‘Pollywood’ & the Power of the Human Spirit: An Interview with Paweł Ferdek
The heroes of Paweł Ferdek’s documentary film ‘Pollywood’ are Jews from Poland: the Warner brothers, Samuel Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer. The resemblance of their names to the names of the great Hollywood studios such as Warner Bros. or Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is by no means coincidental for it is they who built a powerful film industry during the 1920s and 1930s.
Ola Salwa: When you put the word ‘Pollywood’ into a search engine, you get links not to texts about Jack Warner, Samuel Goldwyn or Louis B. Mayer, but instead about films produced in the Indian province of Punjab.
Paweł Ferdek: It’s interesting: I very nearly became a lecturer in the film department of the university in Lahore, that is, in the capital of the Pakistani part of Punjab. But that was ten years ago. Apparently, some Polish emigres working in the broadly defined film industry in Los Angeles have been saying for decades that they work in ‘Pollywood’, rather than Hollywood. But the title of my film comes from Andrzej Krakowski’s book Pollywood, or How We Created Hollywood. When that book came into my hands a few years ago, as soon as I’d read a dozen pages or so, I knew that I had to bring it to the screen, even though I didn’t yet have any idea how I’d do it. I took the first steps in that direction very quickly. It was a sort of trap that I set for myself so that I wouldn’t be able to back out if it should turn out that it would be a project that would take a lot of hard work. And, of course, that’s just how it turned out.
OS: What steps did you take?
PF: I got in touch with Andrzej Krakowski and, three weeks later, I met him in New York. He gave me permission to use his book title and a few of his motifs in the film. I made a quick start: I began putting together a team, producing documentation, writing a screenplay, and filming the first scenes even though I didn’t have a budget yet. Furthermore, I didn’t know yet where my story would lead: I’d have to find that out along the way.
OS: In the book you’re talking about, there are biographies of emigres from the territories of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian partitions of Poland, including the Warner brothers, Louis B. Mayer, and Samuel Goldwyn. There are a lot of interesting details and anecdotes, but they are hardly enough to support a documentary film. What was it about these stories that attracted you so much?
PF: Proof of the power of the human spirit. These people came from poverty-stricken villages or from the poorest neighbourhoods of big cities, from families with many children. They only had a very basic education from Jewish yeshivas. With this minimal capital and at a very young age, they emigrated to America [Jack, the most famous of the Warner brothers, was born after arrival in Canada – ed. note]. After a dozen or so years of hard work and looking for chances of success, they created huge film studios that are still active today. It’s hard to imagine either more modest origins or greater success.
OS: This illustrates the American ‘rags to riches’ myth, though this group of producers that we’re talking about were always more than happy to mythologise their own past.
PF: They lived from the creation of myths: After all, they created the Dream Factory, so it’s not at all surprising that they told different stories about their own history. Louis B. Mayer, when asked about his past and childhood, said that he’d get bored always telling the same story. There was only one consistent element in his narrative: Mayer claimed to be a Viennese aristocrat, though he actually came from Mińsk Mazowiecki.
But America, a land of tremendous possibilities, also demanded something that’s called in English ‘reinventing yourself’ – rethinking yourself anew. That country invented itself and it proposed to all its new arrivals that they do the same. Emigrants often changed their names or they were changed at the ports at which they landed. [While it is certainly true that many migrants changed their names once in the United States, in fact, immigrants’ names were not changed at American ports of arrival. That is a common misperception. – trans. note.] So that’s a good beginning.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Andrzej Krakowski and Paweł Ferdek in New York, photo: Andrzej Wojciechowski
OS: Mayer, who created the powerhouse of MGM, including the ‘star system’ and various awe-inspiring movie spectaculars, justifiably styled himself an aristocrat. Because he truly was one based on his achievements, if not by virtue of his birth.
PF: The founders of the great studios were barons of the film industry and became icons of pop culture. Their dream was to become the exact opposite of who they did not want to be – poor Polish Jews, persecuted in their home country, struggling to find work and repairing shoes for pennies or peddling odds and ends. They made themselves into aristocrats and America let them do it.
OS: On that point, it’s worth adding that neither Warner or Mayer originally planned to create movie studios or – to put it a bit ironically – to take control of people’s dreams. It started with them managing individual cinemas and later they moved on, taking control of film distribution and, as time went on, they decided to take over production, too.
PF: In the beginning, they were just trying to survive, because they had landed in a new country, not knowing the language and without capital or contacts. For them, it was an existential question: to find a business which didn’t require investment or connections. Before they got involved in film-making, they tried various enterprises – we’re talking here about years of crazy and desperate undertakings, bankruptcies, new openings and displacements – I tell about some of them in my film. Step by step, they found their way to ‘trading in films’, but it seems to me that this was not just any ‘product’ for them like a pair of socks. Film was something more attractive – the Warners and Goldwyn grew up in a storytelling culture, they had an instinctive knack for storytelling according to Gregory Orr, Jack Warner’s grandson, whom I talk with in a barber shop in the film. He says with conviction that his grandfather loved making films, showing them, publicising them, surrounding himself with actors and so on.
