{"id":2871,"date":"2019-10-01T08:41:54","date_gmt":"2019-10-01T08:41:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2871"},"modified":"2019-10-01T10:00:57","modified_gmt":"2019-10-01T10:00:57","slug":"the-closest-you-can-get-to-the-truth-of-what-happened-is-a-multisided-account-interview-with-norma-percy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2871","title":{"rendered":"“The closest you can get to the truth of what happened is a multisided account”: Interview with Norma Percy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Anya Pearson <\/strong>speaks to documentary film-maker and producer Norma Percy, <\/strong>who won the Special Prize for Lifetime Achievement in 2010 for the documentaries she has produced in collaboration with Brian Lapping, which cover many of the political crises of the twentieth century.<\/em> Percy’s latest series, Inside Europe: Ten Years of Turmoil, documents the road to the EU referendum and was screened earlier this year. Her upcoming series on Cuba will be broadcast in November. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hi, Norma. George Orwell writes that “The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another\u201d. In your documentary Inside Europe, the word \u2018solidarity\u2019 in times of crisis seemed to mean very different things to different member states. Can you comment on that?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

What I do is try and make viewers feel\nthey’re inside the room when important decisions are being made. My team at\nBrian Lapping look for the turning points when something big is decided and find\nout who was there. We interview them after the event and ask them what happened.\nWhat we are after is evidence. I see myself not as a political scientist or\npolitical thinker – only a historian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In essence, we want to show how\ndecisions are made: in the case of INSIDE EUROPE, why Cameron called the\nreferendum, and how the two big EU issues in the lead-up to the referendum \u2013\nthe Euro crisis and the EU migration crisis \u2013 were handled. We leave it to the\nviewer to pull out any lessons they want to take from these moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does solidarity mean European\nsolidarity? There are people who put a very high priority on the European\nproject, others who put a high priority on getting what their country needs\nfrom Europe, and others who place a high priority on what they themselves\nneed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t always use this notion of\nself-interest in a derogatory way. What David Cameron did, obviously, was a\ndisaster. But his motive, i.e. keeping the Tory party together and dealing with\nthe European issue once and for all, is not necessarily ignoble, from many\npeople\u2019s points of view. Maybe that’s what Orwell meant in the quotation\nyou referred to. Those words can mean so many things that they don’t mean any\n(one) thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In what ways do\nyour contributors drive the narrative of your films, or are they structured\nfrom your research first and then they fill in the gaps? <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The answer is both. We read everything\nwe can find. Then we talk to everyone who was at a key meeting. Our\ncontributors drive it, but everyone gets a level playing field.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The classic example is the meeting we\nreconstruct when David Cameron is deciding whether to hold a referendum. It’s\nGeorge Osborne vs William Hague fighting for the soul of the Prime Minister.\nThey\u2019re both compelling interviewees. Each makes a good case. When you’re\nsitting in front of each of them, you’re completely convinced! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one is truly objective. The closest\nyou can get to the truth of what happened is a multisided account. Someone says:\n“I opened the meeting and I made a long and eloquent speech and everyone\nsat there mesmerised into silence”. Another witness will say “Oh,\nthat boring man went on and on and we were all bored into stupefaction.” So\nthere, the facts! This man made a long speech and everyone sat silent \u2013 that\u2019s what was told by all sides.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You’ve gained the\ntrust of so many world leaders with your interview technique. Why do you think\npeople trust you to tell their story?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

