Errol Morris Interrotron

Errol Morris Interrotron

Errol Morris invented the Interrotron in 1992 while preparing to shoot The Thin Blue Line follow-up interviews. The device - whose name Morris coined himself - is a variation on the teleprompter principle: two beam-splitter mirrors are aligned so that the interviewer's face appears superimposed directly over the camera lens. The subject looks at the interviewer's reflected face while simultaneously looking directly into the camera. For the first time in documentary history, subjects could make direct eye contact with both the interviewer and the viewer simultaneously.

The Technical Invention

Traditional documentary interviews place the camera operator and the interviewer side by side, producing the slightly off-axis eyeline that is the universal sign language of a documentary interview. The subject's gaze is aimed slightly to the left or right of the lens. Morris found this evasion philosophically unsatisfying - the off-axis eyeline puts the audience in the position of eavesdroppers rather than interlocutors. The Interrotron eliminated the evasion. The subject is now speaking directly to the viewer, which changes the moral contract of the exchange.

The Thin Blue Line (1988)

Morris developed his interview technique before the Interrotron's invention in The Thin Blue Line (1988), which investigated the wrongful murder conviction of Randall Adams in Texas. The film's reconstructed reenactments - shot in slow motion with a noir palette, fetishizing physical evidence objects (a milkshake, a gun, a police badge) - were as significant as the interview technique. Philip Glass scored the film with his characteristic arpeggiated repetition, creating a score that functions as an emotional modulator rather than a narrative cue. The film directly caused Adams's conviction to be overturned in 1989.

The Fog of War (2003)

The Fog of War (2003), an 11 Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, is the Interrotron's masterpiece. The elderly McNamara looks directly into the lens - and therefore directly at the viewer - as he confesses to, justifies, and reflects on decisions that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Vietnam. The eye contact is not incidental; it is the film's moral instrument. McNamara cannot look away from the viewer, and the viewer cannot look away from McNamara. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

American Dharma and Later Work

Morris continued the Interrotron format in Standard Operating Procedure (2008, Abu Ghraib), Tabloid (2010, Joyce McKinney), and American Dharma (2018, Steve Bannon). Each film uses direct address to place the viewer in a morally uncomfortable position - not merely watching subjects but being watched by them in return. Philip Glass scored The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War, and several other Morris films, and the Glass-Morris collaboration created a sonic identity as distinctive as the visual one.