Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 388: Hemingway and the Art of the Documentary with Lynn Novick

Transcript

BPS 388: Hemingway and the Art of the Documentary with Lynn Novick · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You are listening to the IFAH podcast Network.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: ifagpodcastnetwork dot com.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three eighty eight.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: It is the great arrogance of the present to forget
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the intelligence.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Of broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood when
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: we really should be working on that next draft. It's
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: script Coverage.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: on the kind of project you are and the goals
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: of the project you are, so we actually break it
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: down by three categories, micro budget, indie film, market, and
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: studio film. There's no reason to get coverage from a
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: reader that's used to reading temp pole movies when your
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: movie is going to be done for one hundred thousand
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: dollars and we wanted to focus on that At Bulletproof
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Script Coverage, our readers have worked with Marvel Studios, CIA, WME, NBC, HBO, Disney,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Scott Free, Warner Brothers, The Blacklist, and many many more.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: So if you need your screenplay or TV script covered
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: by professional readers, head on over to covermiscreenplay dot Com. Well, guys,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: today you're in for a treat. We have award winning
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: documentarian Lynn Novic, who is the co director, along with
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Ken Burns, of the new PBS limited series Hemingway Now.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Lynn has been directing and producing landmark documentary films about
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: American life and culture's history, politics, sports, art, architecture, literature,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: and so many more for over thirty years. She has
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: produced a eighty hours of acclaimed PBS programming and has
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: collaborated with Ken Burns on series like The Vietnam War, Baseball, Jazz,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Frank Lloyd Wright, The War, and Prohibition. These series have
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: garnered nineteen Emmy nomination and she's one of the most
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: respected documentary filmmakers and storytellers in America Today. I had
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: an absolute ball getting into the weeds of documentary filmmaking,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: and we discussed not only the amazing new series Hemingway,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: but also her other project, College Behind Bars, which was
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: her first solo directing project, and much much more so.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Lynn Novic.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: I'd like to welcome to the show, Lynn Novick. How
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: you doing Lynn great?
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: Thanks so much for having me.
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much for being on the show. I
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: am a big fan of your work. I've seen many
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: of your documentaries over the years. I've gifted many of
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: your documentaries, especially to my father who just devoured baseball.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: And other things like that and Jazz.
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: I know you were part of those projects with Ken
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah as well, so and I am dying to ask
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: you how the hell you do these things? So, before
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: we get started, how did you get it too the business?
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: How did you get into being a filmmaker?
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Sure, Well, first, before I get started, thank you
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: for having me. I'm a little bit self conscious because
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: I had some dental work and I'm missing a tooth,
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: and so anyway, I ask your forgiveness about that. But
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: it's a temporary situation.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: So there you are, and there it is.
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: And look in the world that we live in, a
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: missing tooth is very low on the priority list of
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: things that could happen to you.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, be about that.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: I have the ringer off. I don't know why it rang.
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: I'm going to just put it on airplane mode and
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: sure do it. Okay, So anyway.
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and in the grand scheme of things, the way
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: the world is working, a little bit of dental work
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: is I'll take that over the worst things.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: That can happen to you with the base world.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: So for sure, especially nowadays, My goodness, Yeah, it's a
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: minor nothing.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, how did you?
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, I was, I would say, if
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: I look back on my trajectory such as it is now,
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: it didn't It wasn't clear to me when I was
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: first starting out. I didn't know what I want to
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: When I got out of college, I was very kind
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: of lost. And I actually saw a number of documentaries
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: both on PBS and in the movie theater back in
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: those days, this is in the mid eighties that made
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: me think, Wow, you know, I don't really know what
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: I want to do with my life. I might go
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: to law school, or maybe I'm going to be a professor.
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: I really didn't know, and I just was so transfixed
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: by the power of storytelling true stories on a big
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: screen based on history and things that really happened. And
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: I love photography and I loved history, and I just
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: thought maybe I could do that, no idea how or
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: what it would involve. And you know, if a film
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: is well made, you really don't see the effort. It's
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: like the swan going along and you're just gliding on
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: the water, but you don't see the feet doing all
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: this below the surface. So I had no clue what
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: was involved in making a documentary or how challenging it
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: can be or how rewarding. But I just naively thought
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: i'd like to do that, and I actually applied to
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: film school and I got in, And this was in
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: the mid nineteen eighties. There weren't many programs where I
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: couldn't find any that taught documentary filmmaking. They were all narrative,
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: scripted based, and so I decided not to go to
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: film school because I didn't think I had the imagination, frankly,
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: to make up stories and to tell them on the
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: big screen. And I really wanted to tell true stories.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: So I decided to apprentice myself if I could, and
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: I really did go through kind of an apprenticeship starting
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: at the PBS station in New York City WNT for
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: six months, and then I worked for Bill Moyer's on
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: a series of programs that he was doing at the time,
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: and then I freelanced for a while, and I kind
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: of each job I had, I learned a little bit
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: more about the process and different pieces of it that
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: I could sort of master, so archival research, filming, interviews,
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: organizing MATTERI burial, writing a script, you know, different aspects
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: of what kind of goes into any particular film. And
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: luckily for me, I did hear that this filmmaker named
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: Ken Burns was working on a film about the Civil War,
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: and I thought, wow, that that's when I have a
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: dream job. And I managed to meet someone who knew
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: someone who knew someone who knw Ken and literally was
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: so lucky that somebody quit as he was finishing with film,
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: and he really needed someone to come in and help
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: finish up the sort of administrative licensing process for all
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: the pictures they used. So I just walked in the
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: door at the right time. I had enough experience to
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: do the job he needed done. And when we finished that,
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: I was looking for another job. I only had a
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: six month job when I first came and he said,
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: oh wait, don't leave. I'm going to do this series
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: on baseball and you should stay and produce it. Wow,
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: And that was for me jumping off the high diving board.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: I had never produced a series base know anything about baseball.
• 6:57
  Speaker 5: He said, like a thirty eight hour looking like he
• 7:02
  Speaker 5: and I were joking the other day, because the original
• 7:04
  Speaker 5: proposal he told me, was five hours, sure, not eighteen exactly.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: So when you work, when you worked with Bill bill Ware,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: did you work on a power of myth?
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: I did?
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, you were to do so you were
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: there with Joseph Campbell and worked all that not there, But.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: I wasn't there actually when I came onto the project.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: And this is a series of interviews with this incredible philosopher,
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: Joseph Campbell about the power of myth and different cultures
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: and how there we tell the same stories in different cultures,
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: whether the Aztecs or the Greeks or you know, the
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: Norse gods. He found these incredible patterns of kind of
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: the human journey. He had passed away before I came
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: on the project. He was quite elderly when Bill started
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: interviewing him. So they were organizing the material and my
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: job was to find the visuals. So pe mentioned the
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: Aztec ball game. I had to figure out what are
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: we going to show? Or Peene mentioned you know, Star Wars,
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: j Wayne and the you know, the whole grail. We
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: had to find stained glass that could show sort of.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: He covered such a wide range of topics, and I
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: was in those days sending snail mail letters to the
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: far flowing corners of the earth trying to get images
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: to show, right.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: And I'm assuming how did you get the licensing?
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: Well, I guess the licensing for Star Wars was pretty
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: easy because you could just start doc to George.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: That's what Bill did exactly, so the Star Wars right.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: So George Lucas was usually influenced by these works in
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: this writer and so that is how the project I
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: believe got started. That Bill Moyer's and George Lucas basically
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: agreed that Bill would do the interviews with Joseph Campbell
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: and they had them at Skywalker Ranch, and then George
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: Lucas let them use the footage I believe, for you know,
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: some nominal fee. So that that was the organizing principle,
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: and I have to say. When we were working on it,
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: I did not realize how popular it would be. I
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: thought to myself, what did I know, Who's going to
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: want to listen to some old guy talk about the
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: Aztec Fall game and Hercules and whatever. And it was huge.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: It was huge. So it was really it was wonderful
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: experience to see that people really responding to it.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: No, absolutely, And I actually saw years later, Bill did
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: an interview with George Lucas on the Power of Myth
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: on just George Lucas's version of that. I remember watching
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: as well. No, I was a huge fan of that.
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: I mean, I've seen that Power of Myth thing a
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: thousand times. It's just so awesome. And any filmmaker, any
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: filmmaker listening today should absolutely watch that because also the
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: narrative structure that he talks about is involved sometimes in
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: documentary documentary work as well. Just the because that's life,
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: that's what the myth is, It's life in all our lives.
