Mark Landsman, Filmmaker of SCANDALOUS: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer: ...And that's not to say that like I was born to make a story about a supermarket
tabloid. Like I never read The Enquirer growing up, I never cared about
supermarket tabloids. I thought it was a joke.
Film Courage: I was listening to an interview with John Pilger he's a journalist and
someone in the audience yelled out at a Q& A "There's this issue..."
and went on and on "What are you doing about it." Because he covers various
issues in his films and he said [Paraphrasing] "Well why do I have to be the poster child of
having to do something about it. We can all do something about it nowadays." how
do you feel about that because it used to be a select group that would be able
to spotlight these stories and go and delve in and now all of that's anyone
any one sort of with their own agenda or their own need to tell a story and a
camera or a phone can do that what are your thoughts I think I think ultimately
what I'm what I'm getting from the question is it's kind of a larger a
larger issue about like the ability to get stories out there right I mean we
all have Twitter right Twitter's a storytelling device in X number of
characters or less all of these devices all of these apps are newfangled stories
and we're all kind of technically our own little filmmaker I don't think
that's the same as making a film there's a responsibility in making a film if
you're making a film about something that's true if you're making a film
about something that's about real life or if you're even making a scripted film
about something that's historical fiction you know you have a
responsibility as the filmmakers to do justice to that story otherwise you're
going to slip into the propaganda universe and just be filling the world
with more of that and I think filmmakers are bold and they're on the frontier
they're truth seekers I think that's true of even the best scripted
filmmakers you know I mean I think back to BOYS DON'T CRY you know and what
Kimberly Peirce did you know that was an incredibly powerful i opening experience
that the world hadn't seen before and she did tremendous justice to that i
think we you know that's i like that your site is called Film Courage because
that's the kind of courage that that it takes to be a filmmaker you
have to be willing to really tell the truth and not be sort of just agenda
pushing all day long because people see right through that and by the way it's
you know unless you're the president in the United States whose agenda pushing
all day long you know you're you know you're most likely kind of in your own
little echo chamber and you have to be prepared to take the punches that are
going to come yeah online or in written form from people
that have various agendas whether they really didn't like the film or they're
paid troll which is something that I guess it's been around for ages but now
we have a real name for it yeah and yeah there's just all sorts of people in the
peanut gallery that have an opinion yeah yeah I mean the thing that's so great
about filmmaking period right now is we all have access to these tools that we
didn't have before you know you can have a phenomenal camera in your hand you can
have a phenomenal editing device on your laptop you know when I started out it's
like you can do that no you had to go and you know wait by the a/v cage and
your high school or your college and hope you got a camera then you have to
take a camera out get to put film in the camera
when I started you know what I mean and then you know and then you know film
became these tapes that we lugged around I mean we have you know kids can make
films these days so it's an incredible time to be a filmmaker now it's the
question really is a kiss so what are you gonna make a film about when you
feel that someone's got to make a film about this story why do you feel you
need to answer the call I think it's a very personal thing it's very subjective
for me I'm I'll be listening to public radio for example or I'll be reading an
article and I'll get a feeling I'll get a hit um sometimes that it'll be outrage
sometimes it'll be compassion sadness humor it'll hit me on an emotional level
and then I'll have a thought is this a story that could be a film and then the
next thought is um okay so if this is a story that could be a film this is a
story that I should tell that I'm able to tell or
I'm interested in telling and then it kind of just goes from there I think
that there's a lot of important questions we have to ask ourselves you
know a very wise friend of mine a fellow
filmmaker once said to me you know there's there's basically three basic
questions um why this story why now why you and you
know yes there's up those three questions and then it kind of helps you
like it gives you a little bit of a GPS well by the way I was it like and that's
not to say that like I was born to make a story about a supermarket tabloid like
I never read The Enquirer growing up I never cared about supermarket tabloids I
thought it was a joke to be honest with you the the other sort of important
thing about documentaries is access so this story found me in a way because a
parent of one of our dear friends was in town and we all went out and had drinks
and he starts you know rattling off these crazy stories about his former
life as a tabloid reporter for the National Enquirer and I was like wow
this is unbelievable I could listen to this guy all day long
so so I knew I had a window into that world you know before that dinner I had
no idea I didn't know I knew anyone at the Enquirer so I think access is a huge
part of filmmaking documentary filmmaking is you know it's one thing to
have a great idea but I think how you get into that idea that's a huge part of
it and that that can make your life easier as a documentarian so leaving
that family event or that that dinner event whatever way at what point did you
start thinking in your mind I I have to tell this story you know I'd say about
you know we had that dinner he told us all these crazy stories about espionage
and recording people and disguises and like you know booking hotel rooms next
to Madonna and Sean Penn and just crazy stuff and I thought okay this is an
incredible movie and then at the same time Jeffrey Toobin wrote an article in
The New Yorker about the relationship between Donald and David in
the National Enquirer and that's when it started to percolate oh this is actually
a bigger film you know and so that's when we I called
my friend's father and I said hey do you think you could get other of your former
colleagues to talk on camera about their experiences as Enquirer reporters and he
said well let me work on it and that process took many months and some people
refused my phone calls some people slam the phone down on us
some people said I'll consider it and never got back some people said I'd love
to you but I have a non-disclosure agreement and I'm not gonna violate that
because I don't want to get sued they were scared but enough of them said why
not I'll do it I don't have a contract anymore I don't have an NDA I don't you
know this is a story that should be told let's do it and that's when we knew we
had a film and with all that information with that access that's when we went to
the folks at CNN Films and said hey we have something here and during those
many months that sort of all this was coming together and you were getting
yeses noes maybes were you also going to the supermarket and watching people
interact with the paper absolutely I mean that happened before that so
starting in late 2015-2016 as the campaign was ramping up I would have
these very bizarre sensations hitting the supermarket line looking at the
tabloid headlines because there were these really weird stories about you
know "Hillary Clinton going to jail she's hooked on narcotics, she has six months
to live," apparently every week she had six months to live and then you know all
these glowing stories about Donald and how he's going to make America great
again and yada yada yada and it was like this is
crazy this is the National Enquirer and I feel like I'm looking at a political
poster in my face you know with my cereal in line at the grocery store so I
just started to feel like this is crazy and then you start reading reports in
other places about this kind of strange bedfellows between the presidential campaign
and AMI and David and that's when it all started to kind of peak enough
curiosity to make us pursue a film
you