Ive been thankful in quarantine that you can find Errol Morriss documentaries on streaming services, not only because I think about Donald Rumsfelds bonkers word salad weekly, but also because Stephen Hawking grappling with the concept of origins helped put things into perspective. A few days ago, Morris quietly uploaded his two-season Bravo series First Person (2000) to YouTube; from a brief perusal, it is a delight. Its also a product of Morriss favoured televisual invention, the terrifyingly-named Interrotron.

The series features anybody with a story, but mostly, studies fringe pathology and moral deviance: theres a crime scene cleaner, a woman who dates serial killers, a cryonics trailblazer who describes freezing his mums head. The series title and cutaways highlight Morriss carefully-orchestrated design to get subjects to make direct eye contact with the viewer an approach accomplished by a set of two cameras and two, two-way teleprompter mirrors, superimposing a live feed of both the director and interviewee over the lenses. (You can see a diagram by production designer Steve Hardie here.) Today, we might think of this as video conferencing, but its better; the camera on a laptop is still slightly above the image of the other persons face.

Prior to the Interrotron, Morris told FLM Magazine in a 2004 interview, he used to strain to put his head right next to the camera lens in order to simulate a real conversation.

We all know when someone makes eye contact with us. It is a moment of drama, he said. Perhaps its a serial killer telling us that hes about to kill us; or a loved one acknowledging a moment of affection. Regardless, its a moment with dramatic value. We know when people make eye contact with us, look away and then make eye contact again. Its an essential part of communication. And yet, it is lost in standard interviews on film. That is, until the Interrotron. He proudly added that Mikhail Gorbachev, Laura Bush, Iggy Pop, Al Sharpton, and Walter Cronkite had all confronted the Interrotron. He said that his wife had coined the name from interview and terror, since it removes the fear from the interview process.

The tactic clearly coaxes the subjects to flow, and they reward him, as Morriss subjects tend to, with offhand remarks beyond an interviewers wildest dreams.

I had a trial in which my client stabbed the guy in the back four times no, seven times. And my defence was he kept backing into the knife, a mafia defence lawyer chuckles. And the jury bought it.

Murder and crimes are a frequent topic, but its also laced with dark humour. Morris occasionally interjects through the screen to loudly crack a joke with, say, Unabomber Ted Kaczynskis former penpal.

He also has a singing dog, I see.

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Errol Morris Fans, Theres a Surprise for You on YouTube - Gizmodo Australia