all?

Or was it something else?

Now, with new interviews
and recently recovered footage,



we can finally know the answers.

You have to understand
that in the early 1920s,

everyone had eskimo fever.

If you were hosting
an exposition

and your exposition had
an eskimo in it,

people would line up
around the block

for a chance to see it.

I remember my William saying

that seeing an eskimo
in London or New York.

Would never be as exciting

as seeing them
in their natural settings.

If he could find a way
to do that, he said,

he could make a fortune.

At the time, I had just finished
shooting a film

called Passing Train.

It was playing to much fanfare
in Europe.

And Sebastian saw the film,
and he contacted me.

No one had ever shot a film

in the conditions
he was proposing,

but I could tell
he had a vision.

He would use words like
"realism" and "truth,"

and at that time, those words
meant a great deal to me.

And, uh, two weeks later,
we arrived in Canada.

I just took the job.

"Dearest Meredith,
tomorrow we reach St. George.

"I am trembling with excitement.

"The very idea of committing

"these funny little monsters
to film

brings a smile to my face
even as my heart aches for you."

When we finally
arrived at the trading post,

he told me to set up my camera

and rounded up
some local hunters.

Now, Sebastian thought
a good scene for his film

would be eskimos being puzzled

by where the sound came
from a gramophone.

This really delighted him.

He thought that was
a funny idea.

They all thought
he was some sort of clown.

I mean, these eskimos
were... were laughing,

and he didn't care
for their laughter.

See, Sebastian is so...
a dude of his size advantage,

he could impose his will
physically on the eskimo.

But they were a wiry lot,
I tell ya.

They just kicked the crap
out of him.

They shoved snow in his mouth.

They'd shove it in his butt.

They cold-cocked him,

where they put his member
in a block of ice

and then stomped on it.

The letters from Sebastian
at this time

were very dire.

He was intent on coming home

with nothing to show
for his travels.

He told me he wanted a drink,

and I was against it,
but I'll admit I gave it to him,

'cause that's the kind of guy
I was.

I was a big enabler,

and if you were trying
to kick a habit,

I gave you the thing you wanted.

Anyways, then we noticed
the men in the village

leaving en masse,

and we were told
that they were departing

for a months-long hunt.

And it was at that moment I saw,
amongst the womenfolk,

a solitary man waving.

And that was Pipilok,
and he saved our film, yeah.

"My dearest Meredith,

"fortune has smiled upon us.

"I have discovered
the star of our film.

"He is slow of mind, but this
makes him a malleable subject

that I can make do what I wish."

There was an eskimo girl
who spoke a little English,

and we hired her
to be our translator.

I agreed to translate,
but I told them it was a mistake

to work with Pipilok.

The gods had cursed him
in the head.

Pipilok was everything
Sebastian wanted and more.

If you handed him a prop
of any kind,

he would take it and use it
as something else.

Sebastian always insisted

he wanted the film
to have comic moments.

That was a phrase he used,
"comic moments."

Pipilok, he was perfect
at those.

But if you needed eskimos
doing eskimo things,

he was not your guy.

I mean, there was a reason
Pipilok wasn't on the hunt

with the rest of the men
in the village.

He wasn't just bad
at being an eskimo;

I mean, there was something
fundamentally wrong

with this guy.

I figured,
"Well, the game is up."

We tried, but this wasn't
an eskimo to make a movie about.

But Sebastian, he...
he didn't agree.

He tied Pipilok's wrists
to the handles,

and he nailed the soles
of his boots

to the bottom of the sled.

Yeah, I saw this.

It's one of
the most famous shots

in one of the most famous films
ever made,

and all I ever remember
are the sounds of his screams.

Boy, he was howling
across the tundra and back,

Screaming.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah."

Sebastian
would brag to the women

that he was making a real film
with real people,

but everything they did
was fake.

For the famous
spear-hunting scene,

Sebastian would have
several eskimo women

submerged underwater.

When Pipilok put his spear in,

they had to stick a fish
on the end of it.

