J-School Alum Alexis Bloom’s HBO Documentary Screens at Cannes

By Alex Kekauoha

In the new film, ‰”Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds,” the divergent worlds of documentary and Hollywood fiction collide for a rare look inside the life of a legendary show business family. Co-directed and produced by alum Alexis Bloom (’01), ‰”Bright Lights” recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and will air on HBO in early 2017.

Bloom’s film chronicles the lives of legendary Hollywood film and stage performer Debbie Reynolds and her daughter, actress Carrie Fisher, best known as Princess Leia in ‰”Star Wars.” Reynolds, who became a star during Hollywood’s studio era of the 1950s, still occasionally performs her nightclub act.

‰”Carrie reached out to us because she recognized the hilarity and poignancy of the situation,” says Bloom. ‰”Her mother, at 83, was still performing in Vegas. Taking no notice of anyone who suggested she should hang up her dancing shoes.”

But despite decades in front of cameras and audiences, Reynolds, who is now 84 and not currently doing interviews, found it difficult to relate to the nonfiction filmmaking process.

‰”Debbie isn’t from a “÷verite documentary era’,” says Bloom. ‰”She’s definitely more used to performing, preferably with a script. She wasn’t super keen on granting us access. She likes a bit of distance, and to be in the driver’s seat. But we respected that, and worked around it.”

In addition to creative divides, the year and a half-long production faced another major hurdle”Ódistance. Bloom and her co-director, Fisher Stevens, lived on opposite coasts from their subjects, who kept busy schedules, making access to them difficult. ‰”It wasn’t as if we could just nip next door and film for a day,” says Bloom.

But the filmmakers overcame the challenges, and ‰”Bright Eyes” has since received positive reviews. It recently screened at the Cannes Film Festival where it was nominated for the Golden Eye Award.

The project marks continued success for the South African native, whose producer credits include ‰”We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,” and ‰”Speaking with Light,” a documentary about tackling pollution with bioluminescent bacteria. Bloom also has many producer credits with the former international newsmagazine FRONTLINE/World, a program she first became involved with as a student at UC Berkeley, where it was based.

‰”It was a huge adventure, a steep learning curve, and a lot of fun,” she says of the series, which took her to Africa to produce several stories with fellow J-School alum, Cassandra Herman.

‰”That’s a wonderful thing about the J-School–you meet some really talented people there.”

Bloom focused on documentary filmmaking while attending the School. She was a production assistant on ‰”Drug Wars,” Prof. Lowell Bergman’s two-part documentary series for PBS FRONTLINE produced at the J-School. She took classes with instructors like Doug Hamilton, as well as with Jon Else, whose documentary class she says helped form the basis of how she sees film.

‰”He gave us a sense of real discipline, and taught us to ask questions, to be prepared, and not to waste our time and anybody else’s,” says Bloom. ‰”He taught us about poetry and pathos, and showed us a lot of fantastic films in class, from “÷Nanook of the North’ to “÷Crumb.'”

Bloom’s thesis film was about the arrival of television in the tiny country of Bhutan, a version of which was picked up by PBS.

‰”It was one of the best thesis projects we’ve ever produced at the J-School,” says Jon Else. Bloom co-produced the project with Bhutanese filmmaker Tshewang Dendup, a filmmaking team Else calls, ‰”a winning combination.”

‰”She had that grit skepticism,” says Jon Else. ‰”She was full of fire, completely unstoppable. She was one of the few students willing to push back in class.”

After graduating, she produced and reported for FRONTLINE/World, BBC World, and National Geographic. She got to travel internationally and says she took any job she could, even if it didn’t pay.

When it comes to filmmaking, Bloom suggests being as methodical and patient as one can be. ‰”Documentary filmmaking is a very creative profession, but it’s one that requires organization, because money is hard to come by. You have to be single-minded,” she says, and quotes Goethe: “Be bold, and mighty forces shall come to your aid.”

Bloom is currently executive-producing a four-part crime series for HBO.