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: Have the call to adventure, the refusal. I don't want
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: to go take that new job in New York. You know,
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: I live in Kansas. You know, I'm scared.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: But then I go and the adventures and the tricksters
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: and that's life.
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: So it is really really powerful. So I think why
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: it's so popular. We'll be right back after a word
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: from our sponsor and now back to the show.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: I agree, And I was just very naive and I
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: just didn't appreciate the power of what Joseph Campbell had
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: to say and how it touched that deep nerve and
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: people of trying to find meaning, trying to understand our
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: human condition in the moment we're in, and how it
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: resonates with what happened people in the past, you know,
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: had these same questions that we have. It it was
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: I should go back and watch it again because I
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: think it also does have some storytelling lessons for you know,
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: how to put the pieces together so that the story
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: unfolds in the way that people can watch it.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: So I've always been fascinating because when you can go
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: down this.
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: Road to make just just ridiculous and eighteen hours, I.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Mean, they're obscene, they're obscene. How long jazz? How long
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: was jazz? Jazz was like ten hours? Eight hours?
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: I think it was more like twenty because it was
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: ten parts.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, see that going on.
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: So how do you start a project like that, like,
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: how do you You're.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Not just covering like Hemingway?
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: Is it fairly large? We'll talk about your latest project
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: in the minute. How Many Way is a Man's Life?
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: I know you guys didn't work at Less you if
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: you did? By know, Ken did Mark Twain and you
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: have Frank lood Wright's poster in the background. So those
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: are specific peoples and lives and that's pretty extensive. But
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: when you tackle a concept like baseball or jazz, like
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: the scene amount of knowledge that you have to comb through, how.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Do you start a project like that?
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I find the beginnings of project probably the most
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: terrifying because you don't at least for me, I usually
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: don't know that much about it. So I have a
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: huge amount to learn and then to figure out, well,
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: how does this fit into something that could be on
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: television people would want to watch? And you know, I
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: have to say that one of the critical ways that
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: we go about doing this is in collaboration with other people.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: So our writer Jeff Ward, who Ken has worked with
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: for longer than I've worked with Ken. He wrote the
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: Civil warscript and several other scripts before that, and he
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: wrote Baseball and Jazz and all the others Ken and
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: I have made together, So he dives into the deep
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: end of the pool. Also, we order a lot of
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: books and we start to read them. We start to
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: take notes, we start to make outlines, and then we
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: also figure out who is the smart people who are
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: experts in whatever subject it happens to be. Who are
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: they and can they help us? So when the history
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: of jazz, it was when Marsalis, you know, we went
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: to see him early in the process and said will
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: you help us? And he said yes, and then he said,
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: here's the ten people you should talk to. Here are
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: the twenty books you should read. And that led to
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: other people. So we build kind of a team of
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: people who really keep us on the straight and arrow
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: in terms of what's important to include and what we
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: don't have to include, and you know, how to understand
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: the big picture that we're trying to tell. So in
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: the start is hard.
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: And I'm assuming though, as you're going through this process
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: that let's say you have a structured outline and then
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: all of a sudden, you read a new book or
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: you hear something new from a new interview, and you're.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Like, oh god, everything's got to be shift that we
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: got to insert this here. Now now everything's been all
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: and I'm assuming that's a constant. It doesn't happen once
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: in a project.
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: That happens constantly because you discover new things in your
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: archival or archaeology, archaeological dig there you're.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: Going, yes, And once the word goes out that we're
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: working on something, people are always sending us stuff, which
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: is so great. So the worst thing that can happen
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: is after the film.
• 13:18
  Speaker 6: Is done, and then happening has ours every project, yes,
• 13:23
  Speaker 6: of course, and it's just sort of just I wish
• 13:25
  Speaker 6: about that two years ago, but what can you do?
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: So you know, but we don't try to be the
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: last word. So new material is always coming out about
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: every subject, and someone else can take up the baton
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: and continue telling that story in some other way, and
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: you know, that's fine. With baseball, one of the challenges
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: was there, you know, there's so much and there's more
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: to now, but there wasn't a lot of serious academic
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: historical scholarship on the topic. Frankly, there were you know,
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: history of the Boston Red Sox, or a biography of
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: Babe Ruth, or you know something about baseball and the
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: Black Sox scandal. But there wasn't really a big shelf
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: of serious kind of ademic historical work. So we really
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: had to find historians who knew American history and happened
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: to be baseball fans, and they could help us kind
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: of get this in the context because we weren't just
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: doing a sports show. We really wanted it to be
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: about the story of America through the lens of baseball.
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: Right, And like I watched the National Parks one was oh,
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: because I'm a huge National Parks fan.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: And that's actually kind of.
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: On my dream project as well, because you guys got
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: to travel to every single magical park.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: I did work on that, but that's an invitation to
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: go to all those incredible places, all amazing.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Must have been a rough job, like Okay, we got
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: to go to Yellowstone again, we got we gotta go
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: to Yosemite again, you know. But those that's another thing
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: that you guys get to do.
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: And sometimes obviously depending on the on the on the topic,
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: but you get to meet some of the most interesting
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: human beings who've ever lived, you know, and and you're
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: talking to people who either know a lot about a
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: subject or are part of the subject, like you said,
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: and Jazz Woul Marcella's he's like a living legend. So
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: to talk to someone like that, I mean, that must
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: be amazing. As a documentary to be able to talk
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: to you're talking to history essentially.
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's one of the best parts of my job,
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: I would say, is the chance to meet and get
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: to know people, really spend time with them and hear
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: their stories, and you know, you inevitably understand the history
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: in a completely different way once you've talked to someone
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: who lived through it. So I mean, I will never forget.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: We were working on a film on the Second World War,
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: and some of the people we meet don't end up
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: in the film for whatever variety of reasons. So we
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: were trying to find some people who had been on
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: D Day and Omaha Beach, and I remember going to
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: visit the veteran and his daughter had contacted us. And
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: this happened a lot on that project, where family members
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: would say, should talk to my dad or my uncle.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: So we would go to their home and I remember
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: going into this man's kitchen and his daughter said, Dad, Dad,
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: you know Lynn is here. If they're making the documentary,
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: they want to hear about your time in the war,
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: and he's saying, okay, okay, And I said, so, you know,
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: after chit chat whatever, just talking about the weather. Then
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: I sort of got to my point, so I understand
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: you were on D Day and he said, yes, I
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: was in the engineer's betime, which means I had to
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: get out early to kind of take out the minds
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: and blow up things that shouldn't be there and incredibly
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: dangerous job. Okay, so he said, so I'm sort of
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: trying to understand what he's saying, and he said, I
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: got out of the boat, and for me, d D
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: always saying how do you get out of the boat.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, I would not be able to get out
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: of the boat, but everyone's getting out, so you get
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: out even though you're getting fired on. He said, I
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: got onto the beach, a shell came in and killed
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: my best friend, and then he started to cry, and
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: then he didn't talk anymore. So he and he I
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: had to leave. I mean, he couldn't actually speak well understandable, right,
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: And his daughter sort of said he never talks about this,
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: and she had hoped that he would be able to,
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: but he actually was so traumatized. Even sixty years later
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: he couldn't speak about it. And even though we didn't
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: put him in our film because he couldn't really participate
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: in that way, spending that morning with him helped me
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: appreciate in a very visceral way what we're asking people
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: to do by reliving these really difficult moments and how
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: hard that can be. Yeah, And the gratitude and humility
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: you have to have because you just you know, the
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: generosity of someone to even try to do that is
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: sort of inspiring.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: I mean it's one thing to talk about jazz and
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: talk about my good times playing baseball. Yeah, it's another
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: thing about like the Vietnam War. You did, the Great War,
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: World War two, and.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: All these other like dark dark times in American history.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: That's what I love.
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: What you can do is you really are historians of
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: the American experiment, you know you all? I mean, is
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: there any It's all American based pretty much, if I'm
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: not mistaken, right, is there anything world based?
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Well?
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: The Vietnam War is the first time in work at
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: Ken and I have done together where we really tried
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: to represent a story that was you know, as Americans
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: were interested in it. But the Vietnamese story was as
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: important to us, right, So we tried very hard and
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: I made a number of trips to Vietnam with Sarah
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: bott Sign, the producer, to get to know the Vietnamese
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: people who would live through the war and to hear
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: their stories and hear how they talk about it and
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: what it means to them, which is very different than
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: how we talk about it and what it means to us.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: So yeah, so that's that's the first time we really
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: ventured to another country, another culture to that degree, so
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: that the film hopefully really represented, you know, as best
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: we could do, not just an American story.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Right exactly. It wasn't a completely American point of view.
