Director Michael Barnett shares his inspiration for the documentary and why he walked away a changed man<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Lie Shia Ong<\/em> You may have heard or read about the superheroes movement\nacross the United States, where ordinary citizens put on their own made-up\ncostumes and take on the responsibility of fighting crime and making their\ncities a safer place to live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the new documentary, \u201cSuperheroes,\u201d which premieres\nMonday, Aug. 8, at 9 p.m. ET\/PT on HBO, director Michael Barnett shows the\nlives of these real-life caped crusaders from all over America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MSN TV spoke with Barnett about his inspiration for the\nproject, and what he thinks is the true definition of a \u201csuperhero.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n MSN TV: I heard\nthis it the first film you\u2019ve directed. How did the idea come about to do a\ndocumentary about superheroes?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Michael Barnett: \u2026 I basically stumbled across this\ncommunity online and had kind of just been gathering information, and when I\nwas ready to share it with my producer, he couldn\u2019t believe a) a film hadn\u2019t\nbeen made and b) that this community even existed to begin with. WE found Mr.\nXtreme, our first guy, and he agreed to let us interview him, and we cruised\ndown to San Diego, and we thought to ourselves, \u2018Hey, if nobody else even\nagrees to do this, we have a great story in him.\u2019 Ultimately, he became our main\nstory anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Were you a fan of\nsuperheroes and comic books growing up?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, deeply embedded in the mythology of the superhero\nworld growing up. I collected comic books. I was lucky to grow up during the\nkind-of golden age of \u201cDark Knight\u201d and \u201cWatchmen.\u201d To this day, I still have \u201cX-Men\u201d\ndelivered in the mail because I don\u2019t want to read them online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You filmed this documentary\nin several cities. How many superheroes did you speak with?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We spoke with probably well more than a hundred when we\ndid our first set of interviews. Then we kind of narrowed it down. \u2026 As we did researching\na bit, we found out quickly who the pillars of the community really were. We\nended up shooting about 40-something heroes. Then we kind of narrowed that down\u2014kind\nof streaming story lines with New York Initiative, Master Legend in Florida and\nMr. Xtreme in San Diego, so we kind of covered the whole country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you have a\nmemorable moment that sticks out most in your mind when shooting?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I have so many. I would say the most memorable was when\nwe\u2014every time we would get in touch with somebody to begin with, they were so\nhesitant to agree to be a part of the film because they were really nervous\nabout the media. They had been marginalized and exploited by their local media,\nso it took us a little bit. We would just spend the first day or so letting\nthem know our intentions. Then, ultimately, we met with Zimmer, with the New\nYork Initiative, and they\u2019re pretty aggressive, hardcore crime fighters. They do a thing where they dress Zimmer up proactively\nand put him out in the streets in hopes of rooting out homophobic criminality.\nThey were really hesitant to meet with us. We got them to finally agree, and we\nmet them in a coffee shop in Brooklyn \u2026 and we really wanted him to be part of\nthe film. He said, \u201cAll right, I\u2019m going to get the rest of my team,\u201d and then\nabout an hour passed and we realized he wasn\u2019t coming ack. We were like, \u201cWe flew\nall the way to New York for this guy, and I think he\u2019s bailing on us,\u201d and then\njust as we were about to leave, the table next to us comes up and says, \u201cWe\u2019re the\nrest of Zimmer\u2019s team. We\u2019re the New York Initiative. We\u2019ve been spying on you\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n [laughs]<\/p>\n\n\n\n . Apparently, everything we had said while we were waiting was of pure\nintentions so they agreed to do the film.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Did you ever find\nthat these real-life superheroes impeded the work of law enforcement? How did\npolice and people react to them?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s such a complex question. It\u2019s a rough one to\nanswer because it\u2019s really regional. IN the film, Mr. Xtreme by the end of the\nfilm really gets validated by the mayor\u2019s office of San Diego. But in New York,\nI would say the police tend to marginalize the superheroes movement. So, yeah,\nit\u2019s very complex. It changes city to city. I think some of the superheroes\nhave a much closer working relationship with the police and some don\u2019t. Some police\nthink these guys are underqualified and undertrained and maybe exasperate an\nalready precarious situation. It\u2019s complicated, to say the least.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You have said that\nshooting this movie made you walk away a changed person. Why is that?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, I think anybody who spends a year-and-a-half\nwandering around skid rows and seeing the blight that exists in this country,\nto not be moved by what these guys do \u2026 It\u2019s such a noble thing. Few of them\nhave the resources to do that they do, to help, but they find a way, and they\nfind light in very dark places. It ends up being very moving. It\u2019s eccentric,\nand funny, and it\u2019s sad at time how these guys sort of became a hero, but\nultimately what they do is so inspiring. I mean, every single person I met was\ndoing more than everybody I Knew in my everyday life to make this world a\nbetter place. So now that I\u2019ve finished up this movie, I have to figure out\nwhat I\u2019m going to do to make the world a better place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So what do you\nthink makes a real superhero?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s a definition for a real-life superhero, and it\u2019s\nsimply someone who develops an original superhero personality, develops their\nown costume and wears it and goes out in their community to do something, and\nthat could be fighting a crime, helping the homeless or organizing blood drives\nor toy drives, whatever is needed to make the community a better place. So, it\u2019s\nnot that difficult to be one. Make up a superhero persona, make a costume, and\ngo out and do good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What do you want\npeople to know about this film, and why they should watch it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I want people to watch the film and really just see that\nthey can do something, they can make a difference. There are people in the film\nwho need help and receive it and are moved by it. So, I want people to realize\nit doesn\u2019t matter how eccentric you are, you can do something, be it the smallest\nthing to do good, to inspire people to do good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Director Michael Barnett shares his inspiration for the documentary and why he walked away a changed man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-msn-entertainment","category-portfolio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=581"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":886,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581\/revisions\/886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
MSN TV<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n