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PF Pictures’ latest documentary, Requiem for the American Dream (2015) is the result of four years of interviews with Professor Noam Chomsky. Known in scholarly circles for his groundbreaking work in linguistics, Chomsky is a public intellectual whose political ideas have generated strong reactions — both positive and negative. In Requiem, Chomsky traces an intellectual, social, political, economic and legal history in support of his claim that democracy in the United States is collapsing. It is an accessible documentary — one needn’t be an academic to understand what Chomsky says — but it is no less challenging as a result.

I had the opportunity to interview writer, director, and producer Jared P. Scott about the making of Requiem, as well as his views about filmmaking and social justice issues. Scott founded PF Pictures with Kelly Nyks. Together they have made a number of acclaimed documentaries, including Disruption (2014), Do the Math (2013), The Artificial Leaf (2012) and Split: A Divided America (2008). Requiem was produced and directed by Scott, Nyks and Peter Hutchison.

Screenprism: What drove you to specialize in social justice issues and use film as a tool for social change?

Jared P. Scott: I think filmmaking is a personal journey for all of us. Some people set out to be storytellers, others want to be more investigative, and others want to explore the human condition. I learned at a very young age that making movies takes a lot of time. And if you’re not passionate about the subject, it’s hard to dig down deep to find the extra energy to go the extra distance. At some point, in any film, you don’t have money, you’re broke, you’ve been up all night, your girlfriend’s broken up with you – if you’re not passionate about the subject you’re working on, you might not make it.

Because I’ve always been interested in current events, [as a filmmaker] I’m a messenger. Film happens to be the prevailing storytelling medium of our time. It became a really essential vehicle for me to try to use my time and talents in a way that I felt maybe answered a bit of a higher calling. I’m not trying to be precious about any of this, either, it’s just that if I’m going to spend this much time on something, and I care this much about these topics, then I feel I have a responsibility to take my craft and mix it with my passion.

We organize around these films. We try to get people to have discussions. Films are platforms for discussions. They’re beginning points; they’re not end points. A discussion after a film can be radically different based on the people that are involved. A university in Rochester, New York, is going to have a different post-screening discussion than a community group based in Juno, Alaska. You’re able to continue to make the film more timely with the conversation that surrounds it. It’s hard to have a starting point [for a discussion]. What’s great about a film is that it’s such a low entrance barrier. Anyone can sit down and watch a movie for 70 minutes. When you do that with other people, and you talk about it afterwards, you have a point of departure that’s so critical to having some kind of civil dialogue.

One of my co-directors, Kelly, says we don’t want our films to be seen as the broccoli of entertainment. We strive to make these [films] incredibly artful and arresting. If we don’t make an entertaining, highly cinematic film, the message won’t stick.

SP: How did you connect with Professor Chomsky?

JPS: We’d interviewed Professor Chomsky before for two other films. The three of us, Peter [Hutchison], Kelly [Nyks], and I sat down and made this conscious decision to approach Chomsky with the longer-form idea. To his credit, he’s so consumed by his writing and reading and speaking and traveling; he’s always been such a public servant in that way, always trying to get his ideas out there so we can see things in a new way. As long as we were able to make the scheduling work, he often makes himself available for interviews.

SP: Chomsky is arguing his diagnosis of the current condition of our country in relation to wealth inequality, as well as a remedy for this condition. How did you go about visualizing what is essentially a verbal essay?

JPS: The reason why the film is as cinematic as it is is because we didn’t set out to write a white paper. There’s plenty of beautiful books that Chomsky writes, but we wanted this film to be palatable, digestible, exciting and exhilarating intellectually not just for your mind but also by the stimulation of the images, the sound, the music. At the end of the day, we’re still filmmakers.

One of the principles of storytelling is a desire to touch the audience. We have an incredible team: Malcolm Francis, the composer; Mike McSweeney, the DP; the sound recordist, Matt Schonfeld; the artist, Mark Wagner… We’ve worked with a lot of these people on other projects. We used every tool at our disposal.

We wanted it to feel like a highly engaging discussion. And there was also an intimacy to that. You and I don’t often have conversations with people that close up. Professor Chomsky’s framed incredibly close. We wanted the audience to feel like they were right in the room, like there were six inches of separation. He’s very candid; he’s very warm; he’s very approachable. He doesn’t seem like this professor who’s sitting in this ivory tower. We wanted the discussion to feel like that, like you’re really with him, the man. His ideas are him. If you ask him a question about himself, in about five seconds he’ll deflect it and start talking about some kind of larger point.

SP: How did you come to the structure of the film and decide to organize around the 10 principles?

JPS: We wanted a chapter structure. We listened. We wanted to be very clear that we interviewed Professor Chomsky many times over a long period of time. At the same time, we didn’t want you to notice that. We went to great lengths to frame him the same way. We always asked him to wear the same thing; sometimes he didn’t, so we actually color corrected some of the sweaters. But we tried to make it so that you knew you were sitting with this man over several years, but it felt like one conversation.

We started out with a different structure. And as we kept going back — part of the reason also that it took a while was that we did other films during the course of making this film, and we had to work around Professor Chomsky’s schedule — we began to notice that he keeps mentioning these principles, or he keeps saying this over and over. People ask how we went through so much material, but he actually repeated himself quite a bit. And in that, we were like, obviously this point is important, since he said it in every interview; he keeps coming back to it. Professor Chomsky was almost a fourth filmmaker in the room. As we kept listening, we noticed that he was talking about these “principles,” “tenets,” “tendencies,” “mechanisms,” and we were trying to find a way to use his language, but also take a certain liberty in framing that. We felt these 10 principles, based on his words, based on his ideas, allowed us to organize [things] in a way that made it a little easier for the audience to follow. It’s a framing device, a narrative device, a filmmaking device. Each chapter is more or less seven minutes. It’s also a part of the pacing.

SP: What’s next for you and PF Pictures?

JPS: I’m producing Disobedience. Kelly is directing.