Kino Lorber
The New York Times' Obituary section is like the Met Gala of the deceased. It is classy, tasteful, and the guest list is painfully exclusive. If you make it in, you know you've made it. Writers who craft these tributes paint vibrant images of their subjects, drawing to light what made them notable—the things that proved they were ever alive at all. In these obits, grief is temporarily assuaged with celebration.
Vanessa Gould's Obit, a documentary providing a behind-the-scenes look at the vestigial art of editorial obituaries at the New York Times, will open at New York's Film Forum and Lincoln Plaza Cinema on April 26th. The film—which will play at indie theaters across the country this summer—chronicles the workday of journalists such as Bruce Weber and Margalit Fox and unpacks the cultural influence of obituaries.
Gould's inspiration for the film came about when close friend and subject of her previous film Between the Folds (2008), Eric Joisel, passed away in 2010. Joisel, whose skill and vision placed him in the top tier of origami artists in the world, left behind an incredible body of work that Gould feared might all be forgotten. In an instinctive and hurried attempt to preserve the details of his life and accomplishments, the filmmaker contacted several publications across the nation hoping that one would publish Joisel's obituary. When the only paper that responded was the New York Times, Gould grew curious about the inner workings of the obit desk and how its writers artfully fit people's lifetimes into to 500 to 1000 words.Below, Gould talks influential artists, funny obituaries, and grief as an expression of life.How did you feel when you finally saw Joisel's obituary published in the Times ?
It was cathartic for reasons that I still don't [understand]. That was grief. I had mourned him personally because he was a friend, but I was transmitting a deeper cultural grief for the loss of an artist and the loss of his ideas and his vision. And the way he interpreted the world was gone. The things that I did after his death were in a panic to try and preserve him somehow, even in memory. He's gone now, but what can we fling a net at and catch before it flies even farther away?' And then to see it in the paper, I don't know why, but it was really seismic for me. It was earth-shaking. And I guess it just felt like we caught some of it and we had solidified it into the public record and he wasn't going to be forgotten. It's not his whole life—it's a great reduction of who he was, but for some reason it was a validation and I could sleep knowing that he wouldn't be forgotten.I'm sure he would be moved by that.
I'll never be able to articulate the weird feelings I had about what he would have thought had he seen his picture [in the paper]. He lived with very little means. I was at his house a few times and in the fridge was one can of orange juice. [He wore] the same sweater every day, working, working, working with this vision, and he never tasted the fruits of all that work. His name was just coming up as he was getting sick, and so it was like this massive triumph that he won. But he wasn't there for the victory, and that's heavy in a beautiful and sad way. It's sort of both things.In the film, NYT music critic Jon Pareles said that art makes you immortal. Do you feel like that immortality only applies to the most famous artists?
I think he's getting at people who become our voices and our consciousness. So, if it's a politician who fights for justice, in a way their work becomes your vision, and that way they become immortalized because their ideas outlive them so profoundly in the DNA of the people who they've affected. I think that's a really beautiful idea. I think it happens a lot in the arts because it's so much about expression and emotion, but I don't think it's completely confined to the arts.Fox explains that the obits' desk is no longer a stigmatized assignment for journalists. Do you think that shift reflects changing attitudes towards grief?
I'm cautious about making any grand proclamations about how people feel about death because it's such a personal thing, but when there is an obituary that's funny, people really love it, and I think it's a release. When somebody who is a cultural figure dies, I think the range of emotions around that are really varied. Obviously some people felt like they knew the person and felt their loss, but other people do sort of come to it being like, 'I just want to celebrate them.'Like when Don Rickles died, everyone was flinging zingers at each other in the spirit of him—it was a way of mourning. So yeah, I do think the culture is changing. I don't think the obits are changing the culture though, I think it's the other way around. Our culture is changing so quickly and it's so dynamic and the tone of the obits are reflecting that.The interviews with archivist Jeff Roth were amusing because of how he described the 'morgue'—their enormous collection of people's undigitized photos.
The writers and the editors and Jeff, they have a gallows humor about it. When you work in a field that has sort of a heavy side to it, I think it's a natural human impulse to find humor in that. You get through the day by finding the lightness in it. The facts of life that they deal with everyday are sort of funny at the end of the day when you think about it—the fact that Jeff can't wrangle this enormous 'morgue' and that it's less organized. It's humbling. Death is humbling. We are at its mercy. I think there's a lot of opportunity for humor in that. It's a way of coping with the inevitability of it.
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It was cathartic for reasons that I still don't [understand]. That was grief. I had mourned him personally because he was a friend, but I was transmitting a deeper cultural grief for the loss of an artist and the loss of his ideas and his vision. And the way he interpreted the world was gone. The things that I did after his death were in a panic to try and preserve him somehow, even in memory. He's gone now, but what can we fling a net at and catch before it flies even farther away?' And then to see it in the paper, I don't know why, but it was really seismic for me. It was earth-shaking. And I guess it just felt like we caught some of it and we had solidified it into the public record and he wasn't going to be forgotten. It's not his whole life—it's a great reduction of who he was, but for some reason it was a validation and I could sleep knowing that he wouldn't be forgotten.I'm sure he would be moved by that.
I'll never be able to articulate the weird feelings I had about what he would have thought had he seen his picture [in the paper]. He lived with very little means. I was at his house a few times and in the fridge was one can of orange juice. [He wore] the same sweater every day, working, working, working with this vision, and he never tasted the fruits of all that work. His name was just coming up as he was getting sick, and so it was like this massive triumph that he won. But he wasn't there for the victory, and that's heavy in a beautiful and sad way. It's sort of both things.In the film, NYT music critic Jon Pareles said that art makes you immortal. Do you feel like that immortality only applies to the most famous artists?
I think he's getting at people who become our voices and our consciousness. So, if it's a politician who fights for justice, in a way their work becomes your vision, and that way they become immortalized because their ideas outlive them so profoundly in the DNA of the people who they've affected. I think that's a really beautiful idea. I think it happens a lot in the arts because it's so much about expression and emotion, but I don't think it's completely confined to the arts.Fox explains that the obits' desk is no longer a stigmatized assignment for journalists. Do you think that shift reflects changing attitudes towards grief?
I'm cautious about making any grand proclamations about how people feel about death because it's such a personal thing, but when there is an obituary that's funny, people really love it, and I think it's a release. When somebody who is a cultural figure dies, I think the range of emotions around that are really varied. Obviously some people felt like they knew the person and felt their loss, but other people do sort of come to it being like, 'I just want to celebrate them.'Like when Don Rickles died, everyone was flinging zingers at each other in the spirit of him—it was a way of mourning. So yeah, I do think the culture is changing. I don't think the obits are changing the culture though, I think it's the other way around. Our culture is changing so quickly and it's so dynamic and the tone of the obits are reflecting that.The interviews with archivist Jeff Roth were amusing because of how he described the 'morgue'—their enormous collection of people's undigitized photos.
The writers and the editors and Jeff, they have a gallows humor about it. When you work in a field that has sort of a heavy side to it, I think it's a natural human impulse to find humor in that. You get through the day by finding the lightness in it. The facts of life that they deal with everyday are sort of funny at the end of the day when you think about it—the fact that Jeff can't wrangle this enormous 'morgue' and that it's less organized. It's humbling. Death is humbling. We are at its mercy. I think there's a lot of opportunity for humor in that. It's a way of coping with the inevitability of it.