Nancy Schwartzman on her Documentary “Roll Red Roll”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: “Roll Red Roll” is a very dramatic retelling of this story that many of us remember and were so shocked about at the time. An unconscious drunk young girl was taken advantage of, basically gang raped. Just tell me what particular angle you a keen to explore for a documentary this many years later on a story that’s pretty well known.

NANCY SCHWARTZMAN, DIRECTOR, “ROLL RED ROLL”: Yes. What I was drawn to in the story of Steubenville was really the ability to look carefully and closely at the behavior of the perpetrators and the witnesses and the bystanders. So, often in stories about sexual assaults, the story centers or hinges on the victim and all of the burden falls on her shoulders to retell her story, to go out in public and actually aware. I think we need to be looking is at the behavior and at those who choose to commit the act. So, what was so interesting about the Steubenville story was I was able to look at multiple players in this crime scenario and look at social media evidence and eventually, text messages and all other kinds of evidence, but really look at group behavior and the behavior of the young man.

AMANPOUR: So, just to be clear, the victim was 16 years old at the time, she could not be named. So, she is Jane Doe forever. She has not been interviewed. We don’t know and we will not say her name publicly. But she was in no condition to give consent, and you could see that even by some of the pictures that the boys themselves posted where they were carrying her lifeless looking body from place to place. I mean, it’s pretty self-indicting. And we played it in the introduction to you a sound that is so utterly really self-indicting that one wonders why there was any doubt as to their involvement and their guilt even early on.

SCHWARTZMAN: Yes. I think, you know, what’s interesting with also teenagers and social media is really sort of teasing out what is criminal evidence and what is social media bragging. So, I think that two, sort of, parallel things to look at in this film are the kind of thriller elements of a crime unfolding, where you’re following evidence and then also just evidence of the behavior, right. So, if you’re laughing about it and bragging about it but you’re not actually there, whether or not that’s criminal, it’s more like why is that culturally acceptable in this community and why is rape kind of a hobby or a sport? I mean, that’s almost how it was being treated.

AMANPOUR: And is that what you mean by rape culture? Because that comes up a lot, you talk about this entity called rape culture.

SCHWARTZMAN: Absolutely. I think rape culture before Steubenville was kind of an idea that a small group of people were throwing around, trying

to say this is important.