Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: June fifth is the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of
Speaker 1: Robert F. Kennedy, a wound to this country so deep
Speaker 1: that were still assessing the impact. Dawn Porter is a
Speaker 1: documentarian who has just made an important contribution to that
Speaker 1: effort analyzing the assassination, but more importantly R F. K's
Speaker 1: life and legacy. She dives into the controversy surrounding the
Speaker 1: trial of the man eventually convicted of Kennedy's murder, Sir
Speaker 1: Hans Sir Hahn, including witness tampering and destruction of evidence.
Speaker 1: And she went through hundreds of hours of a b
Speaker 1: C news footage that hadn't been seen since the sixties,
Speaker 1: conducted dozens of interviews with Kennedy's friends and associates, from
Speaker 1: Marian Wright Edelman to Harry Bellafante. What emerges is a
Speaker 1: fresh portrait of a man destined to change the course
Speaker 1: of history, whether it's the problems of violence, whether it's
Speaker 1: a problem with justice, whether it's the problem that we
Speaker 1: haven't Vietnam. We can do things, we can accomplish things,
Speaker 1: we can make progress. Porter's previous work has racked up
Speaker 1: awards at Sundance and Emmy nomination and much more. Particularly
Speaker 1: impressive given how brief her filmmaking career has been so far.
Speaker 1: She was a big shot corporate lawyer before she ever
Speaker 1: got the creative bug. You came to this work as
Speaker 1: a documentary filmmaker later in your life, I did. Was
Speaker 1: that an advantage a disadvantage of both? I think it
Speaker 1: was a big advantage. I was less romantic about it,
Speaker 1: and I used my background as a lawyer and all
Speaker 1: my contacts in entertainment. So I had worked for ABC News,
Speaker 1: I'd worked for A and E Television during your legal career,
Speaker 1: during my legal career, and you got to kind of
Speaker 1: see the business side of film. So I spent a year,
Speaker 1: by my last year at any going to film conferences
Speaker 1: and documentary It's like a little Harry Potter world of
Speaker 1: documentary people. We all go around to different conferences and
Speaker 1: talk to each other. Um. So I went to a
Speaker 1: bunch of those conferences and I saw like what people
Speaker 1: were buying, what people were doing, state of the market,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing before I even had a film
Speaker 1: what So that would have been about two thousand, let's
Speaker 1: see seven eight. Yeah, and it was a really interesting
Speaker 1: time in documentary. Yeah. We had like reality TV on
Speaker 1: television and uh, you know, the documentary film world was intense,
Speaker 1: but the market was opening up and more films were
Speaker 1: starting to get produced. Um. So you know, my background
Speaker 1: is my father was a photographer. UM worked in New
Speaker 1: York City and kind of photography. He was commercial photographer,
Speaker 1: so he had UM I don't know if you ever
Speaker 1: been like all the way on the East Side and
Speaker 1: the fifties, there are those old carriage houses and that's
Speaker 1: where his studio between First and Second So it was
Speaker 1: way over like you know that kind of like East
Speaker 1: End area, And so when I was little that I'd
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time there, like literally the floor
Speaker 1: was cobblestones, tall ceilings, those big white doors. That's where
Speaker 1: his studio was, and like film chemicals, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: So I had come from this kind of artsy family background.
Speaker 1: So I became a lawyer. Yeah, I was like, I
Speaker 1: want a real job. Arts what I did with my
Speaker 1: father's for fun like some people do sports. We used
Speaker 1: to make thirty five millimeter films. But it's interesting to
Speaker 1: me how you go to Swarthmore. You go to a
Speaker 1: you go to a great school, you go to a
Speaker 1: great law school, you go to Georgetown Law School. You are,
Speaker 1: in mafia terms, a made guy. You're made, You're totally made,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna have a You're gonna have a legal career,
Speaker 1: and you proceed to get a book of matches and
Speaker 1: burn that to the ground going to that lucrative documentary
Speaker 1: filmmaking career of yours. But my point is, was there
Speaker 1: a moment when you turn around you go, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go do that? What was the transition? Um? What it
Speaker 1: really was was during my time at ABC, my job
Speaker 1: network standards. What we did is we would read scripts
Speaker 1: for long form investigative stories, UM. And we would also
Speaker 1: ABC News. You know, so if somebody's going to do
Speaker 1: a hidden camera reporter, which shows all of them, I
Speaker 1: mean for primarily but long form hour specials, UM, anything
Speaker 1: that was like complicated hidden hitting cameras. You know, Nightline
Speaker 1: was so buttoned up. We rarely had to not buttoned up,
Speaker 1: but they were really really really really really buttoned up.
