Kartemquin Korner is a regular series spotlighting the efforts of Kartemquin Films, the best documentary producing collective this side of the spiral arm of the galaxy. Much of this particular piece is excerpted from the large Kartemquin section in Hollywood On Lake Michigan, 2nd Edition.
At The Death House Door (2008)
Click on this picture to order At The Death House Door.
Although they are most known for the legendary film, Hoop Dreams (1994), which they directed and produced together with Frederick Marx, Steve James and Peter Gilbert also share co-producer and co-director duties on this brilliant collaboration. In addition, Gilbert handles director of photography duties and James is co-editor (with Aaron Wickenden). Wickenden and Zak Piper are co-producers and the executive producers are Gordon Quinn, Christine Lubrano, Debbie DeMontreux, Evan Shapiro, and Allison Bourke.
Gilbert (left) and James pose with their camera in the cemetery where many of the convicted men were buried. The sequence where Pickett walks through this graveyard pointing out those whom he ministered to is one of the film’s more powerful moments.
At The Death House Door tells the story of Carroll Pickett, a prison chaplain in Huntsville, Texas, who presided over ninety-five executions during a fifteen-year period. Having no one he could share his emotional burden with, Pickett made cassette-tape recordings of his thoughts and impressions of each individual execution, describing the entire day (which Pickett would spend with each condemned man from 6 am until they were killed at midnight) in vivid detail.
Carroll Pickett sits with some of the tapes he recorded during his time as minister to the condemned men. He had not listened to any of these tapes until the making of this film.
Several interconnected threads tie the film together: footage of Pickett recounting his life and experiences to the camera, shots of him listening to his tapes (none of which he had listened to since recording them), Pickett’s visit to the prison cemetery where all the condemned men were buried, interviews with his adult children, friends, and colleagues, and a birthday party for Pickett attended by his children. Also woven into the narrative are two Chicago Tribune reporters investigating a story about Carlos De Luna, an executed man who was almost undoubtedly innocent (a sentiment shared by Pickett at the time, which he reveals in a meeting with the two journalists), and the story of De Luna’s sister, who becomes inspired by the injustice foisted upon her brother to become an activist against the death penalty.
One of the series of Chicago Tribune stories filed by reporters Steve Mills and Maurice Possley which provided much evidence to exonerate De Luna, unfortunately too late to save him.
All of these elements are artfully combined into what is one of the most powerful documentary films (or any other category of film or narrative form) ever made. And despite the fact that one can’t watch this film without becoming convinced that there is something seriously wrong with America’s prison system in general and the death penalty in particular, all political issues are superseded by the story of Carroll Pickett, a man who willingly endured unspeakable emotional agony and torment because of his ministerial calling and strong religious faith. A man who is undoubtedly a “Christian” in the purest sense.
Whatever your political, social, or religious beliefs may be; if you are not deeply moved by this film you really ought to seek help from a trained psychiatric professional.