Set your TIVOs - Married in America on Today and on Hallmark tomorrow! - 5/22/07

[Smartmarriages]

- SET YOUR TIVO: MARRIED IN AMERICA

MARRIED IN AMERICA by Michael Apted will air tomorrow night, May 23rd on the
Hallmark Channel.  

Also, tomorrow morning, May 23rd, Apted and one of the featured couples will
appear on the Today Show. They say between 9 and 9:30am EST, but you know
how that goes.  - diane


Here is an interview to give you the flavor:

A conversation with ³Married in America 2² director Michael Apted
 
     Michael Apted ­- the documentary filmmaker behind ³Married in America,²
as well as Hallmark Channel¹s five-years-later follow-up, ³Married in
America 2² ­- never dreamed that the project could have a positive impact on
his own marriage.

     But making the films, the director says, taught him a thing or two
about the power of communication.  ³I¹ve been married twice,² Apted says.
³I¹m on my second marriage.  We¹ve been married eight years and we¹ve been
together 14.  And what I learned from the couples we profile in ŒMarried in
America¹ is that, if you don¹t talk about things, you¹re in trouble.²

     It¹s hard to believe that Apted, whose documentaries are built around
his considerable communication skills as an interviewer, might be lacking in
this area in his personal life.  But he was.  ³Every couple has issues,²
Apted notes.  ³But if you live in denial about them, that¹s trouble.  I was
in denial during my failed marriage.²

In ³Married in America 2,² Apted revisits nine couples five years after they
tied the knot.  ³You can see some of these couples in front of us who maybe
aren¹t as open with each other as they should be,² he says.  ³In fact, some
of them say things to me on camera that you feel they should say to each
other.²

Apted paid attention and applied this insight to his own relationship.  ³I¹d
like to think I¹m better about talking about everything now,² he says.
If viewers similarly benefit, Apted says he¹d be pleased -­ although he¹s
quick to add that ³Married in America 2² isn¹t a how-to program.  His only
agenda with ³Married in America 2,² he says, was to tell interesting
stories.
 
What drew you to this subject matter? What compelled you to examine the
nature of marriage in America, the different flavors of marriage in America?
³I had been addressing the subject of marriage for some time now in the Œ7
Up¹ films and I thought it was intriguing. So I wanted to do a longitudinal
film that would concentrate specifically on marriage and couples. There¹s a
certain confusion that America is a place of family values, yet there are a
lot of people getting divorced.  So what was the truth of the matter?  And
rather than do a generalized piece, I thought I would look at it in a
microscopic way.  And marriage and relationships are something everybody can
identify with.  There¹s something universal about it.  So I thought it would
be appealing.²
 
Did you have a particular message about marriage, pro or con, that you hoped
to impart on viewers?
³I really didn¹t.  I don¹t see the point in doing that.  The only thing I
was careful to do when I chose the nine couples was to choose people who
took it seriously.  Or at least seemed to take it seriously.²
 
So no quickie Vegas marriages allowed in your cross section of American
marriages?
³Right.  I remember one couple -­ I didn¹t use them -­ they said, ŒWe wanted
a holiday, so we thought, well, we¹ll get married.¹  I didn¹t want to load
it against marriage or load it for marriage. But I chose not to include any
frivolous approaches to marriage. I just wanted to take a cross section and
then truly see what happens.²
 
All of the nine couples return for ³Married in America 2,² even those who
have split up.  Were any conditions placed on these couples when you first
profiled them in the original 2002 doc?
³We have a contract that they¹ll participate in the subsequent films, but I
don¹t know how enforceable that is. There might come a time -­ if, say,
there¹s a nasty divorce -­ when it will take all of my powers of persuasion
to get them to do it.  So far, they¹ve been willing.  When I was casting
them, I made it as bleak as I possibly could.  I said, ŒThis is easy, this
one. Everybody¹s happy, everybody¹s getting married and all that.  But as
times get rough, I¹m going to expect you to be there.¹  I kept saying that
to them.  ŒJust think about what you¹re taking on here. It could get very
difficult, your marriage, but I¹m counting on you to cooperate in the film,
no matter what happens.¹  I could not have made it more clear or said it
more often.²
 
