Street chatted with The Art of the Steal director Don Argott and producer Sheena M. Joyce. The couple owns 9.14 Pictures, a production company located in Philadelphia.
Street: You’ve been on tour for a while now. What has the reception been like towards the film?
Don Argott: The response has been pretty overwhelming, honestly. I think people who don’t know anything about the story, that see it for the first time, react really strongly to it. I think people who had a bearing on the story react really strongly to it. People get fired up on both sides, which is great. We’ve gotten really heated debates.
Sheena M. Joyce: The whole thing started off with a bang at the Toronto film festival. We got standing ovations at our screenings there. We were fortunate enough to show it there, and it’s been a great ride ever since. We’re just so grateful to be in the position we’re in and can’t wait to take it out of the festival world and start bringing it to audiences in the theater.
Street: How did you come across this topic?
DA: Lenny Feinberg, who is the executive producer of the film, actually came to us with this idea. He lives in that area and has been living with this story in his own backyard for some time. And the time just came for him that he was really passionate about trying to tell this story, and he set out to find some filmmakers that he could get interested in making the film. So we met with him and he told us a little bit about it, and we were intrigued to dig a little deeper.
Street: Did you go in with a specific opinion in mind?
DA: Personally, I was a total outsider. I grew up in north Jersey. I’ve been here for 15 years, but I knew literally nothing about the story. Sheena grew up around here and went to Bryn Mawr, so she heard a little more than I did. But we really knew nothing.
SJ: We really didn’t have an agenda. We honestly wanted to talk to as many people as possible who were involved in the story and hear their side of it. You know from being a reporter, and I think documentary filmmakers are journalists.
We’re accused of being biased, and certainly I think at the end of the day the film has an opinion, but we didn’t intend it to be that way. And something that we would like to remind people is that we really wanted to tell Dr. Barnes’ story. He’s forgotten in this whole thing, and we wanted to bring him back as the main character and tell the story through his eyes. It’s his foundation, his art.
Street: Speaking of Dr. Barnes, the film gives him such a presence and personality, even though he died some time ago. How were you able to accomplish that?
DA: For us, we do very character-oriented, character-driven pieces. And this was, on the onset, kind of a departure from that. It was more of like a historical retelling — 80 percent of the story had already happened. We only followed the last 10 to 20 percent of it. So on the onset it didn’t have what we are used to doing, which is following a character or a group of characters through a particular story and getting to know them and making it layered and complex.
But soon we realized, and I think it was midway through the filming and as we started to put the film together in the editing room, that Dr. Barnes really started to emerge as a character, and it became no different than the way in which we approached all of our other characters pieces.
SJ: You want somebody to root for, I think, as a viewer, or route against for that matter, someone you are invested in. And if that can’t be Dr. Barnes, then I don’t know who it could be.
Street: Did you feel extra responsibility representing a dead man who can’t speak for himself?
DA: Absolutely. The other thing is, the other side that really didn’t want to talk to us, this is their job. Their job is upholding Dr. Barnes’ vision and his will. Not us. It shouldn’t be left to documentary filmmakers to do that. That’s what he has a board and a foundation that set’s up for.
Street: You tackled the city of Philadelphia in this film. Did you feel like you were taking a risk?
DA: One of the things that we were very careful to do was not put anything in the film that we couldn’t back up. The minute that you go rogue and start making all these wild accusations that you can’t back up, you’re leaving yourself wide open to be criticized, to be taken down. There was a lot of information that we purposely didn’t put in [the film], because we couldn’t back it up by the documentation or anything else.
Street: How would you respond to people who argue that greater accessibility to a world-class art collection is a positive thing?
SJ: I don’t disagree with that, but I think it can be done where it is right now. You can make it a lot more accessible in Merion, there just needs to be the will to do that. I don’t think the mission was to make it more accessible. The mission was to move it.
DA: That to me is missing the biggest point of I think what the film showcases. It’s not just that a man put this collection together – he had very specific reasons why he put it there, and the whole thing is a work of art, literally. And I don’t say that lightly. Coming from someone who had no connection to this place, who had never been there prior to making this film, the first time I went there, I got chills. You get the sense that you are standing in the middle of something that is significant.
SJ: There’s something special about a place that you have to do a little work for.
Street: You both run a production company. How is it faring in these tough economic times?
DA: It hasn’t been easy, but we’ve been incredibly fortunate. We can say honestly that we make a living as filmmakers, which not a lot of people get to do, whether you’re in Philadelphia, New York or Los Angeles. So we’re incredibly fortunate in that respect. Are we making an amazing living, no. But you have to measure success differently sometimes. We’ve been successful as artists and we’ve been able to pay our rent and our bills.
Now hopefully we’re on the verge of a more successful documentary, one that’s got some legs. We’ve already got multiple projects lined up, so hopefully we’ll be busy for the next couple years working on that kind of stuff. As filmmakers, that’s all you can ask for.
