Filmmaker Mitch McCabe is the daughter of an old-school, pioneering plastic surgeon. When her father died in a car accident, he took his common-sense, no-frills approach to his craft with him. So McCabe, hyperaware of her father’s sound sensibilities rarely seen in contemporary practices, tries to reconcile the old with the new or, more appropriately, the old with the young. Situating herself within the contemporary conversation about looking young as long as you can afford it, McCabe traverses the US, meeting with colorful, sympathetic and, in some cases, wholly unsympathetic characters. What people do to themselves to cling to some version of their youth is a personal matter that stems from a superficial culture. That is one part of the conversation. Another part is the lifestyle that results from an addiction—an incessant drive to tweak, smooth out, enlarge or reduce. As tempting as it might be for McCabe to judge those who succumb to the culture, that is not her mission. And as bizarre as some of the subjects are, what unfolds is a series of moments grounded in very real anxieties. And if they have the means to quell their fears, who are we to stop them? With an engaging style, McCabe frequently turns the camera on herself to examine exactly where she stands in relation to the people she follows. Her views on plastic surgery evolve as her film does, and where she ends up is either a thoughtful, deliberate nod to her father’s legacy or the beginning of a downward spiral. The mastery of the film is its refusal to tell us how to think. Instead, in the spirit of the subject, it gives us fresh insights on an old debate.

Filmmaker Q&A

Introduce yourself:
Mitch McCabe grew up in the Detroit suburbs and has been running around with one camera or another since adolescence. Her films have received several awards and screened at hundreds of festivals, venues, and have also been broadcast by PBS and Showtime. Her first film, PLAYING THE PART screened at Sundance Film Festival, New Directors/ New Films, and won several awards, including an Academy Award in the Student category, and was called “One of the Year’s Top 10 Short Films” by Film Comment, and “enthralling” by Stephen Holden of The New York Times. Her short films, SEPTEMBER 5:10PM (1999) and HIGHWAY 403, MILE 39 (2004), were both nominated for Student Academy Awards and premiered at the New York Film Festival, the Village Voice calling SEPTEMBER 5:10PM “the best short of the festival.” In 2003, McCabe wrote and directed the narrative featurette THIS CORROSION, which won a Princess Grace Award. In 2007 her short film TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

McCabe received her BA from Harvard College and her MFA in film directing from NYU. She has taught film at Ramapo College and lectured at Montana State University, University of Iowa, Harvard College, Hunter College, Vassar and Lafayette, among others. McCabe is the recipient of a Jerome Foundation Grant, and has been a fellow of the Djerassi Foundation, VCCA, Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. In 2008 she was a nominee for a Rockefeller Fellowship.

Her current documentary YOUTH KNOWS NO PAIN, made with HBO Documentary Films and Open Pictures, will air beginning August 2009.

What inspired this film?   How did you find your subjects?
The seeds of the film were planted early… very early. Even as a teenager, I was anxious about time passing. I was a bit of an upstart feminist, noticing how women became increasingly invisible as they aged, while it was just different from men. When I turned 20, it dawned on me that aging was something that happens to all of us. When I hit 35, I suddenly became hyper aware of every mention anywhere of creams, serums, injections, books, pills and surgical procedures in the search for the fountain of youth. My male friends bemoaned losing their hair and were secretly looking into hair transplants. The "Anti-Aging" industry had grown to a $60 billion a year business, both catering to and fueling the fear of getting old. To put it simply, it started feeling like I was primed to hit the road and start a film.

In 2003, I began casually interviewing local people, men and women, from 18-93 on their views on aging. In 2006 I got a small grant and started filming, taking a month long road trip through the South doing on camera research in an effort to find subjects for the film. Sometimes we’d just jump out of the car, go hang out at some local event or spot— a Virginia NASCAR race, a Mississippi art gallery, and a smoothie shack off the road in Georgia— and sit down with someone and ask questions. Do you care about getting old? If not, why not, if so, why, etc. As it went along, I asked them if they thought about taking action to fight it, or whether they were at peace with it all. From what I learned in all of my interviews, is that America is harsh on aging—and on women especially. So I decided to make a starkly honest film that reflected that and hopefully a documentary that contrasted films about aging that were already out there, trying to avoid any platitudes.

