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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. Today's show could be titled "Local Boy Makes Good." Jake Swantko was a journalism student at the University of Oregon who started out wanting to be a writer. But when he got the chance to hold a camera, his path moved toward film. Through some luck and skill, he became attached to a project that would ultimately win an Academy Award for Best Documentary Film. "Icarus." Today on the show, we talk with Swantko and learn about both his career and the process of making a documentary film that shined a massive spotlight on doping in sport. He has made a sequel to his film, and we talked about his recent screening for University of Oregon students at the Eugene Art House. Jake Swantko, a former University of Oregon journalism student who was part of a team that won an Oscar for the documentary "Icarus," has released a sequel to that heralded film. Jake, great to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.
Jake Swantko: Thanks so much for having me, Michael.
Dunne: When you were a student at the University of Oregon, did you want to become a documentary filmmaker? Was that something you aspired to?
Swantko: I went to school as a journalist, and I wanted to write. At the time, the school was undergoing a transition to include a lot of different media, seeing the curve in the road ahead, that a lot of these new platforms would be taking on multimedia. I was fortunate enough to have professors like Rebecca Force, Michael Warner and Mark Blaine put a camera in my hand and teach me how to tell stories with all forms of audio-visual technology. Around my senior year, I started making my own documentaries. I saw a really pivotal film called "Restrepo," by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, on National Geographic. That was a big moment. I looked at that film and said, I want to do things like that. That's kind of where my career took off. I had direction, and I started working in documentary before I left college.
Dunne: I always think that cinematographer is the type of profession many of us think we understand, but may not exactly. I want to hear it from you. Describe what the role of cinematographer is, especially with regard to documentary filmmaking.
Swantko: In documentary, there's a much more proactive approach in forming the story you're telling, because a lot of times you may not be working with a director, or you may be the only person let into a room, so you end up directing a lot of the scene yourself. Essentially, a cinematographer navigates the entire business of making the pictures of the movie, which is a huge part of the movie. With that comes an entire team that falls under the purview of the cinematographer, or director of photography, to help with lighting, camera motion and the technical sides of the camera. In documentary, it becomes much more dynamic because of cinema verite. Cinema verite is really a fancy phrase for shooting off your shoulder and running around like a madman. In those moments, there's a lot of free will to find what's interesting in the frame and the live action unfolding in front of you. You become a cinema verite cinematographer, following action as it goes, picking the things you find interesting, focusing on little idiosyncrasies of people. That's the craft of cinema verite. Then directing photography for interviews is more like what I mentioned before, working with a large crew to create the image you need. A cinematographer takes on a whole bunch of different hats. In documentary, you could wear all of them. You could be the sound person, the camera person, the director. In many instances in "Icarus 2," I played all three roles because I was the sole person in the room with Grigory Rodchenkov.
Dunne: Let's talk about "Icarus," for which you won the Academy Award as part of this team. For people who don't know, it was a very important film that exposed what the Russian government was allowing with regard to doping and performance-enhancing drugs in athletic competition. How did you get involved with it?
Swantko: I worked in Los Angeles on a couple of productions right out of college. I was fortunate enough to work with HBO Documentary Films, and I got to meet some contacts and producers there. Then I went to New York and started a career working for myself. I took a trip to Ukraine during the invasion of Crimea, and I shot for myself, by myself. I maxed out my credit cards, went out there and took a big shot. It ended up working out. I ended up working for PBS Frontline while I was there, and that was a big moment in my career. People saw that I was doing things, that I was taking risks. When people see that, they recognize it. Somebody called me. One of the producers I had worked for in L.A. said, "Hey, there's this guy who wants to make a movie about doping in sports. He's going to move to Boulder, Colo., in a week, be there for three months and start making this movie. Do you want to go shoot it?" At the time, I was 25, 26. I said sure, let's talk to him, let's see what this is about. Long story short, I ended up on a flight to Denver. This guy picked me up with all of his possessions in the back of his car and said, "Let's go start making this movie." That's how it started. One connection led to the next, and led to the opportunity, unbeknownst to me at the time, that would be the opportunity.
Dunne: Talk about some of those challenges. Many in the sporting world didn't want this story to be told. What did you have to do to be able to tell that story to the world?
Swantko: The story of doping in sports is a very inconvenient truth for a lot of different organizations and spectators, ourselves included. There is an expectation that when we watch the Olympics, we will see superhuman feats, world records broken, heroes made. Those heroes become what they are from fractions of a second. It's an immense amount of pressure. Imagine winning a bronze medal and then living in the back of your car, homeless, for years as you struggle as an Olympic athlete, versus those fractions of a second going the other way and you becoming a gold medal winner. To answer your question, you have to look at how much pressure is placed on athletes to gain those fractions of a second. Doping in sports is kind of in a whack-a-mole position where essentially one particular athlete is selected and martyred. A Barry Bonds, a Mark McGwire, a Lance Armstrong. That person gets splayed in the media. A huge scandal is exposed, and it's regarded as anti-doping working. The fact is, Lance Armstrong was tested thousands of times and never had a single positive drug test. What ultimately got him was an inside member of his team coming forward and telling the whole story. We really wanted to understand how this system was broken. There's an unfathomable amount of money and power, and as you see with Russia and other countries, a sense of nationalism tied to the Olympics and the sports they host. There's a lot more riding on it than surface value. We tried to unravel that and understand why this keeps happening, and how, if we're really serious about clean sport, it keeps happening anyway.