Speaker 1: But so you know, the other piece of it was
Speaker 1: sitting in edit rooms. I probably have watched thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of hours of news stories, and when you watch
Speaker 1: a really good reporter and editor working a other, it's beautiful,
Speaker 1: Like they take something complicated and they make it comprehensible.
Speaker 1: And I was really impressed with that. In some ways,
Speaker 1: that's what lawyers do, right, We tell a story with
Speaker 1: a set of facts. We have to make something comprehensible.
Speaker 1: So the skills matched up. Um. But then the problem
Speaker 1: was I was kind of at a high level at ABC,
Speaker 1: and I was like, nobody's going to hire me to
Speaker 1: produce anything because I don't know how to do anything.
Speaker 1: But um, it's like Bob Iger saying he wants to
Speaker 1: go run to the Caribbean. That's right. Were you also
Speaker 1: compelled from the working to look at a lot of
Speaker 1: footage and a lot of programs out of footage. So
Speaker 1: we would watch, you know, the producers would put together
Speaker 1: a whole rough cut of something, and sometimes I would
Speaker 1: watch the raw tape and watch the interview because, as
Speaker 1: you know, you can cut things and make them look
Speaker 1: a certain way. And I always like, really appreciated that,
Speaker 1: appreciated watching how this long interview got cut down or something.
Speaker 1: And our job was to make sure that it was fair,
Speaker 1: that it accurately represented and I took it really seriously,
Speaker 1: you know, like like being a journalist and coming to
Speaker 1: giving people their best shot. Like that's what I learned
Speaker 1: in that job is if you give people their best shot,
Speaker 1: even if you disagree with them, they will respect you
Speaker 1: if if they know that you didn't try and manipulate
Speaker 1: and make them look a certain way to make the present. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let them make their case. Let me ask you this though,
Speaker 1: that as a young woman and you're in college and
Speaker 1: so with Swarthmore, and so what was film? And what
Speaker 1: was documentary film? And you're a you're a fan. Were
Speaker 1: you consuming some of stuff? Are you kidding? I'm at Swarthmore,
Speaker 1: I'm like dressed in black, and you know, I didn't smoke,
Speaker 1: but I might as well, you know, fake smoked like
Speaker 1: a candy cigarette. I was more interested in in political
Speaker 1: theory under political science and philosophy, so other very marketable skills,
Speaker 1: you know. I was obsessed with ancient political theory. I
Speaker 1: thought I was going to teach fire. You're just number
Speaker 1: one with a bullet um. I and I really the
Speaker 1: only reason I didn't go to graduate schools because I
Speaker 1: learned that you would have to read, write, and translate,
Speaker 1: not just Latin, but ancient Latin. And I thought, I
Speaker 1: don't really actually want to do that. Um, But like
Speaker 1: I just I was like, say, this has to stop somewhere.
Speaker 1: But you know, I had like this really formative mentor, um,
Speaker 1: great teachers who really loved diving into materials and into stories.