Speaking of which, if, hypothetically, all nine couples split up, would that
necessarily mean the end of the ³Married in America² series?
³It would merely change the story.  I would still follow the couples.  If
couple ŒA¹ splits up, I will stay with them.  I would follow them into their
new relationships and get a comparative study of two different relationships
with one or both parties in that.  I think that would be interesting part of
any examination of marriage: the failed relationships and the new
relationships.²
 
The overwhelming majority of couples in your film made it to their five-year
anniversaries.  Were you surprised that, at least that far, your group had a
lower divorce rate than the overall national average?
³I don¹t think there was overall surprise because, like I said, these people
were initially very serious about marriage. But I was pleased that so many
had hung in there.²
 
How important was it to you to include a same-sex couple in the documentary?
³Very.  I just wanted to get as broad a view of American society as I
possibly could. I don¹t know what percentage there is of gay couples, but I
felt not to do it would leave a gap.  And I do think that people who have to
fight harder for their marriage, like our gay couple, the marriage will tend
to stay solid.  Maybe that¹s a lesson for everybody.  The amount of effort
you put into it may net the same or an even greater return.²
 
You¹ve also directed major studio films such as ³Coal Miner¹s Daughter,²
³Gorillas in the Mist,² ³Nell² and ³The World Is Not Enough.²  Which do you
find more rewarding?  Big feature films that reach millions and millions of
viewers?  Or these much smaller-scale, intimate documentaries?
³Really, I do like doing them both.  It¹s obviously thrilling if a big film
does well and lots of people go see it.  There¹s no substitute for that.
But each has its own rewards.  I also do television and I enjoy that as
well.  I like to spread it evenly, because it¹s all very satisfying for me.²
 
     Do you think we¹re in the midst of a golden age of documentaries?
     ³We are in the sense that more people are going to see them in the
cinema.  I think a lot of the credit goes to Michael Moore, Al Gore and
ŒMarch of the Penguins.¹  Michael Moore really did redefine it all with
ŒBowling for Columbine¹ and ŒFahrenheit 9/11.¹  He put the documentary on
another level and people could see that you could have fun going to the
cinema and seeing a documentary.  As for ŒAn Inconvenient Truth,¹ it is
proving not only to be popular, but it¹s also changing the political
landscape.²
 
     Alas, that doesn¹t make documentaries any easier to finance, does it?
     ³That¹s the awful part of the equation.  Documentaries don¹t tend to
make a lot of money.  I mean, obviously ŒAn Inconvenient Truth¹ and Michael
Moore and some others made money, but most documentaries don¹t.  Consider
ŒMarried in America¹: We got incredibly good reviews for that.  But you
wouldn¹t have thought so based on how hard it was to find funding for
ŒMarried in America 2.¹  I¹m happy with our financial partners, Hallmark and
Faith & Values Media. But it¹s always difficult, even though documentaries
do have a much high profile.²
 
You were making documentaries long before so-called reality TV gained
popularity.  What do you think of reality TV?  And does that genre make your
work as a documentary filmmaker easier or more difficult?
³I don¹t have a high opinion of a lot of reality, to be honest.  When I did
my last movie [in the Œ7 Up¹ series of docs], I had to go to some length to
explain to the participants that there¹s a difference between reality and
documentaries.  They were thinking, ŒAre we going to be exploited in this?
Why aren¹t we making a lot of money?  Why aren¹t we famous?¹ I said, ŒThere
is a difference.¹  Reality¹s strength -- and its weakness -- is its
contrivance: Put people in unusual situations, unusual circumstances, and
see how they respond.  And much of it is cruel.  But documentaries attempt
to see life as it happens. Documentaries show life as it is, not life as you
think it should be if you take some person and manipulate the situations and
the environment around him.²
 
 
-- HALLMARK CHANNEL --
 
 
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