THE EASY PART
Robert Richter, documentary filmmaker, would rather talk
about the work than the struggle to sell it

BY LAUREN JANIS

Framed awards elbow each other for space on his office wall. More are stacked in piles on a high shelf. Three duPonts, three Academy Award nominations, film festival prizes, Emmys, and a Peabody, too. He has made about fifty films that have aired on PBS, CBS, NBC, and ABC. He has worked with the big names: Murrow, Friendly, Cronkite. He has an idea for a new film, complete with witnesses, experts, and exclusive interviews. But so far he doesn't have the funding, the interest, or the outlets to air it. He has been looking for two years. To Robert Richter, an independent investigative documentary filmmaker, this is nothing new.

For over thirty years Richter has been tackling the trio of challenges that independent documentary makers face -- funding, production, and distribution. When asked how he does it, Richter laughs and points to a photograph on the wall that shows him wearing six hats at once. "You have to be optimistic," he says. He sits in his sunny, thirty-second-floor office on West Forty-second Street. Behind him, his computer peers over his shoulder as if looking for his wallet. The screen is open to a chart labeled "Cash Flow Report." Richter, his back squarely turned to his monitor, clearly prefers to talk about his films rather than his steady quest for funding. When it comes to producing investigative documentaries, the actual filmmaking almost seems to be the easy part.

Richter grew up in New York City and became a journalist in 1957. He worked for public radio in Oregon, and then wrote about the Pacific Northwest for The New York Times. It was around that time that he saw some documentaries produced by Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly for CBS Reports. "I thought, that's what I want to do," he recalls. "I set my target on working for the Murrow/Friendly unit." By 1963, Richter was a producer for CBS Reports. He stayed for five years, producing programs on a range of topics, from "Bulldozed America," about the destruction of natural resources, to "Tiger in the Senate," about Robert F. Kennedy's senatorial run.

Then Richter went solo. Seeking more editorial control, he started Richter Productions, in 1968. His initial focus was on environmental issues, and he began making films for PBS's NOVA. "Incident at Brown's Ferry" exposed how an Alabama nuclear power plant -- the largest in the world -- suffered a seven-hour fire, and came frighteningly close to becoming a major public disaster. "Brown's Ferry" won Richter his first duPont in 1977.

Next came "A Plague on Our Children," which explored how pesticides and industrial waste products affected communities. "I will never forget a little boy who spoke to the New York State Health Commission in front of a crowd of a thousand people," Richter remembers. "He said, 'Mr. Commissioner, I just want to know, will I grow up to be a normal man?' And people cried because they were concerned about the use of various poisons." That was duPont number two.

"Pesticides for Export Only" and "Pharmaceuticals for Export Only," a two-part series, examined how products banned in the U.S. were exported to third-world countries without adequate health warnings. For "Pesticides," Richter traveled to Ghana, Malaysia, Kenya, Bangladesh, Latin America, and Central America, documenting how farm workers were exposed to dangerous chemicals, and showing how those poisons got back to the U.S. One sobering sequence followed a crop of bananas as they were sprayed with banned pesticides in Costa Rica, shipped to the U.S., and delivered into the hands of a baby in a supermarket, who sat in a shopping cart, gumming the unpeeled fruit. "I got another duPont for those films," Richter says.

He's seventy-one, but when he talks about his work, he speaks with the enthusiasm of a rookie shortstop describing his first major league game. He recalls conversations and scenes verbatim, caught up in the story as if pitching it for the first time. Did he tell you yet about "Do Not Enter -- The Visa War Against Ideas," he asks, about a freedom of speech law that denies foreigners entry into the U.S.? Or how about "Hungry for Profit," which explores the agribusiness industry? Or "Father Roy: Inside the School of Assassins," about the U.S. Army's School of the Americas, a school in Fort Benning, Georgia, that trained Latin American soldiers who returned to their own countries and joined military death squads? As Richter talks, one film weaving into the next, his bright eyes shining behind his brown-rimmed, round glasses, he almost makes independent filmmaking sound easy. It's not.

