Archie Bunker's nightmare: an unmissable ten-hour documentary about love and race - 'An American Love Story' - Interview

Interview, Sept, 1999 by Jessica Shattuck

Jennifer Fox's ten-hour documentary, An American Love Story, which airs on PBS for five consecutive nights starting September 12, mines the often neglected day-to-day realities of race and marriage in America. For a year and a half, Fox and coproducer Jennifer Fleming lived with the Wilson-Sims family, an interracial couple and their two daughters, in Queens, New York, and filmed more than one thousand hours of footage - from mundane moments around the breakfast table to times of real sorrow and family strife. Instead of sewing up predigested conclusions or flashy voyeuristic drama, the series offers a compelling look at the choices and struggles that define a family.

JESSICA SHATTUCK: What inspired you to make An American Love Story?

JENNIFER FOX: About ten years ago I fell in love with a black man, and being white I thought, Things have changed and it's a modern world - who cares if I'm with somebody of another color? But being in this relationship opened my eyes to the racism in America.

JS: How did you choose the Wilson-Sims family?

JF: Originally I was going to focus on three couples, but I realized pretty quickly I couldn't be in three places at once, so I decided to pick one couple that had been together for a long time. Bill and Karen's relationship began in '67 and has bridged three decades of changing race relations, so they had that enormous story behind them. On both sides of their family they trace American history: Bill's great-great-grandparents were slaves, and Karen's great-grandparents were sharecroppers and migrant farm workers in the West. Also, they're middle class - they're not Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, with the black man being a Harvard graduate.

JS: Why did they agree to let you film them?

JF: They're a very playful family and I think it was fun for them to have me there. I wasn't thinking on a daily basis, This is going to be in front of millions of viewers - and I don't think they were either. The Wilson-Sims have a very old-fashioned household and I became just one more person staying on the couch.

JS: Are you concerned that there will be some suspicion of you as a white woman making this movie?

JF: I don't know what the audience reaction will be, but when I put the question to the family in the beginning, they looked at me like I was crazy. Their feeling was, What does it matter what race the film crew is?

JS: Did the issue of race surface more than It normally would have because the family knew what the film was going to be about?

JF: Probably. Karen said many, many times, "Why are you asking me about race? Race doesn't enter our family." And it doesn't inside the walls of their house, but of course, the minute they leave home, it does. Still, a lot of the interviews and stories have nothing to do with race because the series is just as much about family and love. As you watch them going through their ordinary lives and dramas, you may start out seeing a black man and a white woman and mixed kids, but over time you just see a family - you begin to identify on that level and maybe forget about the different colors. Hopefully viewers will uncover their own ideas about race and reflect on their own prejudices.

JS: What lessons did you draw from observing the Wilson-Sims so closely?

JF: I learned that you will never completely understand the experience of your partner - that they live in a different world from yours. Human beings are frightened of anything that's different - in our country, the biggest example is black and white, but in other countries differences arise for religious or cultural reasons. Suppose, instead of saying, "The other is different and therefore I hate them," or, "I know them and they're bad," we said, "You are unknowable but my job is to try to know you. I can't sum you up." In the Wilson-Sims family, they do this every day.

JS: What's next for you?

JF. I want to make more documentaries. It's important to tell real stories respectfully, to create images that mirror people's lives, and to explore ideas in complex, ambiguous ways rather than in sound bites.