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• Article on Mr. Demme and The Agronomist
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Filming post-Katrina New Orleans. (11:06)
 

Tavis: I'm here in New Orleans in front of one of the many homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and honored to be joined by Jonathan Demme. Beginning Monday, we will air a weeklong series from this Oscar-winning director called, "Right to Return: New Home Movies from the Lower 9th Ward." The unique documentary project tells the story of residents of the Lower 9th Ward who are fighting obstacles and long odds to rebuild their neighborhood, their city and their lives. Here now a scene from "Right to Return."

[Film Clip]

Tavis: Jonathan, great to be with you here in New Orleans.

Jonathan Demme: It's great to be here with you, Tavis.

Tavis: And specifically here in the Lower 9th Ward. Let me start by asking where you got the idea to do this project, to spend the time you spent in this city, in this part of the city, for these many months?

Demme: Well, all of us who lived outside of New Orleans were horrified and heartbroken by what we saw when Katrina hit, and the floods that followed the hurricane. I talked to Cyril Neville, my friend from New Orleans, on New Year's Day 2006.

Cyril was describing to me something that I didn't know about, something that the media wasn't telling, about how there were people down in New Orleans, in the hardest hit neighborhoods like in the Lower 9th Ward, the 9th Ward, Gentile, all over town, that were literally fighting to have the right to return to their homes.

The more Cyril talked to me about it, I thought, you know, we need to bear witness to this. This sounds to me like, if you're a filmmaker and you've got a camera - and I've got a little camera - we need to try to get down there and try to find some of these people and record this struggle, because it sounds very important.

Tavis: Let me press a little further and ask, when we start airing this series for five nights this coming Monday, what is different about the treatment that you have given this documentary? I ask that because so much has been done and said about New Orleans that one could argue not nearly enough, but tell me how the Demme treatment is different on this particular project.

Demme: Well, you know, this piece we call "New Home Movies from the Lower 9th Ward" and that's sort of what they are. Daniel Wolff and I went down the first two seasons. We were joined later by Abdul Franklin, and we visited homes, and we made home movies where the people like Caroline Parker's house here welcomed us into their homes or their FEMA trailers, and they welcomed the opportunity to share their experiences with us.

I think that, as far as I know, we're the only record thus far of an attempt to capture, literally to me, heroic struggles of trying to keep your home and to rebuild your neighborhood.

Tavis: When you say heroic struggles, tell me what you mean by that because we use the word "hero" in our society almost in a glib sort of way and, when you say hero with regard to the folk in this area who are, again, against all the odds coming back to the Lower 9th Ward, what do you mean by hero?

Demme: Well, you know, it's really interesting because I think that probably coming down originally to record these stories, we didn't know who we were going to meet. We didn't know what it was going to be like. I think that probably there was a sense that we were going to record the victims and the aftermath of a tragedy.

What we discovered were these extraordinary persons after persons after persons wherever we went, people who dared - Caroline Parker dared to come back to this when the city of New Orleans said, "We're not helping you." The state of Louisiana made promises they didn't keep, and certainly the federal government did nothing to help. Yet they came back literally in a pioneer way.

All businesses in the 9th Ward and the Lower 9th Ward, every single one, was closed. There were no drugstores. There were no pharmacies. There were no gas stations. There were no restaurants. There was nothing. They fought for their right to get home because, in those days, there was a very real threat that the powers that be wanted to kind of bulldoze all the homes away and rebuild New Orleans as a boutique city.

Tavis: Let me ask you a question that goes to the heart, I think, of what it means to be a filmmaker. I'm just trying to get a sense of your vision here and why you would, again, do a project like this.

When you consider that the mainstream media has essentially allowed this story to fall off the radar. I mean, if we were here a year and a half ago almost now, we couldn't make our way through the neighborhood for all the television trucks, for all the cameras, for all the anchors reporting live here, particularly from the Lower 9th Ward, the area of New Orleans hardest hit.

