SLIFF 2019 Interview: Brian Rose – Director of WHEN I LAST SAW JESSE

By Tom Stockman | November 14, 2019

WHEN I LAST SAW JESSE screens Saturday, Nov 16 at 1:00pm at The Missouri History Museum (5700 Lindell Blvd) as part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival. Director Brian Rose will be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. This is a FREE event.

In November 2006, student Jesse Ross traveled to Chicago to participate in an academic conference. While attending a meeting, he rose from his chair and walked out of the room. He has not been seen or heard from since. The haunting “When I Last Saw Jesse” — directed by SIU-Carbondale graduate and Kansas City resident Brian Rose — tells the story of what happened in Chicago that night, exploring the impact of Jesse’s sudden and mysterious absence on his family and friends. Using audio interviews with friends, family, and students on the trip and evocative black-and-white 16mm footage of the places Jesse visited and lived in, the film draws viewers inexorably into the mystery. With its voice-over interviews and narration and its scenes of locales almost entirely devoid of any human figures, “When I Last Saw Jesse” becomes ever more disquieting as it unfolds. Jesse himself proves an elusive figure, almost a cipher, even before he disappears. The opaqueness of his portrayal only adds to the film’s overall feeling of dread, and the narrow focus on the events of that weekend in Chicago creates an appropriately overwhelming sense of claustrophobia.

Director Brian Rose took the time to speak with We Are Movie Geeks about WHEN I LAST SAW JESSE and about the mysterious disappearance of Jesse Ross

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman November 5th, 2019

Tom Stockman: I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about your new film WHEN I LAST SAW JESSE. Have you ever been to the St. Louis Film Festival before?

Brian Rose: No I have not. This will be my first time. 

TS: How did you become interested in this a true story about the disappearance of Jesse Ross? 

BR: I had followed it from the news from the beginning. I had gone to school in Illinois and I had been to Chicago on a trip to visit some friends just a few days before the events with Jesse took place, so I was struck by the timing. When the news broke, I followed it is a casual observer. When I came back to the Kansas City area, I came to discover that a professional colleague had been friends with Jesse. We talked a bit about the case, he put me in touch with the family, and things went from there. 

TS: It’s an unusual documentary. It’s like a talking heads documentary without the heads.  You shot your film in 16mm black and white. 

BR: Yes it was all shot on film.

TS: Was it hard to find a lab to process 16mm black and white film?

BR: There are still some labs open that do that, but yes, the number of them has dwindled. I used a lab called Cinelab  that has been around for years in Massachusetts. 

TS: The black-and-white grainy presentation gives WHEN I LAST SAW JESSE  a very unique and haunting quality.  Why did you make the decision to film it in this format? 

BR: There were a number of reasons but the main reason was one of practicality . When I started working on the film in earnest in 2013 and 2014, there was a fair amount of change still going on in camera technology.  There was a lot of shooting still done in 1080, but there was a lot of talk about shooting in the 4K format,  which is now largely standard in production.  I looked at all the options and was concerned about choosing a format  that was still going to be current when the film was completed.  I started looking at costs of various camera technologies and crunching the numbers.  I have the film gear in hand from past work  I realized if I stuck to my plan and was judicious about my shooting,  I could actually shoot on film and it gave me the freedom I wanted.  When the time came, I could choose what resolution to scan the film and had it scanned t 4k resolution.  There were other factors as well.  There was certainly an artistic component to my choice   I find with documentaries, they all tend to look the same, partially because  a lot of people use that same cameras, the same software programs, same color schemes.  I have a background as a photographer and like to have control of the image and used various lab processes to get a different look out of the film. Sadly, Jesse’s story is not a unique one, and I decided to use a visual style that would be indelible. 

TS: When you interviewed subjects such as Jessie‘s father and his friend Ralph Parker, did you just record audio or did you film them as well? 

BR: I just recorded audio. There is a technique in documentary that’s not done so often anymore but used to be more standard, called pre-interviewing where you go in and interview people to kind of get a sense of how they will sound and what information they have. You can start to shape the story from that, then go back and interview them and ask the specific questions  you want them to answer. That way you only end up shooting maybe an hour or so  of interview material instead of four or five.  I started off with that in mind.  As things progressed, I started wondering whether or not I really needed to see these people on camera. There were some people that I interviewed that, for some reason, could not be on camera.

TS: I wanted to ask you about that.  You filter a couple of voices to disguise their voice and claim they wanted their identification protected.  Protected from whom exactly? 

