Hollywood Lot Interview with Erik Greenberg Anjou Posted by: Joe Tracy, Publisher

Anjou’s recent feature-length documentary “A Cantor’s Tale” (Ergo Media) has to date won the Best Documentary Film prize at the World Eye Jewish Film Festival (Tel Aviv), the Bronze Phoenix at the Warsaw International Jewish Film Festival, and Best Documentary Film at the Miami, San Diego, and Washington, D.C. Jewish Film Festivals.

Anjou is a graduate of Middlebury College (B.A.), Northwestern University (M.A.) and the American Film Institute (Directing Program). His film endeavors encompass both the narrative and documentary arenas.

Recently, Hollywood Lot Magazine caught up with Erik Anjou to ask him about the documentary he’s currently working on, “For Love and Honor”.

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Hollywood Lot: “For Love & Honor” is a documentary film about Ivy League football and American leadership. How did this project first get started and what was the inspiration behind it?

Erik Anjou: The project started thanks to a high school reunion in Philadelphia. An old classmate, Mark Bernstein, and I were catching up. He had written a book about Ivy League football history and American culture. I had started getting into documentaries after steeping myself in the feature film world. I’d also played four years of football at Middlebury College, and was in the throes of finishing up a very rewarding picture about cantorial music and Jewish tradition. Creatively, I was hankering for something, for lack of better wording, more collision-oriented. A collaboration between Mark and I seemed like a natural thing.

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Hollywood Lot: Why is it important for the average American to learn about the roots of Ivy League football and what does the documentary bring to the table for someone who may not be interested in football?

Erik Anjou: I believe this picture will be surprising in that it will have something for everybody. For people who already love football – but may not be familiar with Ivy ball – it will expose them to the giants, both players and coaches, who gave birth to the game. Everything that presently exists on Saturdays and Sundays – from hype to hitting – was forged on Ivy League gridirons. And for those who may have only a passing interest in football… The picture is a journey into how Ivy League ball reflects and presages some of America’s salient cultural debates – the virtues of the scholar-athlete versus rank professionals, attitudes towards race, the place of violent sport in the academic culture and society at large.

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Hollywood Lot: Last year, you directed the documentary “A Cantor’s Tale” about the history of chazz’n (chazzanut). For our readers not familiar with it, please describe what chazz’n is?

Erik Anjou: Good question. I’m still learning how to pitch it and the film was finished in 2005! A Cantor’s Tale is two tales woven on a single rope. The first story is that of Cantor Jack Mendelson, a “larger-than-life,” charismatic and hysterically funny master cantor born in Borough Park, Brooklyn. The second story is that of “chazzanut” – cantorial music, the traditional Jewish prayer music which threaded through Jack’s life and in a sense created his “destiny” – how that music came to America, and what it meant to the many generations of Jews it inspired. Ultimately, the film is about how one man makes sense of his tradition for himself – and how that tradition allows him to be raised to remarkable heights and become one of the country’s most extraordinary teachers.

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Hollywood Lot: What did you learn from directing “A Cantor’s Tale” that you brought to the production of “For Love and Honor,” a completely different subject matter?

Erik Anjou: I learned less from the directing side than I did from the producing side. Ninety percent of my work prior to Cantor’s Tale was in the feature realm. With “A Cantor’s Tale” I really knew nothing about how to ally with a 501(c)(3), how to raise money given that structure, how to be responsible for every facet of a film from hiring the right people to buying insurance to securing locations to bringing a movie through scoring and on-line. Producing comes with some exciting challenges and opportunities but with a topography of responsibility and stress that’s very very different from that belonging to a writer or director.

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Hollywood Lot: As someone who directs documentaries, how important is it to have a passion about the topic and does that affect what projects you decide to (or not to) take?

Erik Anjou: Passion is Requirement Number 1. It trumps all other qualities, other than animal drive and perseverance. Because the documentaries I’ve undertaken thus far have been initiated without distribution deals in place it means that, first, there’s no upfront money that will launch the project from its initial financial inertia, and second, there is no guarantee down the line that a project will be picked up. The only thing that keeps such an independent entity alive is passion. There is no substitute.

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Hollywood Lot: Many feature films are built around a formula of a central question and three acts. Is there a formula you follow in creating a documentary?

Erik Anjou: There’s not a formula, but there is definitely a structure to “traditional” narrative since, well, at least the thirties. There’s more often than not a reason why stories work or don’t work. You have to have characters, a conflict, something the characters want, and obstacles en route to that want’s fruition. Sometimes what the characters say they want isn’t what they want at all, which is another shade of narrative. So… Every story is unique unto itself, as is the story’s environment. The dramatist has to figure out where the traditional “rules” serve his story; and where he has be bold and break new ground. That challenge is the same with both features and documentaries.