First of all, we have the luxury of\ntime. People think that\u2019s just because we’ve been doing this for thirty years\nthat so many people agree to talk to us. Hah! Going back to people is a tough\ntask, and experience gives you the tools to know how to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m going to say something totally\ncontroversial: most politicians are reasonable. What I mean is that they have\nreasons for describing what they want the people to understand. But first you\nhave to persuade them they will get a fair hearing and a wide audience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s not always easy. One top politician\nfinally agreed to take to take part in our history of the Iraq War. Then\ninexplicably he changed his mind.  We had\nto find someone \u2013 whom he trusted who knew our work and trusted us. This guy also\ngot a no \u2013 but he could ask: \u2018why?\u2019 Well, the week before the big politician had\ngiven a camera crew access to spend a week with him, he’d taken them out\nfishing and he’d landed the biggest fish he’d ever caught. But they didn’t use\nthat bit it in the film. Outraged, he\u2019d have nothing to do with television\nagain. Our go-between could say you are crazy \u2013 and persuade him to do our\ninterview after all. That’s an extreme example, but that’s how it works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Inside Europe,\nwe are reminded that Britain\u2019s relationship with Europe has always been\nfraught. Cameron is seen attempting to use the Eurozone crisis as leverage for\nunrelated negotiations inside Britain, ultimately giving into internal\nConservative party pressures to hold the 2016 referendum. But he himself is\nnotably absent from Inside Europe, refusing to be interviewed due to his\nexclusive publishing deal. What question would you have loved to ask him?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In the end, we got all the key scenes we wanted with him described by other people who were there. In every series there’s one story we are sure now happened, but we just can\u2019t find someone to say ‘I was there’. In this case it was a well-accepted rumour that Cameron committed to the 2015 referendum because he didn\u2019t think he\u2019d have to hold it. He expected he’d still be in coalition with the Lib Dems and they wouldn’t allow him to. Cameron was as surprised as anybody when he won the 2015 election outright. Boy, did we try to find a Conservative to say that. No good. Finally we met EU Council Donald Tusk!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seemed like\nyou had a great connection with Tusk. <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In order to ensure that the\ninterviewee make eye contact only with the person who’s doing the questions, we\nput a sheet between him and the others on the team who are listening. I was listening\nin on this. After every long answer, Tusk would lift up the sheet and say: ‘Was\nthat good enough, Norma?’ He just radiates honesty… and he’s a naturally good\nstoryteller. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another marvellous\nthing about your team\u2019s documentaries is that you use clips of political satire\nto portray moments of crisis. I’m thinking of the Saturday Night Live sketch\nabout Obama\u2019s early presidency and the puppets of Sarkozy and Merkel during the\nEurozone bailout. What do you think the use of absurdity does for your films?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

These documentaries are\nwatched in peoples’ living room at nine o’clock at night. They\u2019re not Orwell\nPrize Lectures. In Granada TV when I first started there, its founder Sidney\nBernstein put a photo of PT Barnham in every room to remind everyone that, you\nhave to entertain to keep people from switching over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mohammad Zatareih\nis a migrant from Syria who led thousands of refugees on foot through Hungary\nto Austria. What made you decide to interview an \u2018ordinary\u2019 migrant alongside\nglobal leaders?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