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: Is like the oppressor and the oppress kind of oh
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: the vibe or oh that's not the rapid word, but the.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: Well antagonist or whatever.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, attacks attack exactly.
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: So you've got the point of view because to us,
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: to them, we're the bad guys. To us, they were
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: the bad guys. Like I always tell people, were everybody
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: is the hero of their own story. Nobody goes to
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: sleep twiddling their mustache going aha, I'm evil.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: No, everyone thinks that they're.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: The good guy.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: They're all right, which.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: Is and you're right, and for Americans, the Vietnam War
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: was the first time I think they really had to
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: face as a culture, maybe we're not the good guys.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: Maybe we're not always the good guys, and that was
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: a reckoning that we still haven't really sorted out.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Oh no, because after World War Two, we're just like
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: you know, as we're g we're super or Superman. We're
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: you know, American pie and baseball, and we saved the
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: world and that, and we're still kind of on that
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: high and you know, that PR that PR run still running.
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: But I think from the Desert Storm and all these
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: other wars that we've gotten into, people.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: Like, you know, maybe.
• 20:00
  Speaker 7: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 20:06
  Speaker 7: And now back to the show.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Maybe we're not always the best guys. We try, we try,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: but like.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: Any human we try.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: But the thing is, like any human being, we have
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: different you know, we can't be perfect.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: Well, we're certainly not perfect. Yeah, I think if we're perfect,
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: it would be so boring. It's basically you're talking because
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: there would be nothing to tell. So I think it's
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: especially hard for Americans, though, to really examine our flaws
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: and our failures. I do think culturally, like you said,
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: we'd like to think of ourselves as the good guys
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: and that we're always on the right side of history
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: and that we, you know, stand for something that's good
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: and you know, inspiring and noble. And it's a lot more.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Complicated as a human being.
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: Is like you can't like there's so many players, like
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: as they said, Shrek, Like Shrek, you're like an onion,
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: multiple layers, multiple layers.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Now. The other thing I find fascinating about documentarian work
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: is and I've worked on documentaries in post editing them,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: but nothing like a ninety minute you know documentary, So
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: I have some very small experience doing that.
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: But the endurance that you need to have as a
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: filmmaker to sit like some of these projects not only
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: takes years. I mean some are like did you do
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: anything thick, like a decade or am I exaggerating?
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: Well, the National Parks I think they really did work
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: on for almost a decade, and that allowed them to
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: visit all those parks and film them in different seasons
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: and accumulate all that material. But in fairness, it's not
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: the only thing that they were working on, so it's
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: not your only project for ten years, but you know,
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: you might work on it a part of the time
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: and work on something else that's shorter term and then
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: come back to it depending on.
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: Well, yeah, yeah, because I'm assuming you guys don't just
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: sit down and just do like, Okay, we're just doing
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: jazz for the next two years. You've got four or five, six,
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: eight different little some like a heaving way over here
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: and a jazz over here in a Vietnam war over here,
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: Frank Lloyd right over here, and you're kind of like
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: dabbling in a bunch kind of keeps you all busy
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: and sane.
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I mean Ken does work on I think
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: he says he's working on eight or nine projects right now,
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: right and they're all at different stages of production, So
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: he can be an editing room with one project and
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: you know the film is being let's say they're shooting
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: interviews for another project and developing a script for another project,
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: so using different parts of his brain for different aspects
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: of that. For me, I like to work on maybe
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: no more than two or three projects at the time.
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: My brain can't handle it. So but that's enough. So
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: you know, today I'm working on what two projects, and
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: tomorrow but like eight or ten. I don't know how
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: Ken does it.
• 22:47
  Speaker 8: Honestly, it's amazing, it's exactly, but even two or threes,
• 22:50
  Speaker 8: like you know, because as narrative filmmakers, you generally are
• 22:54
  Speaker 8: working on one and that one could take two years,
• 22:58
  Speaker 8: or it might be writing.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Maybe something else.
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: But I've been on projects that's take two years, three years,
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: and that's all you do all the time.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: It becomes kind of crazy, but the endurance is remarkable.
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: Now I have to ask you, what do you think
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: the job of a documentarian is in your ingion?
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: Wow, you know, documentary. In the time I've been working
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: in this field, which is more than thirty years, it's
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: really evolved. And even the genre, such as it is,
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: is so capacious. There's so many different kinds of documentaries
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: and different approaches and different kind of philosophies. So you know,
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: it's almost hard to pin it down because different people
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: approach it with different expectations. So I'd like to think
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: that it's a way of putting on the screen and
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: doesn't have to be the big screen. It could be
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: a small scream, a true story not based on a
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: true story or inspired up by a true story, but
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: an actually true story, something that really happened with real people,
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: and that then you know that that's the number one
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: for me. Then is it going to be sort of
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: a story of something that's happening right now That would
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: be sort of a you know, present day story that
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: you're following action as it happens. Or is it something
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: that happened in the past, like what we have mostly
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: done exclusively, where you're excavating a long ago story and
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: trying to put the pieces together like you would a
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: jigsaw puzzle, you know, figuring out what happened. Hopefully it
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: has a beginning, middle, and end fact Aristotelian poetics of
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: just you know, a story that kind of makes sense,
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: and the way that we think of narrative, which means
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: you have to impose some kind of order and some
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: kind of you know, right, you have to pick out
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: the things that you think fit to get your beginning, middle,
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: and end. You can have some detours along the way,
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: but ultimately for me, it has to touch people. It
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: has to have a human dimension and mean something to
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: get people who watch it so that they are engaged
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: in care about the story, the people, the information that
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: is true, you know, and that you come away with
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: some new perspective or deeper understanding of some aspect of history,
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: the human condition, what it means to be alive. You
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: know those kind of things.
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: Because you know a human story and you know history
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: generally is not so neat as have a middle. It's
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: not constructed in the middle, a beginning, middle, and a
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: human life.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, yes, does have a beginning middle and and
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: but it could be very anti climatic, it could be
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: very wide open, it could be multiple different things.
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: So it's interesting how you you are able to put together.
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: You have to put a structure. There has to be
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: some sort of narrative story put into history, which is
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: so much more complicated, I feel than just writing what
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: I know. I've seen some of your other interviews that
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: you're like, oh, you just said it here. It's like,
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: I can't do a fresh come up with a story.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: I'm not that creative. What but I'm going to give
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: you more credit than you're giving yourself is to construct
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: a narrative out of history. Yes, sometimes it falls, but
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: sometimes you just got to really work it and understand
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: the structure of story. So wild even more so than
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: I think when you're creating.
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: It that maybe I've never tried the scripting adventure, so
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: that seemed like it would be harder and easier for me.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: You know. I came to understand this in a deeper
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: way when I was working on a documentary that I
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: made over the a number of years called College Behind Bars,
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: where we were filming not history, but life as it
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: was happening, and it was filmed over four years. As
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: we got to know people, Sarah Botstein, the producer, and
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: I got to know people who were in prison who
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: were enrolled in college, which is very unusual because most
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: people in prison don't have access to college of any kind,
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: and they were in this incredibly rigorous and impressive program
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: called the Barred Prisoner Initiative an upstate New York. So,
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: you know, we would come in and out of the
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: facility multiple times a year with our cameras, sometimes without
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: our cameras other times, get to know people or hopefully
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: earn their trust over time, and follow them around through classes,
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: into the yard and to their cells, you know, meet
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: their families and kind of understand and the beginning, middle
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: and end was basically, you're enrolling in the program and
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: hopefully four years from now they'll be graduation. So luckily
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: school does have a beginning, middle, and end, right, so
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: we knew we hope you'd begin with a you know,
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: an orientation and end with graduation. But along the way,
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: we had four hundred hours of material of all kinds
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: of things, you know, that we didn't know how they
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: would fit into our film or not, and you just
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: we kept filming, and a lot of the times we
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: wanted to call the company Seat of the Pants Productions
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: because we just had I felt we had no idea
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: what we were doing, but if we sort of showed
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: up enough, maybe it would all make sense later. And
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: working with our editor Fisher Reading and assistant editor Chase Horton,
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: eventually managed to kind of wrestle these four hundred hours
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: into four one hours where you really get to know
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: people and see how they evolve and are transformed by
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: the process of education, and over time get to know
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: why they're in prison and their families and so some
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: of them came out of prison while we were filming.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: But at the beginning we had no idea, and we
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: really did have to impose a structure on each scene
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: and each episode and on the whole thing. There wasn't
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: any structure.