Being an investigative documentary filmmaker is not like reporting in-depth articles for a newspaper or producing sleek segments for 60 Minutes. There are very few staff positions for investigative documentary filmmakers, and very few places to broadcast the work. They must be independent and tireless, constantly juggling multiple projects and responsibilities -- tapping into grants, relatives, friends, and savings accounts to get funding; walking around with flyers advertising screenings or selling videos out of living rooms to get distribution.

The average cost of a one-hour documentary is about $600,000 to $700,000. This is money that a filmmaker must either raise or pull from his own reluctant pocket. Days are spent writing grant proposals to foundations and church groups. While waiting for the funding, filmmakers continue to research, investigate, and shoot film. This means they can work on a project for months and years without being paid a nickel. Much must be done on faith -- faith that money will come in to complete the project; faith that someone will want to put it on the air.

The situation is getting tougher. In 1984, Richter was quoted in a New York Times article as saying that he spent up to 25 percent of his time on fundraising. Now that figure is up to 50 percent, he says. Less money is available from public sources. And more filmmakers are seeking funding. New technology allows anyone with a video camera to make a documentary. They all want money. "A number of years ago, there were five hundred people going to fifty places," says Richter. "Now there are five thousand going to the same fifty."

It's no easier on the distribution side. Television is the best way to reach the largest audience, yet there are few places in the television spectrum for investigative documentaries, beyond a sassy ten-minute slice. Cable television initially looked promising, with its many new networks and programming hours to fill. But in the last few years, cable documentaries have become less intellectual and more generic, usually focussing on sex, murder, celebrities, or all three. While HBO airs some serious documentaries, it has also had success with series such as "G-String Divas." The Discovery Channel, the History Channel, and A & E Biography looked like possibilities until they began financing their own documentaries, creating cookie-cutter segments that are cheaper than buying outside films.

The options are limited. "There's only one Frontline, there's only one NOVA, there's only one POV," says Richter. Frontline is the place to be, airing serious, in-depth documentaries every week. Yet even with experience, Academy Award nominations, and three duPonts, Richter has never made it to Frontline. "It's a very closed circle," he says. "I've tried to penetrate a few times, but it's not easy." Frontline airs eighteen new programs a year. Most of those slots are filled by a group of ten to twelve regular filmmakers, with perhaps only two slots open to outsiders. For those two slots, Frontline receives up to 900 proposals.

If American television fails, documentary filmmakers can look to film festivals or hope for a theatrical release, though investigative documentaries will not likely rival Gladiator any time soon. Or they can self-distribute, selling films to universities or community groups, one video tape at a time. Richter has done all of that. He has also gone global. "Money Lenders," a film about the impact of the World Bank and the IMF on developing countries, was distributed in Western Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. International sales from that movie paid his rent and his assistant for two years, though U.S. outlets had no interest.

Richter has a head full of films that were never made, because of lack of funding or broadcast interest. But he hates to give up on them. They stick in his head like burrs. "I've invested my time and money and passion and commitment," he says. "Sometimes I just dig my heels in and say this is such a good idea, I'm just not going to give in."

Tenacity might be what makes this business possible. "It's like the priesthood, it's a calling," Richter says. "You have to want to do it. Or as Fred Friendly used to say, 'You have to have fire in the belly.' If you don't, better not get into it." Richter still has the fire.

For two years Richter has been researching a film on Operation Condor, the 1970s conspiracy involving six Latin American countries to neutralize their left-wing opponents around the world using torture and murder. The operation -- which has been linked to the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and, more recently, the CIA -- has been implicated in the deaths of Orlando Letelier, the former Chilean foreign minister, and his colleague Ronni Moffitt, who were assassinated by a car bomb in Washington, D.C., in 1976. Richter has contacts, knows victims who survived, and says he has documented CIA links. Springing out of his chair, Richter pulls a clipping off his wall from The New York Times, dated March 6, and reads a headline: NEW FILES TIE U.S. TO DEATHS OF LATIN LEFTISTS IN 1970s. "More and more stuff keeps coming out," he says excitedly. "Some of it I knew before it came out."

Richter needs $25,000 to start filming. He has raised none. He continues to track the story, develop contacts, write out grant proposals, and may even re-send his pitch to Frontline. "There may be a time when I put Condor on the back burner," he says. (But not yet.)

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Lauren Janis is CJR's assistant editor.