Just a Shot Away

by Saul Austerlitz

  * * *

  In the Maysleses’ editing suite, the stacked work prints rose in teetering piles that almost reached up to the ceiling. David and Albert sat at facing desks, able to communicate with only a glance. Albert would idly retool his Arriflex camera, while David would smoke one cigarette after another as he worked the phones, making connections, hunting down leads, and looking for business. Albert would occasionally pop into the editorial room to check on Zwerin’s progress. David had spent a great deal of time with Jagger over the course of shooting the film, and had grown enamored of the Stones singer’s panache, style, and sulky charm. Jagger seemed to him the epitome of what a modern man could be, his slinky cool a major component of what attracted him to making a film on the Rolling Stones.

  During the editing of the Altamont film, David had ditched his Brooks Brothers attire and started dressing in Jagger-esque clothes, letting his famous friend’s dark-prince aesthetic creep into his wardrobe, all swirling scarves and shaggy hair. He would show up in long-sleeved T-shirts, resplendent in pastel colors like peach and apricot, paired with tight bell-bottoms. David found that Mick Jagger reminded him of his cousin Alan, a bon vivant and World War II fighter pilot who had died tragically young. The editors would pore over footage of the Maysleses’ encounters with the band, and would get to see and hear David’s interactions with Jagger, which seemed to betray a closeness at odds with the filmmaker-subject relationship. Speculation started to creep around the office: did David have a crush on Mick Jagger? Were David and Mick actually having an affair? The likelihood of the latter seemed vanishingly remote, even to those who glimpsed the intensity of David’s affection firsthand, but it was a telling question nonetheless. Had the filmmaker grown too close to his subject? And had that closeness eroded the necessary artistic distance to tell a truthful story?

  Moreover, an inherent suspicion clouded the Maysleses and Zwerin’s project, long before anyone caught a glimpse of a single frame. If this film had started off as a kind of promotional film for the Rolling Stones, how could it ever shed its PR trappings and become a work of art willing to stake out a critical stance vis-à-vis its subjects? A sense of skepticism set in about the film, a belief that whatever its final form, it would be the fruit of a poisonous tree. How could anyone trust the filmmakers to do something so radically different from what they had first set out to do? Moreover, how would a film about a rock band be affected, consciously or otherwise, by the knowledge that the band would financially benefit from the film?

  Zwerin’s calm inspired a kind of diligent craftsmanship in the editors working under her. Four separate editing rooms were at work at all times at 1697 Broadway, each one wrestling with its own challenges, its own invisible demons to slay. Joanne Burke had been working on the film for months as an editor and silently wrestled with the same questions as Zwerin. She had yet to see the entire film, concentrating her efforts on the segments she was working on, but she had the sense that the film lacked a core. Some segments were absolutely brilliant, she believed. The footage that had come in from Altamont had demonstrated a focus and ingenuity that was downright remarkable. But there were so many strands of narrative to follow, so many threads to account for, that Burke could not imagine how this could ever become a film. It was simply too episodic to work. There was no way to knit it all together.

  Many evenings, Zwerin would take a dinner break before returning to the office and continuing her work. She would repair to her nearby apartment, which she shared with her boyfriend, editor Kent McKinney. McKinney would devote six months to the editing of a single song, the bravura slow-motion take on the Stones’ “Love in Vain.” Zwerin and McKinney would often be joined by Albert and David, and by younger editors like Burke and Mirra Bank. Glasses of wine would be poured, and the day’s challenges mulled over at leisure. Charlotte and David had once dated, as well, and though they were no longer a couple, with David having just started to see Judy Verhagen, who would soon become his wife, they had remained close. It was obvious to all the crew working by their side that a deep emotional connection still existed between the two filmmakers, only hastened by their mutual love for the technical, moral, and emotional challenges of the filmmaking process. They were joined in advancing toward a shared goal that they could see far off, in the distance.