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: Right, And that's the thing that I feel that with
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: with the historical documentaries that you you do, those they're
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: safer in a sense because you're you know, you're discovering archival.
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: Yes you'll have surprises, and yes you'll have things, but
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: it's not gonna hit you, not gonna blindside you. Whereas
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: if you're following real life, it's unfolding on front of
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: you are on the edge. You really have no idea,
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: and you might start the documentary and the story in
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: one way and then all of a sudden, it just
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: turns like that wonderful documentary Hoop Dreams back in the day.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Yes, oh my god, Like how did that?
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: Like?
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: You know, it just you're like, oh my god, like
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: so something like that.
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: You're really it's a completely different kind of documentary and
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: different kind of filmmaker to go down that.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: How did that feel? Jumping from from very safe, historical,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: very long, laborious, you know process too, I'm on the edge,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: like you're like, yeah, what's happening? How did that send?
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's kind of exhilarating and terrifying, you know,
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: exhilarating in a sense of its exciting because you don't
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: know what's going to happen, and you sort of are
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: open to whatever happens, we'll figure it out. But it's
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: also certainly scary to think, wow, what if I mean,
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: I had the feeling okay, we started this film, but
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: what if the Department of Corrections, which gave us incredible access,
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: or the students, the people in the film, decided they
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: didn't want to do it anymore. Right, that could have happened.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: Someone could have said, you know what, actually we're not
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: doing this anymore for whatever reason. That could have happened.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: Or and things did happen. People got in trouble and
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: were transferred to another facility and couldn't be in the
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: program anymore, or something happened in their personal life, or
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: you know, academic things, whatever. Just all kinds of things
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: happen that you can't predict in life.
• 30:00
  Speaker 7: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 30:06
  Speaker 7: and now back to the show.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: But when you're trying to make a film, it can
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: be very destabilizing. We just have to stay open to that.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: But you know, even with historical films, I mean, for
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: the Vietnam War, it may seem like it made all
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: sense when you see the final film. But at the
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: beginning the Possible we were not at all sure what
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: the hell we're doing. Yeah, because first of all, I've
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: never been to Vietnam. I don't speak Vietnamese. We have
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: to go I want to go over there and meet
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: people and figure out how to what questions to ask
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: them and who to talk to and how we're going
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: to do that. And we've never really thought about the
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: Vietnam War from the perspective of the Vietnamese. Get turns
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: out it's really complicated, so even just and we wanted
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: it to be from the ground up, ordinary people telling
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: their stories. But then we have to figure out, well,
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: we're not going to interview John McCain and John Carrie
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: and Henry Kissinger, We're going to talk to your regular
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: key people, which regular people. So it was you know,
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: word of mouth and sort of going out into the
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: world and trying to find people to fit certain criteria
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: that we had being in the anti war movement or
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: being on a college campus, or being you know, a
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: soldier who then turned against the war. We had like
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: different ideas of things, or someone who covered the war,
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: but we didn't really know what that would be. It
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: all makes if we do our job. Right at the end,
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: it looks like it all fits in and makes sense,
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: but it really doesn't at the beginning, and even at
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: the middle, we're not too sure.
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: No, with college behind bars, I wanted to I wanted
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: you to kind of express to the audience what it
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: felt like because I was I was. I had the
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: privilege of doing location Scotts for a film that I
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: was going to direct at every prison in Florida. So
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: I went to every prison that would allow us to
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: allow us to shoot there if we wanted to shoot
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: it front. I got access to it. And I had
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: never been in, you know, a prison. I you know,
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: I was a boy from Florida, Like I mean, I'm
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: a good boy.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: I've never been in prison.
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: So when you walk through those gates and you feel
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: the energy, you know, we were in empty areas. We
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: weren't with any anywhere there was inmates. So we did
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: see like some of them were very low low security
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: you know, low security areas.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: So that you see them walking and stuff.
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: But I never was in a place where there was
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: like you know, you know Odds as they said the
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: HBO show Odds or something like that. I wasn't in that,
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: but the feeling of that place, the energy, the almost
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: the ghosts, if you will, of that place. Did you
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: feel that and you were going into a place with live,
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: you know, people and interacting with people. Can you express
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: to people about how that feels and how you put
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: that onto the screen with college buying bars?
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you for asking. You know, I do. I
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: think it's important for all of us as citizens to
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: try to have some proximity to the problem of criminal
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: justice and amarcearation in our society, which is horrendous and appalling,
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: and it's it's not easy to get access if you
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: not don't have a family member that's caught up in this.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: You know, it's far away from most of us, and
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: it's behind walls, and so I had never had the
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: experience of gain inside of prison until I got invited
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: with Sarah to give a lecture basically in this college
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: program and that we went into that we went through
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: the you know, the double gate, and then the other
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: double gate, and then walking through the you know, long
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: hallway and kind of could see the yard over there,
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: and then down another hallway and then up a date.
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: You know, I remember every step of this way into
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: past an officer into a classroom. You know, it's it's
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: an oppressive, dehumanizing, really just degrading and oppressive environment, and
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: it's meant to be that way. Nothing there is by accident.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: It's all by design. It's very purposeful. And especially probably
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: you in Florida, but in New York State, the majority
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: of prisoners are black and brown, the majority of the
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: officers are white. The dynamics of how control is managed
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: and security is done is I found extremely disturbing. Just
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: I did feel, you know, it's just I found it
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: really really upsetting and disturbing to say the least. And
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: yet I also think it's easy for us, if we
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: have seen oz or locked Up or the other kind
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: of Hollywood versions of incarceration, to have a very skewed
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: perception of what is actually like. And one of the
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: most profound things that one of the students that we've
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: gotten to know really well said is that suicide is
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: a much bigger problem than homicide inside prisons. It's about
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: despair and loneliness and isolation and giving up hope and
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: a place where there is no hope, and people, you know,
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: decompensate in different ways in that environment. And so we
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: have this image of this violence and you know, awful
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: things happening, but actually it's most A lot of it
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: is really designed to make people isolated and lonely and
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: to not care.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll tell you.
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: One of the officers of what our tour guide he
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: actually he's like, do you want to go on one
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: of the cells? And I went into one of the
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: cells and they shut the door behind me, and that sound.
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: I'll never forget the sound. I'll never forget the sound
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: because I'm like, I'm playing I'm couseplaying this right now.
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: This is right, This is not real for me, but
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: I can I can feel it. It is a feeling.
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: And you were like it was visceral and I was
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: a young man. I was in my mid twenties at
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: that time, and boy was it powerful. And I agree
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: with you. I think everybody could just feel that. I
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: think our opinions of that whole system honestly needs to
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: be needs to be readdressed in a very very very
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: big way.
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: I agree, well that all this experience that we had,
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: and you know, we spend the fair around of time
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: inside people's ealves with them, and when you see the film,
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: people who are the people that we got to know
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: are college students. So their cells are full of books.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: So you're seeing American literature, art, history, philosophy, economics, algebra, Mandarin,
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: you know, all the things they're studying. Their cells are
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: full of books, and they're doing serious academic work while
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: in this very inhumane space. So there's kind of like
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: a cognitive dissonance about that. But also it's extraordinarily inspiring
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: to see that, even in this dark place, they hold
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: on to and many of them have talked about this
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: just a sense of hope that there's something other than
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: this place, and the way to move through it is
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: to make sure you use your time the best you
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: can and to you know, open your mind in whatever
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: way you can.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would, I would.
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: I would completely lose myself in books. I would completely
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: lose myself into that. I would escape into that because
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: that just makes the most the most sense, the most sense,
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: without question.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Now, you were talking about four hundred hours for this project.
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: Four hundred hours cut down to four hours. I mean,
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: I've edited twenty five heres, so I understand the process.
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: I've never had four hundred hours of footage, So how
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: do you be I mean, I'm assuming that the team
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: is that one person.
