Director Barbara Kopple, one of the leaders in the field of documentary filmmaking, has been on the frontlines recording the American labor movement since her groundbreaking 1976 feature debut Harlan County, U.S.A. Following the struggles of a coal miner’s strike in Kentucky, Kopple found a story of community solidarity and corporate cruelty––a struggle of David and Goliath proportions. About a decade later, she drove to Austin, Minnesota, to film a new strike at a Hormel meatpacking plant. Kopple found workers pushed to the brink, disagreements among labor leaders, and corporate interests that only focused on increasing profitability, not wages. The result would become 1990’s American Dream, a documentary just as relevant today as it was during its original release.
Now, American Dream is coming to theaters this Friday with a new 4K restoration for May Day, playing alongside Harlan County, U.S.A. The two Oscar-winning documentaries reflect the change in the American labor movement as support for unions fell and workers felt their paychecks shrink under Reaganomics, while still resonating with working conditions today. The A.V. Club spoke to Kopple about breaking into the documentary field, the importance for documentary filmmakers to embed themselves in the stories they want to tell, and her next movie about the labor movement.
The A.V. Club: Before making your own film, Harlan County, U.S.A., you started working with the Maysles brothers. What did you learn about documentary filmmaking from them?
Barbara Kopple: I had studied clinical psychology, and I saw Frederick Wiseman‘s Titicut Follies, and it was censored everywhere for a while. I was in Boston going to school, and I took a train to New York. It was playing at Cinema Village, and [when] I saw it, in a way, I knew this was my calling. This is what I wanted to do in my life. I came back to New York City, and I took a course at the New School on cinéma-vérité. Sitting next to me was this really wonderful woman named Angela, and she said, “The place I work as a receptionist, they need an intern. They’re called the Maysles brothers, and they’re really influential in documentary filmmaking. Would you be interested?” And I said, “Are you kidding? I would love it!” She brought me in, and I got interviewed by Albert and David [Maysles]. One of the things they said to me was, “Okay, we have a film called Salesman coming out, and we want you to get the mailing list from the Museum Of Modern Art.” I said, “Okay, I got it.” I did it, and they were shocked.
When they were editing, they would let us in as a group, interns and whoever else was working there, to look at the different cuts that Charlotte Zwerin and Susan Steinberg were making, and let us give our opinions. That made me feel like I counted, like people cared about what I thought about, and that gave me the confidence and the passion to want to tell stories like this myself.
AVC: How did you know you wanted to make your first movie about a miner’s strike in Kentucky?
BK: I heard on WNPR about what was happening in Harlan County. So, off I went for the Miners For Democracy in Harlan County. I got a $12,000 loan to go do it. It was an adventure. When you go out for a documentary, you feel like maybe there’s a kernel of a story, but you’re not sure till you get there, and you explore and things take you in totally different directions. That’s what makes it frightening, wonderful, and exhilarating. You get to meet a whole community of people that embrace you and have your back and take care of you. It’s wonderful.
AVC: After filming this story for years, how did you know it was time to stop and make the movie?
BK: Well, I didn’t. I just figured, okay, I have to go back now. I don’t have any more film to shoot. Sometimes, my parents would send me film, and we’d pick it up in Tennessee, and send them what we had already shot. All my friends and everybody, instead of giving me any little birthday party or gift, they would give me a little bit of money so I could keep going.
AVC: What was it like to revisit American Dream for this restoration?
BK: Well, [the restoration] goes to Criterion and Janus because they had the distribution of both Harlan County, U.S.A. and American Dream. They’re the ones that put their sweat, equity, and money in it. It was extraordinary [to revisit] because I felt like all this time had not really gone by, and memories of people came up, and how much I loved being in both those circumstances of Harlan County and American Dream, and the work that it entailed.
AVC: There’s so many interesting subjects in American Dream, like the Bergstrom brothers that fell on different sides of the picket line, and the personalities that would take on leadership roles in the various union organizations. How do you find the people you want to profile?
BK: Well, you’re living in a community, and for me, living in a community is really important. You can’t just go and stay a week or two weeks and expect to get a film. I’ve lived in these communities for one, two, three years––as long as it takes. I knew that RJ [Bergstrom] was really upset at his brother because RJ was P-9, which meant he went along with Jim Guyette and Ray Rogers. His brother, Ron, was P-10 that went along with the International Union, and they were having some friction. RJ just said to him, “If you go across a picket line, you’re not my brother anymore.” And Ron said back, “My family comes first. I’ve been taught all my life you do not cross a picket line, but my family has to come first and not my union.” There were just so many extraordinary moments like that that were pulling that community apart over different things that they had to do for their survival.
