Lawrence Bender has produced such well regarded and award-laden films as Good Will Hunting and An Inconvenient Truth, as well as each of Quentin Tarantino’s films (though he’s not working with him on Django Unchained), yet he considers himself to be a political activist at heart, involving himself in documentaries in order to further an overall message that is close to his heart.

He was recently presented with an award by the National Wildlife Federation for his contribution to the protection of wildlife and is serving as producer on Countdown to Zero, a new documentary by Lucy Walker about the proliferation of nuclear weapons and what can and must be done to stop it.

I had the privilege and pleasure of speaking with Lawrence Bender recently in order to discuss Countdown to Zero and the process of it making its way to the screen. We also discussed the state of documentary film-making and his commitment to political campaigning on this crucial issue.

HeyUGuys:     I had the pleasure of seeing Countdown to Zero last week and very much enjoyed it as I’m sure many will. I understand that Matt Brown initially contacted you regarding the feasibility of a documentary on nuclear proliferation. Did the idea grab you at once or did it take some time to get under your skin?

Lawrence Bender:     Well first of all thank you for saying you liked the movie. I very much appreciate it.  You probably know I produced a movie An Inconvenient Truth before and after that and having the success I’ve had, there are a lot of people who came to me with many different issues. As we all know there are lots of overwhelming issues in the world today, but when Matt Brown and also Bruce Blair, the two of them came to me with this idea, which is the other threat that can upset mankind on a planetary basis in an unforeseeable future, the second he brought it up to me I came to it pretty quickly.  So the answer was yes, I immediately said yes this is it, this is my next project.  The question I had and I grappled with for several months was “What’s the storyline?” How do we actually make this into a movie, because nuclear weapons could be very boring. There are a million books on it and it could be difficult so it took a little bit of time to figure out the actual take and how to go about it, but the second he brought it up I was very keen to get into it.

HeyUGuys:     I think it hangs together excellently as a film, I think it really grabs your attention and carries all its ideas through very well.  In the same way as with An Inconvenient Truth, Countdown to Zero seems to seek to inspire us to get involved and play our part.  With the decisions primarily in the hands of national governments and, do you feel it’s something that you and I can have an impact on ourselves?

LB:     Well that’s why I guess I made the movie. It is probably, next to global warming, the number one threat facing us. It’s a scary and a powerful film but I believe it will play a major role in raising awareness and building the Global Zero movement to eliminate nuclear weapons.  In the United States it came out during the ratification process for the Start Treaty [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] and it helped build public support for it.  I guess the main thing is that the UK obviously is one of the nuclear weapon states and they have a major role to play in the Global Zero movement. So as a citizen of a country and the world it’s incumbent upon us to become aware of this and then to become political and tell our leaders that this is something that we believe in, that we believe something needs to be done about this and to take action.  There are so many things going on in the world of course as we all know and you watch the movie and say “how many people really see nuclear weapons on any kind of regular daily basis?” Very few and so the idea is to raise awareness and get people to take some action.

HeyUGuys:     I think that was a key element of the film, this sense that this has been going on for decades and it’s not so immediately on our radar and yet when you’re confronted with the information in the film you can’t help but feel that this is something that we can’t just sit back on.  I understand that you remained personally involved in the setting up of many of the interviews that form the backbone of the film, who was the hardest to get hold of?

