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‘Doing Time’ in the big house
1993 documentary plays tonight at festival’s final night
LEWISBURG — In 1990, Academy Award-winning documentary filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond were granted exclusive access to the Federal Penitentiary at Lewisburg, which hadn’t been given before — or since. The resulting film, “Doing Time: Life Inside the Big House,” (1993), stirred considerable controversy when it was released; but it also won the Raymonds an Oscar nomination.
“Doing Time” is a gritty, no-nonsense documentary about life behind bars at the venerable Lewisburg institutiuon, which has housed such infamous criminals as Al Capone, Jimmy Hoffa and members of the Colombia drug cartel.
Tonight at 7, “Doing Time” will be one of the films shown at the 6th Annual Documentary Film Festival’s closing night at the downtown Campus Theatre, in Lewisburg.
“The project sort of fell into our laps,” Alan Raymond said recently while on the phone from Philadelphia where he was busy filming his latest documentary.
The Raymonds had already been award-winning filmmakers working with cable network HBO when they were asked to take on the documentary after another filmmaker dropped out.
“My wife and I decided to do the film,” he said, “but first, we had to get permission from officials at the Federal Bureau of Prisons.”
Fortunately, they had a good resume, having filmed the police-friendly “The Police Tapes” and “Chiefs.”
“I think it was because of those two films that they let us film in Lewisburg,” Alan Raymond said.
The film focuses on “lifers,” those inmates who are beyond rehabilitation and hold no possibility for parole. With unprecedented access to the entire facility, “Doing Time” provides a unique look at prison life from both the inmates’ and the guards’ point of view.
“I don’t think they were thrilled with the idea, but they were not resistant to it either,” he recalled.
The shooting schedule was about six weeks and Raymond filmed 100 hours. Alan’s collaborator, his wife Susan, was not allowed into the penetentiary.
“Frankly, I believe they thought of us as an experiment in P.R.,” Raymond said. “I think they gave us unlimited access because they wanted to see how things might all turn out. When we got there, the warden was very amenable.”
Prisons are the most secret areas remaining in our society. It’s one of the few places not open to the press. That’s why Raymond was so surprised when he was given complete access to the prison.
“They let us walk around on our own,” he said.
As the weeks went on, there were some prisoners and some prison officials who felt like their “side” was not being fairly presented in film. But Raymond thought he spent an equal amount of time talking to guards and inmates.
Raymond never felt like he was in danger, although, he said, “there were some inmates who were not thrilled that we were given access. Some guards felt the same way. There were some prisoners who shunned the camera, and some who loved it.
“The warden told us a few inmates had sent us angry notes, but we never felt threatened,” Raymond said. “Actually, nothing much happened.
“When the movie came out, the Federal Bureau did not initially like it. But once the reviewers started writing about it, the sentiment clearly was that prison guards and officials have a tough job, and it’s a good thing we have places like Lewisburg to protect us from this tough criminal element.”
The job of a documentary filmmaker, Raymond said, is not to worry about what people think of the portrait of themselves, but to present a fair snapshot of reality at a particular moment in time.
“Doing Time” was intended to simply be a portrait of the prison, “and I guess we did okay, since we won an Emmy Award for directing the film.”
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