Bosnian Filmmaker Danis Tanovic

DATE November 28, 2001 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Bosnian filmmaker Danis Tanovic talks about his
experiences in Sarajevo during the war
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest, Danis Tanovic, has written and directed a war movie that he
describes as his vote against violence of any kind. The movie, "No Man's
Land," won the best screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival. It's set in
1993 during the Bosnian War. A Serb soldier and a Bosnian soldier are trapped
in a trench between enemy lines. A second Bosnian soldier who was presumed to
be dead regains consciousness to find he's lying on a spring mine that will
explode if he moves. So the three soldiers' lives depend on working together
to prevent this mine from exploding.

Filmmaker Danis Tanovic was a student studying film and theater in Sarajevo
when the war broke out. He volunteered for the army, but ended up carrying a
camera instead of a gun, documenting the war for the Bosnian archive. I asked
Tanovic how his experiences with UN peacekeepers during the war influenced how
he portrayed them in his movie.

Mr. DANIS TANOVIC (Filmmaker): If you look well in my film, you will see that
United Nations soldiers, well, they are almost the only positive characters in
the film, because that's how I felt about them. The problem was not the
soldiers, the problem was here in United States, in New York, with United
Nations politics, in fact, with their desire to do nothing, hiding behind
neutrality. And, you know, I don't believe in neutrality because I don't
think it exists, simple as that.

GROSS: In one of the early scenes in your movie, a wounded soldier takes a
pretty big risk to get a cigarette butt to smoke, only to realize he doesn't
have a match. Do you smoke?

Mr. TANOVIC: Yeah, I do.

GROSS: Was it hard for you during the war to find cigarettes?

Mr. TANOVIC: Well, you know, I think that the two most important things
during the war were cigarettes and coffee, and if we wouldn't have those ones,
then, you know, life would be very difficult, but fortunately we somehow
managed always to find something. I will not tell you about the quality. It
was definitely not any great brand of cigarette, but, you know, it was--well,
we made with what we had.

GROSS: What's the biggest risk you took for a cigarette?

Mr. TANOVIC: You know, I wouldn't miss the day in the units when they were
giving those, so, you know, just being in Sarajevo is risking your life every
day, so going to take a pack of cigarettes, you know, running for one
kilometer from home to front lines just to pick up one, you know, is dangerous
enough.

GROSS: The main feeling in your movie is that the war is somewhat ridiculous.
The soldiers don't really want to kill each other, and they certainly don't
want to die, and you imagine them always asking themselves, `What are we doing
here?' Is that the feeling you had during the war?

Mr. TANOVIC: I think that is the feeling you get--after some point, you get
in any war, you know. When war goes on, the reasons just get lost, and
that's--you know, war is absurd. You're killing each other for this reason or
that reason, but finally, you know, I don't think any reason is good enough to
kill each other.

GROSS: You were a student in Sarajevo when the war broke out in '92. How did
you end up in the Bosnian army?

Mr. TANOVIC: Well, in the beginning, it was not Bosnian army. You have to
understand that when Bosnia was recognized in 1992, you know, the only real
army which existed was Yugoslav army, and then as Bosnia separated from
Yugoslavia, this army just went into hands of Serbs, of what--rest of
Yugoslavia. And so when they started to bomb Sarajevo, I just went to the
police station and asked `What can I do?' and, you know, they told me, `Well,
you can go with these four guys,' and we were five guys with one machine gun
walking down the street pretending to be whatever--special force. And after a
few days, you know, I just realized that nobody's filming what's happening, so
I took camera and I started filming, and that's I how I stayed--you know, next
two years I spent in the front lines of Sarajevo, filming what's going on and
filming life in Sarajevo.

GROSS: Now were you shooting film in any official capacity? In other words,
were you just doing it as an individual or were you, like, the official
cameraman for the Bosnian army?

Mr. TANOVIC: Yeah. I was working for the army. I was soldier. But in the
beginning there was no army, so, you know, the army was made up few months
later, you know, so I was in the same place, but suddenly we were called the
Bosnian army. So yes, I was working for the army for a film archive of
Bosnian army.

GROSS: Did you carry a gun?

Mr. TANOVIC: In the beginning, yes, but, you know, as we didn't have too many
guns, I gave mine to a friend who was on front line all the time and couldn't
defend himself. And I just kept hand grenade for me, in case they would
capture me, because I didn't want to go into the hands of our dear enemies.

GROSS: So you were prepared to blow yourself up?

