Thirty Minutes With Noam
Noam Chomsky during his 2016 interview for One Night in January: Counting the Cost of Homelessness. / photo © Stephen Newton
In October 2016, I drove 900 miles north from my home in Tennessee to Cambridge, Massachusetts for a thirty-minute interview with Dr. Noam Chomsky for my 2020 film One Night in January: Counting the Cost of Homelessness.
After watching his 2015 documentary film, Requiem for The American Dream, I felt I had to include Chomsky’s insights about the causes and consequences of homelessness in the richest country in the world. Thanks to the internet I was able to send him an email early in the summer requesting an interview. I never thought I would hear back from him, but to my surprise, he replied. He could give me thirty minutes after he returned from vacation in the fall.
I arrived in Cambridge the night before my appointment, ate Indian takeout in my hotel room, and the next day I showed up an hour before my one o’clock appointment. Chomsky’s book and plant cluttered office was on the eighth floor of MIT’s Ray and Maria Stata Center, a 430,000-square-foot academic complex designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry. At 1:30 I was ushered into his office and told that I had thirty minutes and not a second more.
“Remind me why you’re here?” Chomsky asked me as I placed the lavalier mic on his sweater.
I told him why, and handed him a copy of his book, Who Rules The World?, which I had brought with me for him to sign. “I’m glad you found it helpful,” Chomsky said as he signed it.
I liked Noam Chomsky immediately. He radiated calm, and so I relaxed, but I was still groggy after my marathon drive. I kept checking my camera settings and sound levels. There would be no chance for a second go. What I came away with was going to be it, so I started recording. Instead of using the list of questions I had prepared, I asked Chomsky the same one I asked myself when I started working on One Night: “Why are there millions of Americans experiencing homelessness and extreme poverty in the richest country in the world?”
Chomsky coughed to clear his throat. His voice was hoarse. The office admin brought him a cup of tea. I offered him a throat lozenge, which he accepted. I’ve since asked friends who have seem the film if they noticed Chomsky’s brief pauses as he passed the lozenge from one cheek to the other as he delivered a concise half-hour lecture explaining the main reasons millions of Americans are living in poverty or are homeless.
Before I knew it, I was told my time was up. I shook hands with Chomsky and told him what an honor it was to meet him, and left. It was a perfect interview. What a brilliant, humble man, I thought. There was nothing arrogant about one of the most well-known intellectuals of our age.
Ten minutes later, I was back on the road for my two-day journey home. An anti-climatic ending for sure, but I’d do it again. The trip was worth it. Chomsky’s insightful interview is one of my film’s highlights.
—Stephen Newton