We're the only ones around here right about now, and you've been the only one here really, for the last year and a half almost, covering these stories. As a filmmaker, as an artist, what is the story now? Is there a story here that should compel folk beyond Jonathan Demme to be here chronicling this? What is the story? Because, if there is a story, there are a lot of folk who've decided that, at this point, it's not worth covering. Does that make sense?

Demme: Well, I hear what you're saying. Probably the wrong answer, but what I think of first is that these are really the great people. They're the kind of people that you want to get to know. There's a spiritual dimension, I think, to this refusal to give up the homes. I've never encountered such sort of mass spirituality as I have on these trips to New Orleans. It's very inspiring; it's very moving.

I just feel that, you know, where I live, I love my neighborhood and I think that, if a flood washed all our homes away from the neighborhood, I live in Rockland County, New York, and I don't see a bunch of us going back to our devastated neighborhood because we wanted to keep that Rockland County culture alive. I'm not quite sure, but it's a nice American area (laughter).

But the people that we met time and again, after we were coming down here, are not only insisting on their right to go home again. I heard Caroline Parker say today, "That's my house. I own it. How dare they tell me I can't go back to my house." But it's more than that. I think Caroline feels that New Orleans has something tremendously valuable, culturally, philosophically, to offer the country.

If you let that culture be exterminated - and that's a supercharged word - but I think that's when I feel the federal government was really proposing and recommending and trying to enact at the time in the aftermath of the flood. Our first trip in January, they wanted to level it and start all over again, and they didn't want to make it a place that the people who lived here originally could return to.

Tavis: Let me offer this as an exit question. When you said a moment ago that you had never in your career, in your life, been exposed - your phrase here - to the mass spirituality that you were exposed to, covering these persons trying to repair and rebuild their lives here in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, did that do anything to you or for you and, if so, what?

A white guy being exposed to the mass spirituality of these Black folk here in the Lower 9th? Not that you are a stranger to projects of color. You did, of course, direct "Beloved," the wonderful Toni Morrison story, but what did this mass spirituality exposure do, if anything, for Jonathan Demme, the man?

Demme: Well, I think that it's given me probably - I'm reverential of this spirituality in a way that I don't think I ever thought truthfully, Tavis, that much about. You know, if someone believes in Jesus and follows the Christian life, I love that and I respect it very, very much. I have a cousin who's an Episcopalian minister and I used to love going to his church. Not because I'm terribly religious, but I liked the idea of people coming together in a positive way.

But I'm in awe now of the practical application of that spirituality to a real-life situation like this. It's just so profound to me. I'm going to go home and my faith is inspired by whether it's Jesus or whether, in some situations, some of the families that we've gotten to know draw their spiritual power more from the old African religions.

They believe - and even some of the volunteers that we've met coming down here. Someone that we're going to see in one of the films is Malik Rahim. I don't know what Malik's spiritual or religious orientation is, but I do know that he believes profoundly in human beings and he has tremendous faith in humanity.

Some of the other volunteers that we met, like Brandon Darby, they believe in the people so deeply. But everyone we've met down here, everyone who's been down here, the first ones to come back either to reclaim their homes or to help those that want to reclaim their homes, they are motivated by deep spiritual conviction, and I'm impressed.

Tavis: Well, let me close by saying that we've been here for a couple of days and I have enjoyed the opportunity. Not just enjoyed, but been enlightened, been encouraged, been empowered by the opportunity to meet all of these persons that our audience is going to meet starting next Monday night.

I've really been pleased to spend this time with you and I'm delighted to have you on the program. What an honor it is for us at this program to be able to showcase your work and to share it with the world starting Monday night. So, an honor to see you.

Demme: That's a two-way street, Tavis. It's an honor to be with you. I honestly feel that, for you to open up the airwaves to the people of New Orleans to share with their fellow Americans what's been going on down here and giving everybody a chance to kind of fall in love with these people, it's only you would do it and God bless you.

Tavis: So you know, Academy Award-winner, Jonathan Demme. "Beloved," of course, "Silence of the Lambs." You know his wonderful work. On Monday night, during this regular program, Monday through Friday, starting next Monday, feature this wonderful series called "Right to Return: New Home Movies from the Lower 9th Ward."