Mr. TANOVIC: Well, if I fell into their hands, yes. I preferred to kill
myself than to let them the pleasure of killing me.

GROSS: Did you ever come close to thinking you were going to need it?

Mr. TANOVIC: Hmm. No. I never thought I'm gonna die, frankly, you know. I
don't--we don't die--I was young, I was 23 years old, I was crazy and I never
thought of death. You know, I just hoped that I will not get blown, you know,
to stay without leg or whatever, to be mutilated. But that's--you know, after
some times you don't even think about it. It's all around you, so you just
live your life.

GROSS: Did the camera give you any feelings of safety? Did you feel at all
protected by being behind the camera?

Mr. TANOVIC: Yeah. I used to swing it--it's very good question. It's a
strange feeling that I had. I had a feeling this camera protected me in
certain way, you know, because when you're working on a front line, well, you
know, you don't have time to feel fear or you don't shoot anything, so you
expose yourself even more than you should do normally, because you are
filming. But then again, you have somehow feeling that you are not there,
that all this stuff is happening, you know, in the film, because you're
watching everything through the camera, so I think camera helped me a lot. I
don't know. Maybe we should do some psychoanalyzing here, but I don't think
we have time for that. But it definitely helped me out, because I was
occupied, you know. My mind was occupied all the time. Only I had time to
think I would not--I never had time to become desperate then, because there
was always something to do, something to film, you know. For two years I was
every day filming, filming, filming.

GROSS: You know what I'm thinking? When you're in the middle of battle,
you're so out of control, but if you're behind the camera, you're at least
controlling the framing of the war.

Mr. TANOVIC: Mm. That's true. That's true. It's putting some order in the
mess.

GROSS: Right. Are there risks that you think you took to get good footage
that you might not have taken just as a soldier?

Mr. TANOVIC: Well, I repeat you. You know, it's very--I don't think it's
understandable for you what happened in Sarajevo. I mean, just being in
Sarajevo is dangerous enough. Yesterday I had a talk with an American
correspondent who was in all the war around the world, and he told me, `The
thing that really bothered me about Bosnia is that you couldn't run away,'
because normally there are front lines, so you can run. If they shoot, you
can run back. But in Bosnia, there was no back. Everything was front, so,
you know, you just duck and that's it, and hope, well, that you stay alive.

GROSS: Are there things that you witnessed through the camera that you might
not otherwise have watched?

Mr. TANOVIC: Frankly, a lot of them. A lot of them. Well, you know, with a
camera, I had a chance to see things that most even soldier couldn't see,
because I was there always when something was happening, you know, because
when there is nothing happening, there is nothing to film. So they would
invite me each time there was something happening, so I had chance, you know,
to film from mass graves to fights to--I don't know--to war criminals and, you
know, all kind of stuff, well, you maybe don't even want to see.

GROSS: Tell us about one of the things that you might otherwise not have
wanted to see, but you felt committed to see because you were documenting it.

Mr. TANOVIC: I don't--you know, I can't--frankly, all of it. I just can't
take one thing. You know, war is a place, and war is something you really
don't want to see anything of it. You don't want to see destruction of your
city, you don't want to see destruction of your life, your friends being
killed or people that you don't know being blown to pieces or people getting
killed by sniper just because they run to pick some water. You know, I didn't
want to see any of it.

GROSS: Did you have any standards about what was too gruesome to film or did
you just film whatever you saw so that there would be some documentation of
it? I mean, for example, if you're filming something for network news in the
United States, there are certain scenes that you know they won't put on TV
because it's too gruesome.

Mr. TANOVIC: Yeah.

GROSS: But you were doing this for more archival purposes.

Mr. TANOVIC: Yeah. Well, you know, I didn't have this kind of--I was
filming everything I think I should film. And, of course, there's always auto
censor--How do you say it?--you know, you are...

GROSS: Self-censorship?

Mr. TANOVIC: Yeah, self-censorship, because you just need--you know, you just
have it in yourself, and there are sometimes things that you just don't want
to do, to film. And sometimes I would even leave camera because, you know,
there would be wounded people that need to be taken into hospital, and I can't
film them. If I film them, they're going to die, you see? So you can't...

GROSS: So what choice would you make in a situation like that?

Mr. TANOVIC: I would always stop filming.

GROSS: Stop filming and take them to the hospital.

Mr. TANOVIC: Well, definitely. You know--and you have to make choices in
life, and I think our job while filming and even journalism has a lot to do
with ethic. You know, if you're not ethical, then you can't do your job. And
I don't consider my job as a business. What I do, I don't see it, you know,
as a business. For me, it would be deeply immoral to film people who are
dying and knowing that I could maybe help them and bring them to hospital.
So--but then again, each person has his choice, and that was mine.

