RANDY HENRY - interviews
and press cuttings
Also see:
Randy's CV
Sightings
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“We’ve
reached a crucial stage in filming. We have some amazing footage. I can’t say
any more but believe me, this tops anything I’ve done before. See you soon.
Love you.” Last answer phone
message, _______________________________________ Randy Henry interview from Time Magazine, Oct 1983. Interview by Herbie Arranovitz. We sit in the measured opulence of Randy
Henry's "Everyone goes in there eventually so they get seen." He smiles sheepishly. Back in the Big Apple, after covering the collapse of the steel industry in Britain, Henry splits his time between both countries though it is, not surprising perhaps that, his best work is that which is shown this side of the pond. The work which became a cause celebre and one which he admits now hangs like a millstone (though a profitable one) on his CV is Vet Vets - his fly-on-the-wall series about Vietnam veterans who went on to become vets.
It was considered groundbreaking at the time, "Until we did that the networks did not believe you could make a ratings winner which featured people doing everyday things." Sam Kolowski, then Head of CBS Factoids,
allegedly almost fired his secretary for continually making typing errors.
"In the end she had to only type Vets, because Kolowski did not
understand the notion of Vet Vets." Kolowski passed on the series. After
NBC collected audiences of 35 million and three Emmys, Kolowski was kicked
upstairs. "I believe he was sent to "That in many ways encapsulated my attitude to documentary." muses Henry putting his feet on the coffee table and chewing a Hershey bar. "Here was a sure fire audience winner. There will always be an audience for animal shows. On the other hand, while using the animal show vehicle, I was able to explore social issues which were of great concern to me." As a result of Henry's series, welfare payments to Vietnam vets were increased and their employment rose significantly for a year or so afterwards, though the effect faltered with the passing of time. "TV is a transient medium. It operates in what McLuhan called the perpetual present. Our culture has short-term memory. There are kids around today who don't know who Martin Luther Kings is. They're not interested in civil rights. They want to be rappers. TV is about impact: that is what I seek from my work. What else is there to aim for?" He is currently researching a series on celebrity chauffeurs. Surely a far cry from his halcyon days with Vet Vets? "I don't see it that way at all." shrugs Henry without a hint of appearing defensive. "There are still social issues there and again we need people to watch these things. It matters. Believe me it matters." He glares defiantly. He deplores the cult of celebrity. "That is why I went to the very heart of the matter. I seek to demystify. Demi Moore (one of his favourite targets) is just a person and for her that is a compliment. She needs someone to drive her around. More and more these celebs are asking their staff to sign confidentiality clauses. Why? Because they trust nobody. Imagine that nobody. And we are supposed to admire these people, treat them as role models for Christ's sake? "It's a master-servant relationship that tells us we haven't come very far in the past 100 years. People are brought. These relationships are based on nothing more than a commercial transaction." He returns to his mantra, "Celebrities can trust no one. It's actually a relationship which benefits no one. Neither the celebrity nor the public. "The celebrity ceases to be a real person yet it is the public who feel that they are not real people. That the only people that matter are those on screen." Duality is a crucial feature of both Henry and his work. There is often a hidden agenda to his films, always a subtext. Under the cute furry surface of Vet Vets lurked the ticking time bomb of a nation's untold tragedy. Typically the first person to really cover Vietnam was Henry. "For about six or seven years after Vietnam it was a taboo area. It was a defeat for this country, our first and it hurt. We had been humbled by a much poorer nation. Our machinery and technology had not delivered victory. The vets were the first unsung soldiers in American history and it happened in our lifetime. "These were mainly working class kids that had been sent to fight for their country and when they returned they were shunned." It was a taboo area and Henry likes to go into taboo areas. "On the other hand, people like Tom Cruise and Demi Moore (his bette noir again) are lauded and applauded for being nothing more than successful, famous and very rich. Unlike the vets what have they ever done for anybody? This brings us onto his new series "Up and Down" A docudrama about lift attendants. "I want to get under their skin. I want to find out what really makes them tick. And, unlike any of the cast of Taxi (a programme he hates - "New Yorkers are not that rude. We are nice people.") if all the lift attendants in New York went on strike for a week the city would be paralysed. "There is also a metaphor in the title, I get them when they are up and down, the mood swing is an essential component