Get those releases!

A documentary filmmaker is in a legal dispute with Stanford University about whether the proper releases were signed during an interview with a Stanford professor, The Stanford Daily reports.

Documentary filmmaker Phelim McAleer apparently got a signed release from the professor he interviewed, Stephen Schneider, but Stanford then cited a regulation that says that all interviews on the Stanford campus must be approved in advance by the University’s office of communications. The filmmaker is being told he can’t use the footage he shot on campus, including that of the interview with Schneider.

It’s likely that when Schneider agreed to an interview, that appeared to be enough for McAleer; but it also turned out that Schneider didn’t like the result. McAleer’s film, “Not Evil, Just Wrong,” which is about “environmental extremism,” showed Schneider making seemingly contradictory remarks about global warming. The Daily reported:

According to Associate Director of University Communications Kate Chesley, Schneider did not have the interview banned because of embarrassing or difficult questions, but rather because of dishonest filmmaking. According the Daily, university spokesperson Kate Chesley said it was the professors’s upset about how the footage was used that led to the issue of the release.

So if the professor liked the result, the rule would not have been applied?

“Essentially, Prof. Schneider asked our office to help him extricate himself from a documentary for which he had been interviewed,” Chesley said. “He felt that the filmmakers had not fairly represented their intent, and when that intent became clear, he didn’t want to participate in their project.”

The variety of issues here is interesting. One is the purpose of a release, which is to make the subject aware that the interview is not in the subject’s control once it’s done. In other words, “choose your words carefully.” That doesn’t mean the subject has no other recourse if the film portrays him/her negatively; there are both libel and privacy laws (such as “distortion” and “false light”) governing misrepresentation that Schneider could utilize in a civil suit, but that would require a court review of the material, to determine of the cited statements truly were out of context. Maybe they weren’t.

McAleer is a former print journalist, serving as a correspondent for The Financial Times and a contributor to The Economist.

In my years as a print journalist, I never once had anyone sign a release for an interview, never worked at an organization that required them, and never had a resulting issue. Of course, that was print, and somehow the taping of the interview, on the campus, is different. The distinction, when it comes to releases, is that a documentary film is somehow categorized as “entertainment,” rather than journalism. Also, the permission-to-be-on-campus element is similar. I know of documentary footage shot on the Stanford campus where there was no such permission; in fact, I’m not sure some Stanford faculty are aware of the rule. Even Chesley’s statement seems to support that.

By the same token, when a subject feels they’ve been misrepresented, through the magic of editing, they may have the right to use whatever legalities they can. I’ve concluded as a journalist that getting people with strong viewpoints means they’ll be proud to see their viewpoints represented, just as they are. When subjects complain of being out of context when their words are recorded, it can often mean there might have been a better interview subject to approach. Squeezing a quote or viewpoint out of someone who disavows it later is never inherently strong material in this sort of policy discussion. (As opposed to, say, videotaping a murder confession).

The release game is an interesting one. In Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine,” the filmmaker’s ambush of Charlton Heston seems to be something done without a signed release, but rather verbal permission. Some sites argue Moore’s complete misrepresentation of Heston’s views.

The article notes that the filmmaker is not completely deleting Schneider from the film, and in fact may only make the professor look worse:

In the documentary, the interview has been replaced with a blank screen with an audio clip of the actor reading the transcript of the interview.

But taking it this far may only make the filmmaker worse as well.