I also--you know, during the war I was making footage which I was giving to
all the journalists around the world. The chosen one, of course, because we
couldn't show front lines to the journalists because then Serbs might see that
we had three guns full for 300 meters of front line, because we didn't have
any weapon, as you know. So this kind of footage I wouldn't give, but all the
rest I was giving. And I was giving for free with my friends because--Why for
free? Because first of all, we would think it would be immoral to make money
over our buddies who are defending the city, you know, so we couldn't sell it.
And then we had--you know, you hang on crazy things in this kind of situation.
I was thinking, `If I sell one footage, then I'm going to die filming next
one.' So it was kind of protection for me, you know, and I just kept filming,
thinking that nothing bad can happen to me, and nothing bad happened to me. I
know it's crazy belief, but still, you've got to believe in something. So...

GROSS: I imagine that is true, that you have to believe in something.

Mr. TANOVIC: You do, and I believed in my friends and in myself. That's all.

GROSS: And did you feel like your friends believed in you?

Mr. TANOVIC: Well, they had to, you know, because when you're in this kind
of situation, you have to hang on your pals, you know. If you think that
they're going to leave you in the bad situation, then you would fell really
bad. But if you know that, you know, even if you died, they're going to bring
your body down to city and, you know, bury you as you should be buried, then
it's different feeling. So, yes, it's very important to have good friends.
And I think all the people who survive this kind of situation can understand
which kind of friendship you have in this kind of situation.

GROSS: Are you still close with some of the people who you traveled with
during the war?

Mr. TANOVIC: Yes, very much. And I think we're going to stay like that
forever. Even if we don't see each other, you know, we just--there is
something between us. There is a code between us.

GROSS: My guest is Danis Tanovic. His new film, "No Man's Land," is set
during the Bosnian War. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Danis Tanovic, and his new movie is called "No Man's
Land." It's about the war in Bosnia. During the war, he was a cameraman for
the Bosnian army.

How was the footage that you shot during the war used, in addition to being
archived?

Mr. TANOVIC: Well, you know, a lot of people used it. You know, I think some
things you saw even on maybe CNN or BBC. A lot of footage was used in the
film that are being done about Bosnian War. A lot of footage was used by
United Nations Commission for Investigation of War Crimes. So there are
different things, you know, that--it's footage that's being used for all
different kind of things.

GROSS: Are there--have you ever, like, had the TV on and suddenly there's war
footage that you've shot?

Mr. TANOVIC: Yeah, I saw it a few times. Yeah, of course.

GROSS: What impact does that have on you to kind of relive the war through
footage that you shot yourself?

Mr. TANOVIC: Well, you know, the funny thing is when I look now, things that
I've been filming, I feel sick, and I wonder, `How could I do that?' and I
don't know. It's a strange feeling. I see sometimes crazy things I was
doing, like running in front of people who are shooting, you know, just to
film them shooting and stuff like that. And you say, `How could I do this?'
Or just going into mass grave and filming that and, you know, I feel rather
sick when I see it today. And at that moment, I was not. I was just doing
what I thought was right to do. So, you know, I don't know if I would do the
same thing today. I like to believe that I would, but, you know, I'm not
sure.

GROSS: Are there any scenes that you actually shot on camera from the war
that you tried to re-create in your new movie "No Man's Land"?

Mr. TANOVIC: Well, there is a lot of situation that I've been, not that I
film--yes, on some of them, like shooting and stuff like that. But there is a
lot of things that I actually lived like this. I'm sure you laughed about the
guy who comes in the middle of all this and says, `What a mess in Rwanda.'

GROSS: Yeah, yeah. Let me explain. You know, they're, like, in a trench and
there's, you know, firing all around. And one of the guys is reading the
newspaper, I guess, and he says, yeah...

Mr. TANOVIC: Yeah.

GROSS: ...`What a mess it is in Rwanda.' And...

Mr. TANOVIC: Well, this thing happened, actually, to me, because we were on
front line, it was early morning, and there is one of our friends coming on
the front line and he's all white. And he sits and says, `Oh, my God.' And
we were looking at him and we thought like his father died, because it was
night of shelling and it was a mess. And we're like, `Are you OK? Is
everything'--and he said, `Oh, my God.' `What? What?' And, you know, we all
came around him like, `Are you OK? What happened? Calm down. Do you want
some water? Do you want a cigarette?' And then after, you know, a few
minutes he said, `What a mess in Rwanda,' and we're looking at him and saying,
`Do you know where you are, for God's sake? What's wrong with you?' you know.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. TANOVIC: And, you know, I just put it in my film because, you know, it
sounded right because it is crazy situation, and the sentence `What a mess in
Rwanda' in many other situations would be--you know, would have total
different meaning, would have meaning it should have, but not in that
situation.

