Original-Cin Chat: Doc-Maker Lucy Lawless on CNN War-Zone Warrior Margaret Moth
By John Kirk
Lucy Lawless, action hero turned first-time director, chose a heroic real-life subject for her debut. New Zealand’s Margaret Moth, a dynamic newswoman who wrote her own rules when covering war zones, was certainly worthy of her own film.
In Never Look Away, the world gets to see how she lived her life and never looked away from danger.
Lawless sat down with Original-Cin to talk about the inspiration for a film about Moth.
“It was a film that was about an unknown New Zealander, for New Zealanders, directed by a New Zealander!” Lawless tells us. “But now I don’t know if it’ll ever get back home again!” She laughs.
CNN’s Margaret Moth and frontline friends in Never Look Away
Never Look Away is a story of courage, stubbornness and some self-destruction. Moth was determined to bring CNN cameras to war zones like the Balkans or the Middle East.
We asked Lawless about the process in transitioning from performer to director. And why Moth?
“There was no process. It was a mistake.” She modestly tells us. “It was a little film with a small budget that somehow managed to find itself on the international film circuit. I got this email asking if I wanted to make a film about Margaret Moth, who was a camerawoman for a fledgling news outfit called CNN in the 1990s.
“My mind cast back all the way back to 1992 when she got her face blown off in Sarajevo and the whole country was riveted to the screen. The images were everywhere, and they were burned into my brain. I immediately fired back an email saying yes and making all sorts of crazy promises, like ‘I will find the money, and I will find the producers and this story needs to be told!’”
Taking a breath, she continued.
“I just thought I was going to produce it. I never thought I’d be able to direct it. I’d never done that before. So, before I realized it, I was now in this position where I had to make good on all those promises. I was drowning in responsibility!
“But everyone was like, ‘Yeah, she sounds like the right person for the job!’ And then two and a half years later, we found ourselves opening Sundance. But it wasn’t a conscious decision. I wasn’t planning to direct.”
It's a very Margaret Moth thing to do, if you think about it. The conversation with Lawless was excited, energized and positive. She refered to the spirit of Moth a number of times. But the connection was second hand.
“No! I’d never met her. I don’t know what compelled me to jump on it like that, but I really feel like the spirit of Margaret sort of kicked me in the butt!”
There are myriad reasons to know about Margaret Moth. She was a pioneer in war correspondence. Not just because she was a woman in a traditionally male-dominated industry, but also because she brought a sense of commitment to her coverage that helped to establish CNN as a broadcaster that delivered gritty coverage in dangerous situations.
Director, ex-Warrior Princess, Lucy Lawless
Margaret Moth didn’t just help tell the news, she and her camera were part of it and that brought in viewers who saw the news as something far more dramatic than what they were used to.
Never Look Away tells the story of Margaret’s background and the personality that led her to this role. Lawless easily draws out friends, colleagues and even past lovers who testify to the resilience of Moth’s character and her ferocity at living life on her terms.
It’s an apt title; Moth couldn’t look away from the danger. It wasn’t that she willingly put herself in danger for mere thrill’s sake (though there is something to that). She saw those parts of the world that were in crisis and couldn’t turn her camera off. But there are other reasons too.
“There’s a high-altitude level to this film that as we sit here, those newsgatherers are putting themselves in imminent danger or death to bring us the news because they believe in speaking for the non-combatants.
Then you can believe, what gets done, how their images get packaged, political narratives, propaganda, all that stuff gets swirled around and you have to parse that out for yourself. But there is no self-interest; those people, you can believe they’re trauma-bonded to the job.”
“From one point of view, it was about bringing honour to Margaret and her colleagues – and the colleagues who are doing the job today. And the other thing was to bring honour to her anger.
You don’t have to walk on the side of the angels to do good. There’s a radical acceptance of our own dark sides, our flaws, whatever. We are all flawed, but that doesn’t mean we have to be ashamed of that. Margaret teaches us that. She’s certainly taken me places where I’d never have gone on my own before.
“It’s about living up to your potential. It’s about human achievement, transcendence, about how awesome humans are.”
Was Margaret addicted to the chaos of the world? Lawless gave an answer that showed some kinship with Moth.
“It’s hard not to be.” She said. “It’s like directing! When you get trauma-bonded to living that way, terrified, like Margaret was, you push through anyway for different reasons. I mean, I’m not dodging bullets like she was, but when you feel you are so close to failure at so many moments, you push forward regardless.”
But was it possible for Moth to maintain journalistic integrity while attracted to or pushing through all that chaos?
“I don’t think attraction is the right word. But let me talk about war zones. Even though I’ve never been in one, once you’ve lived in an environment of chaos and learned to float, having zero control, real life and everything is grey and very hard to adjust to. You know you feel like you still exist in that war zone, and soldiers talk about this in literature, the greyness of life in civvy street. Nobody else understands or cares about that existence.”
An example in her case came in 2005, in the post-Xena: Warrior Princess stage of her career.. She was shooting a horror film in Louisiana called Vampire Bats when real life horror intervened.
“When we were filming, we were caught up in Hurricane Katrina and we had to evacuate at the time of landfall. We were in this gridlock of everyone trying to leave at the same time. The terror and not having water, can’t get off to get gas, and if you get out of that stream of traffic, you’ll never get back on.
“So you hope you’re going to make it to the next town and you’re not even moving one mile an hour. But the barometric pressure is low, and your shoes don’t fit, your hat doesn’t fit because everything is swelling. But when you get back to L.A., everything is like, ‘La la la, do you want a latte?’ and whatever. And you’re just shocked after having lived through that experience. And in a small way, that’s what I think it must have been like for Margaret and every one of these journalists when they get back. It’s like an alternate reality.”
It's not an attraction to the danger; rather it’s more like being stuck in the traffic: getting out of it feels like the wrong thing to do and knowing you don’t actually want to get out of it.
After watching the documentary, we get a better sense of why someone would rush into danger. But why it was such a part of Margaret’s character? It was not quite an addiction but more of a need to confront, see things for what they were and then tell others about them. There was something unique in her background, her make-up that compelled her to be a witness.
This appreciation and way of life cost her a great deal: relationships, personal safety and even the scarring of her face. She was a dynamic woman in combat situations who threw herself into danger.
Recklessly? Who knows? Lawless asks viewers to make up their own minds about who Moth really was.
Never Look Away releases theatrically November 22 in select theatres in Toronto and Vancouver.