[Today begins a series of postings by TIFF directors discussing different crafts that go into documentary making: archival research, shooting, editing, music - Ed.]

Dick. Shamus. Slewfoot. The slang varies, but the job is the same throughout decades of crime films -- navigating a noir-ish jungle of torpedoes, fakeloos, shysters, tomatoes and roscoes to obtain information.  

Although hardly as treacherous, making The U.S. vs. John Lennon did involve quite a bit of hard-boiled detection. Lennon was one of the most photographed and filmed personalities of the 20^th century, so uncovering imagery was not hard -- uncovering the perfect footage to illustrate a given story point?and finding it in the best quality possible?that was the real challenge.  

My partner in producing crime, David Leaf, refers to me as an AVAD ("Awesome Video and Audio Detective"). I confess ? I do love gumshoeing my way into people's hearts, minds, data bases and closets in search of audio/visual material that has not been seen in a zillion other Lennon/Beatles-related documentaries.  

We cast a wide dragnet, relentlessly pursuing our sources worldwide, above and below ground. Sometimes we know specifically what we want, other times our requests are completely general in hopes of uncovering buried visual treasure. There are, of course, far-too many dead ends to such sleuthing. Personnel turnover at libraries, archives, morgues (I am speaking now of the newspaper variety), lack of knowledge or just plain laziness, often results in, ?Sorry, we don?t have anything like that.?  

For example, to make our ?Bigger Than Jesus Controversy? segment truly compelling, we wanted more than just the usual imagery seen in the Beatles Anthology and other documentaries on the Fab Four.  News archives told us time and again that what we saw was all there was. Beatles collectors had nothing. However, as mountainous phone bills will testify, endless calling and cajoling (not to mention occasional begging) finally brought the desired results. Two reels of raw film were discovered in the far corner of a news archive where they had lain unseen and un-transferred since they were shot in 1966. After months of AVAD-ly digging, a portion of John?s ?apology? press conference was located in living color. 

Footage of the day John triumphed over the US government was more problematic. We were told repeatedly that such footage did not exist. And yet, we had photos showing that cameras were swarming around the Lennons as they stepped out of a New York Courthouse that hot July day in 1976. Certainly photos would serve our purposes, but I wanted film! For nine months we wandered down numerous dead-end alleys. And then, with a mere three weeks to go before locking picture, we found it. Buried deep in an archive, misfiled, mislabeled, was a roll of un-developed film. David and I used that footage to create a truly memorable moment near the end of the movie.  

Between our efforts and the generosity of Yoko Ono, we believe THE U.S. vs. JOHN LENNON is overloaded with rare and unseen imagery and sound. And that, as Sam Spade would say, is the crop.

[See Greencine for links to other pieces on The US vs. John Lennon - Ed]