GROSS: You got out of Sarajevo in 1994. How did you get out?

Mr. TANOVIC: Well, I get out in the jeep of a British pilot, fighter pilot.
I was hidden in the behind of his jeep. He was a friend of a friend, and he
came suddenly one day with a jeep and he came and said, you know, `You have 15
minutes. Pick up your stuff and we're out.' So that's how I left.

GROSS: How did you feel about leaving and leaving behind other people in the
army who were fighting the war, leaving behind the work that you were doing
shooting the war?

Mr. TANOVIC: Yeah. Well, in 1994, in Sarajevo, the situation--you remember,
there was a big massacre in Sarajevo. I don't know if you remember. And
after that, Serbs just moved away and we, frankly, thought that the war was
kind of finished because we thought, you know, NATO gave the ultimatum to
Serbs that they have to move away. And everything seemed as if war is going
to finally be over because we believed in intervention. And Serbs pulled out
and situation got better for Sarajevo. Food started to come in and, you know,
the situation just got better. And unfortunately, one year later--well, eight
months later they started to shell again.

So--and then again, when I left Sarajevo, I didn't know that I'm going to
leave, you know, forever. I wanted to leave for two weeks just to get some
rest because you can't imagine in which kind of shape you are after two years
of war, and I was--for two years in war I was one of the first volunteers in
Bosnian War. And of the guys from my unit, in the beginning of the war, we
were 25. I think we had two who stayed alive finally. And, you know, I just
felt tired and I had a girlfriend who was outside, and I desperately wanted to
be with her at that time and to get some rest.

And when I got finally to Belgium, while the situation was looking better,
even the tramps started to work in Sarajevo. And, you know, they proposed me
to stay in film academy in Belgium and that's what I did. You know, you don't
always make plans when you do these kind of things. Things just happen in
life, sometimes without you planning them. So when they proposed me to stay
in academy, situation was OK in Sarajevo, I accepted and I started studying.
And I was always--for next--you know, when war restarted in Bosnia, I was
always on the point to leave if anything would go wrong with Sarajevo, you
know, with the front lines around Sarajevo. But, you know, until the end of
war, Serbs didn't move any line around.

GROSS: Tell me more about the shape you were in after two years of war.

Mr. TANOVIC: Well, I think I was 65 kilos and--well, you should see me. I
don't think--you know, you can't compare things, but we looked very much like
people getting out of concentration camps, not in that desperate situation.
And I don't like comparing things, you know, because it would be comparing
apples and oranges. But those images that you remember so well from people
going out of concentration camps in Second World War were images you could see
in Bosnia all around.

GROSS: Your film shows that you have, you know, a real keen sense of irony
and, you know, a sense of humor. Was there any sense of irony or sense of
humor left after two years of war?

Mr. TANOVIC: Yes. You know, Bosnians are very known for their black humor.
And while I--you know, I'm sure you laughed during the film, and a lot of
those things really happened in the war. You know, for us, humor was a way to
save life, was our biggest defense mechanism, was our weapon somehow. And I
liked to our humor somehow to Jewish humor, which is--I think some were
saying, which came out of all this trouble that the Jewish people lived
through. And Bosnians, in that sense, will have thousands of years of war
behind them because all the time somebody's trying to attack and to take piece
of a land, and--you know. And I thought, like, `OK, as it was there in World
War I, why not put it in the film.' So we are very known throughout the
region as people who laugh about almost everything because you can't laugh
about everything. But...

GROSS: You've...

Mr. TANOVIC: ...you can laugh about a lot of things. And I think the big
strength of us is that they laugh about themselves, too, which gives the right
to laugh about the others, because it's very important, I think, to have this
balance and to be able to laugh about yourself.

GROSS: Danis Tanovic wrote and directed the new movie "No Man's Land." It
opens in New York and LA December 7th, and in more cities the following week.
Tanovic will be back in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Credits)

GROSS: This is NPR, National Public Radio.

(Announcements)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Danis Tanovic. He
wrote and directed the new film "No Man's Land," which is set in the
Bosnian war. Tanovic was in the Bosnian army during the war working as the
army's cameraman, documenting the war for the Bosnian archive.