Speaker 1: I've never been as good a writer as when I
Speaker 1: was in college, you know, like we just were writing
Speaker 1: all the time. Um. And I had, in particular, an
Speaker 1: English professor who was a big fan of Laurie Anderson
Speaker 1: and so he would constantly like play her music. This
Speaker 1: isn't this is what you're paying for when you go
Speaker 1: to college. Um. Not a lot of film going, not
Speaker 1: a lot. He would bring a lot of film into
Speaker 1: so I took. But it wasn't a major then. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like it wasn't on my radar screen is like
Speaker 1: that could be a job. You know. The documentary film,
Speaker 1: as you well know, has become, for lack of a
Speaker 1: better word, so much more popularized than it was ten
Speaker 1: years ago. It has you know when I started, and
Speaker 1: it was roughly ten years ago, um, you know started
Speaker 1: really focusing getting interested. Um. You know that coincided with
Speaker 1: reality television. Quote unquote reality. Um. And then as reality
Speaker 1: became less real, and also as things got faster and
Speaker 1: quick cuts, and yet yea yeada. I think people actually
Speaker 1: like sinking into a story. And that's what good documentaries do,
Speaker 1: they don't, you know, They let you spend some time
Speaker 1: um with a subject, and they also let you It
Speaker 1: goes back to my ABC time at least like for me,
Speaker 1: I feel like what I love to do is is
Speaker 1: bring as as much of the story you know, to
Speaker 1: an audience and let them enter it where they will
Speaker 1: and judge it how they will, you know, instead of
Speaker 1: like hitting people over the head with something like let
Speaker 1: them enter a subject and think about it for a
Speaker 1: little while. So was there a moment when you what's
Speaker 1: the moment when you said I'm gonna do this'n make
Speaker 1: a film? Um? I mean part of it was meeting
Speaker 1: I met these young public defenders. Um. When I was
Speaker 1: in law school, I did clinics to represent victims of
Speaker 1: domestic violence, and my husband he did the criminal defense clinic.
Speaker 1: So I was like, your clients are beating up my clients,
Speaker 1: they should stay locked up forever. Very unswarthed wory. And
Speaker 1: then I got introduced to these public defender people, and
Speaker 1: I went to there. They have this training session in Alabama,
Speaker 1: so they were like, do you want to come see
Speaker 1: our training session? So I said, sure, I want to
Speaker 1: go to Alabama in July. But I get down there.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of lawyers are not necessarily happy people.
Speaker 1: They're not happy in their jobs, right. And I get
Speaker 1: down there and these young kids in their twenties, the
Speaker 1: representing people accused of terrible times, and they make no
Speaker 1: money and they're happy as can be. They cannot wait
Speaker 1: to get to work, and I kind of got teary,
Speaker 1: and I thought like, this is kind of what it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be like when you go to law school.
Speaker 1: You think you're going to help the people. So I
Speaker 1: just got curious about them. So that was I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I think as a lawyer, I can help
Speaker 1: translate some of the legal stuff. So at that moment,
Speaker 1: I was like, this should be something. So my first
Speaker 1: film is called Gideon's Army. Um it's on HBO. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that it was going to be a future
Speaker 1: film or short or whatever, but it should be something.
Speaker 1: Who do you go to? Sheila? And we had her
Speaker 1: on the show too. Yes, Yes, Sheila Evans for our listeners,
Speaker 1: who's the head of HBO documentaries? Were you? Were you
Speaker 1: in pitching to her? Eventually, so I got one of
Speaker 1: the best producers in documentary, Julie Goldman, and Julie had
Speaker 1: worked with HBO a lot, and she said we should
Speaker 1: go to Sheila. So I'm like, great, we should go
Speaker 1: to Sheila. So we went to show her some footage
Speaker 1: and the first thing she says is it's not very cinematic,
Speaker 1: is it. It was like, Hi, nice to meet you.
Speaker 1: But you know, Sheila really is a genius. And she
Speaker 1: said your film is all heart, and she just kept
Speaker 1: pushing us to find the heart of the subject. Don't
Speaker 1: make this a news story. Make it about the people
Speaker 1: and what people go through. And so, you know, HBO
Speaker 1: bought it before we had a rough cut and then
Speaker 1: it goes to Sundance. That's your first film. What did
Speaker 1: you What did you learn from making your first film?
Speaker 1: Like when it was over, did you say to yourself,
Speaker 1: Oh god, you watched the movie and say, oh God,
Speaker 1: I wish I had done this. I mean, I'm assuming
Speaker 1: it's a learning experience. Oh yeah, Oh my goodness. It's
Speaker 1: so what did you get right? And what got by you.