BR: More often than not, a lot of the people involved in this group activity, the model UN, are very intelligent and driven students.  The Model UN attracts chronic overachievers.  Of the dozen or so people that were on this trip, several of them are medical doctors, and several are attorneys.  A lot of them have prestigious careers.  I decided early on not to judge the reason a person might want to remain anonymous for a project like this.  It was a traumatic experience for all involved and I decided to respect their wishes.  A lot of people chose not to speak with me at all.

TS: Yes, that was my next question. So there were people that you reached out to the did not want to get involved? 

BR: Yes, there were a number of people who simply didn’t respond or they declined to participate in the interviews for reasons that I chose to respect.  I also feel that some of them figure that they have already cooperated with the police, made their statements, and have the right to move on  with their lives. 

TS: Would you have had liked to have had more interviews with the detectives that worked on the case?  There’s very little of that. 

BR: I would very much have liked to have had some of the Chicago police speak with me on the record.  I did speak with one detective who agreed to go on the record  because he is retired now. He also felt a sense of responsibility and a duty to the family.  No one who is currently working on the case would speak to me which was a disappointment.  The Chicago Police Department obviously have a lot to deal with.  It’s one of the frustrations I have with documentary filmmakers.  So many documentarians, the Michael Moore-types, go into an interview with a kind of adversarial mindset,  trying to inject conflict and criticism. It makes a lot of people inherently suspicious of the motives of documentarians.  I think that’s why the Chicago PD was a bit suspicious of my motives. 

TS: I agree that so many documentaries are agenda-driven and that you’re often wondering if you’re getting the full story. I am often drawn to these true crime docs because there seems to be a bit less of that.  Have there been any developments in the Jesse Ross case since you made your film? 

BR: Of course I keep in touch with the Ross family  but there hasn’t been anything promising. Periodically they may had a situation where  some human remains are discovered, washed up along the riverbank,  or in a tributary somewhere, so that will reignite some speculation that maybe it is Jesse.  Thus far however, there has been no identification of his remains, so the case has largely been the same as since I started working on this project. 

TS: It’s a strange case, especially the fact that there is no body. Has the Ross family seen your film? 

BR: Yes, and to their great credit, since this is at a film they likely don’t enjoy watching, they have attended several screenings. In some cases they have traveled significant distances to do so.  I’m very fortunate that they have helped support this. 

TS: Have they been involved in the post-screening Q&A‘s? 

BR: Yes, but they will not be at the St. Louis screening at SLIFF. 

TS: What was your filmmaking a background before you made WHEN I LAST SAW JESSE ? 

BR: I initially studied history, but I’ve always nursed an interest in film  and decided to pursue it further as a grad student after which I  started my job at a production company here in Kansas City, where I have worked ever since. I do work for them as a researcher and writer and editor.  I’ve done a lot of work for them on PBS documentaries and Museum films, and also some labor union advocacy. These are projects for really good causes.  WHEN I LAST SAW JESSE is one of my independent productions that I do in my spare time.  I like to say that I work as a filmmaker during the day and then I work as a filmmaker when I go home at night. 

TS: When you show this film at film festivals, what is the most common question and that you get during the Q&A‘s? 

BR: Certainly asking about how I got involved in the case and also about the stylistic choices I have made,  such is my decision to not have the interviews on camera. It definitely stands out as a very different kind of documentary  in that regard. 

TS: Are you often ask what you honestly think happened to Jesse? 

BR: People do ask me that and  I always have to be a little careful  going on the record.   It’s hard because I think there were some mistakes made in this case . Investigators arrived at conclusions a little too rapidly and the exclusion of eliminating other thoroughly possible  explanations.  My goal with this film was not so much to throw speculation at the audience, which is what I think a lot of true crime documentaries do, just to gin up the water-cooler talk.   Rather I wanted to clear up some of the misconceptions surrounding the case and tell a story fairly straightforward  that would allow viewers to arrive at their own opinion based on the available evidence. 

TS: What are your plans for a future distribution of this documentary? 

BR: I’ve been writing to a lot of distributors and sending out inquiries.  I’ve written to a lot of agents and critics to try to help promote the film.  Ultimately if something like that  does not pan out, I intend to distribute the film myself online through various streaming platforms like iTunes and Google Play and Amazon and put it out there  sooner rather than later. 

TS: Best of luck with WHEN I LAST SAW JESSE and we will see you at the film fest here in St. Louis.

BR: Thanks you. I look forward to it.