OS: Not every rookie producer in those days – we’re talking about the 1920s and ‘30s – achieved the kind of success achieved by the folks in ‘Pollywood’.
PF: On the one hand, film was a new field then and, in the beginning, anyone could go into it, but, on the other hand, tremendous competition developed very quickly. A few ‘big players’ soon stood out who created trusts and monopolies.
OS: Immigrants from Europe learned about that quickly when they were literally chased off of the East Coast by Thomas Alva Edison’s trust. Were it not for that, perhaps the great studios would be located on the Atlantic coast today. Had they been created at all.
PF: The fact that the Dream Factory was built in the California town of Hollywood was an accident. Of course, the independent producers had to flee in the face of Edison’s trust and its enforcers who threatened to destroy competitors’ film equipment. The first one to flee to the west was Sam Goldwyn. He began filming outside of New York [for the film ‘The Squaw Man’ – ed. note], but, just a few hours after being threatened by Edison, he packed up his scenery and his crew and boarded a westbound train. He planned to go to Arizona, but, when he arrived there, all he saw was desert… In those days, there were no location scouts who could find appropriate film sites and his departure was really just a hasty escape. Without thinking much, Goldwyn got back on the train and rode to the end of the line, i.e. Los Angeles. If the tracks had led to Houston, maybe the Dream Factory would have been built in Texas. California had no infrastructure, but it had two advantages: it gave the escapees their freedom and it had excellent weather conditions. Unlike the suburbs of New York, in Hollywood there was no winter, the sun shone all year ‘round and the sunlight had a special quality that gave the films a special flavour. I don’t know if that last factor had much of an impact on black and white films, but the good weather certainly had some significance.
OS: In the film, you visit not only Hollywood, but also Krasnosielc, a small town in Masovia, that the Warner family came from. Very few of the town’s residents recognise the name Warner. [Perhaps because the original name may have been Wonsal or Wrona – editor's note.]
PF: The name seems to mean something to some of the people, but no one has taken any deeper interest in the question beyond a few local experts or history buffs. I’ve wondered how it is that the most famous representatives of the town, known worldwide, are so thoroughly forgotten there… I know from the former mayor of Krasnosielc that, when he proposed that the local school be named for the Warner brothers, he was outvoted and the school was named for Pope John Paul II. Had the people of Krasnosielc thought like the Warner brothers did, they would have seen this as a great opportunity. As the only Warner Brothers School in Poland, they could have established cooperation with the Warner Bros. company and, for instance, they could have set up a film-making curriculum and sparked the imagination of their students. The Warner brothers would certainly have taken advantage of this and that’s why they were the ones to create Hollywood. Because they saw an opportunity in everything and they knew how to take advantage of it.
OS: You seem to have learned from the immigrants: going to Hollywood and wanting to contact celebrities like Steven Spielberg or Sam Goldwyn Jr., , you used every chance you had. How did you come to the idea of going beyond the history of the past?
PF: It turned out that I couldn’t make the film in a typical way, that is, illustrating the story about the founders of Hollywood using archival materials. There just aren’t any. So I decided to do what they did – though on a smaller scale – because I wasn’t planning to create a movie studio. I wanted to get to people who think like the Warners or Goldwyn and see what I could learn from them or what they’d suggest about trying to make a career in Hollywood. Each of them followed a similar path to the top and, what’s more, it turned out that everyone I spoke to had Polish or Central European roots.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Paweł Ferdek, photo: Nicolas Villegas
OS: Like Paul Maslansky, producer of ‘Police Academy’ among other films, who wanted to help you reach Sam Goldwyn Jr.
PF: One of the hardest things in doing this film was getting to the main characters. I spent a lot of time being turned away from the doors of assistants and agents. It took me a year before I made my first direct contact with Sandy Lieberson, the retired chief of the 20th Century Fox studios. And then it went on from there in a kind of chain reaction: People I spoke to gave me contact information to the next ones or they recommended me to their friends. That’s how I got access to the inner circles of Hollywood.
OS: Did the magic of the names Mayer or Warner work for you and open doors?
PF: Absolutely, that was my capital. Many of those I spoke with came alive at the sound of those names; they were fascinated by stories about the pioneer epoch of Hollywood. Hearing those names, they became more open to me and they hosted me in their homes, rather than in their offices. They succumbed to the magic of remembering those times when everything seemed possible and the spirit of adventure was in the air. Today, in the mainstream part of Hollywood, you don’t feel that anymore; most producers work in a routine, institutionalised way.
OS: So did you really want to break into Hollywood yourself or did you do this just for the sake of the documentary?