Speaker 1: One thing I learned is you tend to fall in
Speaker 1: love with your characters, and um, you have to be
Speaker 1: not so romantic you you really have to actually be
Speaker 1: true to the story. I learned that I can't fix
Speaker 1: everything I want to fix. We interviewed this kid and
Speaker 1: he was a kid who was sixteen. Um, he was
Speaker 1: in jail. There was no evidence against this kid, like
Speaker 1: nothing at all, but the prosecutor wouldn't drop the charges
Speaker 1: for like nine months. He misses all that time in
Speaker 1: high school. He's an adult jail because he's sixteen. So
Speaker 1: finally the prosecutor says, I will drop the charges. But
Speaker 1: in order to get out, he has to post bail,
Speaker 1: which was three thousand dollars. And he's all excited because
Speaker 1: he's going to get out of jail. And we're filming
Speaker 1: this and the lawyer calls his mother and says, he
Speaker 1: just has to post this bond and we'll get out,
Speaker 1: and she says. There's a long pause, and she says,
Speaker 1: how much is it? Three thousand dollars? And there's another
Speaker 1: long pause and his mother says, I don't have it.
Speaker 1: And you see, like the public defender who had moved
Speaker 1: mountains to get this kid out, which she shouldn't have
Speaker 1: had to do because there was no evidence against him.
Speaker 1: And you know, we hang up the phone and she's
Speaker 1: just kind of devastated it. So later on we're leaving
Speaker 1: and I said, you know what, I'm going to bail
Speaker 1: him out, Like I just can't. I'm like, throw it up, sick.
Speaker 1: Here this this child who was like doing great in
Speaker 1: school and guilty of abc legal money you have right.
Speaker 1: So so having quit my job reduced my family's income
Speaker 1: by half, I'm now going to bail out everybody. And
Speaker 1: she said to me, if you're going to make this movie,
Speaker 1: you can't do that. And I just felt like the
Speaker 1: lowest of the low, you know. Um, but you know,
Speaker 1: things are hard, things are and you know, you asked
Speaker 1: what I had learned from my first film. Um, Documentaries
Speaker 1: should also entertain and be engaging as a film. It
Speaker 1: should stand together as a film. It's not a commercial,
Speaker 1: it's not a news piece. Um. So there's a story
Speaker 1: arc that has to emerge. It's a it's a very yeah,
Speaker 1: and documentary is very collaborative. I don't edit, I don't shoot,
Speaker 1: I don't do anything useful, So you have to work
Speaker 1: with people who are really good. I had a great editor,
Speaker 1: Matthew Hammachuk, who has worked with Matt Hyneman um. So
Speaker 1: he did City of Ghosts. And I think the thing
Speaker 1: that came from sitting in edit rooms for so long
Speaker 1: was like pacing, you know, is so important, and the
Speaker 1: audience is way ahead of you, right, and being respectful
Speaker 1: of your audience, you know, like you got to move on.
Speaker 1: The audience is way ahead of you. There, let's put
Speaker 1: it this way. And I learned this enough from doing
Speaker 1: thirty Rock with Tina Fee. I had this line. I'd
Speaker 1: say we would do the scenes, and I said, you're
Speaker 1: like a jockey, and you give the horse to stick
Speaker 1: all the way to the end, like we drive this
Speaker 1: scene and don't take any unearned pauses, and our audiences
Speaker 1: with us unearned pauses. I think that that's like really
Speaker 1: no earned bass. And then and you're going and you say,
Speaker 1: those people that don't keep up with us, who cares
Speaker 1: about them to begin with? But but in the films
Speaker 1: you've made, you talk about the kind of altruistic work
Speaker 1: that a lot of lawyers at least. I wonder if
Speaker 1: this feel all making wound up being your chance to
Speaker 1: do the work you didn't get to do as a lawyer.