I was a little anxious
and, uh, distressed

by the direction
I thought the film was going,

and I tried to speak
to Sebastian,

but at this point, he... you know,
he was drinking even more,

and he started taking up

with many of the local
village women.

He always talked about
how fat they were

and how they looked like guys.

Ugly women, the eskimo.

My god, they were ugly.

I about three of 'em.

"My dearest Meredith,

"we are capturing
the true eskimo tradition

like no one ever before."

He was very pleased
with how it was going,

but he wanted to make certain

that it looked
as good as he hoped.

Sebastian had sent the film
to be developed,

and the first few reels
made their way back to us.

When Sebastian showed us the film,

we all laughed.

How silly it was that Pipilok
looked like a hunter.

But Pipilok was not laughing.

After we watched the footage,

I asked Pipilok what he thought.

He told me there was no Pipilok.

There was only Kunuk.

Whoa.

"Dearest Meredith,

"the most adorable thing
happened

"at the screening last night.

"Pipilok now believes

"he is the hunter
we have made him out to be.

"He has started referring
to himself as Kunuk.

And insists we do the same."

We all thought
it was funny that night,

but the next morning,
as we were setting up

for a shot of Pipilok emerging
from his igloo,

He wouldn't come out.

Pipilok explained that
he thought he looked too old

in the footage he had seen
the night before.

There was a prostitute in town
who painted her face.

He suggested Sebastian hire her
to make his face look younger.

Took me upwards
of an hour to explain

that we wanted to pay her
for something that wasn't sex.

Kunuk was such a sweet man.

Simple, fragile, but sweet.

The shots we did get that
day were completely unusable

for obvious reasons.

And that was just the beginning
of things going south,

I tell you.

"The whore has convinced Pipilok

"that we shouldn't have to wait
until the end of the day to eat.

"Now he insists
that we have a table

"with coffee
and other craft services

to enjoy in the downtime
between shooting."

You could sense.

That Sebastian felt he was
losing control over his film.

But he was stronger
than Pipilok,

so he used that
to his advantage.

Sebastian was,
if nothing else, a bully.

For the next hour,
things went smoothly

until Marie's pimp showed up.

Oh, boy, now, this guy.

He called himself Chacal,

which is French for "jackal."

It turns out
after Sebastian hit Pipilok,

Marie went straight into town
to get him.

He felt outraged that the
eskimo wasn't being compensated.

Sebastian said,
"That's not how it works."

And the man struck him
across the face.

From that day on,

Chacal became Pipilok's manager.

Making matters worse,
Chacal decided.

That Marie needed to be
in the film.

I remember overhearing
Sebastian say to Chacal,

"What would she play, anyway?"

Chacal said, "She can play
the queen of the eskimos"

"for all I care,

but she's going to be
in the picture."

At that point, it was
getting very difficult to shoot.

Pipilok would only work
four hours a day.

I mean, I was about to tell
Sebastian, "Hey, I'm leaving."

And then the men came back
from the hunt.

Remember them?

Now, Sebastian had left pieces
of his clothing

in pretty much every igloo
in the village,

and I figured he was a dead man.

Sebastian had to leave
in the dark of the night.

The women gave him some blankets
and some food

but assumed he would just die
in the woods.

That was okay.

At first, it was fun for them

to be sleeping
with a fancy white man,

but they told me he needed a lot
of positive feedback sexually.

That got tiresome.

When I realized
Sebastian had gone,

I once again thought,
"Well, hey, that's it.

End of that. I'm going home."

But then Chacal approaches me,
and he says, uh... he says, uh,

"I want to speak to you
about my client."

I say, "Go ahead."

And he tells me that Pipilok
would like to direct.

I just laughed in his face.

But I tell you, what I saw next
completely changed my mind.

Pipilok had put the camera
on a sled.

I asked him what he was doing,
and he explained

that if that sled ran
alongside the sled he was on,

it would make for
a more interesting shot.

And he was right, of course.