After the war, I guess while you were living in--in Belgium, you made two
documentaries about the war. What were the subjects of the documentaries?

Mr. TANOVIC: Well, I just told you a few minutes ago, if you remember, that
war stays after the actual war is finished. And one night, I was calling a
friend of mine, and his wife answered the phone--I was in Brussels--and she
told me, `You know, he--he left for Bosnia.' And I said, `Why? What do you
mean he left for Bosnia?' Because it was the--it was just the end of the war.
And she said to me, `Well, remember this wounded guy who was living in a
little village next to Brussels. Well, he left to bring his family.' And this
guy that she was talking about--this guy who got blown by a mine; so he stayed
without hands and without eyes, and he was living in total dark and he was
evacuated from Gorazde enclave in 1994, and he was living for two years in
dark, waiting for his family to come.

And I just couldn't sleep that night, and early morning, I went to the
production house and I said, `Listen, I need two cameras,' and it was a
school, this like production house in a school of documentary films in which I
gave some lectures. And, you know, they just gave me everything I asked, and
I went there and I put one camera on the border, waiting for family, and I put
another one in his room, filming him as he waiting. And you know, we--I just
ask him to tell his story, and it was 30-minute film, which was awarded on a
lot of festivals around the world. So it was just an idea I had in the
evening and--and you know, the power of--of this film is in its simplicity and
in universality, because each one of us had at one time or another somebody
that we lost or lose or that we were waiting. So he was waiting his wife and
his--his children and he said, you know, `My wife's going to be my eyes and my
kids going to be my hands.'

And in the final moment of the film, when they--when they came into the room,
when they entered the room and they start kissing each other, well, you know,
that's the moment where, as we say in my country, even--even the stone would
cry. And I just wanted to show it to people that war is not only about
shooting. It's state of mind. And it stays--well, it stays long time after
it's actually finished. And I think frankly, it stays forever. I don't think
we'll ever get rid of these ghosts who stays in us. So that was one--that was
the first film, which was called "Dadome."(ph)

Second film I made was--was a film about Bosnia reconstruction and people
wanting to go back, and that was the moment when, I mean, in fact, I--I--I
finally saw what my country was after the war. And I met my country for the
first time, in fact. It was really beautiful experience, because I was going
from north to south and from east to east, filming people who were trying to,
well, rebuild their lives. And it was--it was, in the same sense, a film
about--about war, about what stays after.

GROSS: Where do you live now?

Mr. TANOVIC: I live in Paris.

GROSS: How come you decided not to return to Sarajevo to live?

Mr. TANOVIC: Well, you know, I just came back from Sarajevo. Before coming
in the States, I was in Sarajevo for a few days. I go every two, three
months. I have my parents still live there and I have some friends living
there still, and people are coming back. The whole institution is rather
desperate in Bosnia today. But you know, I think there is the answer, because
the situation is desperate. And to think that I'm going to be able to make
movies and, you know, making movies is an expensive toy. And to make movies
in Bosnia, it's--it's even ridiculous to think in that terms, because there
are people starving really to death in Bosnia today. There are--there are old
people who--who--who just don't have anything to eat anymore because, you
know, the system is broke down, and nothing is being reconstructed.

And you know, just like in my film, the world made image of Bosnia in
which--which we have today is like everything is OK in Bosnia now and
everything is fine, but nothing is fine in Bosnia. There are more criminals
still walking free around Sarajevo. There are people who actually shoot in
Sarajevo. And because of the total amnesty, they are just walking free around
Sarajevo, going back into their apartments and taking out from those
apartments, for example, refugees from Srebrenica. And those people can't go
back to Srebrenica because Srebrenica is still under Serbian power; so you
have situation in which Bosnia is paying, again, the highest price of being
democrats. And the situation is rather desperate. And all of this is
happening because while the Dayton agreement, the victims and the aggressors
were equalized--you know, we're all equal now and I don't know. It--it's
rather desperate.

GROSS: What are your parents' lives like now?

Mr. TANOVIC: Difficult. Life is difficult there, I'm telling you, you know.
It--I--I don't know--I don't know if I can--if you can understand, but it's
like if--well, not maybe Osama bin Laden walking in New York, but it's like
if--if the people who are helping him in doing that were still walking free
around, and you would know them and you can't do anything about it, you know.

GROSS: Are your parents...

