The holiday season is known as the time for giving. For her third film, Director Robin Baker Leacock examines the motivation people have to give and be charitable, both rich and poor. A Passion for Giving airs on PBS this month.

Robin Leacock

Adam Ullian: How did this film come about?

Robin Leacock: I had made a film a few years ago called It Girls. It actually came out after 9/11, but it was one of the early films about all the cool girls in New York. It focused on Nikki Hilton, Casey Johnson, Elizabeth Kieselstein-Cord and many others. It was shot during Fashion Week in New York and it was on WeTV.  I decided I wanted to do a film that had a different kind of meaning to it. I, of course, thought that film was very meaningful, but I wanted to do something that spoke to people, and I wanted to raise the conversation of giving and philanthropy and helping others.

AU: How long did it take to make?

RL:  Oh my god — I thought it was going to take six months; it took three years.

AU: What was the most difficult part about it?

RL: Definitely the editing. The editing was like climbing Mount Everest. It was such a lot of work, and I love the other part of film-making — going around and filming people, and I especially love interviewing.  However, in the technical part, one little thing goes wrong and it can throw everything else off, and then you’re back at the beginning again. We just had a lot of obstacles. It was crazy.

AU: In the film, you talked to some celebrities and major philanthropists. Were their other major names that you wanted to get involved?

RL:  Yes, at the beginning, we aimed for the most well-known, biggest philanthropists we could think of, from Bill Gates and on from there. But to speak with these people, there are a million assistants that you have to speak to first. It seemed to me, after a while, that it was easier to talk to people I actually had access to or knew. Then it started to occur to me in that process that it really didn’t have to be the biggest philanthropist — it was really more important to speak with people who were giving their time and energy and had a huge passion for giving. That was more important than how big they were, and actually, in the end, I’ve come to realize, after going through this whole process, it’s really a very simple gesture to give.  You don’t have to be a big philanthropist — it can be as much as being nice to people that cross your path during the day and helping people when you see that they need help, and being really open to what you can give to a situation — not what you can get out of it.  Not only did I find that it was the simplest gesture that was the most meaningful, but I also found that, in talking to everybody from Tibetan monks to the most famous well-known philanthropists, every single one of them said that giving made them feel good and that’s why they did it. The Tibetans believe that giving — or, as they call it, compassion — is a very selfish practice. The more you give and help others and animals and the planet, the better you feel. So in other words, it’s not a self-sacrificing action; you’re actually doing it to make yourself feel great because nothing else makes you feel as good as helping other people — not buying shoes or cars or anything else.  I think you find, when you speak with people, when you come across somebody who is very wealthy, they so often say that it’s empty. You’ll often find that those are the people who do spend a lot of time and energy helping others, because that’s a much more fulfilling feeling.

AU: There’s a man who opens and closes the film. His name is Mr. Smiley, how did you come upon him?

RL: He is amazing — he’s my favorite. I was taking a trip around the world with my mother, and we were in San Francisco. Everywhere I went, I had my camera with me, and he’s a street singer in San Francisco, but he’s a very famous street singer. He’s had his spot across from Saks Fifth Avenue in San Francisco, and everybody knows him. He’s just a famous figure in that city, and I’ve been trying to find him because I want to let him know that he’s in the movie, and I can’t find him. I’ve called everywhere and no one seems to know where he is. I would love to find him. I shot about 50 hours of footage, so who made it into the final 50 minutes of footage was a very small amount of what I shot, so I was just really taken with Mr. Smiley.

AU: The holiday season is known as the time for giving. How do we go about making that a year-round endeavor?

RL:  I think that’s a really, really great question. Can you imagine a whole world where everyone was helping each other all the time?  One thing I found, when I was traveling, is that some cultures really do that.  There is a lot of warmth, sometimes, in communities where there may not be a lot of wealth, and people are very happy to be kind to each other. I think we are often so focused on survival and getting ahead and competition that we forget, as Mr. Smiley said, it’s nice to be nice.

AU: Tell us a bit about your family’s filmmaking background…

RL:  Well, one interesting thing is I made the film It Girls, and this is my third film. I made another one that was in a lot of film festivals — a fiction film called I’ll Take Manhattan. My husband, Robert Leacock, was director of photography for Madonna’s Truth or Dare. He also made Looking for Richard with Al Pacino and The Catwalk with Christy Turlington and Kate Moss. What’s most interesting is that he’s second generation — his father was one of the great pioneers of documentary film and cinema verite, Richard Leacock.