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: Oh well, you know, in all honesty, because we're shooting
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: digitally in these days, the camera's rolling, especially if we're
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: in a prison, where you just you know, just keep
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: rolling because you never know. So there's a lot of
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: that four hundred hours, probably fifty hours that you don't
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: even ever look at. That just is just like you're
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: walking down the hall or whatever and you're not really
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: you know. But nonetheless, we filmed interviews, so we transcribed
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: and when we pick out the best, you know, moments
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: from those. We filmed a lot of classes because it's
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: a film out college, so in those an hour long
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: class might be five minutes. That's really interesting. So we
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: sort of like whittled down from the beginning what we'd
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: say the highlights and then and we basically put them
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: in a string out and watch it. And our string
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: out was like nine hours long, so then it was
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: just that's not bad, though, four hundred to nine you know, yeah.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Right, and in the skull of the projects, you do
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: nine hours bad.
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, we were planning to make a feature length
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: doc though at the beginning we had nine hours to
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: boil down to ninety minutes, and I realized that's not
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: going to be possible and make well, it would be possible,
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: of course, but we just decided to go back to
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: PBS and saying, you know what, this material is so rich,
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: and they actually had said at the beginning, you know,
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: you might end up with something bigger than the feature
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: because this is a very profound and you know, rich
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: story to tell and to get to know people and
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: see what happens to them. So you know, we I
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: have our editors do an enormous amount of the time
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: spent looking at the material over and over and getting
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: to know it really really well and picking out the
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: things they think work best, and then we would react
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: to that and kind of I'm tune and home with them.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: And we also brought in the people who were in
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: the film if they had been released from prison, especially
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: to see it and kind of help us to get
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: back to my point about being authentic, authenticity and being true.
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: You know, they live this and we've got a version
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: of it that we captured with our cameras, right, but
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: we didn't want to put something out that didn't feel
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: authentic and true to them. Fair because you know, you
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: have the camera on for a little while, you turn
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: it off, or you look over here, but something else
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: happened that you didn't notice. And just there's a lot
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: of subtleties to what gets into you know, gets captured
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: on film or whatever. Recapture things on. Nowadays, it's always
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: going to happen.
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: It's because I need a xerox, Like, it's just film.
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: Film is going to be film. I need to film it,
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: or I need to tape it. You know, it's just
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: the way it is.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: I just heard it.
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: I heard a newscaster the other day say like, oh, yeah,
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: we were taping this.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: I'm like they were. It was an iPhone. It was
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: a k iPhone. Come on. But it's just it's just
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: it's part of the lexicon.
• 40:05
  Speaker 7: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 40:11
  Speaker 7: and now back to the show.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Now, tell me about your new project, Hemingway, which is
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: a fascinating subject. He is such a larger than life
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: figure in American history, in the literary world, he is
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: a giant up there with Mark Twain and Shakespeare. I mean,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: he is our Shakespeare in many ways, a give or take,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: but he is a giant, and he's so much information
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: about Like even I I've read a bunch of Hemingway,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: you know, growing up.
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: And but the myth of who Hemingway is.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: Is larger than life.
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: It's a as an art like I don't know much
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: about Stephen King's personal life, though he is a giant
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: in the literary world as well, different than Hemingway, but
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: you know, other than a few things, he's not there's
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: not a myth about him.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: No, there is a myth about him in a way.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: How did you go to tackle this subject matter?
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well you really hit the nail on the head there,
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: because Hemingway is unusual in the sense that he the
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: myth is sometimes bigger than him, and I think many
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: people that we talked to you said it kind of
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: gets in the way of actually seeing him. But he's
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: so famous because of this myth. His work is extraordinary,
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: as you said, but it's a myth that people know,
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: and he created that. That didn't just happen to him.
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: He was the reason why there's a myth. He very
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: consciously created this persona and then kind of fed the
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: flames of that throughout his life in very conscious and
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: sort of purposeful ways.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: Was it branding, Yes, exactly, he was branding. So he
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: was he was an influencer before they were influencers exactly.
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: He understood all of that in a way that I
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: think a lot of writers don't or wouldn't want to
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: more than like a movie star or a rock star.
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: You know, he had a sense of his brand from
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: a young age. It's fascinating really, and that's the story
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: and of itself.
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, before there was ever a concept of a brand,
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: like a human being being a brand, like you know,
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: Marilyn Monroe became a brand, but Marilyn did not know
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: about it. When you know, those big movie stars of
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: the day did not think about that. But you wrote,
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: were you saying rockstar movie star? He essentially is the
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: rock star or movie star of the literary world.
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, And that's not necessarily the best thing
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: for a writer just to say. You know, he's not
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: playing arenas you know, and he didn't like to be
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: on the big screen, right, So he's writing in his
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: room on his typewriter. So, but what he was famous
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: for was kind of these escapades, you know, hunting and fishing.
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's I can't tell you how many pictures
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: there are of him posed with the enormous fish he
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: caught or the animal that he shot, you know, or
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: in kind of like pretending to be boxing know, all
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: these really macho, sort of what we would now call
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: hyper masculine poses. And even in his own lifetime, it
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: got a little tired, and there was criticism of it,
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: you know, even then it was he was at the
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: extreme of this masculine persona, and he also kind of
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: knew that. But I think he was trapped by it
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: at a certain point. And it's true he did enjoy
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: the things that he was famous for doing, but having
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: to perform the role of being Hemingway, it must have
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: been very tiring. Yeah, exhausting exactly.
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because once you build a myth like that, you've
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: got to live up to it, right, And it's a
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: beast that you can't control. And that's the thing about
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: brands and about your legend or your myth that you create.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: It goes off and.
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: You can't if you build it to a point, it
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: becomes its own monster. And I think it, I think
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: the myth is the monster that ate Hemingway. Unfortunately at
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: the unfortunately, at the end, it was too much much
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: for him.
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it is a tragic story. Back to
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: our hero's journey from Joseph Campbell there, you know, it's
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: there's Hubris, and there's just tragedy that happens to him,
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: and some things he's responsible for and some things he isn't.
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: There's a family history of mental illness, and so you know,
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: you're born with that. That's something you can't control. And
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: the time when he was alive certainly true now, but
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: even more so then, there's such stigma around mental illness, depression, anxiety.
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: No one talked about that. They would say, somebody went
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: for a rest here, or they're just taking a break
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: or something you know you would rather I don't know,
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: I mean the shame of going to a mental hospital.
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: You know, he didn't want that, and he was suffering
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: from very serious psychotic depression among other things at the
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: time that he should have gone to a mental hospital.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: Did he write any of his works while really going
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: through some episodes?
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: Yes, I'm I'm not sure I can line up everything
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: chronologically exactly. But he also suffered from alcoholism, chronic alcoholism,
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: would you know would affect your power to function?
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Mythical alcoholism?
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, yes, he glorified drinking, right so, but then
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: he you know, that got the better of him. And
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: then also he suffered from a number of serious concussions
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: head injuries over the course of his life, probably eight
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: or nine very serious concussions, which now we know that
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: does really serious damage to your brain and your capacity
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: to think and function and your moods and can cause
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: depression and paranoia and all the horrible things we've seen
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: happening with people who have suffered from traumatic brain injury
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: and CTE. He had no idea about that, so he,
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: you know, one of the psychiatrists who studied his trajectory
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: suggests that he had kind of a dementia, which is
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: not like you don't know your name, but there's a
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: kind of confusion and lack of capacity to really do
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: organized thinking. And he really struggled with writing the last
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: ten years of his life. He had a lot of projects.
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: He couldn't finish any of them. He couldn't figure out
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: how to edit himself. He was just sort of overwhelmed
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: with a lot of ideas but nothing really gelling. And
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: he did manage to write The Old Man in the
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: Sea in the middle of all of that, by some miracle,
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: he had a few months of clarity. But before and
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: after that he was really a mess.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: It's fascinating. What was the one thing that you discovered
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: behind the way that you did not know when you
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: started this project that surprised you.
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean a lot of things surprised me because
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: I was not an expert when we started the project,
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: So it's hard to say the one thing. But one
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: of them more fascinating themes that emerged in the course
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: of making the film was and maybe I kind of
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: vaguely heard this, but I don't think I really understood
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: that he for this hyper masculine guy who played the
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: part of the such man, who was the man's man right,
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: who was always strong and tough and didn't betray weakness,
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: and you know, just courageous and morally right and all
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: these things that he you know, it's hell such high esteem.
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: He was vulnerable, he was anxious, he was empathetic. He
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: was concerned about how male behavior affected women. So he
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: writes about that really beautifully in ways that I didn't
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: fully understand. In that you know, we had this phrase
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: now toxic masculinity, which I didn't have that in my
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: vocabulary ten years ago, but I understand what it is now.