Mr. TANOVIC: Some of them can't be stopped because there are not enough
proves, and some of those can't--can't be stopped because they--they are still
hiding. And you know, my parents--my mother is teacher of music who--who--who
retired two, three years ago, so she--she spend most of her time home. My
father is still working in--in a Bosnian television. He's chief editor; so he
works there probably.

GROSS: Are your parents still living in the home they lived in before the
war...

Mr. TANOVIC: Yes. Yes.

GROSS: ...or was that home destroyed?

Mr. TANOVIC: Our apartment, thank God, was OK. We just had a few bullets
passing through and a few shrapnels here and there, but, you know--for
example, the apartment below us was blown to pieces and the apartment next to
us was blown to pieces. But you know, there--there are no rules, so we got
lucky.

GROSS: Danis Tanovic is my guest, and his new movie, "No Man's Land," is set
in the war in Bosnia. During the war, he was a cameraman for the Bosnian
army, documenting the war on film. Your film was screened at the Toronto Film
Festival on September 9th, two days before the attacks. What went through
your mind on the 11th? Were you still in Toronto then?

Mr. TANOVIC: No. I was on the airplane when it happened. I was on the
airplane flying fromm--from Paris to Bordeaux, and, you know, I think we
all--we all felt the same thing. And it was my producer who called me on the
phone and told me what happened, and I couldn't believe--I couldn't
believe--simple, you know; same thing like I couldn't believe that--that siege
of Sarajevo is possible. So I think I had the same feeling and th--you know,
a rather desperate feeling from them...

GROSS: Did it reactivate the feelings of insecurity and that anything can
happen, feelings that you had during the war?

Mr. TANOVIC: No, I don't have feeling of insecurity. You know, I think once
you live through war, you're just--you're just happy for any other day you
live on this earth and you're happy about it. So I don't have feeling of
insecurity. I--I can't live like that. I still fly the airplanes. I still
live my life. And I think that's the only way that we should all behave
because anything else would be defeat.

GROSS: You said that by the end of the second year of the war in Bosnia,
when--when you got out, that you nearly looked like the survivor of a
concentration camp, you had lost so much weight. Did your body return to what
it was before the war, or was it permanently changed by what you'd been
through?

Mr. TANOVIC: No. I was young at the time. I was 23. And when I got out of
the war, I was 25, and it's still young. My parents never recovered from
that. My parents, you can see that they lived through--through something
hard. I still feel some things, like I can't sleep in a cold room anymore
because you have to understand that in Sarajevo, we didn't have any heat, for
example, and it was -25 degrees Celsius in the evening sometimes, and it's
like you're sleeping outside in the field in the winter, and even worse,
because there is wind. And since then, I can't stand sleeping in a cold--I
got--I got ill immediately after. If I sleep in a cold room, tomorrow I am
ill. So that's one thing, but it's not very big deal. There are people who
have much, much bigger scars.

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you very much for talking with us. I wish you
the best with your new movie. Thank you.

Mr. TANOVIC: Thank you.

GROSS: Danis Tanovic wrote and directed the new film "No Man's Land." It
opens in New York and LA December 7th and in more cities the following week.

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Profile: Tribute to composer Ralph Burns, who died at age 79
TERRY GROSS, host:

Arranger and composer Ralph Burns died last week at the age of 79 of
pneumonia and complications of a stroke. He'd worked with the Woody Herman
Band, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles and Peggy Lee, and he orchestrated movie
scores and Broadway musicals. We're going to hear his composition "Early
Autumn," which was written and arranged for the Woody Herman Band. Here's
their 1976 concert version with Stan Getz on tenor and Ralph Burns at the
piano.

(Soundbite of "Early Autumn")

GROSS: Coming up, linguist Geoff Nunberg compares computer voices and human
voices. This is FRESH AIR.

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Commentary: Making robots talk
TERRY GROSS, host:

For 50 years, movies have been imagining how talking robots and computers
would sound. But when machines actually started to talk, their voices were
like nothing we'd ever heard. Our linguist Geoff Nunberg thinks that's
because we have trouble imagining how truly unhuman machines really are.

GEOFF NUNBERG:

According to a legend, the first talking machine was invented by Roger Bacon,
the 12th century scientist in polymath that the Medievals called Dr.
Mirabilis. After seven years' labor, Bacon fashioned a brazen head to hold
philosophical discourses with. According to an Elizabethan version of the
story, the head was awakened one day by Bacon's inept servant. `Time is,' it
said. When the servant asked what it meant, the head responded, `Time was.'
The servant became vexed and insisted that the head explain itself. `Time is
past,' it said, at which point a hand with a hammer appeared and broke it into
a thousand pieces.

