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CAUGHT ON FILM

Documentarian John Wilson

Wilson

by Margot C. Lester
When John Wilson matriculated at UNC, he was headed toward a career in medicine like his uncle and grandfather. His major was biology.

“But in the summer of 1983, something magical happened that completely changed my life,” says the Chapel Hill filmmaker. “My best friend in high school was Brian Henson, the son of the late Muppet creator Jim Henson. In the summer of ’83, I was with Brian and Jim while they were shooting the second Muppet movie, The Muppets Take Manhattan. Jim kept asking me, as someone not directly involved in the production, what I thought of the footage they were shooting. I had no film experience, but Jim really made me feel like I had something valuable to offer. So I came back to Chapel Hill for my junior year very excited about doing something new.”

Plot twists
Shortly thereafter, Wilson stumbled on the unused University Access Channel and decided UNC needed a student television station. He co-founded STV (Student Television) with Walt Boyle in 1983.

“There was a biology major frantically reading camera and editing manuals trying to produce the 30-minute premiere show that had already been advertised to air just one week later,” he recalls. “Somehow we managed to finish that first show, and UNCSTV (uncstv.org) is still going strong 30 years later.” Wilson chairs the channel’s board of directors.

“UNCSTV helped me realize my future was in film and television rather than medicine,” Wilson allows. “It also gave me production, creative and leadership experience that enabled me to get into graduate film school at the University of Southern California.”

While in L.A., Wilson worked in various roles at Jim Henson’s production studio, a place that “was filled with people who, like Brian and Jim Henson, believed deeply that character is all important, and that nothing is impossible.”

Wilson aimed to make scripted, narrative films. But during the UNC Bicentennial, he was hired to do a one-hour documentary for his alma mater. A Place on the Hill featured Tar Heels like Charles Kuralt, Bill Friday, Doris Betts, Charlie Justice, Michael Jordan and Dean Smith.

“That great experience of interweaving individual stories into overall themes confirmed for me that I wanted to make documentaries,” he says. “I love telling true stories through the voices of people who were either directly involved or who have a unique perspective on the story.”

Political thriller
Wilson has made two documentaries on polarizing political figures in his native North Carolina: Frank Porter Graham and Jesse Helms. (View these and others at vimeo.com/album/220893)

Chapel Hill filmmaker John Wilson with Bono during a 2005 interview with the U2 frontman for Senator No, Wilson’s documentary about former-Sen. Jesse Helms. Photo courtesy of John Wilson

During interviews for A Place on the Hill, several people talked passionately about Frank Porter Graham’s influence on them, the university, the state and beyond. Wilson also stumbled onto a treasure trove of 1962 interviews with the former university president and U.S. senator.

“That’s when I realized I had to make a documentary about Dr. Frank,” Wilson allows. “The film took about three years to make, including raising all the money and doing other video work to keep the lights on.”

The effort was worth it. Dr. Frank: The Life and Times of Frank Porter Graham won a regional Emmy.

The Helms film, Senator No, was inspired by the infamous 1984 Hunt-Helms Senate race, the most expensive campaign in history at that time. Helms saw and liked Dr. Frank when it aired in 1994, and agreed to let Wilson produce a film on him with no strings attached.

“I wanted to make a film that would hold people’s interest regardless of their prior feelings about Helms,” Wilson says. “I wanted to show people who hated Helms why so many loved him, and people who loved him why so many hated him.” Everyone from Bono to Joe Biden weighed in. “Whether you loved or hated him, there’s no denying he was at the heart of the conservative movement that changed America starting in the ’70s.”

Though both Graham and Helms were true characters, telling a balanced story about either iconic figure requires an even hand.

“The biggest challenge for me is not letting my personal feelings about the subject, whether positive or negative, interfere with making a balanced, engaging and informative film that people will watch, regardless of their own feelings,” he says. “It’s important to get varying perspectives from on-camera interview subjects, and to write your narration carefully, because viewers understandably consider narration the filmmaker’s voice. Multi-dimensional films are much more interesting than one-dimensional tributes or hatchet jobs.”

Nature films
Wilson and his wife, Ashley, also a Carolina grad, returned to Chapel Hill in 1998. Recently, Wilson has turned his talents to producing films about land conservation. He’s on the board of the Conservation Trust for North Carolina. After five historical documentaries, he welcomes a change to “spend time in the present – and outside!”

He says the Old North State is a great place for a filmmaker. “North Carolina has a rich history made by fascinating people. It’s amazingly fertile ground for a documentary filmmaker. There are a lot of very talented people in the film business here, most who choose to live here because of the state’s great quality of life. I like working with people like that.”