Dunne: You made this film, it was rewarded handsomely, and you won an Oscar for it. I'm also curious how it changed the way a lot of people look at sports. It was part of a trend of uncovering how much was going on. As a documentary filmmaker, winning an Oscar has to be amazing. But was it also gratifying because it opened a lot of people's eyes?
Swantko: It's rare to make a film, or any piece of artwork or media, where people engage with it in such a way that it potentially has the discourse behind it to change something. That's ultimately the goal of any documentary surrounding a scandal. The fact that it created such immense pressure on the International Olympic Committee and other anti-doping bodies was really profound. But ultimately, all we sought to do was tell a personal story about two guys who met each other. If you look at it from one perspective, both were kind of in the middle of a midlife crisis. One guy is going to try to dope himself and make this documentary. The other guy he meets across the world is at the top of the anti-doping apparatus in Russia, and he wants out. He's tired of doping all these people, tired of living this lie. These two people meet each other and start this journey. That's what makes all these really inconvenient truths much more approachable. This hero's journey, this buddy story, did unfold. I don't know that those inconvenient truths would have found the legs they did unless they were wrapped in a really good story, which this is. It's an almost unreal, hard-to-believe story. And when you're making a documentary, that is the absolute pinnacle of the craft: making something so strange it can't be true.
Dunne: Did you always know you were going to extend this story and make a sequel?
Swantko: As soon as we finished it, we knew there was a story that hadn't been told. The journey of someone who discloses a massive truth, with exponentially consequential effects, and then has to go into hiding for fear of their life, is not often told. People usually don't get the privilege of being part of that journey because it has to be so secretive. We saw an opportunity during a period when Grigory wanted to not be completely secluded. He wanted security, but also wanted his voice to remain relevant in helping anti-doping authorities correct and right the wrongs of the past. We saw a moment where this man was undergoing an intense transformation, really going from Grigory Rodchenkov to a non-person. He came to the United States without an ID, without any form of identification, without an insurance card, without the ability to get medicine he needed. Basically an alien in this country, trying to start over and find his way. Following that journey was of tremendous interest to us. We had also developed a personal relationship with the doctor, and we wanted to continue telling the story because it truly was fascinating. And to note why we finally made it: at every screening we went to, no matter how complex the questions about anti-doping and so forth, there was always one question. What happened to Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov? That question came up at every single screening of the film. So we sought to answer it.
Dunne: You did a screening locally at the Eugene Art House earlier this month. Talk about how that went, and what were some of the questions and comments you got from people here locally about this international film.
Swantko: It was really great. We were able to have the School of Journalism involved, and it was a completely packed house. The Art House theater is really a great place to see a show. The movie had a very limited release. We premiered it at Telluride several years ago, and we've sought to continue telling the story and add scenes. We're revamping it for release this year. The screening was really magical. Some of my old professors were in the audience, as well as students and faculty, and there were constant, insightful questions. It was really, really amazing. It was a lot of fun, and we had an important discourse on journalism and storytelling. It was special. Very special.
Dunne: Jake, my last question for you. Taking off from that: obviously the disciplines you studied, journalism, documentary filmmaking, and some of the subjects you've covered, a lot of that is, for lack of a better phrase, under attack these days. The truth, in some ways, is under attack. As somebody who tells powerful stories, sometimes on uncomfortable subjects, what do you think is the role of the documentarian, the journalist, going forward, when many of them are often derided from the highest office in the land?
Swantko: Every time I'm at the School of Journalism, I look at a quote on the wall from Orwell. We're all waiting for Orwell to cease to be relevant, but he seems to be only gaining in relevance in our society at the moment. The quote is: "It is certain that literature is doomed if liberty of thought perishes." I think a lot about George Orwell, and I think a lot about the truth and what we prize in our society. It feels a lot like we're edging toward a more authoritarian style of government in this country, and also toward a willingness, even a complicity, to not speak up. We need young people now more than ever. This is why I go and speak. This is why I go talk to inspire. I can't imagine trying to become a journalist in this age. So I go to the school to help lift people up as much as I can, to share my own truth and what my career has been like, and to inspire the next generation to go out and seek their own truth.
Dunne: Good enough. Jake Swantko is a documentarian who won an Academy Award for "Icarus." "Icarus 2" is being screened and will be released later this year. Jake, I really appreciate your time. Thanks so much for talking to us.
Swantko: Pleasure to talk with you as well.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Monday on the show, you'll hear about efforts and plans to replace CAHOOTS in Eugene. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
