A pastiche of confessional interviews, recreations
and decade-spanning raw footage, Darius Clark Monroe’s Evolution of a Criminal
examines the director’s transition from a 16 year-old Texas honor student to
incarcerated bank robber. Not so much a malicious jaunt as an impulsive act of
financially strapped naïveté, Monroe revisits his victims, family members,
teachers and friends as he tries to piece together the puzzle behind this
life-altering moment. Below, Monroe speaks about why his film is not just for
the convicted, his reasoning for recreations and how the camera elicits
honesty. Evolution of a Criminal premieres tomorrow in the Visions section at
SXSW.
1.
While you’re in jail, around age 18, you
realized you wanted to go to school to become a filmmaker so you could tell
your story. Why did you keep quiet about that very story until the film was
complete?
2.
Once I was released from prison, I continued
going to college, having transferred from Lee College (a community college with
a prison satellite campus, located on my unit) to University of Houston.
Although my first semester was tough, figuring out how to set up an email —
learning how to register for classes and applying for financial aid — it never
once occurred to me that I should share my background with my professors and
fellow students. This wasn’t due to me being ashamed. I just didn’t feel the
need to wear my past and be forced to relive it each time I met a new person.
While at NYU, a few classmates knew about my background, but that’s where it
remained, in the background. I’d also add that it’s hard to omit huge chunks of
one’s life during normal day-to-day conversations. Eventually, someone was
going to ask me about something that occurred during 1998, 1999, 2000, or 2001.
So it wasn’t that I was quiet, I just didn’t tell everything to everyone.
Regarding the film, I had no idea that I’d make this film until the beginning
of my third year in grad school. Once I knew that I was really going to go
through with it, it was the second semester and school was almost over. I’d say
it was all timing. The desire to embark on this journey simply happened while I
was deep into the grad film program.
3.
I wanted to ask about some POV choices you make
with respect to the narrative. Everything unfolds through your eyes, but you
leave out key elements, like how you escalated from VHS tapes to banks, and the
details of the prosecution. Why?
4.
When I first read this question, I smiled. I
almost wanted to answer your question with a question. I believe that one can
go from committing petty crimes to doing something very serious without too
much happening in between. I believe it because I experienced it. Robbing a
bank may seem extreme, but for me, at sixteen, it didn’t feel like a huge leap.
The thought of doing it didn’t seem impossible. I didn’t need to go from
stealing VCRs, to hypothetically stealing cars and robbing convenient stores
before I decided to rob a bank. Had you asked me on my sixteenth birthday if
I’d ever rob a bank, I would have replied no. And yet, the robbery occurred
eight weeks later. When you’re young, one doesn’t need a lot of motivation to
do something reckless. I also don’t feel like I left out key details regarding
the prosecution. I’m well aware of the fact that the audience is experiencing a
story where they know the protagonist is guilty. When I think about courtroom
scenes in docs or narrative films, usually, we’re on the edge of our seats
because we’re questioning if the defendant is guilty or innocent. Although the
sentencing was important, I wanted to draw attention to the moments we don’t
usually see, the aftermath of said sentencing. And not just the aftermath told
in a broad sense, but the literal moments that happen once someone is
sentenced, handcuffed, and escorted away from their family and into a holding
cell.
5.
Were you able to have such honest conversations
with your family about how they felt before the film, or did the camera allow
you to venture into territory that was perhaps too sensitive earlier on? Your
mother, in particular, seems to carry a big burden for telling you too much as
a child.
6.
After my incarceration, my family would talk
about the robbery in an “I can’t believe that really happened but I’m glad it’s
over” sort of way. We wouldn’t delve into too many details or take the
discussion too far. There were moments where the conversation would become
fraught with tension. And other moments would occur where we’d find ourselves
laughing at how outrageous it was. My uncle Roy still jokes that I have money
buried somewhere. I knew that my family respected me as a filmmaker and that
the act of making this film would get them to open up about what really
happened. The camera, in a strange way, almost demands a certain level of
respect. After going through the headache of setting up the shot, lighting the
shot, and checking my mic levels, family members almost felt guilty for not
being open and honest. In my mind, I could hear them rationalizing all of this
to themselves: “Well, he brought all of this equipment over here, so I might as
well say something.” The camera made it safe for me to ask questions I wouldn’t
normally ask or know when to ask. Because the subjects knew me, I’d maintain
eye contact, hoping they’d forget about this huge piece of gear propped up in
front of them. You mentioned that my mother seemed to carry a big burden for
telling me too much as a child. My mother does carry that burden, but she
doesn’t carry it alone. At least, I hope she doesn’t. There’s no easy answer.
The relationship between a mother and son is a special one. Many mothers
overshare with their children. I do believe that my mother did indeed tell me
too much, but she’s not to blame for my actions. I was old enough to know
better. I had a father in the home as well. And there are many systemic issues
like generational poverty, generational incarceration, and class disparity,
just to name a few, that impacted and influenced my behavior.
7.
How did you go about structuring the film, with
its confessional interviews, raw footage and recreations? Was the re-staging of
events an ethical decision, to allow yourself to better reflect on what you
did?
8.
It took years to figure out the structure of
this film. After we shot the majority of the footage (back in 2007), I thought
we had everything we needed to finish the documentary. But I had no idea how it
would all go together. The footage consisted of numerous interviews, tons of
b-roll and raw footage (home video.) Something was missing. I didn’t know what
that something was, but I couldn’t see the movie. For the first five years of
editing, I was against any reenactments. Reenactments are not just hard to pull
off. If done incorrectly, they could ruin your film. Every time I thought of a
reenactment, my mind drifted to visuals that would appear on Investigative
Discovery (and I would have a mild heart attack.) I also didn’t want to
disrespect the innocent customers who were inside the bank by having an
emotionless, dry reenactment of a very serious event. During a two-year gap
when I walked away from the doc, I directed a couple of shorts and loved the
feeling of being back on set, back working with actors. It dawned on me that
I’d be okay with doing a reenactment as long as it felt genuine and was treated
with respect and shot like a film. I removed “reenactment” from my brain and
thought of the narrative scenes as one continuous short. While in the edit,
Doug Lenox (my editor) and I knew that the audience would want to experience
the robbery because we wanted to experience the robbery. The cut almost demanded
it. We needed the glue of the reenactment scenes to structure the rest of the
movie.
9.
Do you have any plans to bring this film to
those who are incarcerated, and in need of concrete evidence that they can
still turn their lives around?
10.
This is the second time I’ve read a question of
yours and wanted to reply with a question. In the question is the assumption
that the incarcerated are the ones who arguably need this film the most. I do
plan on screening this film in prisons and juveniles across the country, but
I’d hate to limit the core audience of this film to individuals who are
currently incarcerated or formerly incarcerated. When one commits a crime, the
ripple effect impacts the life of the incarcerated individual, their family,
spouse, children, victims, the family of the victims, the victims’ children and
many others. With over 2 million Americans incarcerated in prison and millions
more incarcerated in juveniles, county and state jails, it’s easy to see how
many people are involved when a crime is committed. This is the group I’d like
to speak to the most. Unfortunately, it’s pretty substantial in size. Evolution
of a Criminal is also a universal film. The majority of the country lives
paycheck to paycheck. The financial struggle that my family experienced is an
American struggle. We’d like to believe that most people wouldn’t go to the
extent of committing a crime to help ease that burden, but I’m of the belief
that it’s more common than advertised.
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