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: Him in way could be the embodiment of that in
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: his personal life, in his relationships with his wives and
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: other women in his life, but in his work at
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: times and not always, he critiques that. So he writes
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: a story called Hild like White Elephants, where it's a
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: man and woman at a train station. This is written
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: in the nineteen twenties, so it was quite you know,
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: I don't know, risky thing for him to do, but
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: it was unusual, and that it was about an abortion.
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: Man wants a woman to have an abortion. Wow, she
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: doesn't want to. They never say the word abortion. He
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: just keeps saying to her, it's just a simple operation.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: They just let the air in and then you'll be fine.
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: We'll be just like we were before. I promised. It's
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: just a little operation. And she's not sure. And he
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: keeps at her and at her and at her. And
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: when you read the story, you're not thinking, Wow, what
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: a great, strong, tough guy this is. You're thinking, this
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: guy's a jerk. I don't care if you're a man
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: or a woman reading that story. You're sympathy and you're
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: the hero where the moral center of the story is
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: the woman. At one point, she just says to him,
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: will you please, please please please please, please stop talking.
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: And you know, the Hemingway, the myth of Hemingway. She
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: wouldn't think he'd be capable of right having the sensitivity
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: to write that story in the way that he does.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: And that's that's the beautiful duality with Hemingway, is that
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: he portrays this complete macho man. Drink until you're you
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: fall over, then get up and smoke a cigar and
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: write a masterpiece, you know, while you're in the Keys
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: or in Cuba, and then you're hanging out with Fidel
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: and all this like all of that, that's the myth.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: But if once I did, I've seen.
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: Parts of, not all of it, because again it's six hours, uh,
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: and I have children, But the parts that I have
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: seen that he when he was younger was dressed as
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: a girl and his was dressed as a boy, and
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: that through the through his life he actually had his
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: wives cut their hair short and they would this gender
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: kind of thing that they he would like, he would
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: play with.
• 50:00
  Speaker 7: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 50:06
  Speaker 7: and now back to the show.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: There is a sensitivity behind all of all of that machoness,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: and I found that to be true with I mean
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: I've spoken to many many people in my life and
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: have met many many interesting human beings in the entertainment industry.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: The more macho, big they are, generally.
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: The more insecure, the more scared, the more they lash
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: out because they didn't want to show any and they
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: can't show any weakness because of something that happened in
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: their childhood or something like that.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: It seems very similar to with hemyway he put this
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: this shield up.
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: I think it was almost a protective thing for him
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: because he didn't want anybody to know who he really was,
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: but it would slip through in his writing. He couldn't
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: hold it back there. So that's really he's such an
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: interesting character.
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: I agree completely. And you know that what you just
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: described something I was sort of focusingly started the project
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: on this kind of obnoxious myth and some beautiful writing
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: that I loved, and I didn't understand the complexities of
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: what you just described until I've done all the way
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: through the whole life. And you know, late in his
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: life he started to write more explicitly about his interest
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: in gender fluidity and in gender role playing and in
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: a kind of vulnerability in his intimate life. He never
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: published that during his lifetime, but his family has allowed
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: some of this material to be published, especially in a
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: novel called The Garden of Eden, which is not my
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: favorite in terms of having way great work, but in
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: terms of understanding him in way than man, it's really fascinating.
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: You see a man his wife is sort of transitioning
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: to male I would say, in the story, and they
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: bring in another woman into the relationship. So there's a
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: polyamory component to this. The husband becomes kind of the
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: female in bed with her, the wife who's more of
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: the becoming more of the husband, and then this other woman.
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: It's very interesting and relatable to us today in a
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: way that in his lifetime I think, you know, one
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: of he couldn't publish it. Let's put it that way.
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: No, right, I mean, it'd be interesting to see, how
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: I mean, because and there's that whole concept now cancel
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: culture and you know, like you know, oh, you can't
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: say that, you can't do this, you can't do that.
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of stuff in hemingway that is arguably
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: like when's that?
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: When's that you're going to drop any second?
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: Now?
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: When is it?
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: When is someone going to go, oh, we can't we
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: got to pull out these books. I mean Hemingway is
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: that which what do you think? I don't want to
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: talk about cancel culture in general, but specifically with Hemingway.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: Why do you think that he.
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: Kind of transcends that because there's stuff in Look if
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: they're if they're knocking out, you know, the sweetest chef
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: and uh and doctor SEUs.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, Hemyway is a much easier target than doctor Seuss.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: So what do you Yeah, makes.
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: His work kind of almost impenetrable to that kind of
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: you know, what makes him stand away from that?
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, we'll see how it all plays out.
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: We're right, and I'm glad we're having a conversation as
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: a society about, you know, reevaluating these icons of the
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: past and looking at them honestly for who they really
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: were and what they really said and what they say
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: about us, good and bad. And I think that's healthy.
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: And I'm not big on the pantheon where you can
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: only have so many people up on Mount Rushmore, or
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: you know, it can only be for writers and you
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: have to pick. I think we have room for a
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: lot of people to be read and discussed into whose
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: voices matter. And it certainly shouldn't just be Hemingway by
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: any means, But taking him out of the equation is
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: a mistake too, because he helps us understand some of
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: the problems and challenges in his limitations as well as
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: his strengths. We'll uses incredibly offensive words, hurtful words. There's
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: anti semitism in his work that I personally i'm deeply offensive.
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: But it doesn't mean that I don't want to read
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: this on also Rises. It means that when I do
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: read this on also Rises, I'm going to be thinking
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: about anti semitism in our culture and why did it exist?
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: Does it still exist? Why would you know? What does
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: it say about the people who read this book then
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: and loved it? You know, it's in other words, it's
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: part of our history that we have to face, like
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: it or not. And there's also potentially a critique of
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: those things in there too, if you want to look
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: at it that way.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, you know, looking Mark Twain, I mean,
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: look you read talk Finn. I mean he's saying some
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: stuff that's probably not the most PC stuff in the
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: world nowadays. Still listen, but I always find it, especially
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: in history, and you're much more more of historian than
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: I am. But from my limited perspective is in history, it.
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: Is a product of its time and has to be
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: looked through those that lens. If it's being brought into
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: today's world, there's a conversation and go, you know what,
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: but they said there isn't appropriate from our point of view.
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: There just like and I promise you at everyone listening
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: in a.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: Hundred years, they're going to be looking at stuff that
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: we're doing and going, yeah, we're really the social media
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: thing not really the best idea, you know, sure, you know,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: polluting the entire planet and killing ourselves off, not denying
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: the global warming, not the smartest thing. So we're going
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: to be judged as well, so I think.
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: And we should be and we should be right, I think. Yeah, Look,
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: I mean it's just because you brought them up Shakespeare.
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: There's racism, there's geniti semitism, there's misogyny, you know, and
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: we don't just say well, we're not going to read
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: Shakespeare or we aren't going to ignore those things. We're
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: going to have that conversation. You know.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: It's a teaching tool.
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: I feel it's a teaching team with anything, yea, with
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: my daughters, with my daughters as I'm watching things sometimes
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: now you know things that.
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: I grew kind of things I grew up with.
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: I mean, I'm stuff stuff I saw on TV, some
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: episodes of Tom and Jerry, some Metunes episodes which are
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: straight up just racist, completely racist, and we didn't think
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: twice about it. And then my daughters will watch something
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: and they'll point out what is that, and then there's
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: a conversation to be had about it.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: It's a teaching tool at this point in the game.
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: But you can't sanitize it because when let's say a
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: child is sanitized from all of that and when they
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: hit that imagine getting.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: Hit with racism for the first time at thirty. Yeah,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: you can't. It's a difficult like the concept of racism,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: like you've been so sheltered.
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: No, it's out there, right, You shouldn't really need, you know.
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: I do think with children's literature and children's books and
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: children's media, it's maybe a little bit different criteria and
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: for adults because we have the tools hopefully to kind
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: of have that critique in conversation. We're working out a
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: film Keed and Sarah A. Botztein and I about America's
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: response to the Holocaust. We have the bath help, right,
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: So we're and we're trying to understand anti semicism as
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: a factor of life Germany. And we came across a
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: book that the Nazis put out, a picture book about
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: the horrible Jews and how they are you know, sub
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: human and you know, will destroy you. The beautiful illustrations incredible,
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: you know, with the devil, and I mean, if you
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: were a kid reading that, you would just it's captivating.