The story doesn't say anything about what sort of voice the brazen head had;
brassy, I'd imagine. It wasn't until the advent of talking pictures that
people began to give machines voices of their own. There's a curious catch-22
to that exercise. The point is to convey the machine's singular lack of
humanity, but the only way to do that is by giving it a voice that connotes
some uniquely human deficiency of personality.

The progenitor of the breed was Robby the Robot who stole the show in the
1956 sci-fi classic "Forbidden Planet." Robbie was the cinema's first lovable
robot. He looked like a metallic Michelin Man and spoke in a ponderous
monotone like a butler who was trapped inside a garbage can.

(Soundbite of "Forbidden Planet")

"ROBBIE THE ROBOT": That is correct, sir. For your convenience, I am
monitored to respond to the name Robbie.

NUNBERG: Robbie's voice had a vaguely fey note that other movie robots were
never able to duplicate. But his affectlessness was the model for the talking
machines in dozens of movies and TV shows to follow, from "Lost in Space" to
"Doctor Who," to "The Jetsons" to "Star Trek." The pitch and tempo might
vary, but the robot drone was always the same.

"DALEKS": (From "Doctor Who") Exterminate all humans!

Unidentified Robot Voice #1: I'm sorry, Will Robinson, I am afraid I goofed.

Unidentified Robot Voice #2: I am a machine vastly superior to humans.

Unidentified Robot Voice #3: (From "War Games") Shall we play a game?

Unidentified Robot Voice #4: Back to work. Back to work. Everybody, work,
work, work, work. Work, work.

USS Enterprise Computer: (From "Star Trek") Program complete. Enter when
ready.

Mr. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (As "The Terminator"): I'll be back.

NUNBERG: After a while, other movies started playing variations on that
theme. In "2001," Stanley Kubrick modulated the traditional robot monotone
into a preternaturally calm voice that suggested a paranoid's
hyper-rationality. HAL talked the way Mr. Rogers would if he became a
facilitator for a New Age cult.

(Soundbite of "2001: A Space Odyssey")

"HAL": I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm
afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.

NUNBERG: Then there was the lugubrious robot Marvin from the BBC version
of Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." In his case, the low
affect voice was a sign of chronic depression.

(Soundbite of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy")

"MARVIN": Sorry. Did I say something wrong? Pardon me for breathing, which
I never do anyway, so I don't know why I bothered to say it. Oh, God, I'm so
depressed.

NUNBERG: The voices of other movie robots didn't suggest an absence of
emotion, so much as emotional immaturity. In the 1986 film, "Short Circuit,"
the robot Johnny 5 speaks with the adenoidal Jerry Lewis voice that
connotes the prototypical dweeb.

(Soundbite of "Short Circuit")

"JOHNNY 5": Need input. I have questions, clearly.

NUNBERG: But however they speak, movie robots and computers always convey
their lack of humanity in familiarly human tones. That's what drama requires,
of course, whether the machines are cast as villains, heroes or sidekicks.
But none of those movie machines prepared us for how deeply weird machines
would actually sound when they acquired voices of their own. The early speech
synthesis systems had otherworldly voices that were barely comprehensible.

Unidentified Robot Voice #5: For your convenience, I am monitored to respond
to the name Robbie.

NUNBERG: Granted, speech engineers have made a lot of progress since then,
particularly in rendering the tambour of the human voice. Here's a
state-of-the-art synthesizer from AT&T.

Unidentified Computerized Voice: For your convenience, I am monitored to
respond to the name Robbie.

NUNBERG: You can count on hearing a lot more voices like that in the future.
If the engineers have their way, speech technology is going to go a long way
to taking high-maintenance humans out of the customer service loop. But as
good as they've gotten, computer voices are still patently unhuman. Whatever
personality disorder they're suffering from, it isn't anything you'll find in
"DSM3."(ph)

There are two problems in getting robot voices right. The first is that their
words don't mean anything to them. The second is that they don't know what
their words mean to their listeners. They don't know what tone to take when
they're telling you something. When you call to complain about your phone
bill, you don't want the computer to tell you the bad news in an upbeat voice.

Unidentified Computerized Voice: I'm sorry, you'll have to pay another
installation fee.

NUNBERG: Now I'm sure even as we speak, there's a team at AT&T or Carnegie
Mellon working on the problem of computer abjection. But getting tone right
isn't just a matter of synthesizing intelligence. Voice is the sound that the
mind makes when it scrapes against the body. You can hear that in the awkward
rhythms and transitions of machine speech, which suggests just how hard it is
to mimic the moist, ballistics of the human tongue. But it takes more than an
artificial mouth to infuse a voice with warmth or sympathy or contrition.
Emotion comes from lower down than that. You have to suggest the rest of the
body, too.

