Interview With "Power" Director Yance Ford

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[00:01:02] Yancy Ford.

[00:01:13] Police power is immediate power.

[00:01:16] Is right now.

[00:01:17] Do what I told you to do, right now or else I decide what happens next.

[00:01:31] Policing is inextricably linked to the racial history of this country.

[00:01:37] Police associated with colonizers, wealth and whiteness.

[00:01:40] So police targeted people marked as non-white.

[00:01:43] Slaves, indigenous, and working class people.

[00:01:49] Police have been able to double down on their power time and time again.

[00:01:54] There are a lot of people that feel that policing is out of control, but it's also the case that

[00:01:58] there's horrific crime and it also is out of control.

[00:02:01] Hello everyone and welcome to the Next Best Picture podcast where I am being joined right

[00:02:06] now by the director of the documentary film Power, which is premiering soon on Netflix,

[00:02:14] Yancy Ford, Academy Award nominee.

[00:02:16] Yancy Ford might I add for the record.

[00:02:18] How are you today?

[00:02:19] I'm doing great, Matthew.

[00:02:20] How are you?

[00:02:21] I'm doing really well.

[00:02:22] Thank you so much for taking a moment here to talk to me about this new profound, very

[00:02:27] powerful, informative piece of work.

[00:02:30] I want to first start off by asking, Strong Island was obviously a very personal story

[00:02:36] for you in many ways.

[00:02:38] This one is taking a more macro look at this problem that we have had for decades across

[00:02:45] this country involving police relations, police power.

[00:02:50] Can you tell me just a little bit about, was this something that was always brewing prior

[00:02:56] to Strong Island?

[00:02:58] Was it because of the reception to Strong Island?

[00:03:02] How did this come about?

[00:03:04] Sure.

[00:03:05] I've been thinking about police and policing as an institution since there were detectives

[00:03:13] in my parents' living room explaining to them why the person who killed my brother wasn't

[00:03:18] going to be charged with a crime.

[00:03:21] My interest in policing goes back that far at least.

[00:03:27] The story really came about as a film and as an idea in the wake of the murder of George

[00:03:33] Floyd.

[00:03:34] I think, like many people were in that moment, asking, is this what policing is for?

[00:03:43] The goal of the film is really to step outside of the debate that has seized hold of the

[00:03:53] current moment in this fake binary of Black Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter, and to

[00:04:01] give folks a 30,000 foot view of the institution of policing, and to try to answer the question

[00:04:07] of how we got here, where did policing come from, and what ultimately policing is for.

[00:04:13] You do something very unique in this documentary that I don't see many other filmmakers do.

[00:04:19] You legitimately tell the audience in the very beginning how they're meant to engage

[00:04:23] with the material.

[00:04:26] Why come forward and say that rather than letting the material speak for itself?

[00:04:31] Not a knock in any way, I'm just curious where the decision itself came from.

[00:04:35] Sure.

[00:04:36] That decision is based on just the straight up fact that when you make anything about

[00:04:42] policing there are some people who are going to be curious about what you have to say, and

[00:04:47] there are some people that are going to be suspicious of what you have to say.

[00:04:50] They're going to assume that they know what the film is going to say.

[00:04:57] Saying that at the top of the film, addressing the audience that I know is there, it's like

[00:05:03] I'm not going to pretend that there's nobody watching this.

[00:05:06] By addressing the audience that I know is there and just saying, listen, it's either

[00:05:10] curiosity or suspicion, and I leave that up to you.

[00:05:15] I want people to come to the film no matter what their political viewpoint.

[00:05:20] I think that invitation to come with your suspicion or to come with your curiosity is

[00:05:25] the way to invite everybody into the film.

[00:05:27] Yeah, I definitely agree with you on that.

[00:05:29] It's almost like you're extending an olive branch, if you will, to not scare people off,

[00:05:34] essentially.

[00:05:35] Because I agree with you, I start seeing people put up walls to this debate the minute that

[00:05:40] anyone even has a chance to bring up an opinion.

[00:05:44] They just say, I want to talk about the topic, and all of a sudden everyone's like, no,

[00:05:47] not doing that.

[00:05:48] Yeah, no, I want that address at the beginning of the film to feel like a welcome, to feel

[00:05:53] like an open door.

[00:05:55] And I hope that it has that effect.

[00:05:57] I think it definitely does, for sure.

[00:05:59] You obviously interviewed so many experts on this matter.

[00:06:05] For something this vast and this large, where does one even start?

[00:06:09] Did you know people personally?

[00:06:10] How did you gather these expert voices together?

[00:06:13] Sure.