of fly-on-the-wall. That is where the drama resides. That is why people watch." Henry likes to go into the lives of the uncelebrated. He is a radical liberator, a guardian angel to life's oppressed. "I once did a series in England about squad of police who were a gun squad." In England this is a rarity. "Of course everything revolved around them going to incidents. It was very exciting TV and I was nominated for a BAFTA" (the English equivalent of an Emmy). However, Henry complains that the very action got in the way of ever knowing the characters he was filming. "Sure it was dramatic. The situation came inherently from their job. But most people don't have jobs like that. I wish to get closer to the human condition. "What does someone who has a repetitive job do? I think they take shelter in their real personality. That's when you learn what they are all about. The reason for the trips to England is because Henry is half-American and half-Scottish. "My father was from Brooklyn. I was brought up in New Jersey. I went to a good school 'cos I got lucky." He won a scholarship after submitting a tape to a local radio station at the age of eleven. "Yeah, I've always been a media junkie. It was an expose on a caretaker who was doing unspeakable things to kids at the local YMCA." His mother came from Glasgow, Scotland. "Consequently I always had a fascination for things British and I now divide my time, half in the village and half in England." He claims most Americans have no idea about the real Britain. "The kind of people we think of are, you know, James Mason, Rex Harrison, Roger Moore - you only get to meet those guys at things like Ascot, Wimbledon or the House of Lords. Michael Caine a is more accurate reflection of the Brits but the north of the country is virtually unrepresented in terms of American cinema. "When I first went to the north of England, they have these cities like Manchester, or Leeds. When I went to what they refer to as "the midlands", though it's only 100 miles from London, Birmingham, man just trying to understand those guys is harder than making a movie." After Up and Down he's off to England again. "There are two things I want to do there. One is a programme about the heart of London. They call it Docklands. It's mostly rundown warehousing but it's going to be turned into very expensive real estate. I want to speak to the communities that live there they are going to be destroyed so I want to cover that while it's still there. Someone is going to make a lot of money out if. I want to find out who." "The other issue is safety on UK oil rigs which is being jeopardised in order to save money. Sooner or later there is going to be a major disaster there." It's relatively easy for Henry to get funding for his projects. "I usually am able to offer something either to the Americans (normally NBC though latterly he is concentrating more on HBO - "more autonomy") and in the UK he has a constructive relationship with Granada, an independent company. "I can give them things that British producers can't, like access to Senators. Plus I can give them intros into New York society. Also, though they won't admit it, I think they like the accent." Our interview over Henry takes me to his favourite Italian restaurant. "There is another perk to making these movies," smiles Henry over an apple strudel, "You get well paid. Hey! Don Antonio, where's the champagne?" |
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Article from The Mail On Sunday, June 1995. Randy Henry: The Phil Collins of Reality TV, or Triumph of the Real, by Julie Bitchall. So here he comes then, all flap jacket and no chinos. A man who makes his ordinary films about ordinary people. How could they be anything else? Unlike Leni Riefenstahl. Now there was a woman who made killer docs. A woman with access to men who made history. This cross Atlantic mutant with his smug assurances that we are gaining access to reality makes programmes only for those who have no life, no luck and no looks. What was the point of following an elevator boy for six months? We know that once he reached the top floor, (which afforded the highlight of that dreary film, a heart stopping view of Manhattan) the only way to go was down. Why, when he had all of New York to choose from, did he get stuck in an elevator? You wouldn't want to be there in real life so why would you want to watch it? With Leni Riefenstahl we had super-reality. She was beautiful, she was classic. She looked good in chinos and had no need to surround herself with the merely ordinary. Would that I were interviewing her today. Riefenstahl's life and career are material for legend. As a film creator and innovator she is fully the equal of Sergei Eisenstein and D.W. Griffith. But in a life that now has lasted eighty six years, she was able to complete only four films - all shot before the end of World War II. Since then she has been blocked, blacklisted, had her financing withdrawn, and otherwise been prevented from making any further films. Don't expect the American Film Institute or the Motion Picture Academy ever to give her a "Life Achievement Award", despite her being so much more deserving than many minor figures and hacks so honoured. I am