  The problem, as Zwerin saw it, was that the Rolling Stones needed to be confronted with the proof of their own failures. They had to witness the havoc they had caused. But the Stones had fled Altamont immediately after their performance, leaving the scene of the crime without ever seeming to have acknowledged the disaster. Moreover, direct cinema required that filmmakers only seek to shape the material that came to them. They were to be simultaneously passive and active: passively gathering footage without interfering in events as they unfolded, and then actively shaping that raw material into a narrative.

  Zwerin saw a way through the tangle of complications, but it required skills more in keeping with David Maysles’s strengths. David would have to pull a rabbit out of a hat, and convince the putative criminals to return to the scene of the crime and face a cinematic tribunal. What possible reason could Maysles give the Rolling Stones for following up the mistake of appearing before their cameras at Altamont by doing it again?

  * * *

  Maysles approached the band with an argument, and a plea. The film he and his partners were creating, he argued, and that the Stones would own half the rights to, was a monument to the Rolling Stones in adversity. To abscond without comment, to fail to place their imprint on the story, would be both shameful and a notable missed opportunity. David and Charlotte suggested a brief final shoot, this time in London. A skeleton crew would travel to England to film the Stones watching some of the footage from Altamont, and capture their responses to the death they had perhaps inadvertently caused. Looping in the Rolling Stones, allowing the story to begin and end with the band, would close the circle.

  This would not be the Maysleses’ first attempt to add context and nuance to the film by flying out to see the Rolling Stones. A few months prior, they had flown to London to film the final mixing for Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out, the Stones’ live album from the ’69 tour. They bantered with the band about potential titles for the film (Jagger suggested Naughty Ladies 70, while David, riffing off the famous Stones song, proposed Jumping Jack Maysles) but none of the footage wound up in the finished film.

  Zwerin’s plan was audacious, not only for its desire to recruit the Stones into responding to the disaster they had so scrupulously sought to avoid, but also in its bending the unofficial rules of direct cinema. Direct cinema was intended to stand back and observe, to capture the world as it was, not to interfere or intervene. Nor was it supposed to script reality, pushing its characters—for even documentaries had performers—to appear in scenes of the filmmakers’ devising. Zwerin was coming dangerously close to violating direct cinema’s insistence on critical distance in order to solve the challenge keeping this project from becoming a unified whole.

  Charlotte and David asked Mirra Bank to accompany them on their trip to London.

  Bank had studied film in London and knew the city. She got along well with both Charlotte and David, and had also played a crucial part in finding the footage of the killing. The filmmakers were staying at the Londonderry Hotel, where Zwerin was dismayed to be staying in a dark, small room upstairs, while Albert and David shared an enormous suite facing Hyde Park. Zwerin’s room had no bookshelves, and her cramped room was filled with the Steenbeck editing machine and other bulky equipment. She kept the film reels on the open windowsill, and a surprise snowfall one evening had the three filmmakers spending much of the next day drying out wet film stock.

  The London footage would provide a context for Altamont, a frame in which it could be seen. It would be, as Bank saw it, a necessary climax to the story. The film was about more than Hunter’s death, but without this confrontation, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to make the film work. Watching the Roll
ing Stones take in the tragic results of their misbegotten concert would provide a genuine moment of reckoning that was otherwise lacking here, a moment of discovery and potential catharsis that the film sorely needed.

  The filmmakers had approached all the Stones about appearing onscreen, but ultimately only Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts agreed to participate. Charlotte and David were more than satisfied. Jagger was both the Stones’ superstar and the band member that had been the most closely associated, however unjustified, with the debacle at Altamont. It would be his response that would be closely studied.

  In his paisley button-down shirt with black collar tabs, black coat, and white scarf, Jagger was an emblem of effortless rock-star chic as he entered the Maysleses’ London editing room, but his bandmate Charlie Watts, nervously fluffing his hair, was already anxious: “It’s really hard to see this.” The filmmakers played portions of the KSAN radio broadcast for Jagger and Watts, and the Stones’ drummer could not help but smile when describing the forcefulness with which the Angels had cleared a path for the band as they made their way to the stage. “That’s just the way they did it,” Watts enthused, before pausing and taking stock of the day: “Oh dear—what a shame.” Albert particularly liked these quiet moments; in these moments of silence, he thought, character revealed itself.