[00:06:15] So we had actually six months of development before we started production.

[00:06:20] And during that six months, I think that we found just about every scholar who was working

[00:06:27] in the field of policing and researching policing and writing about policing, as well as current

[00:06:33] and former police officers who were doing innovative things at their departments or

[00:06:37] had gone on to do innovative things about policing after they had left their police

[00:06:44] departments.

[00:06:45] And it was like an entire education.

[00:06:50] We read so much.

[00:06:52] We watched interviews with people.

[00:06:56] We tried to ingest as much information as we could until we figured out the set of people

[00:07:02] who are all teachers, by the way.

[00:07:07] We didn't go for professional commentators, really.

[00:07:13] We went for people who help other people learn about stuff for a living.

[00:07:19] We went for journalists who explain things to people for a living.

[00:07:22] Teachers that I would say at the beginning of the interview, listen, you need to imagine

[00:07:26] that I'm your worst student.

[00:07:28] I haven't been paying attention all semester, and suddenly I've showed up and I've got lots

[00:07:33] of questions.

[00:07:35] Talk to me like that.

[00:07:36] I don't assume that I know anything because I wanted there to be a common point of entry

[00:07:44] for everyone.

[00:07:45] And we found people who have done really incredible writing and thinking and teaching

[00:07:51] on policing and police work and policing as an institution.

[00:07:55] And we were able to start building the film around their interviews.

[00:08:00] Yeah, yeah.

[00:08:02] And then of course you have all this archival footage.

[00:08:04] Kind of a similar dual question here with that.

[00:08:08] When you're discussing decades of information, where does one go to to uncover that archival

[00:08:15] footage?

[00:08:16] What do you have access to?

[00:08:17] What do you not have access to?

[00:08:19] Sure.

[00:08:20] Well, one of the things that we did with the archival process is I brought in the archivist

[00:08:25] Gillian Bergman really early in the process.

[00:08:30] And all of the cards that went up on the wall with all the themes and questions and

[00:08:36] all the different tangents that we were going on, I brought her in to look at those cards

[00:08:42] just like I brought everybody else in to my office to look at those cards.

[00:08:47] And one thing that I asked her to do was not to limit her imagination in terms of what

[00:08:53] material could fulfill my request for footage about immigration or footage about patriotism

[00:09:05] or whatever the theme might be.

[00:09:09] So she was able to engage in a really creative process with me that resulted in sourcing

[00:09:17] material from places like the National Archives to a place called the Internet Archive, to

[00:09:22] PBS, to NBC.

[00:09:27] There are a list of places that we licensed footage from at the end of the film.

[00:09:32] And you'll see that it's a lot of different sources.

[00:09:37] But that's because the record of policing in the United States sort of exists in many

[00:09:45] different places, including at police departments themselves, which often produced training

[00:09:51] videos and other material that they would show to their recruits or their cadets or

[00:09:58] share with other departments.

[00:09:59] So it was just as an intensive process building the archive as it was in the development and

[00:10:08] researching phase of the film.

[00:10:09] Yeah.

[00:10:10] No, I can only imagine.

[00:10:11] So one of the things that I'm most amazed by sometimes is whether it's a documentary like

[00:10:18] Ava DuVernay's 13th or whatever it might be, whenever I see so much information from such

[00:10:23] a large period of time being condensed into a package that is less than two hours, I'm

[00:10:29] pretty much awestruck by how much information can be conveyed so succinctly.

[00:10:35] What was your initial rough cut on this, or was it always hovering around this length?

[00:10:41] So our initial rough cut was, goodness gracious.

[00:10:48] It was over 100 minutes, but not by much.

[00:10:54] It wasn't like a two hour rough cut.

[00:10:56] It was nothing like that.

[00:10:59] We made really difficult decisions right from the start.

[00:11:03] Which I think is part of how you end up with a long rough cut, is that you put off making

[00:11:12] tough decisions and then you save them for the second round.

[00:11:17] Ian and I wanted to have a very different approach to structuring the architecture of

[00:11:21] meaning in the film.

[00:11:23] And that meant making very specific decisions early on, sticking with those decisions, seeing

[00:11:28] how things fit together, seeing how we would build the story over the arc of time.

[00:11:33] And it's not chronological.

[00:11:35] We don't start at one point and end up in another.

[00:11:39] We move in and out of time and we move back and forth between black and white, color,

[00:11:47] film, video, all sorts of different material and in and out of these interviews to get

[00:11:55] to this structure that really is this kind of dynamic thing that takes this question of

[00:12:01] who is more powerful, the people or the police, and lets the question evolve over the course

[00:12:05] of the film.