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Hollywood Lot: How long has “For Love & Honor” been in production and when will it be released?

Erik Anjou: We’ve been shooting the documentary intermittently for some eighteen months. Production has gone in spurts pending financing. My partner, Mark Bernstein, and I are hoping to have a locked cut ready to screen for distributors by the end of 2007.

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Hollywood Lot: Do you face problems that some Hollywood film productions have with production costs being much higher than originally forecast?

Erik Anjou: Yes and no. Maybe because I’m a fledging producer I may miss an element in the production and budget that needs to be better shored up. “For Love & Honor” has segments which are heavily driven by archival material, and I didn’t properly anticipate the massive research and hopefully not too onerous licensing fees that are required by this stripe of storytelling. In regards to straight-forward on-the-ground productions costs, I’ve been fortunate to have been in the business for some years and have developed some really wonderful relationships with both creatives and creative vendors. People want to work with artists who are driven by passion and have significant stories to communicate. Many times these directors of photography or sound people or camera houses viscerally understand how tough it is to get an independent production mounted and launched. They want to help. They’ve taken some hard knocks and made sacrifices themselves. They want to see a committed project succeed.

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Hollywood Lot: Were you involved in Ivy League football? How about others on the production crew?

Erik Anjou: Unfortunately I didn’t play Ivy ball. I was an overachieving 5’8” noseguard who played two years of high school football and then won the opportunity to play freshman ball and three years varsity at Middlebury College in Vermont. I was probably one of the only kids on the team who wasn’t a high school captain or an All-Everything. It taught me a lot about pushing the envelope physically. My partner Mark Bernstein is a Princeton grad who didn’t play contact football. One of our shooters, Kevin Egan, also played Division 3 ball. Other than that, I’m afraid we’re straight cineastes.

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Hollywood Lot: What was the biggest challenge you faced when directing “For Love & Honor”?

Erik Anjou: Not beating up the Co-Producer (spelled Me) when things weren’t happening fast enough on the financial front. Creatively, the challenge is to work with Mark, the other Co-Producer and my editor, Karlyn Michelson, to create a structure for the film that serves both the history of Ivy League ball and how it reflects American culture and also the current state-of-the-nation. We don’t want to make an antique. We want to create a dynamic piece that speaks to a current audience, and portrays the new generation of student-athletes as something special despite the fact that a Division I-A spotlight isn’t shining upon them.

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Hollywood Lot: What does it take to put together a documentary like “For Love & Honor” in terms of time, resources, finances, staffing, marketing, etc.?

Erik Anjou: Doing a film in a professional way, and fulfilling so that it will have a life with a distributor and a wide audience, is simply an awesome task. Creative brainstorming, networking, securing interviews and building relationships, fundraising, shooting, gathering archival materials… It is more than a full-time job – as an independent, it will pay as a half-time job, if we’re lucky. Overall it will take us between two and two and half years to finish the film, God-willing. I’m lucky to have Mark Bernstein as a partner. But even if we took on a third producer there would still be more than enough work to go around.

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Hollywood Lot: How do you keep the whole team together in a production that goes between two and two and a half years? There must be some strong dedication there…

Erik Anjou: Dedication and a lot of communication. Praying doesn’t hurt. Obviously you’re not always going to be able to stay consistent with your shooter. You can’t pay him enough to be on hold all the time, and he – or she – has to be supporting their family with steadier or more lucrative work. My editor is an absolutely integral part of my creative process. In features you’re shooting from a script. With documentaries often-times the script isn’t “written” until post. So I was always careful to keep the supremely talented Karlyn Michelson, who also cut Cantor’s Tale, abreast of our filming and scheduling.

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Hollywood Lot: Do you find the payoff to be worth the effort?

Erik Anjou: Absolutely, yes. Because the money is so slim in documentaries, it can sometimes be punishing. But I love being a filmmaker, and a writer. My parents. God bless them, gave me the education and freedom to do anything I wanted in life. I chose the path of the pen and the camera. There’s nothing else I want to be doing.

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Hollywood Lot: What’s your next documentary project?

Erik Anjou: I’m re-investigating some Jewish terrain. I’m directing and co-producing a documentary film about the wonderful New York-based band, The Klezmatics, who just won a 2006 Grammy award for their stirring new album, “Wonder Wheel.” I’ve also got some exciting feature opportunities brewing, so… I’m hoping for very little sleep in 2007-08.

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Hollywood Lot: Thank you, Erik, for taking the time to share your experience and insight with our readers. It is greatly appreciated.

For readers wanting more information on For Love & Honor, you can visit the documentary Website at http://www.forloveandhonorfilm.com.