LB:     Most of the former heads of state took some time, oddly enough Gorbachev maybe took the longest and was the hardest.  We met him at Harvard, Graham Allison, who’s in the movie, hosted a nuclear summit at Harvard was there and spoke to him, but it was a year and a half later that we actually ultimately had the interview.  President Musharraf from Pakistan was quite interesting in the sense that we were trying to go to Pakistan to interview him, this is a couple of years ago now, and so as a tourist going to Pakistan it’s not so hard to get a visa, but to go in for a movie about nuclear weapons to interview him was quite difficult. We didn’t want to lie about it, because we didn’t want to have any potential issues once we got into the country and so what happened was, we eventually got our Visa, the Director and my Line Producer was in Abu Dhabi about to fly from Abu Dhabi to Pakistan, I was about to get on the plane from LA and I got a phone call from my fixer saying “your visa is being denied”. I’m like “what?! You’re telling me when half the crew’s already halfway around the world” – well not half the crew, I mean we’re talking about three people – but documentary people fly coach, it’s a long trip and I said ‘why?’ and they said “well, you know we’re sorry we can’t let you go in”. So then two things happened – first of all, the day we were supposed to arrive, the hotel that we were supposed to be in blew up and it was I think the Marriott which is in Islamabad and has been the most fortified hotel where all the westerners have stayed. We actually had a choice, our fixer said “well that’s where most people stay but you might want to stay at a little tiny hotel over here where maybe people won’t know you’re there”. I’m not sure which hotel we’d have been in but then the day after that Musharraf was ousted and he left Pakistan and as you know he’s in the UK now. So soon after that we actually went and interviewed him in the United Kingdom. There weren’t that many stories like that but there were a couple.

HeyUGuys: It feels like we have been for a number of years in something of a golden age as far as documentaries are concerned. You think of An Inconvenient Truth, Fog of War, Inside Job, Enron, Grizzly Man, Fahrenheit 9/11, it seems as though we have had such a flurry of real quality documentary filmmaking.  Why do you think there has been this recent resurgence? Why do you think that suddenly documentaries seem to be so much more proficient and popular a type of film?

LB:     Ok, so first of all before I answer the question I have to say that as many of these extraordinary documentaries as you mention, although some of them are coming out, unfortunately in the United States it’s as hard as ever and people just don’t seem to go to them in the theatre.  Once every year a couple of documentaries pop out if we’re extremely lucky – hopefully we’ll be luck with this one – but it’s very hard to get people to the movie theatres to see documentaries and it’s a shame.  It’s not like it’s getting any easier but quality documentaries just continue to astound and as you said there are these amazing documentaries.  Although this movie is nothing like his movies, Michael Moore I think gets the ultimate credit for this because he has made documentaries extremely popular and won an Academy Award himself. They made huge amounts of money and he popularised this format.  We got very lucky with An Inconvenient Truth where we had such a huge phenomenon with it. I think after An Inconvenient Truth I got to witness first hand the power of a movie to educate people and inspire them to join the movement, but I feel there were these documentaries that have inspired another generation and people are saying “hey, there’s another way to get involved and make a difference”. And there are two types of filmmakers in this area. One are the filmmakers themselves, documentary filmmakers who love making documentaries and that is their passion and their art form, but that is not me, although I love this process. I don’t consider myself to be a documentary filmmaker, I’m a political activist who uses documentary film-making to further an overall message. That’s why I did An Inconvenient Truth and that’s why I did Countdown To Zero, because it is part of a bigger agenda that I have.

HeyUGuys: Finally then, do you have any more documentaries on your radar as a producer?

LB: I don’t right now have another one on my plate. Tomorrow, here in the United States I’m getting an award at the National Wildlife Federation’s Voices for Wildlife” gala and as I’m sure you know Countdown To Zero is coming out next Tuesday. The next day there’s a big summit and so I have a lot of work involved with the summit and the premiere and the issue itself  and at the premiere at BAFTA in London there’s going to be a panel discussion. At some point I will start another documentary.

Countdown To Zero is premiering on June 21st on Demand Zero Day

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Dave has been writing for HeyUGuys since mid-2010 and has found them to be the most intelligent, friendly, erudite and insightful bunch of film fans you could hope to work with. He's gone from ham-fisted attempts at writing the news to interviewing Lawrence Bender, Renny Harlin and Julian Glover, to writing articles about things he loves that people have actually read. He has fairly broad tastes as far as films are concerned, though given the choice he's likely to go for Con Air over Battleship Potemkin most days. He's pretty sure that 2001: A Space Odyssey is the most overrated mess in cinematic history.