[00:12:06] I have to say, thinking about that question as like the, all right, I have this in the

[00:12:11] back of my mind while I'm watching the documentary unfold.

[00:12:14] I gotta tell you, there are times where I'm watching this and I'm saying to myself, it's

[00:12:18] the police.

[00:12:19] It just feels so unbearably large to somehow fix this terribly broken system that has

[00:12:30] such an entrenchment in our history.

[00:12:34] It's like, I commend you and literally anyone out there who's willing to take this on because

[00:12:41] I don't even know where one even begins with something like this.

[00:12:46] And so I will say that by the end, I definitely felt more equipped to say people instead.

[00:12:54] But at the same time, I still have that lingering feeling of what can I do as an audience member?

[00:13:01] What can any audience member who watches Power do when this is over?

[00:13:06] Don't you know that you're a grown up?

[00:13:08] I'm a grown up.

[00:13:09] Me too.

[00:13:10] Yep, me too.

[00:13:11] But you know, these days being a grown up can really suck.

[00:13:12] Luckily we're grown ups who grew up in the coolest generation.

[00:13:15] We had video arcades.

[00:13:17] And also some of the best TV and movies ever made.

[00:13:19] We lived the origin of awesome consumer electronics.

[00:13:21] The list goes on and on.

[00:13:23] Yep, Generation X.

[00:13:24] Exactly.

[00:13:25] And we're Gen X Grown Up.

[00:13:27] Every week, the Gen X Grown Up podcast explores media, tech, toys, games, and more from both

[00:13:33] yesterday and today.

[00:13:34] Through the eyes of Generation Xers who absolutely love that stuff.

[00:13:38] You can find us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:13:41] Or find us on our website, GenXGrownUp.com.

[00:13:46] Alright, I think that was good enough.

[00:13:47] I hope so, man.

[00:13:48] I'm tired.

[00:13:49] Who listens to a promo on a podcast and then goes and listens to a different podcast?

[00:13:53] Right.

[00:13:54] I've never done it.

[00:13:55] I know.

[00:13:56] Right.

[00:13:57] Sure.

[00:13:58] I mean, I think that when this is over, and I think actually throughout the course of

[00:14:05] watching the film, one of the most important things to do is going to be interrogate your

[00:14:10] own relationship with policing.

[00:14:12] Right?

[00:14:14] It's important.

[00:14:16] And there are some people in this country who will watch this film who don't need to

[00:14:19] interrogate their relationship with police because they live it on a day-to-day basis.

[00:14:24] And there are other people who are living with policing at a remove.

[00:14:29] And those folks need to interrogate, why is it that I get to live with policing at a remove?

[00:14:34] And some people live with policing as a day-to-day intervention in their lives.

[00:14:40] And then I think the next thing that people need to ask themselves after watching this

[00:14:44] film is, is policing working for everyone?

[00:14:50] Not just is policing working for me, but is policing working for everyone?

[00:14:55] Is my community being served by this?

[00:14:59] And if not, how do I want to see it fixed?

[00:15:04] What do I want to see changed?

[00:15:07] That's the fundamental thing that needs to shift because honestly, we've gone through

[00:15:12] generations of reform, right?

[00:15:17] After reform, after reform for generations in policing.

[00:15:21] And it hasn't arrived at an institution that serves all of the people.

[00:15:28] And I think that more than anything else, folks need to, if they're not already doing

[00:15:33] the work of questioning, how can policing really work for my community?

[00:15:38] They need to get into the actual, very difficult work.

[00:15:46] As Wesley Lowry says, the very tough work of figuring out how can we arrive at a police

[00:15:56] apparatus in this country that works for us all?

[00:15:59] Yeah.

[00:16:01] It starts with that question, like you said, asking yourself internally.

[00:16:05] And I liked that documentary both, I feel like it both gives answers, but also at the

[00:16:11] same time allows the audience to organically figure out that answer for themselves, which

[00:16:17] is something that I particularly appreciate.

[00:16:21] At the same time, I'm also wondering too, when this whole experience is over, like I

[00:16:26] said, you've explored now both a micro and a macro story or film experience, if you

[00:16:33] will, of these two films.

[00:16:36] What is left for you with this topic?

[00:16:39] Or do you feel like, you know what, I've explored it from these two angles, I'm going

[00:16:43] to move on to something else?

[00:16:45] Yeah.

[00:16:46] I think that for me right now, I have explored the criminal legal system from the two

[00:16:52] vantage points that are really important to me.

[00:16:54] One, which is about the brokenness in our criminal legal system, and the other about

[00:17:02] policing and really encouraging people to think hard about what the demand is that they

[00:17:08] are going to make of policing.

