Through a combination of old-fashioned police work, empathy and a dogged resistance to sensationalism, Nick Broomfield has made one of the most impressive entries in his already rich canon of documentaries with his new film Tales of the Grim Sleeper.
It examines the case of Lonnie Franklin, a man from South Central Los Angeles accused of murdering 18 women, though the real number could be in the hundreds. Broomfield, along with his cameraman son Barney, wander into the street where Franklin lived and start piecing together a story that eluded the LAPD for decades. The reason it took so long becomes abundantly clear: in the police force, black lives - at least those in impoverished and crack-scourged areas - don’t matter.
Among the characters Broomfield uncovers are Margaret Prescod, who campaigned for years to have the female victims noticed, and Pam, a hilariously forthright former prostitute and crack addict who acts as a go-between for Broomfield and the often rootless women who encountered Franklin in the neighbourhood.
They collectively paint a picture of a “horny old man”, a “freaky motherfucker” who would lure them to his house with promises of money and drugs, and then photograph them, handcuff them, submit them to depraved and often violent sexual practices. Equally itinerant men from the area told their own stories: of Franklin having them burn out bloodied cars and clean blood-stained carpets. It’s not too much of a stretch to connect the dots.
On one level the film is a story of a man and his violent acts, but the bigger story is one of police incompetence and prejudice. The police interviewed few of the people Broomfield meets, all of whom are able to demonstrate how potentially dangerous Franklin was. The police withheld information from the community, such as voice recordings and the fact that the killings were linked, preventing any unmasking of the killer in their midst. Bullet casings, victims’ clothes and other evidence was lost. There’s even the suggestion that the force actually favoured Franklin, for “cleaning the streets” of drug abusers and sex workers.
In conversation with Francine Stock at a Guardian screening of the film, Broomfield, now a Los Angeleno himself, outlines just how much the experience affected his perspective on black America. “My position has changed so much since I started doing this film,” he said. “The longer you spend looking at it the more you see that America has had a real problem getting over slavery ... this community is completely disenfranchised, and don’t have any sort of political weight.”
He points to “inherently racist” drug laws that award heavy penalties for crack use, while cocaine – a white drug in every sense – is treated with relative leniency. “The more you look at it, the more blatant the racism is,” he said. “My position has become much more radical in that way. I think the debate has started after Ferguson but it has a long way to go. It’s here too – you can see it with [historic] child abuse in various parts of England. The police were kind of aware of what was going on, but these were poor and disenfranchised people. But in South Central, it’s a race issue as well.”
The LAPD make a rod for their own back by refusing to comment on the case in the film, but as Broomfield says, “I’m very grateful to the LAPD for being so uncooperative – we met these other people who were so much more interesting and showed us this world that is hidden.”
After first encountering a little friction, and people who only wanted to rally round Franklin, even his friends began opening up about his indiscretions, often in the most vivid ways. “They’re street people and are super articulate,” Broomfield says. “We’re losing the ability to talk properly and tell a story, the more social media stuff we do, [whereas] they just know how to tell a story. It was incredible listening to them.”
He contrasts this documentary with those focused closely on single figures such as Aileen Wuornos or Eugene Terreblanche, or those where he becomes the centre of a wild goose chase. In Tales of the Grim Sleeper, the vibrant LA cast are such fantastic storytellers themselves, Broomfield can make himself less of the focus – their ratatat opinions and memories carry the story along. But his methods remain the same: he’s still in his headphones, holding a boom mic to record sound. He tells the audience that this style was borne out of his schooling and “desperation more than anything else,” adding: “I wear the headphones to cover my bald patch up.”
“I think it’s useful to have a function,” he says of his sound recording. “I would find it strange wandering around as a quasi-interviewer. I like to be what I am, which is a filmmaker making a film. Also two of you can get in a car really quick – but if you’re a big crew you don’t have that kind of mobility.” At one point that mobility is called upon, as Broomfield, his son and an interviewee hear gunshots close by and decide to head to a safer location, even though they seem relatively unfazed by the action. As Broomfield says with wry bitterness, “You’re not going to shoot two white journalists down there, because the whole place would get shut down. I didn’t feel frightened.”
Broomfield may not be done with Franklin – the case is ongoing, and will eventually come to trial. He admits to still being “really curious” about how it will all finish up. But whatever subject he chooses to make next, his compassion and incurable curiosity will carry on underpinning his methods. “Plan B, which is the real film, is always different from the film you think you’re going to make,” he says. “And there is no objective position – there’s an inherent position in anything. It’s more watchable for an audience if you tell a more subjective story. And the audience can take it or leave it.”
Nick Broomfield was speaking to Guardian Members at an exclusive screening. Find out more about Guardian Membership and how to sign up.