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: So I kind of think, well, maybe for children's literature,
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: we have to have different criteria because children don't have the.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Framework or the tools that the project it reade.
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: That right exactly. So I understand the impulse to remove
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: some Doctors Zoos books because and that was done by
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: the estate. I mean, they decided they didn't want these
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: books out there anymore. You know. The cat in the
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: Hat is still great.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: The Cata hat is still great. Yeah, and it's it's
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: it's we're living in very interesting times. And as a documentary,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: and I am assuming.
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: You're looking around going Jesus, I'm just there's so much
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: I want to say right now. There's so many different
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: projects I want to do. But out of all the projects,
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: you've done, which is the most difficult, which is the
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: one that was the longest, just even if it wasn't
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: time wise, just difficult to get through because you've talked
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: some tough subject matter.
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: You know, I think truly the Vietnam War series and
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: the College Behind Bars, which we were working on more
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: or less at the same time, both were dealing with
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: enormous trauma, traumatic experiences, and tragedy. And College behind Bars
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: was also an uplifting story of transformation, but there's tragedy
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: and devastating human experience within it. So and the Vietnam
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: War is just an unending tragedy. So spending the time
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: to get to know people who are still carrying that
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: loss and grief, unprocessed and anger and rage and disillusionment,
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: especially with our country, as we said before, sort of
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: you know, we weren't always the good guys, and our
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: leaders led to us and let us down and told
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: us we were there for one reason or other reasons,
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: or the reasons kept changing, or said we were winning
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: when weren't, or minimize casualties on all sides. Just that
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: kind of the betrayal, I would say, of the American
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: government of the people by the government and the Vietnamese
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: government not a whole lot better, by the way, so
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: you just have epic tragedy on all sides. Kind of
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: sitting with that for all those years.
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: Was difficult to I mean, day and day after this
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: had been rough and emotional less spiritually it must have
• 59:29
  Speaker 4: been rough, yeah.
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: And spending time with the people who were still carrying
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: that weight, and then you know, watching the film as
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: it evolved with some of the veterans that we got
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: to know and some of the people who protested the
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: war and still felt very raw about it, it was
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: it was really painful. I think, so that that experience
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: that sits with.
• 59:51
  Speaker 7: Me will be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 59:59
  Speaker 7: And now back to the s show.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: And there are some days both on both of those
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: projects of especially filming your interviews with people who shared
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: extremely difficult stories and really open themselves up in ways
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: that I have never experienced before, was or just a
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: profound experience that I will never forget.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: Now I have to ask you, because now I just
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: need to know your opinion. What what do you feel
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: about the rise of the docuseries of Tiger King of
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: those kind of you know, that's why what I know
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: you cringed right there. For people not watching, she cringed,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: I want to know what a true documentarian who is,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: you know, considered a very serious, award winning someone who's
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: deadly serious about what you do for that you know.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: For decades now there is a rise of docuseries and
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: some are really good. Some are you know, Tiger King's
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: just what it is. I'm not specifically asking you to
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: comment on specific ones unless you'd like to, but just
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: in general the whole rise of dakuaseries, because there are
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: some dakyseries that are fascinating to.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: Watch, absolutely absolutely, just which is.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: The one I we just watched.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: My wife was watching the one of the Menendez brothers
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: and now that there's a whole movement to free the
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: Menendez brothers and I'm like, are you like there's a
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: bunch of millennials and like freedom.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: They were like what is going on? And watch that
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: whole series. My wife and I were just like, are
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: we a free Brittany like that? You know that whole thing?
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that was a fascinating document She's just sitting there
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: going again and please with you and Ken dorth ampletely different.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: I'm just curious I'll.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: Wait into this, and I you know, I look sometimes
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: I feel there's a very fine line between telling someone's
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: story and exploiting them and sensationalizing them and actually using them,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: and you know and sort of having the it's really
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: a reality TV kind of ethos in the documentary, uh
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: or whatever? Right? Cool? And so the people are kind
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: of performing, you know, outsized version of themselves, like having waited, right,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: But you know they're not they're necessarily yeah, they're on cameras,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: so but you know, how much are they able to
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: really have agency in that? Maybe a lot, you know,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: there's it's just it gets very complicated, I think in
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: terms of what is a documentary and what is kind
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: of a performance. Now, everybody when there's a camera on them,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: including me right now, we all performed to some degree.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: We're you know, if I were just talking to you
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: on the street, it would be a different conversation. We
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: all know that. But if you are being filmed and
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: you're sort of the more you act outrageous and the
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: more you just play it up, the more you're going
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: to be on screen. Then you know, that's what happens.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: So everybody gets it and everyone is part of that
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: so some So anyway, I think some of the some
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: of the is in that mode right, And Tiger King
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: I would say, I didn't watch the whole thing. I
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: heard it was great. It was the beginning of the pandemic.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: Everyone's watching entertaining.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: His hacking got great, totally entertaining. But after a while
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: I just thought, where is this all going? I don't
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: know if I really care in the end.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: So it was, it was. It was. I think the
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: timing of that release, it was the beginning of the pandemic.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: That's right. Everyone was at home and everybody.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: Was like, what is this. I saw it come across
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 4: my screen. I was like, what did I saw that?
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: My wife was like, why are you watching this? And
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 4: I'm like, because it's the pandemic and there's nothing I
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: gotta watch this.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: And it was. It was, It was, but it was
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: a train wreck. It was a train work, and you
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: were watching a train wreck.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: And that is very reality show style stuff, whereas in
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 4: you know, Oscar winning documentaries like Searching for Sugarman or
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: or the Wire?
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: Is it the Wire?
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: Or the Wire is actually not a documentary.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: For this great did you No?
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: No?
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: The one about the guy who who what they Oscar
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: manor Man what.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: You watch those kind of stories and you're just like,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: oh my god, that's like amazing storytelling.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: I agree, but I you know, I look, I mean,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: I think a docuseries is wonderful because it's like reading
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: a novel or having an extended podcast where you really
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: dive in and get to know people and a story
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: from multiple perspectives and over time. So if you listen
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: to Cereal for eight hours, you get really sucked into
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: who are these people? And there's different ways to think
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: about this, and you know, if it's artfully done, it's
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: totally captivating. And I'm really thrilled that these that there's
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: a huge audience for this kind of storytelling and these
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: kind of stories to be told. I just when it
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: gets into the sort of sensational, almost exploitatious, exploitative realm,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: I get uncomfortable. So like making a Murderer I thought
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: was fascinating, right, you know, that was Landmark docuseries. I'm
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: not sure in the end that they fully gave you
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: all the information you needed. They sort of shielded certain
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: parts of the story from the audience. I think that
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: was problematic. I loved oj made in America. I thought
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: that was one of the greatest amazing share brilliance.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely amazing. But there's but I think at the
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: end that opens the appetite for other documentaries, and I
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: think that's always good thing. You know.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: So Tiger King probably brought in a generation or a
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: bunch of audience to the concept of a docuseries. And
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: now that'll be more interested and might be watching you know,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: one of your projects or College behind Bars or something
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 4: along those lines because they associated to a docuseries. I
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 4: could jump into that. It just yah, I think it
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: helps everybody. It does help everything, even though some of
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: it might be more exploitive. It does open up, hopefully
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: the audience to other great documentaries.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: I agree. And to get back to what you said
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: at the beginning, it's about real people, you know. So
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: there's something absolutely fascinating about This is not an actor, right,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: an well person doing their thing, whatever it is. This
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: is not somebody wearing a.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 4: Costume, right, or a Superheroes outfit or a giant lizard fils.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: But yeah, there's something is absolutely fascinating for us as
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: human beings to be eavesdrop on somebody else's life.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: What's a voyeuristic.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: Is that voyeuristic thing that you know why voyeurism is
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: such a powerful thing.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, Hitchcock knew that extremely well.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 4: I was just thinking, yeah, that's extremely well, and we're
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 4: all fascinating, like, what's going on behind that closed door?
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: R there? What's going on?