PF: When I was working on the film, I wanted to find out how that world looked from the inside and what kind of possibilities exist. For the time being, I’m not looking for employment in the big studios. A director is hired by them to realise the vision of the production staff. And he or she can be fired at any moment. But I met many film people who are functioning more independently, who are open to ideas and who are driven by the passion of creating cinema. Many times, I felt in their company like I was among friends who share a kindred way of working and of seeing the world. And I’m referring to filmmakers of different ages: even the eighty-something-year-olds had that fire in their eyes when we talked about film.
OS: But the model according to which the director is just there to carry out the vision of the producers was put in place precisely by your film’s central characters – Goldwyn and Mayer,
PF: That’s why they were called ‘moguls’, that is, chieftains. They hired - and over time even created - actors and directors, taking control of their careers. They signed multi-year contracts with them and exploited them mercilessly, ordering them to shoot several or even more than a dozen films per year. They invested in stars and drew their strength from them and made their money from them. The studio system has collapsed, but the means of producing the most commercial films has remained in almost unchanged form: there’s little room for the director’s vision.
OS: That’s true with the exception of two or three directors, like, for example, Steven Spielberg, whom you pursue in your film, hoping to get an interview with him. A second important name on your list is Harvey Weinstein. You went after him before the notorious scandal broke out. Today, the former producer is serving a 23-year sentence for sexual crimes.
PF: A few people advised me to avoid that subject, because it would show the passage of time and that sort of ‘newsy’ element would quickly make the film outdated. But I decided to leave it in as a sign of the times. In fact, I tried for a few years to get to Weinstein, who was known as ‘the last of the moguls’. His style of operation was to a large extent derived from that of the founders of Hollywood. He took decisions unilaterally and wasn’t afraid of taking risks. It's interesting that his family came from Głogów Małopolski near Rzeszów. For sure, no one would want to name their school for him, but I offer the information in any case.
OS: Weinstein is also the last of the moguls in another sense – today it’s hard to name the bosses of the major studios. We know the names of the stars, a few directors, perhaps a cinematographer here or there – especially if they’re from Poland like Janusz Kamiński – but that’s it.
PF: That’s probably due to the structure of the system of producing films that are being made in Hollywood. There isn’t just one person behind them – decisions are made in larger groups and along the so-called corporate track. The final result often yields the profits that are foreseen in corporate projections, but this also affects the vision and message of the film.
Interview originally conducted in Polish, translated by Yale Reisner, Sept 2021
[{"nid":"5688","uuid":"6aa9e079-0240-4dcb-9929-0d1cf55e03a5","type":"article","langcode":"en","field_event_date":"","title":"Challenges for Polish Prose in the Nineties","field_introduction":"Content: Depict the world, oneself and the form | The Mimetic Challenge: seeking the truth, destroying and creating myths | Seeking the Truth about the World | Destruction of the Heroic Emigrant Myth | Destruction of the Polish Patriot Myth | Destruction of the Flawless Democracy Myth | Creation of Myths | Biographical challenge | Challenges of genre | Summary\r\n","field_summary":"Content: Depict the world, oneself and the form | The Mimetic Challenge: seeking the truth, destroying and creating myths | Seeking the Truth about the World | Destruction of the Heroic Emigrant Myth | Destruction of the Polish Patriot Myth | Destruction of the Flawless Democracy Myth | Creation of Myths | Biographical challenge | Challenges of genre | Summary","topics_data":"a:2:{i:0;a:3:{s:3:\u0022tid\u0022;s:5:\u002259609\u0022;s:4:\u0022name\u0022;s:26:\u0022#language \u0026amp; literature\u0022;s:4:\u0022path\u0022;a:2:{s:5:\u0022alias\u0022;s:27:\u0022\/topics\/language-literature\u0022;s:8:\u0022langcode\u0022;s:2:\u0022en\u0022;}}i:1;a:3:{s:3:\u0022tid\u0022;s:5:\u002259644\u0022;s:4:\u0022name\u0022;s:8:\u0022#culture\u0022;s:4:\u0022path\u0022;a:2:{s:5:\u0022alias\u0022;s:14:\u0022\/topic\/culture\u0022;s:8:\u0022langcode\u0022;s:2:\u0022en\u0022;}}}","field_cover_display":"default","image_title":"","image_alt":"","image_360_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/360_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=ZsoNNVXJ","image_260_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/260_auto_cover\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=pLlgriOu","image_560_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/560_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=0n3ZgoL3","image_860_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/860_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=ELffe8-z","image_1160_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/1160_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=XazO3DM5","field_video_media":"","field_media_video_file":"","field_media_video_embed":"","field_gallery_pictures":"","field_duration":"","cover_height":"991","cover_width":"1000","cover_ratio_percent":"99.1","path":"en\/node\/5688","path_node":"\/en\/node\/5688"}]