As a result, in 2008 the casting team and I threw out a wide net to find people throughout America who had stories that gave evidence to a growing obsession with staying young; men, women, people in their 20s-50s, people in the middle of the country, southern states, and of course, New York City and Los Angeles. Through a long grass-roots campaign, involving email chains, doctors’ recommendations and Craigslist, I found all the main characters in the film. It was in that month, on that road trip using Craigslist, that I met Sherry, who became the film’s recurring character as I met with her every 12 months until 2008. And now, Sherry’s a good personal friend.

What were some of the biggest challenges/surprises?
In our subject search, I expected that it would be hardest to find straight men to admit caring about what they looked like and aging—let alone admit to having plastic surgery! Surprisingly, finding the men was pretty easy. The biggest challenge was getting the New York based women under 35 to admit on camera that they cared—or spent scads of money on products, injections and so on. One would think that New Yorkers (and I’m one of them!) would be up front and open about everything.

However, the biggest challenge in making the film was striking that delicate balance of how much of my own personal story we should include. Thank God for the perspective of my editor and some great pairs of eyes! In the beginning my personal presence was very subtle, but with every rough cut viewing the feedback we received was that the thread of my own journey and my dad’s story needed to come forward more. Moreover it was important to me as a filmmaker who was also in the film to let the audience know that I did not judge these people, but understood them. So as risky as it felt at times, I had to take the plunge and expose myself. In the end, I think it made a better, more honest film, something that hopefully offers something beyond what the many articles and news shows on plastic surgery can offer the audience.

Who are some of your favorite filmmakers?
Robert Altman, Agnes Varda, Alexander Payne, Ross McElwee, Mike Leigh, Alex Gibney, Rachel Gray and Heidi Ewing. As one can see, we need more women out there.

What is your all time favorite documentary?
“Bowling for Columbine”. I love how it concludes with a question for us, and leaves things unresolved like the issue of gun control and American violence itself. And I can’t help but to appreciate the thread of his personal journey.

What other projects are in the pipeline?
A nonfiction book based around YOUTH KNOWS NO PAIN, an unrelated documentary that came out of my travels for this film (and which I was itching to make!), a political documentary on some women-related issues, and a few narrative feature projects that were put aside to push forward with this film.

Why did you become a filmmaker?
Since early adolescence I’ve always been documenting things through writing and visual means (photography, painting, etc). So when I got to college and I found a documentary program, it seemed the perfect fit to combine my photography and writing, both of which have always blended fiction with real life. I’ve been making films now since 1991,alternating between narrative and documentary, and have never veered into another career path. My stubbornness can only be attributed to my belief that film is the most viewer-interactive, collaborative and creative form there is!

What are some of your creative influences?
A little known British photographer, who I found in college, by the name of Jo Spence. She did a body of work that she called “photo-therapy”, which consisted of self-portraits. She photographed a lot of role-playing, documenting her divorce and even her struggle with breast cancer, which ultimately killed her. I was also heavily influenced by the undergrad documentary community at Harvard and in the Boston area, which has several documentarians in the personal doc genre (Ross McElwee, and the many others who he has influenced).

Did you go to film school?
Yes. As an undergraduate I was in a very small doc program, where we started making collaborative 10-person team docs, and then branched out to our own thesis films by the end. A few years later I went to NYU graduate film school, where I started making narrative films.

What do you shoot on?
The Panasonic DVX 100a, 24p. I may be the last person to shoot on tape, which makes me sad. I’m a big believer in non-digital recording. Not to mention the old days of 16mm.

What has been the most unexpected thing to happen since taking the film on the festival circuit?
The conversations that the film has sparked, the continued responses we hear…. My editor and I wanted to provoke a conversation for a broad audience as we aimed to represent as many aspects of America’s obsession with youth culture, age discrimination and the can of worms that plastic surgery can open for us. So now that we’re starting to screen publicly it’s gratifying to see that happen. It’s why we all stick in there and make films.

Why did you want to screen your film at SILVERDOCS?
Many of my favorite documentaries of recent years have shown at Silverdocs, so I’ve always wanted to be a part of it. I know I will be able to catch great ones this year, documentaries that I’ve heard so much about over the course of this year’s festival circuit. But the thing I most value Silverdocs for is its great breadth of documentaries it gives attention to, ranging from political issues, smaller human stories, global issues to pop culture topics. It’s a real rarity today to have that kind of a spectrum, so thank God for doc-only festivals!