After we finished shooting,
I slapped him on the back,

and I told him

he had just changed the way
films were gonna be made.

And the next thing he said to me
was so jarring,

I had to have Aglatki
translate it twice.

"We can grab each other's asses
later.

Let's make a film."

There were more
filmmaking innovations made

in the next three days

than there were in the previous
three years, I tell you.

Pipilok felt strongly

that the camera should see
what he was seeing.

He kept calling it
his point of view.

We strapped the camera

to the front of the sled,
facing out.

We flipped it around
so it was facing Pipilok.

For the seal-hunting scene,

he wanted the camera having
the point of view of the seal.

I told him there was no way

I was getting in the water
with my camera.

He laughed at me, and he said,
"We'll build a set."

And we did, and it was amazing,
of course.

But no one knew that
more than he did, I tell you.

I was on assignment

with the Bureau
of American Ethnography.

We were traveling
across country,

interviewing indigenous people
at the time.

I had just arrived at St. George

when I heard
a film was being shot.

I was intrigued, of course,
and found my way to their set.

Pipilok wanted to record sound
for the film,

not music but actual dialog.

I said, "Pipilok,
that's not how it works."

I explained who I was,
and his eyes went wide.

I started immediately.

When Pipilok fired Marie,

she was very surprised.

He told me he was making a film
with realism and truth

and that a white woman had
no place in it.

Marie had told Chacal

she had been fired
from the film.

He came to the set
to put Pipilok straight.

Being a director
turned him into a tyrant.

Pipilok hired Nuka
to be his leading actress.

He wanted a shot of her
holding a baby

in such a way that the sun would
hit her just right.

Pipilok didn't like
the way Nuka was doing it.

He kept telling her
that it was artless.

He was very angry.

He was becoming
completely unglued.

He started working
with his shirt off

despite the bitter cold,

and when we asked him about it,

he would say things like,
"I am the cold.

"I am the northern wind.

I am Kunuk."

And you have to remember
his name wasn't Kunuk.

It was Pipilok.

The day of the blizzard, I said,
"Well, he's not gonna shoot."

And he did.

He kept yelling at us
that we were cowards.

He was going out there
with or without us.

He kept saying the blizzard
would fix all of the...

What was the term?

The third-act problems.

Alexander said,
"Well, he's an eskimo.

At least he knows
what he's doing."

And I remember thinking,
"He's not an eskimo.

"He's an idiot.

He's gonna die."

It was the worst
storm in half a century.

Ships in the dock
had been unmoored

and lost to the sea.

He never stood a chance.

We never found
him or the camera, no.

But we had the film.

Thank god I had that film.

I kept the film.

How about that?

When Barnabas left, he asked

if there was anything
he could do for me.

What she wanted was an
associate producer's credit.

I didn't know what that was,
so I said yes.

I walked Barnabas to the docks
to wish him good-bye.

And while we were waiting
for his ship,

we were approached
by the most filthy beggar.

Despite the beard and the hair,

I knew it was Sebastian
immediately.

I mean, he was covered in feces,
his own.

When I asked him why, he said,
"To keep the wolves away."

I mean, he had really gone nuts.

Barnabas cleaned him up

and bought him a ticket home.

It's more
than I would have done;

I'll tell you that much.

We returned home,

and I tell you I was so excited

for Sebastian to see
what Pipilok had shot.

And he hated it,

said it was too unsettling,

told me to burn it all,
to burn it!

The only thing Sebastian kept,
of everything Pipilok did,

was the name Kunuk.

He liked the name Kunuk.

It was a hit.

When the film ended
the opening night,

people leapt to their feet

and demanded they start it again
from the beginning.

There's no accounting
for taste, is there?

Here was a film
not a tenth as good

as the one
we could have showed them,

and they ate it up.

- Audiences...
- they're useless.

He didn't live long
enough to enjoy his success.

He died two weeks
after the premiere

with what the physician said
was...

"All the gonorrhea."

He was a silly man.

Made a great film, though.