That ups the ante considerably. Artificial intelligence has always been a
game of deception, but up to now it's been limited to creating the illusion
that there's a working mind at the other end of the line. Now we may have to
deal with machines that can sound as if they had chests and shoulders, too.
Imagine trying to talk to a computer at the bank that sounds like a harried,
middle-aged service rep hunched over his terminal in the seventh hour of his
shift. It's an unnerving prospect. You might yearn for a hand with a hammer
to appear out of nowhere.

(Soundbite of "2001: A Space Odyssey")

"HAL": This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

GROSS: Geoff Nunberg is a linguist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center,
and the author of the new book "The Way We Talk Now."

Coming up, Kevin Whitehead reviews a new Artie Shaw box set. This is FRESH
AIR.

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Profile: Jazz clarinetist Artie Shaw recently edits a five-CD box
set of his own music
TERRY GROSS, host:

Artie Shaw was one of the stars of the swing era and one of the esteemed jazz
clarinetists from the late-1930s until he retired from music in 1954 to write
fiction and his memoirs. He's now 91 years old. Shaw recently edited a
five-CD box set of his own music, drawing on commercial and private, studio
and live recordings. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead likes it a lot but says it
also reveals much about the many contradictions behind Shaw's career.

(Soundbite of music)

KEVIN WHITEHEAD reporting:

That's Artie Shaw's theme song. For promotional reasons, every swing band
leader had one. But it was typical Shaw to make his theme a downer called
"Nightmare." Artie Shaw is one of the most conflicted jazz heroes. By his
own account, he hated the glittery distractions of show business, yet he still
managed to marry Ava Gardner and Lana Turner. His bands didn't last, either.
He was always breaking one up only to dive into another, full of renewed hope.
But at any setting, he was an excellent clarinet player, with daring ideas and
a full sound in the high and low registers, a sound to beat rivals like Benny
Goodman and Woody Herman.

(Soundbite of music)

WHITEHEAD: Artie Shaw's 1938 hit "Begin the Beguine." Shaw hated having
hits, because people then expected him to play them. But the anti-commercial
Shaw had a curious weakness for strings, which pop arrangers used to sweeten
up music for the rubes. Between 1936 and '53, Shaw augmented his bands with
anywhere from 4 to 17 strings, looking for the right balance. He had some
success as early as 1940. On Lenny Hayton's arrangement of "Temptation," 9
strings proved loud and supple enough to stand beside the band's horn section.

(Soundbite of music)

WHITEHEAD: Artie Shaw also led stringless swing bands, well represented among
the 95 tracks he picked for his five-CD self portrait. It also includes a few
live rarities and appearances by hip singers like Hotlips Paige and Billie
Holiday. There are always better and harder swinging big bands, but some of
the weird stuff with strings wears well, or at least exerts some grotesque
fascination. Coming to it out of context, you might wonder if it's meant as
serious or satire.

(Soundbite of music)

WHITEHEAD: That's from the fitfully entertaining "Concerto For Clarinet" in
1940. Bridging high and low culture and jumping between diverse styles from
jazz to klezmer, Shaw anticipated John Zorn's post-modernism by a half a
century.

(Soundbite of music)

WHITEHEAD: Artie Shaw kept searching for an ideal setting. The irony was he
found it by 1940. Like Goodman and others, he started featuring a small band
drawn from the ranks of the big one, the sextet Artie Shaw and his Gramercy 5.
They had a pseudo classical gimmick, too. Johnny Guarnieri played harpsichord
which shouldn't have worked but did.

(Soundbite of music)

WHITEHEAD: The Gramercy 5 with Billy Butterfield on trumpet. In the next
version without harpsichord, the trumpeter was the great Roy Eldridge. Shaw
was fondest of a later 1954 version to judge by how much space he allots it in
his self portrait. It was his last working band before his premature
retirement. Clarinet was the only horn this time and Shaw sounded more
reflective and at peace than ever. Producer Orrin Keepenews says Artie Shaw's
self portrait may be the first time an artist selected and annotated a
personal best drawn from all available recordings. Whether that's true or
not, it's an idea other producers should have the good sense to steal, even if
other artists don't make as judicious a selection as Artie Shaw has.

GROSS: Kevin Whitehead reviewed the new box set "Artie Shaw: Self Portrait."
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