Speaker 1: That is perceptive and right. It's kind of like if
Speaker 1: I were a braver person, and actually my kid because
Speaker 1: you know, kids never miss an opportunity to don't. So
Speaker 1: my older son said, well, if you really wanted to
Speaker 1: make change, you'd be a public defender. And I was like,
Speaker 1: oh man, you know, um, but it's kind of right.
Speaker 1: But you also have to know yourself. Two boys, how
Speaker 1: old are they? Eli is sixteen and will is fourteen?
Speaker 1: Teenage boys. I have two teenage boys. And now you're
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. Yes, because your husband got googled Google.
Speaker 1: We're all Googled and we have drunk the kool aid.
Speaker 1: We love the Google. Now you spent much time out there?
Speaker 1: Is it a city that you were kind of disposed
Speaker 1: towards living there? I didn't spent any time and literally
Speaker 1: we landed. And you know, it's one good thing about
Speaker 1: the documentary community people, I kind of I had a
Speaker 1: Bonnie Cohen and John Shank who um just made the
Speaker 1: al Gore film um or some friends. So Bonnie corralled
Speaker 1: some of her girlfriends and they helped me find schools.
Speaker 1: One of them help me get an apartment very difficult,
Speaker 1: which is very very difficult. Um, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: actually very creative place and very open. They're kind of relaxed.
Speaker 1: You know. It was good for like New Yorker me,
Speaker 1: who you know when we were first out there, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I got a team getting people together, and
Speaker 1: then uh, you know, people started packing up at five
Speaker 1: thirty and I'm like, is it a half a day?
Speaker 1: Like where is everyone going? Um? But it's kind of
Speaker 1: good for us New Yorker people to slow down a
Speaker 1: little bit, you know, although I do admit, like when
Speaker 1: I get here, I'm like, like, people walk quickly. They
Speaker 1: ordered their coffee quickly. My favorite expression of that was
Speaker 1: I think it was in The New Yorker they did
Speaker 1: an article the Study of Americans versus their European counterparts,
Speaker 1: and the article was about predam and they said that
Speaker 1: in European cities, the preda mange customer was willing to
Speaker 1: take the pre prepared sandwich with limited options and have
Speaker 1: more time to eat the sandwich. They and they said
Speaker 1: in New York it was the situation was the opposite.
Speaker 1: New Yorkers want exactly what they want and they want
Speaker 1: to completely customize the sandwich and fast they're going to
Speaker 1: shove it in their mouth. But anyway, now in the
Speaker 1: first movie, you tank that career and your and your
Speaker 1: husband's still with you, right yeah, and the kids stayed
Speaker 1: along to the next movie is next movies called Spies
Speaker 1: in Mississippi and it was in the fifties. The state
Speaker 1: of Mississippi established a domestic spy agency and the sole
Speaker 1: purpose was to undermine the CP and stop civil rights.
Speaker 1: So it was this archive base was it was a
Speaker 1: lot more traditional. Um it was. It was hard to
Speaker 1: get I got the first money from Germany, you know,
Speaker 1: like the Germans were like, we like despise, so um,
Speaker 1: you know they never met a spy. We don't understand
Speaker 1: what this. Um. It was funny though, because you know
Speaker 1: they did a co production with a German company and
Speaker 1: this is where like being a lawyer and understanding the
Speaker 1: business worked. Like I knew there was money in Germany,
Speaker 1: so I was like, I can do this faster if
Speaker 1: I go to Germany first and rather than trapes and
Speaker 1: around and in New York like trying to sell this.
