4 Little Girls - Production

Production

Lee first became interested in making a film about the Birmingham bombing as a student at New York University in 1983. After reading a New York Times Magazine article about the incident, he was moved to write to Chris McNair, the father of Denise, one of the victims, asking for permission to tell her story on film. McNair turned down the young, aspiring filmmaker's offer. "I was entering my first semester at N.Y.U. So my skills as a filmmaker were nonexistent, and at that time, Chris McNair was still hesitant to talk about it," Lee said in a 1997 interview with Industry Central's The Director's Chair. "I believe timing is everything. So it took ten years of Chris thinking about this and ten years of myself making movies for this to come together."

According to McNair, he changed his mind about supporting Lee's film idea due to learning about the depth and precision of Lee's research. McNair said, "t's very important that this be done accurately and correctly. In all his research he showed that he was objective and seeking a broad section of opinion. I'm a stickler for the facts."

Lee had first intended to create a dramatic reproduction of the incident, but decided that would not be the best approach. He shifted to a documentary. Once he secured funding, Lee went to Birmingham with a small skeleton film crew. He wanted to have the families be as comfortable as possible. Ellen Kuras was the Director of Photography and Sam Pollard the producer/editor. (Lee developed a relationship with Ellen Kuras on an HBO project called Subway Stories, an anthology of short films compiled by Jonathan Demme. Lee's film never made the final cut due in part to conflict between Lee and Demme, however, the working partnership between Lee and Kuras was born.)

Kuras said of her desire to shoot 4 Little Girls, "I was really interested because my background is in political documentaries ... I always felt that one of the reasons that I had got into filmmaking was that I wanted to use my craft to be able to say something about the human condition, however I could, in my own humble way. For me this was an opportunity to make a small contribution."

Lee's partnership with Sam Pollard began on Mo' Better Blues. Pollard was recommended to Spike as a replacement for his longtime collaborator Barry Brown, who was directing his own film. Busy working on his segments of Eyes on the Prize, Pollard originally refused Lee's overture, but then agreed to work with him. He has since become one of Lee's most prolific collaborators. Their first few films working together were fiction, but Pollard's background was in documentary.

He was key to guiding the structure of 4 Little Girls.

"Basically it was to help with the conception of the structure, to edit it ... We spent a lot of time screening dailies together. We could come to 40 Acres at 7a.m., and we would spend three hours a day screening dailies for two weeks straight ... We talked, selected all the material that we liked, and I started working on the structure in the editing room. Spike was asking if he needed narration and what the structure should be. I basically said the structure should be that there are parallels-the family, the history of the community—and then they come together on the explosion."