[00:17:09] Right?

[00:17:11] The film ends with a quote from Frederick Douglass, like, you know, power concedes

[00:17:16] nothing without demand.

[00:17:17] Well, what is the demand that you are going to make of policing?

[00:17:21] That's the thing that I want to leave audiences with, as I move on to whatever comes

[00:17:27] next in my career as a filmmaker, which I'm sure will involve some sort of social issue

[00:17:33] or interesting person in one way or another.

[00:17:37] But I think that the question of what demand will I make of policing feels like a really

[00:17:44] great one to leave folks with after this film.

[00:17:48] Yeah, no, I definitely think so too.

[00:17:51] You've worked with Netflix now quite a bit on both films.

[00:17:56] Can you tell me just a little bit about your feelings towards your relationship with them

[00:18:01] and also to getting the film on Netflix for as many eyeballs to see as possible?

[00:18:07] Just your general thoughts and feelings there, because I know that there's always this

[00:18:11] ongoing debate about the benefits of theatrical versus streaming.

[00:18:14] And, you know, I just like hearing other filmmakers perspectives on this.

[00:18:18] Sure, sure.

[00:18:19] I mean, so I think, you know, I'm going to be real.

[00:18:23] I will always value a theatrical experience.

[00:18:28] Right? Absolutely.

[00:18:29] The reality is of the cost of going to the movies, however, is that it's so expensive

[00:18:38] that if I only did a theatrical release, there would be plenty of people who would never

[00:18:42] see my work.

[00:18:43] Yeah. Right.

[00:18:43] And those are folks who are really directly impacted by policing.

[00:18:48] And I don't want to forego that audience having the experience of seeing this film and

[00:18:59] asking the questions or hearing people wrestle with the issues that are in the film.

[00:19:04] So, you know, for me, Netflix is doing a theatrical release, which I'm so, so happy

[00:19:10] about. It opens May 10th.

[00:19:13] In theaters.

[00:19:15] And then after that, on May 17th, we launch on the platform.

[00:19:20] And, you know, I try not to think about the number of people who will see the film

[00:19:27] because it gets a little overwhelming.

[00:19:29] First of all, it's an absolute thrill.

[00:19:32] Yeah. Right.

[00:19:33] It is an absolute thrill because it's millions and millions of people.

[00:19:36] But it also is like the kind of information that can keep you up at night.

[00:19:40] Yeah.

[00:19:42] It's just like, you know, everyone is always nervous when they let their work out into

[00:19:47] the world and they hope it does well and they hope it communicates as clearly with an

[00:19:51] audience as you intend it.

[00:19:53] But then there's also the very human element of, oh, my gosh, there are millions of

[00:19:58] eyeballs on my movie right now.

[00:20:00] And it's just a little nerve wracking.

[00:20:02] So I think it's going to be great.

[00:20:04] I can't wait for it to open in theaters.

[00:20:07] I can't wait for it to drop and I can't wait for the conversation that's going to

[00:20:11] happen afterward.

[00:20:12] Yeah, I agree completely.

[00:20:13] And one other thing I also want to bring up, too, I'm a huge lover of the Sundance

[00:20:17] Film Festival. It's pretty much my I always call it my unofficial like start of the

[00:20:24] the film year because you get a glimpse at all these movies that are going to be

[00:20:28] sprinkled all throughout.

[00:20:29] But there's also like this great sense of discovery that comes out of a festival like

[00:20:34] that as well.

[00:20:35] You've now had both documentaries have their world premieres at this festival.

[00:20:40] I know that there's an ongoing debate right now about should they remain in Park

[00:20:44] City? Should they go somewhere else?

[00:20:46] Can you just tell me a little bit about like your connection to that festival and

[00:20:49] what it has meant to you?

[00:20:52] Sure. My connection.

[00:20:55] Excuse me, my connection with the festival and with the Sundance Institute goes all

[00:20:59] the way back to 2006 when I was first a creative producing fellow.

[00:21:05] And, you know, I think I went to my first festival in 2008 or 2009.

[00:21:12] I forgot. And it has also felt to me like like the launching of the year.

[00:21:18] Right. It's also been a place where where I've been able to see friends and

[00:21:22] colleagues who live all over the country and who come together in Park City for for

[00:21:29] seven days, 10 days, five days, however long you can manage to stay and really get

[00:21:34] to catch up and remind each other that, you know, even though we might be scattered

[00:21:39] around the country, we are actually a community.

[00:21:42] I think that, you know, like like everyone else, the pandemic was a difficult time for

[00:21:48] Sundance. And, you know, the truth is that Park City is a really expensive place.

