Last Saturday, the day before he received an honorary degree from Brandeis at its 60th commencement ceremony, filmmaker Errol Morris spoke with students and alumni in a talk titled "Investigating with the Camera." JustArts caught up with Morris before the event to speak about his occupational hazards and his fascination with human error. Note: Full coverage of the event can be found on page 19.JustArts: The topic today is "Investigating with the Camera." How did you decide to talk about this?

Errol Morris: Prof. Alice Kelikian (HIST) asked me if I would be willing to do something in connection with graduation. I thought for a moment and I thought, "let's do this." It's something I've thought about for years and years, but I've never put it into this form before. I hope it interests other people, it definitely interests me.

JA: Why?

EM: Well, I used to be a private investigator.

JA: I didn't know that.

EM: You would think that the way you discover new facts is through some kind of stealth or subterfuge. Why would you be able to find out anything new with a camera crew present? If there was a reason for people to be on their guard you would say, this is it. And yet, I discovered unexpected things while filming interviews.

JA: Has your interviewing style changed?

EM: My interviewing style has changed, I guess, but it's still the basic idea that remains the same. If you know the answer to a question that you're going to ask, then don't ask it. You should expect to hear something unexpected. . It runs contrary to lot of what people imagine is the appropriate recipe for journalism.

JA: How do you find your characters for your films? Is mostly luck, or is it method?

EM: There's no method. [Laughs] I am attracted to all kinds of different stories. It's a mixed bag-Robert S. McNamara, Fred Leuchter, Rodney Brooks.

JA: Does something just hit you, and you think, "I want to make this into a film"?

EM: That is actually the correct way to describe it, I think. If there's something about a story and I think there's something there, what that is exactly, I don't think I can really put my finger on it.

JA: What are the topics going around the world now that interest you?

EM: Everything. It's kind of an exciting time for me. I'm planning to direct a dramatic feature, and we are in the process of casting that. And I've started other documentaries as well, and I'm writing too.

JA: What was going through your mind during your college graduation?

EM: I wasn't interested in film, really. I was a History major at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I spent a lot of time rock climbing. I graduated a little bit late because I spent a good part of my senior year in Yosemite Valley.

JA: I used to go to music camp at UWM all the time when I lived in Milwaukee.

EM: What do you play?

JA: The trumpet.

EM: That's great! I play the cello.

JA: So when did you first get into film?

EM: I started getting interested in film when I went to [University of California,] Berkeley. I was about 24, 25 years old. I started going to movies. Then I met a number of filmmakers like Werner Herzog. I worked for Herzog on a film, then I made my own film.

JA: So you really didn't watch a lot of movies before you were 24?

EM: Not really. But then I went to three movies a day for maybe 3 years. What interested me in The Thin Blue Line is that I'm really fascinated by error. How people actually make mistakes. They convicted the wrong man and let this guy loose, this 16-year-old kid, who was a killer. This story [The Wilderness of Error] about the Green Beret doctor is also a story about a horrendous series of errors. It's one of the themes that really interest me. Not how people learn the truth, but how people avoid, in many instances, learning the truth.

JA: How do you get people talking about making mistakes?

EM: I don't know. That's another great mystery. Interviewing is mysterious. I have all types of wacko theories about why I'm successful at it, but ultimately, I don't really know. . I was interviewing Eddie Murphy for the beginning of the Academy Awards. I asked him, "Do you ever worry that someday you'll wake up and you won't be funny?" And he said, "All the time." And so I asked him if he could try to be not funny for me. And in his effort to be not funny, he was, of course, really, really funny. If you're good at something, and I'm supposed to be good at interviewing, and you don't really know why you're good at it, then there's always the fear it might vanish. You might wake up on the wrong side of the bed someday.

JA: Could you conduct a bad interview if you tried?

EM: I've done bad interviews, but I have a high success rate, and I'd like to keep it that way if I can.