AVC: How did you first find out about the Hormel strike?
BK: I was in Worthington, Minnesota, and an armor plant was closing. I had wanted to look at what was happening under Reaganomics and the industrial situation out there because it was a lot different than with Harlan County. It was very anti-union, even more so on a larger scale. So, I went to Worthington, and I went there before it closed. I was sitting on the porch with this husband and wife, and they said, “We’re really sad. We’re going to have to leave, but at least we have a place to go to another armor plant,” because they had it in their union contract that if their plant closed, they could go to another plant. So, I’m talking with his wife and their phone rings. He comes out crying and says they’re closing all the armor plants and there’s nowhere we can go. People just started leaving, putting things in their trucks, and leaving almost like in The Grapes Of Wrath. It was so sad and depressing.
I heard on the radio these people in Austin, Minnesota, started screaming, “We’re not going to take it anymore. We’re not going to take it anymore.” So I immediately went to Austin and that’s where I stayed. I tried to fit the other material in, but it just was too much because American Dream has four different arcs, and to be able to weave them in, it’s P-9, P-10, the National Union, and the company. It was difficult.
AVC: In the decade between Harlan County and American Dream, it feels like there’s a fracturing of the labor movement. What was it like to tell that story?
BK: In American Dream, they all had different opinions, but they all had really great hearts and were really honest and really cared. For example, Lewie Anderson had to take care of 25 or 30 different meatpacking plants, and many of them were making $6.50 or $7.50 or $8.50 an hour doing the same exact work as the people in Austin, Minnesota. His strategy was to bring everybody up to the same level. You don’t get the people who are on top to keep going. Ray and Jim Gayette felt, “Why should we have to do this? We were making $8.69, our grandfathers and our fathers and all the people that we’ve known in our life have worked in this plant, and we’re working in this plant. [The company] cut our wages, and we want to have an American Dream like everybody else.” Their hearts were in it, and they really wanted to win. Of course, the company who had made over $200 million profit wanted to be competitive, and if there was anybody evil in [the movie], it was the company.
AVC: How did you balance those various opinions in the edit?
BK: It’s a monster. You sit in the editing room, and you try so many different things to see what connects, what works. With American Dream, it was harder than Harlan County because Harlan County was “you’re either for the union or against the union.” This had a lot of other things, but you wanted to learn, you wanted to see different people’s perspectives. It was so important for me as a filmmaker to let you make your own decisions on what you felt was right.
AVC: Was there a moment when making American Dream that you knew this conversation or scene had to be in the film?
BK: I think [about] these Minnesotan men who believed all their lives that you do not cross a picket line and had to make that decision over their family or their union. One of them just says, “My wife has a job. My son has a job, and what do I do? I sit home, and I play with the cat.” Then, he just puts his hands over his face and cries. In the next scene, you see him going to the picket line and crossing. I think that was very, very hard and very, very challenging for these guys who believed in unions all their lives and just had to give it up for their jobs.
AVC: You’re working on a new labor documentary. As you’ve documented the labor movement for decades, what is your impression of how things have changed since American Dream?
BK: I don’t think it’s changed too much. I think that it’s very, very similar. I’m doing a film on UPS, Amazon, the Teamsters, and the deliveristas––the people who deliver you your bagels or whatever you have [ordered]. Amazon, for example, uses independent workers. So Amazon never hires them, but Amazon can fire them. They’re on their own if they get hurt, or if anything happens. They’re gone. The deliveristas are from other countries. They have to buy their motorcycles or their bikes and their gloves, and they’re totally on their own in a different community. They have no health benefits, no nothing. If something happens to them, they’re responsible for it. And UPS and the Teamsters, even though they’ve had––I don’t know––the union for a hundred years, the company is still doing things that are not living up to the contract, so they have to continue to fight.
AVC: It feels like we’re in another Reagan era that’s anti-union and anti-arts funding. How do you maintain the energy to keep fighting and telling stories?
BK: Well, the energy is always there, because if you’re able to finish the films that you want to do, hopefully people will see them. You’ve done it and nobody can erase it. Funding for documentaries has always been hard. It’s never easy. I remember [making] Harlan County, they turned my electricity off at home, and I put candles around my bathtub and took a bath and was singing Bob Marley and feeling sorry for myself with tears coming down my eyes, but it’s always hard. It’s really hard now because the National Endowment For The Arts is not able to fund anything that is about social issues, and the National Endowment For The Humanities and other people, other foundations are afraid. It’s a difficult time, but you have to look, and you have to try to find people who will be donors. Even if they give you a little bit of money, it still encourages you to keep going, and that’s the way you have to do it. You have to be as creative about your fundraising as you are about making the film.
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