  An unspoken, unacknowledged tension hung in the air as Bank began to spool the reels of film on the Steenbeck, favored by Zwerin for its sharp, bright screen. The filmmakers needed the cooperation of Jagger and Watts to finish their film. The Stones would have to sign off on the use of their images and on the release of the film, as the band retained the rights. The Maysleses had never gotten releases from the Rolling Stones and were aware of the risk of alienating the band. (Their earlier film on the Beatles, What’s Happening!, had been denied an audience when the band, about to star in A Hard Day’s Night, refused to sign their releases.) Albert and David tried to put it out of mind, but in reality Jagger could pull the plug at any time, and all their work would be for naught.

  David was deeply concerned about Jagger’s reaction. He considered the Stones’ front man a good friend, and worried that this would spell the end of their relationship. Moreover, he worried about Jagger lashing out at any perceived affront, or implication that his band was responsible for Hunter’s death, and shutting down the film.

  The more time Albert and David invested in this effort—and the more time David and Charlotte put in editing the film—the greater the potential catastrophe if the Rolling Stones pulled their cooperation. Everything would ride on the trip to London, not only for tying the film together, but for assuring its eventual release.

  While there had been newspaper reports on the concert, and numerous photographers, including Rolling Stone’s Baron Wolman and Robert Altman, had snapped iconic pictures of the day, the Maysleses’ documentary was the only filmed footage of Altamont. Jagger was in the unusual position of controlling the rights to public exposition of what appeared to be highly incriminating footage of his band’s most shameful moment. It might be pleasing to be thought of as the Devil’s guitar-slinging minions; it was assuredly less so to be seen as ineffective planners, publicly held hostage by a gang of demented motorcyclists.

  Jagger was particularly adamant at the outset about not wanting Meredith Hunter’s death to appear in the film. However, Jagger knew he would have to reimburse the Maysles brothers for the costs of producing the film if he chose not to allow its release, and the threat of a six-figure payout stilled his natural impulse to stifle the film.

  Although Zwerin had prepared a rough cut of the entire film in preparation for the London meeting, she only screened some of its footage for Jagger and Watts before showing them the killing. There were ten or fifteen minutes of footage on the reel, with numerous takes of certain scenes included. The filmmakers wanted to make sure Jagger and Watts would be able to see Hunter’s death, and also understand the malevolent forces that had led to the moment when the Angel’s knife had penetrated his back. Interestingly, they did not show Jagger and Watts the eight seconds of footage of Meredith Hunter from a few minutes prior to the fatal encounter the cameras had captured—or at least did not include it in the final cut of the film. An opportunity to humanize Hunter had been overlooked, or ignored.

  The resulting sequence was a landmark in the history of the documentary film. The brief, blurry footage was marshaled as evidence in a cinematic trial, with Albert, David, and Charlotte as judges, Jagger and Watts as cooperative defendants, and the audience as jury. The purpose was not to punish, but to witness the acknowledgment of responsibility.

  The film broadened the definition of direct cinema by pushing it into territory we might identify, from the perspective of the twenty-first century, as a kind of reality television avant la lettre. Zwerin (who would go on to work on the first American reality television series, 1972’s An American Family) set up a scene for the cameras to film, hoping to capture a revelatory moment that they had themselves planned. Their subjects’ responses would be genuine, but to what extent was genuineness undercut by the prefabricated aura of the moment? If this was still direct cinema, it was a highly flexible model that allowed its filmmakers to insert themselves into the reality that they were filming.

  There had been no coaching, no preparation before the scene. The camera caught genuine reactions. David told Jagger and Watts that he had the moment of Hunter’s death on film, and Albert filmed them as they watched it.