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: And that's what documentaries do. They peek you through the door,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 4: like you're like in hevyway, you're seeing things that were
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 4: not made public, you know, and you're seeing things behind
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 4: the scenes that are really, you know, almost voyeuristic in
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: a way. I had one other question for you in
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 4: regards to because the kind of documentary you are is
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: you tell the story, you tell the truth, you put
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: it all out there.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: But there are.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: Documentarians and filmmakers who put themselves in the story. They're
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: the guy, they're the narrator, the supersize me, thee the
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 4: Michael Moore is very famously who put themselves in the documentary.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: How do you what do you feel about those kind
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: of stories and.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 4: That kind of I mean, just not specifically those filmmakers,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 4: but just it's a different kind of documentary.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's wonderful. I mean, I think in a way
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: it's very honest because then you know who's telling you
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: this story. Here's the guy or the woman whose story
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: this is. There's no kind of objective, anonymous, invisible force
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: of story, god, whatever it's here's the person who you know.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: Michael Moore is going to walk you around and tell
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: you what it is. And I think if it works,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: it can be really powerful. I actually admire filmmakers for
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: being brave enough to put themselves and you know, be
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: in front of the camera. I hate to do that.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: My partner is a psychiatrist. His name is Ken Rosenberg,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: and he's also a documentary filmmaker, and he when I
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: first met him, which was five years ago, he said,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: I'm working on a film and it's about serious mental
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: illness in America. And he filmed the LA the emergency
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 3: room in LA for over a number of years and
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: people who were in psychotic seats, and then followed them
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: over time, and as he was working on the film,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: he realized he needed to put himself in it, which
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: is why so he ended up basically narrating it and
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: being on camera talking about his own story of his
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: sisters the sent into schizophrenia and how she died, and
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: how he'd been carrying this burden as a doctor who
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: couldn't help his own sister, and how many families suffered
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: so and he very consciously chose to use himself and
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: his story to kind of ground the film. And so
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: then you know, well, who's telling me this story and
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: why should I care? And it was you know, he
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: didn't start out wanting to do that, but it was
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: a really powerful device. Was also helpful for him to
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: exercise his own demons and tell the story. The film
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: is called Bedlam, and he got a DuPont last year.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: I'm very proud of him. It's yeah, so but it
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: was a really good example of the power of the
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: on camera filmmaker being inside the story and helping you
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: guide you through it, and also being really transparent about
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: why this story is even being told in the first place.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: So it can really work.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 4: Well, yeah, it's a way to connect the audience to
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: the subject matter sometimes because some things like jazz or baseball,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: you don't need someone walking you through it.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: It's not weird. It'd be weird, like, hey, hi, you doing,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: I'm Alex and we're gonna back in the day. Like
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: that's just like he seems very kind of kitchy and
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: it doesn't really like something you would see on Sunday
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: at like three o'clock.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: I'm like, you're not even local public access. It would
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 4: just be like it's a weird thing. But certain topics
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 4: that supersized me. It was all about him going through
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 4: the process. He's the subject, you know, which.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: Was I mean, I mean he literally changed McDonald's I know,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: like it was remarkable that whole world.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 4: And I have a couple of questions and when I
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 4: ask all my guests, what advice would you give a
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 4: documentarian wanting to break into the film business and into
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 4: the business of making documentaries?
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: Today, We'll be right.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 7: Back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 7: to the show.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: I'm of two minds, explore.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: Let's explicit both minds.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: You know, I think you know, be sure you're passionate
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 3: about the story you want to tell and why you
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: want to tell it, and really drill down on that,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: why you care about it, and what you can say
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: that hasn't been said. And then most important, how will
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: it affect the people who you're going to be filming,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: which is sort of back to our Tiger King point.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: You know, is this going to be something that will
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: your subjects will be okay with when it's over. And
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: I'm not talking about expose of you know, corporate nonl seasons.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: Like if you want to make a documentary about Purdue
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: Pharma and the Sacklers, go for it. They deserve whatever
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: bad things can happen to them as far as I'm concerned. Right,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: But if you're talking about ordinary people and you're going
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 3: to write so, but if you're going to film just
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: your neighbor and their relations with their dog or something
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: like the chuffle hunters, let's say, you know, and if
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 3: you saw that, right, so is this why are you
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: doing it? And what are you trying to say? And
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: is it honorable? To our larger point, but if you're
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: passionate and you have a story that you think needs
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: to be told, then you should go for it.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: And it's so so affordable to do it nowadays. I mean,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: the cameras are it's super inexpensive. I mean before you
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 4: had to get the film camera and that, yeah, and
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: all that stuff. I'm assuming you guys shot some film
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 4: back and cut it off flatbed and but oh.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: God, the four guys who repaired the feedbacks went out
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: of business about twenty years ago. But yes, yes, infrastructure
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: of that world. So you know, yeah, I think the
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: motor production is much cheaper and more available and more democratized.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: You can film it on your iPhone, you can cut
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: it on your laptop, you can put it out on YouTube,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: you know, so the barrier to entry is zero. So
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: it's more just is the story worth telling? Is it
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: really important? Is it going to be worth you spending
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: x amount of time of your life to tell this story?
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: Now? What is the lesson that took you the longest
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: to learn, whether in the film industry or in life.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: Oh wow, that's such a profound question. I'm not sure
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: I can answer it. A few things come to mind.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: Me the longest to learn. I've learned a lot of lessons,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: so you know, pop this. I don't know if it
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: took me the longest to learn, but it's something I
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: hold onto. Is how important it is to just be present,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: and especially now, it's so hard because we're so distracted.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: I haven't looked at my phone the entire time we've
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: been talking. And that's maybe a record you know, for
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: to day, so to really, but that's you know, I'm
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: here with you, I'm not doing anything else, and that's great.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: We've had a great conversation, and I think we lose
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: that so easily. It's just, you know, how often have
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 3: I been doing something and I get distracted and then
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: I'm lost, and then I don't come back to where
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 3: I was, And so trying staying focused and being present
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: and just letting things happen because you are present is
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: really really important, and I think it takes a lot
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: of discipline to do that, especially now. It's really really hard.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 4: And three of your favorite films or documentaries of all time?
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: Oh?
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: Wow, okay, well films of all time? I would have
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: The Godfather Away up there on high on the list. Yes, yes,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: which you know, I don't know. That's a Desert Island movie.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: I could watch it over and over again. Sure. So
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 3: there's there's a few others I've documentaries. There's so many.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: I don't know. That's really hard to say. I wish
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: I was prepared for that. I had a list.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: What comes to the top of your head?
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, interestingly on the Francis word Copola sort of genre,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: the Hearts of Darkness about is such it right?
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: Eleanor eleanor wow? Oh my god, what an amazing documentary?
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: Amazing documentary. It's about the making of a clips Now
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: for anyone who doesn't know, and Apocalypse Now is kind
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: of a flawed film but has moments of brilliance in
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: it and her telling of how challenging that was. I
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: wasn't a filmmaker when I saw it, but it really
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: stuck with me. Eyes on the Prize, which was a
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: series on PBS in the eighties about the Civil Rights movement,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: had a huge profound impression on me because it was
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: the first time I'd seen that kind of storytelling and
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: just regular people who were witnesses and British spens and
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: history telling their stories. It's such an important historic experiences
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: of our country that I had read about in books
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 3: but I did not understand, and seeing Eyes on the
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: Prize brought that epic time in our history vivid, late
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: to life in just indeublible ways. So that's way up
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: there on the list for me.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 4: Well, Lim, it has been an absolute pleasure talking to
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 4: you all things documentary, and I tell everybody out there
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: to please go watch himing Way and all of your films. Honestly,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 4: I mean, if you've got like a year or two,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 4: thank you to.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: Put away because it's going to take you a minute
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: to watch it all. How many hours have you, like
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: I read someone like eighty hours or something like.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: That sometimes like that. But it's been thirty years, right,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: you know, so I.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: Mean it's not like you just did that last week.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, it is right, it is. But but thank you.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: But thank you so much for doing what you do
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: and fighting the good fight as a documentary and telling
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: the truth out there and helping get a little bit
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: bit of clarity on your subject matter. So thank you
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: so much. I appreciate it.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: Thank you a this it was a great conversation.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: I really want to thank Lynn for coming on the
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: show and dropping her knowledge bombs on the Tribe today.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: Thank you so so much. Lynn. I would recommend that
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: everybody listening head out and watch Hemingway on PBS and
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: you could also watch it on PBS's channel on Amazon
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: Prime Now. If you want to get links to anything
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: we spoke about in this episode, head over to the
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv Forward Slash three
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: eighty eight. Thank you so much for listening, guys, As always,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: keep on writing no matter what I'll talk.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: Screenwriting dot tv.