Getting Past the Why
Columbus Circle is engulfed in a virtual whiteout. Our plates are cleared away by a waiter who is careful not to stare.
Give me a tip. I'm going to Burma for Outside, and I don't know it.
I've only been to rebel-controlled parts. I got in through a contact in Mae Sot, the border smuggling town in Thailand.
That's one of my favorite things, making contact with the guerrillas. Do you tell people how you do that? I'm always ashamed, because it's sort of easier than it looks. You just meet the guy who introduces you to the guy who introduces you to the guy.
I know. You want to cloud it in mystery to make it more impressive. People imagine it's like the bar in Star Wars. I once had to wait a week in a Belfast hotel for the IRA to contact me. It was a lovely hotel, and it felt very clandestine.
Did you have any role models for this kind of adventurous life?
Besides Outside?
Honestly, no.
Good answer.
It seemed so unlike anything that anybody had ever recommended to me. I'd always been interested in military stuff. I collected toy soldiers. British colonial wars. I was obsessed with the Zulu wars. Three years ago—this is going to sound really geeky—I went to the Zulu battlefields, Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift. I'm so glad I went. I forget what the question was.
That is the question. Where does excitement about the world come from?
I was interested in obscure wars that nobody cared about, just as now I'm interested in obscure stories that people aren't telling. There is something in the fact that people in these places are experiencing oftentimes horrific things, and nobody knows of their struggle. I find that particularly galling, or upsetting. At the very least I think people should go there, at least through television.
Do you ever have trouble coming back to New York?
Yeah. It's very strange coming back. Now I'm used to the dichotomy of it. But it was really hard in the beginning. When I first started going to Sarajevo in '93, '94, the height of the war there, coming back I kept trying to picture how New York would fare if the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island were full of Serbs lobbing shells into Manhattan. It doesn't take long for everything to break down. It doesn't take long for people to change, for one's heart to harden and for the dark stuff which is in all of us to come to the fore. Once the electricity goes out, and the lights go out, and the air-conditioning stops working, or you get really cold, it doesn't take long until you start killing one another. I would always wonder, like, in New York how would that play out?
Did you get bitter about life here?
Not bitter, just more confused. It made it harder to fit in. I stopped going to parties. I remember coming back from Rwanda during the genocide, and going directly to a dinner party and not being able to converse with anyone. I just had nothing to say. I remember being very negative: They were talking about stupid stuff. But you can't exist like that forever. You have to come to some sort of understanding in your own head.
What's the understanding?
It's just that all of this is contained in the same world and probably always will be, and that it's OK. It is the way it is. You can knock your head against the wall asking why something has happened. At a certain point you get to a place where there isn't any why. You just stop asking the why. And even in the midst of horror and sadness, there are great acts of compassion and kindness, there are acts of great joy, there is life... I do think television can change things, make some things better, and not in a grand "save the world" kind of way. But you can tell stories that change the world. It's the only thing I know how to do, frankly.
You sound almost optimistic.
Yeah, I am. There's no reason not to be. It's a privilege to go to these places, to walk into someone's home, turn your camera on, and tell their story, and to be trusted with that. It's not my job to be optimistic or pessimistic; it's my job to be there. How could I not go there, how could I not do that? Shame on me if I didn't.