[00:21:55] Yeah. You know, and, you know, it's it's.

[00:22:00] And I think that I understand that Park City wants to keep the festival, but I think

[00:22:06] that, you know, if if there is a venue that could that could host that has the

[00:22:13] infrastructure to host the festival and be competitive, not just in terms of the

[00:22:18] benefits that it has to offer Sundance, but but also in terms of the cost of attending

[00:22:23] the festival, you know, via vis-a-vis hotel prices and Airbnb prices.

[00:22:31] You know, like I think that that's a huge part of it as well, because it's a small I

[00:22:35] mean, you know, people squeeze themselves into, you know, very small places to stay

[00:22:41] because they're splitting, you know, the cost of housing by six or seven or eight or

[00:22:46] nine ways. And I think that, you know.

[00:22:51] I love Utah, I love going to the Sundance, you know, labs, I love that place, the

[00:22:58] mountain feels like a very special place to me.

[00:23:01] It's where I had a lot of insights about Strong Island for the first time.

[00:23:05] And at the same time, there's a financial reality that I hope Park City really

[00:23:11] understands and can make their best competitive effort.

[00:23:15] Um, yeah, for Crescent, that's 2027, I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[00:23:21] We will. Yeah.

[00:23:22] I mean, I was thinking about this the other day about how low income cinephiles, you

[00:23:28] know, are struggling to get a chance to discover those types of films and new voices.

[00:23:33] And it is something that I think everyone is going to have to reckon with at some

[00:23:37] point, not just with Sundance, but other festivals, which I won't mention here as

[00:23:40] well. You know, it's it's becoming I don't want to see it become an insular

[00:23:46] you know, exclusive club, if you will.

[00:23:49] And I think this film Power premiering, like you said before on Netflix, allows for

[00:23:54] that exclusivity to go away and for it to be as accessible to a wide as wide of a

[00:23:59] and broad of an audience as humanly possible, which I which I deeply appreciate

[00:24:03] given the content of the film.

[00:24:05] My last thing before we go here.

[00:24:07] Yeah, sure. I know I kind of alluded to this earlier, but I would love to know

[00:24:10] specifically what can we look forward to seeing from you next?

[00:24:15] Oh, gosh. What can you look forward to seeing from me next?

[00:24:19] I have let's see.

[00:24:22] Do I answer it specifically or do I leave it in like in the in the realm of

[00:24:26] mystery? I think I'm going to leave it a little mysterious for now.

[00:24:32] But there is a there is a feature fiction film in my future, as well

[00:24:38] as other documentary work, which is obviously documentary is my first love.

[00:24:44] But I'm developing a scripted series and I'm attached to I'm attached to a

[00:24:50] really brilliant film script rather written by a young screenwriter named

[00:24:55] Evan Dodson. And I'm really excited for those two things to, you know, to ramp

[00:25:01] up and and see what else sort of appears on the horizon as power moves out into

[00:25:06] the world. Well, I can I can honestly say for all of us listening right now, we

[00:25:12] cannot wait to see you go into those two areas and also just continuing to tell

[00:25:16] stories, communicate your truth to people.

[00:25:19] And we really, really appreciate the truth that you've conveyed with both of

[00:25:23] these films. I really urge everyone that's listening right now, like if you have

[00:25:26] not already seen Strong Island, you can stream that currently on Netflix and then

[00:25:30] hop right into power when it drops.

[00:25:33] So, Anstead, thank thank you so much for your time.

[00:25:36] I really, really appreciate it.

[00:25:37] Thank you, Matthew. It's been a great pleasure.

[00:25:39] Take care. Me too.

[00:25:41] I know.

[00:25:42] Hey, everyone, thank you so much for listening.

[00:25:50] Power will be available to stream on Netflix on May 17.

[00:25:55] You have been listening to the next best picture podcast.

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[00:26:15] Thank you all so much for listening, as always.

[00:26:17] And we will see you all next time.

[00:27:03] You've watched them in unforgettable adventures, love affairs and tragedies.

[00:27:10] Now it's time to hear their own remarkable stories from the makers of Death of a Rock

[00:27:17] Star and Death of a Sports Star.

[00:27:19] This is Death of a Film Star.

[00:27:23] And action.

[00:27:25] Starring Heath Ledger, Marilyn Monroe, Chadwick Boseman, Robin Williams, Harry

[00:27:31] Fisher and Bruce Lee.

[00:27:36] Search for Death of a Film Star in your podcast app.

[00:27:39] You've seen them tell stories.

[00:27:41] Now it's time to tell theirs.