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"You know, I don't even know if I'm being coy ... I get the 'What's it about?' question endlessly. Who is Fred? Is he a bad guy? Is he an anti-Semite? Is he misguided? Is he evil? Well, you can decide for yourself whether I'm self-deceived on this issue," Morris is laughing. "I think there is something chameleon-like, something almost evanescent, ephemeral. It's very hard to get closure on the question: Who is this man?"

Our food arrives. Morris isn't hungry and he's in a hurry. He gets a toasted bagel and tea and continues pondering "Mr. Death" and what is real. "Here you have this crazy character right out of Nabokov," Morris says, referring to Leuchter, "the totally clueless narrator. He makes Humbert Humbert look like someone with intense self-knowledge." Morris laughs. "You know, I've read a lot of reviews where I've been criticized that somehow I should have provided closure, that I should have plumbed the details of Fred's history -- defined, perhaps, that one illustrative event that would make everything come clear. It's that fantasy picture that will identify the evil at the heart of the man; the imagined desecration of a Jewish cemetery ... or a synagogue on fire." He is laughing again. "But," Morris proclaims, "it's not there."

As I eat my sandwich, Morris describes one of his favorite scenes in "Mr. Death" in which Fred Leuchter, electric chair designer, straps himself into his own execution machine. "I think it's really hard to find a triple irony," Morris remarks. "You know, as a connoisseur of irony, double ironies are good to come by, triple ironies are really good to come by."

I say that the bits of archival footage used in "Mr. Death" have a forceful, lingering quality all their own. Morris agrees. "There are certain images that you see and somehow it's very, very hard to take them out of your head. They remain in there and it's like a chicken bone caught in the throat."

Morris' use of such footage -- staged shots and reenactments, among other stylistic embellishments -- has been the source of controversy among documentary film purists. I admit that I have a bit of an ax to grind with the overrated, overfunded Ken Burns, who seems to be the only documentary filmmaker acknowledged by mainstream America. "I'd like to grind an ax against his head," Morris shoots back.

Morris has no shortage of opinions regarding the use of reenactments, which appear most notably in "The Thin Blue Line" and some of his more recent films. "Often we like to reduce documentary to journalism and we like to feel secure about journalism -- that we're not being tricked or betrayed or swindled or lied to. But no one really worries about it that much as long as it's being presented in the right idiom. As long as it looks real, people are delighted. But what the reenactments do in, say, 'The Thin Blue Line' is provide this wealth of visual contradiction. They're never illustrations of what I think the world is. They're illustrations of lies. They're all ironic. They, hopefully, teach you how images can't embody truth." Morris is smiling again.

"How's that?" he asks abruptly.

It's fine, I tell him. He then informs me that if any of what he's been saying sounds too pretentious, I should tell him to stop. I appreciate the offer, but remind him that our interview is nearly over. I go with the standard closer and ask what we should expect next from him. He tells me about his upcoming Bravo series, "First Person": "I'm interviewing people for the show this week. Hey," he exclaims, "got any ideas for the show?" I suggest Mae Noell the gorilla woman and Hasil Adkins, the backwoods rockabilly legend, but it's time for Morris to go to another appointment.

And for me, as he prophesized, it's time for an antacid.
salon.com | Jan. 29, 2000

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