He wasn\u2019t a politician, but he made a\nkey decision that made something important happen. We don\u2019t interview ordinary\npeople \u00ad\u2013 not because we\u2019re against them, but because the decisions that most\npeople make are about their own and their families\u2019 lives. But Zatareih made a\ndecision that changed migration policy. When we are lucky enough to find such stories,\nit does improve the series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s fascinating because his personal story gave a very human face to the migrant crisis. Meanwhile, we learn a lot about Angela Merkel, who grew up in Communist East Germany, who had these very personal motivations for defending freedom of movement across the EU at all costs. She said: “We are not going to build any fences in Germany\u201d. Is it important to you to humanise these types of international political decisions?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In one sense, if you\u2019re interviewing\nthe person, you\u2019re halfway there. There is the human being in front of you. You\ncan see them, judge them and decide whether they are plausible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you build your programmes out of\ninterviews you can\u2019t make your interviewees look like liars  \u2013 or the viewer doesn\u2019t know who to believe. So\nwhen someone says something thing that is obviously a porky, we don\u2019t use it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was one exception. When we finally\nwe got the interview with Slobodan Milo\u0161evi?, we had an hour, and I would say\n55 mins of it was lies. We had to use it. He was the central character. Fortunately,\nwe interviewed his deputy too, who was proud of the things they did together. We\nput what he told us in with the archive footage of the result. The truth was\npretty clear.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you were\nmaking Putin, Russia and the West (2012) what was he like? Has your opinion of\nhim changed much since then?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In the first programme, dealing with\nwhen he first was President, I think he comes across very well. He had a good\nrelationship with Bush, and particularly his chap, Sergei Ivanov, higher in the\nKGB than Putin had been, and Condoleeza Rice, the two national security\nadvisors, had a fantastic relationship. Between 2000-2012, Russian-American\nrelations often worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Filming The Second Russian Revolution (1989-91)\nat the time of Gorbachev\u2019s rise was\nwonderful. In the UK I had used a technique that got UK ministers to tell stories\nthat I tried when I met Vitali Virotnikov, my first top Soviet: ‘Tell us what\nhappened in the Politburo, tell the story  like you went home and told your wife that night’.\nA look of complete horror spread across his face at the very idea of telling\nsuch a thing to his wife.<\/em>  But as Gorbachev\u2019s\npolicy of Glasnost (openness) spread and the Soviet rules came off, there were\nnone of the conventions that governed what UK politicians could or couldn’t say.\nThey told us things that we\u2019d never get in the \nWest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bu soon after the 2012 election it\nbecame harder and harder to work as a journalist in Russia. Today, many of the\npeople who had worked with us have left. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something that\nwon’t escape most viewers is that there are comparatively few women are in the\ninterview chair. <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I think it’s a real pity. More\nselfishly it gets me into a lot of problems! I have certain rules: we only film\npeople who were inside the room when decisions were made.  In one episode of INSIDE EUROPE the only two\nwomen relevant said no. It’s not fair to blame me \u2013 the problem is the\nsystem. More women should be in top jobs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn’t think\nyou’d avoided interviewing all the female decision-makers with a twisted\nanti-feminist motive!<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

It was easiest in Inside Obama\u2019s\nWhitehouse. There were black women and Latina women who were in top positions.\nWhen Mrs. Thatcher was there you didn\u2019t notice the absence \u2013 she dominated.\nMerkel isn\u2019t great for helping the cause for women on television. She gives\ngood press conferences and she radiates being the most sensible person in\npolitics. But she doesn\u2019t like giving retrospective interviews. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does the absence\nof women pose a serious threat to democracy? Democracy is arguably on the\ndecline; is there a gendered element to that?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I think the best person wins no matter\nwhat their gender. I’m never sure what I think about positive discrimination.\nIt would be wonderful if Michele Obama wanted to stand. If more wonderful\ncharismatic women stood forward it would be easier to be a feminist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your new documentary about Cuba comes out in November. Would you like to tell us about that?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s about Castro\u2019s relations with the outside world. It’s unfinished business from the Obama series where we could get no access to the Cuban side and had to drop the story. We thought: how can we crack this? It’s just the sort of place where you’ve got to make it the centre of your focus if you want to get anywhere \u2013 like Russia. We found a French production company that had very good access in Cuba, so we did it as a co-production with them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first episode shows how Castro made little Cuba a major player in the Cold War \u2013 and a thorn in the side of the US giant. The second is about how this all fell apart with the fall of the Soviet Union, and the hardship Cubans suffered with the loss of its Soviet backer. We also show the ingenious method Castro found to rescue Cuba from isolation \u2013 now under threat from Trump. We interviewed Bill Clinton and got access to unseen bits of an interview with Fidel. The team have produced some great peaks behind closed doors. Watch out for it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This interview with Norma Percy is the latest in a series of exclusive interviews with female\u00a0<\/em>Orwell Prize<\/em><\/a>\u00a0winners and shortlisters, from the <\/em>Political Quarterly and the\u00a0Orwell\u00a0Foundation.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anya Pearson speaks to documentary film-maker and producer Norma Percy, who won the Special Prize for Lifetime Achievement in 2010 for the documentaries she has produced in collaboration with Brian Lapping, which cover many of the political crises of the twentieth century. Percy’s latest series, Inside Europe: Ten Years of Turmoil, documents the road to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":239,"featured_media":2883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1391,1392,1408],"tags":[1461],"coauthors":[1419],"class_list":["post-2871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-international-politics","category-interviews","category-media-and-culture","tag-brexit"],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/cropped-Norma-headshot-high-res-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/239"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2871"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=2871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}