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San Francisco Bay Guardian Rewinding Waco
Ours, too. One of the most achingly sad documentaries I can remember, Gazecki's film sounds, on paper, more like a morning with Rush Limbaugh than like an evening screening at the Roxie (where it got its first theatrical run, last week). In Waco's world the gun "nuts" are sane, the conservatives are honest, the liberals are pigs, the children are in danger. The doc left even slackers in Roxie's rep house stunned, their ideologies scrambled and their consciences scarred by a slow-motion, two-hour-plus replay of the slaughter of a peaceful sect. How can a jury look at the Rodney King videotape and not see a police beating? The same way the American people can look at the Waco inferno and see a mass suicide. A radical reframing suited up in pin-striped documentary garb, The Rules of Engagement mixes footage that's already been heavily digested by interested parties: Waco in flames, forward- looking infrared (FLIR) imagery seen by Congress, CSPAN's coverage of the Waco hearings, David Koresh's pleas, Janet Reno's testimony. But this film adds to that tabloid mix some desperate 911 calls by Branch Davidians, sections of the negotiation tapes that offer a dismal perspective on FBI attempts to come to a truce, the Davidians' footage and that of the FBI agents (a SWAT teamster jokes about being "honed to kill," while Davidians inside calmly express fear for their lives). Most crucially, the soundtrack lays new emotional cues over old footage (a Third Reichian drumbeat as federal agents approach, heavy-metal guitar tangle as tanks crash into the building). And in case anyone's sympathy for the Davidians was lagging, the film also has witnesses noting that armed federal agents killed their Alaskan malamute. As reported by the Chronicle last week, Gazecki was not pleased by changes his producer wanted"and won"in the film. "My cut just had more of the human drama," he told me. Despite the tussle, the product is powerfully reserved, a rueful procession of information instead of a violent spew of sermonizing. The result is somber, nonpartisan, enraging.
Co-executive producer Amy Sommer Gifford said over the phone from Los Angeles that the director and executive producers basically "agreed on the gestalt of it. Just because you didn't want them as neighbors doesn't mean you should fry 'em." Or, as one lawyer said of the lack of due process given the Davidians, under the Constitution "we don't kill them first." The somewhat disappointed Gazecki is pleased that some basic media-fueled misconceptions get corrected"particularly the idea that the Davidians were a "cult," the notion that they committed "mass suicide," and the concept that Koresh "controlled" those who lived at Mt. Carmel. Says Gazecki, "The reason they didn't come out is because the FBI lied to them repeatedly. If you listen to the negotiation tapes, you find that that's true." Audience response to the information bombs on those tapes inevitably will be vehement. But distribution isn't yet sealed ("No i's have been dotted," Sommer Gifford said). The film shows through Thursday at the Roxie, will likely play in rep houses in Boston and Austin, and has been selected for screening at the June Human Rights Watch film festival in New York. It's been the proverbial long, strange trip for Buddhist, Deadhead, and Bay Area native Gazecki. "When I started the thing I...hated guns to the degree that I was terrified of 'em. I still don't like 'em, don't even like touching them. I will say that in learning more about how this country was founded [I learned that] the reason we were given the right to have guns is in case we were gonna have to overthrow our government again." Not that he's expecting to have to anytime soon. Robert Preiss, the film's Washington, D.C.-based press agent, is playing down any legislative aims. There probably won't be any special screenings for Congress members. "They can buy a ticket like everyone else," he said. "They had their chance to deal with the issue and they blew it. Now it's up to the arts community to explain to the public what happened. When the film screens here in Washington, I'm sure we'll be inviting members of the press and members of Congress to come see what they may or may not know."
©1997 San Francisco Bay Guardian |
"I've always
voted Democrat," William Gazecki, director of crowd-displeaser Waco: The Rules
of Engagement, told me over the phone last week. "But at this point, all the
lines are crossing in my mind."
"One thing
I'm proud of in our film is that we got to the factual data," Gazecki said.
"When I realized these people who looked worthy of my respect were lying"
which is something I don't respec" I got pretty angry. The trick is, how do
I make an objective piece of media without projecting my anger? That was the challenge."