Two weeks ago I found myself driving around the most devastated neighborhood in New Orleans with a documentary film crew in my car. Strange as it may seem, the film crew was not there to record the story outside my car, but the one inside it.
“So Kate,” said the director from the backseat, “we need some context for this footage. You just graduated from college and now you’re driving around the country alone. Can you tell us what you are doing, exactly? Could you explain how you ended up volunteering in Louisiana? Also, when you answer the question this time could you say ‘New Orleans’ instead of ‘here,’ so we know what you are talking about?”
“And could you give the camera an occasional, furtive glance?” added the camera man from the passenger seat.
“And could you slow down and stop driving on the wrong side of the road!” said the sound guy, this more of a demand than a request.
I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I’d done this before, I could do it again. This film crew has been visiting me since I was seven and chosen to be a subject in an ongoing documentary about kids in America, called “Seven Up in America.” Every seven years they come and follow me around for a day, asking me questions about my life. When the producer contacted me a few weeks ago, she asked if they could come visit me while I was in Louisiana. I said yes. In other words, it’s not like my parents sold my soul to Miramax when I was kid. I have a choice in the matter.
I was in middle of answering the director’s questions when something to my left caught my eye. A great big bubble with a hole in the roof.
“Holy shit, that’s the Superdome!” I said, giving a not-so-furtive look at the camera. “Woops, I’m probably not allowed to say shit on the Discovery Channel,” I apologized to the director, who motioned for me to keep talking, but at that point I was so flustered I started mumbling.
“I couldn’t hear the last part of what she was saying,” the sound guy complained.
“Let’s try that again,” the director said, his voice beginning to sound weary. “Okay, Kate. You just graduated from college…”
The funny thing about having your life profiled in an ongoing documentary is that you develop a double consciousness. You are two people: yourself, and the one depicted on screen. There is little room for nuance in a 90 minute film about 13 kids. Last time the film crew visited me, I was the kid whose parents had just gotten divorced. I was quiet and sad. Psychologists wrote things like, “The shattered look on Kate’s face speaks volumes about the effect of divorce on children.” I’ve been waiting seven years to redeem myself and show that I am a well adjusted 21-year-old. Now here was my chance.
“Okay, that take was good until the end when we lost Kate’s voice in the muffle of that truck. Kate can you repeat what you were saying, beginning with…”
When you have to repeat yourself several times your words begin to lose meaning. When this happens on camera, it can feel like you are reading a script. During the fifth take, I started to question the sincerity of what I was saying. I knew what the director was looking for in my answer, some thoughtful explanation of what inspired me to volunteer in the Katrina relief effort. I wanted to give him this, but in my heart I knew it wasn’t altruism that had brought me here. It was curiosity. I am a writer and I wanted to see what was happening. Now that I was here I felt like a child who stops to examine an animal corpse on the side of the road and immediately regrets it. I felt ashamed and slightly sick to my stomach. I had to explain this to the director so he didn’t portray me as a hero. I managed to mutter something but then my voice petered out.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized to the director. “I’m terrible at this.”
I felt bad. The film crew only had a few hours until their flight to go visit the next kid, who was in jail in Chicago for attempted manslaughter. They had flown all the way down here to visit me and I was having trouble delivering what they needed, a simple explanation of how I ended up here and what I was doing.
“It’s okay, Kate,” said the director, “Let’s just have you pull over up here and walk down the street.” For a moment I thought I was going to forget how to walk, how to swing my arms so that it looked natural, where to rest my gaze. But there was so much debris on the sidewalk I had to concentrate on where to step and this concentration helped me get over my self-consciousness. I had to step over crusted stuffed animals, appliances, shoes. There were body-count numbers on doors I was passing. There was a sick, dank smell in the air. For a moment I was so absorbed in my surroundings that I forgot I was being filmed.
“That was great, Kate,” the director said to me afterwards. “You do a great job of that.”
“Of what?” I wondered, but did not ask.
The director left his notepad in my car by mistake. This is what he’d written: Kate; aimless wanderer, not a do-gooder.
I wasn’t pleased but I didn’t spend too long thinking about it. I was already planning who I would be in seven years.
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