interviewing one of them today. What is the Riefenstahl problem? She was the creator of the great documentary film about the Nazis, Triumph of the Will - a film that seems to be a promotional piece for Hitler and nazism - and she is a former admirer of Hitler (though she was never a member of the Nazi Party). Her life has been inextricably linked with and cursed by these facts. With her classic cheekbones and beautiful dappled hair. She made new techniques that have stood the test of time. She told Hitler what she wanted and she got it. That's directing. Henry got stuck in a lift and wanted to tell the world. To the bargain basement bellboy. Forget it buddy Henry with your transatlantic relaxed demeanour. The people who take part in Henry's films are losers, the people who watch them are losers, and the people who respect Henry are losers. I on the other hand receive Ł2,000 per article for writing this and have no interest in such nerd-like creations. Admittedly Henry often gets luck and as a result of his films stumbles upon certain issues that others take up. But who grabs the glory? Why Mr Flapjacket. We meet at the Savoy grill. He enters in a rush. He says he has some important information. He says he can't tell too much at this stage because it will endanger lives. Yes, mine, I am dying of boredom. If only I could have interviewed the beautiful Leni. As is often pointed out in his mediocre dull plodding films: Life is not fair. Not today it ain't. Reality as Paradigm from Insight: A Media Studies publication (incorporating Bandwidth magazine). Dec 1990. Published by The Norwich People. Reality as Paradigm: Duality in the Films of Randolph Henry, by Tarquin Arstle. "Reality is us. Us is reality." Louis Bunnois. With an oeuvre that is an opus. Transferring the moving image to a movement. Making the still move. A fatuous fatwa. A remedy and an explosion. A fait accomplis, which nonetheless exists outside itself and yet is known to us an entity. Ipso facto, inter alia, an art form that is not an art form. The duality that is Henry (or as the French call him Henri) is a paradigm of our times. From the measured tones of Vet Vets through the up and down mood swings of Jansen Daley in Up and Down. In the corridors of power with My Friend the Senator and once again, (with emphasis on precision were it not so obvious to say so and then one must be impervious to the agenda of the commercial distraction). Let it be said (and thus it shall be spake). Randolph Henry is a filmmaker and a (if I may so, a bon mot of je nais se quo?) a liberty taker. Thus spake Zarathrustra. But prey define liberty? And if liberty cannot be defined then how can it be achieved? Obviously and not so, it is an illusion and one that Henry pursues. At a cost to himself, the viewers and the participants in his noveoux cinimatique. Or as Winstone Perony declared in his treatise, The Pickled Herrings of Scarborough, "A vegetable is organic. But to be organic one is not to be a vegetable". Hence couch potato plus mayonnaise. Churches la Femme. A TV dinner of quality. Mais qui garcon. Henry declares war on vision. Yet he is a visionary. He seeks what cannot be seen and in doing so serves us with reality. And serves us right. Henry's politics is in the personal. It is the politics of humanism. People are what he deals in. It is the trust, the regard, the respect and his ability to become at one with the environment that makes the films what they are. In watching them we become emboldened. Henry is certainly not in film making for the money and famously turned down the chance to make Return To Zenda, a star vehicle for Rene Martine, Chloe Starburgh and Stella Manhattan. It his undeniable passion for humanity which takes him from project to project, from elevator shaft to vet nary practice that makes him the man of the moment, the real deal and notably but not imperceptibly, quite good. His films are watchable and watching is what he does. Watch, look, listen and learn. With Henry we do all those things - and more. There's always more. It's the magic of the medium, the meat in the sandwich, the ice cream in the wafer, the grape in the wine, the leather in the boot polish, the gassy froth on a pint of Guinness. As Arthur Mullard would say 'Yus My dear.". Other articles by Tarquin Arstle: TV or Not TV, That Is Not the Question. Hodder and Storten. Pointless or Merely Vacuous? Arsey and Gobshite. Academic Questions To Pass The Time. Staller and Pharbucket. Is My Brain In My Arse? Needless Pointless Publications. (From Essays In the Location of Intellectual Behaviour). The Dream Machine Reconfigured. Pretentious Party Press. The Size of Those Nuts. (From Essays in Advertising). Scotum. Knob In The Butter. (From 'Tips for Tea Time') Delia Press. Post Modernism and A Five-Year Study Into Dutch Porn Channels. Filthy and Foreign. Lincoln Research Project Publications. I Take It Up The Swannee River. Barry. You Lookin' at Me? (From Confrontation and Alienation in Urbanity) Qunt Press. Passing The Time Comfortably Until We Die. Middle Class Occupation Press. No One Reads This Anyway. Obscurity. I Blame The Scapegoats. Mervyn Duckworth’s Guide To Management. Blamehound
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