  In the version included in the final film, the audience was thrust into the action at Altamont before being roughly pulled back, reminded that what appeared on the screen was being filtered through the presence of the men watching the action. “People!” an Angel on the screen called out into one of the microphones onstage after Hunter was stabbed. “Let’s be cool!” Sam Cutler began imploring people to move back. Without warning, we were interrupted, yanked out of the moment by the voice of Mick Jagger: “Can you roll back on that, David?” As Maysles rewound the film, the moment of Hunter’s stabbing was now framed in the editing machine’s screen, mediated by the very fact of the editorial process. This was not reality so much as a film earnestly attempting to document that reality. Moreover, the story being told by the film was still in the process of unfolding, with Jagger and Watts’s spectatorship folded into the narrative. David asked Jagger if he had been able to see anything of Hunter’s stabbing while he had been performing. “No,” he responded, “you couldn’t see anything. It was just another scuffle.”

  Intriguingly, Maysles felt comfortable asking Jagger a question here, his direct-cinema scruples notwithstanding. Perhaps the question itself was more conversational than interrogative, or perhaps David believed the answer was an absolute necessity for his film. Either way, the rules were bent once more to accommodate the Maysleses’ needs. And there would have been no reason to behave otherwise. If the filmmakers were willing to fly to London for this quasi-artificial encounter, it stood to reason that Jagger could be asked what he knew at the time of Hunter’s killing.

  Mirra Bank watched Jagger closely, his eyes glued to the screen, and thought she saw an intensely devastated man viewing the consequences of his own failure to anticipate the Hells Angels’ violence. She was surprised, though, by his stubborn inability to emote, to clarify his feelings about what he was seeing. Some of it was undoubtedly stereotypical British reserve, but Jagger’s refusal to defend himself against the unspoken allegation contained in the footage was telling. Had band advisers told him to be careful about what he said? The relative silence seemed damaging, too, in its own way.

  In a way, it also reflected the limitations of direct cinema. At no time did David, Albert, or Charlotte Zwerin ask Jagger or Watts the most obvious question of all: how did seeing the moment of Meredith Hunter’s death make them feel? Albert and David were philosophically opposed to sticking a camera in a subject’s face and asking them to share their feelings. They were observers, not interviewers, and were ill-inclined to interfe
re in the natural flow of events and ask a subject to emote. This was one of their core tenets, even as some of the most revealing moments in their past films had come when their subjects had chosen to address the camera as if they were responding to an unasked question.

  Here in London, too, the filmmakers had clearly manipulated reality in the service of their story. Would Mick Jagger be present in this editing room if they had not asked him to appear? This blatant editorial interference notwithstanding, they still felt constrained from asking Jagger about the events he had witnessed. In respecting the tenets of direct cinema, the filmmakers were also limiting Jagger’s ability to explain himself.

  The London footage answered the technical challenge that had bedeviled the film since its crucial footage had first been discovered. How could the moment of Meredith Hunter’s death be slowed down enough to allow the audience to properly see it? The answer was Jagger and Watts. Their presence as heightened spectators within the film’s frame, bearing witness to the events that had unfolded in front of their stage in California, was the necessary excuse for the filmmakers to repeatedly show all the other presumed spectators, outside the frame and in the movie theater, the footage that formed the crux of the film. One set of spectators stood in for another.

  David Maysles showed Jagger the arc of Passaro’s knife, and pointed out Hunter’s gun, seen against the white expanse of Patti Bredehoft’s crocheted dress. We watched Jagger watching, and then we watched him get up, stretch, and bid the filmmakers farewell: “See you all.” The moment, when placed near the close of Gimme Shelter, ended with a freeze-frame of Jagger’s quasi-diabolical face. Jagger was being silently upbraided for his emotionlessness, his perverse calm in the face of death. But the stipulations of direct cinema had prevented him from having a forum in which to share his feelings.