Speaker 1: But they did the color correct and like all the
Speaker 1: black people came back really black, and I was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, we're different colors. There's like we're all
Speaker 1: we're all different. Um. So I did so spies went
Speaker 1: to PBS. UM. After that, I did some I did
Speaker 1: a short for Alex Gibney. Um beautiful. Um. This was
Speaker 1: like one of my favorite projects ever. So he hired
Speaker 1: I think it's ten different directors and said, pick a
Speaker 1: story from the New Yorker and go make a be
Speaker 1: about it. So I picked the story by Catherine Boo Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, one of my great great authors, and she
Speaker 1: had written this story Swamp Nurse, and it was about
Speaker 1: women who would go work with underage pregnant teens and
Speaker 1: so they would work with the pregnant teen but also
Speaker 1: stay with them for two years and basically teach them
Speaker 1: how to be mothers and make sure that these girls
Speaker 1: had health care and you know didn't repeat a cycle
Speaker 1: of poverty and um. So this is deep Texas, like
Speaker 1: like you know, not Austin. I mean, like you know,
Speaker 1: the nurse I followed was an evangelical. I loved this woman. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, making documentaries is also really um it's
Speaker 1: a good way to get out of our bubble. You know,
Speaker 1: like you see people who live without plumbing. Um, and
Speaker 1: you know who are face challenges whatever face right? And
Speaker 1: who are are still like great mother and resilient and
Speaker 1: happy people and um, but you know things are hard
Speaker 1: and you know a lot of these just so. Then
Speaker 1: my third film was about abortion providers in the South.
Speaker 1: As my mother said, another comedy, what drives me is
Speaker 1: what these people are. They're really brilliant and smart and
Speaker 1: creative and they could do anything. And what is making
Speaker 1: them day after day returned to these incredibly difficult situations. Um.
Speaker 1: And then like Zach, curiosity that drives you? Where was
Speaker 1: that set? So? Dr Parker was in Mississippi where there's
Speaker 1: one abortion clinic left, and that's what kind of piqued
Speaker 1: my interest. Um. And Parker's a man. What was his background?
Speaker 1: Faith was how So that's the other thing I'm curious
Speaker 1: about people. I always want to find it regardless of
Speaker 1: their background. I've always wanted to see a program which
Speaker 1: you wanted these doctors sit down and discuss what it's
Speaker 1: like for them to perform that procedure. He is very religious,
Speaker 1: grew up, you know, kind of this side of evangelical
Speaker 1: thought he was going to be a minister. Um didn't
Speaker 1: do abortions for the first like ten or twelve years
Speaker 1: of his career. And then he did a post doc
Speaker 1: fellowship and he saw all these women who were dying
Speaker 1: from you know, trying to self induce and didn't have
Speaker 1: medical care. And he says, he's like, I think Jesus
Speaker 1: would want me to provide healthcare. You know, like, isn't
Speaker 1: that what we're supposed to do? You know, the articles
Speaker 1: about him are like the ministry of Dr Willie Parker.
Speaker 1: He refuses to seed religious ground to people who are
Speaker 1: opposed to abortion, and you know, he can quote you
Speaker 1: every Bible passage about it. But you know, when you
Speaker 1: get into abortion films, it's not like public defenders, Like
Speaker 1: nobody cares about public offenders abortions they care about so
Speaker 1: like I made the mistake of showing a small clip
Speaker 1: like at a festival because I was I was trying
Speaker 1: to raise money for the for the movie, and um,
Speaker 1: this like anti choice group like put my picture up
Speaker 1: on a website. Documentary filmmaker Dawn Porter, if you haven't
Speaker 1: heard my interview with the woman who gave Porter her
Speaker 1: big break with Porter's film, Gideon's Army goes straight to
Speaker 1: our archive at here's the thing dot org. Sheila Evans
Speaker 1: is a delight. Everybody says, let's do an anti Trump film. Okay,
Speaker 1: I must get five pitches a day about let's do this,
Speaker 1: Let's do who voted, Let's do the Democrats who voted,
Speaker 1: Let's do the women the college graduated. Every day, there's
Speaker 1: something here more at here's the thing dot org coming up,
Speaker 1: Dawn Porter and I go deep into the weeds of
Speaker 1: the RFK conspiracy. I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is here's
Speaker 1: the thing. I wanted to spend a good amount of
Speaker 1: time not talking about your current project, because I know
Speaker 1: I'm like, Netflix is gonna fire me, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: but meaning we could just talk about that. And I
Speaker 1: always have the concern that we made the conversation not
Speaker 1: about you, but about him, and you pitched it to
Speaker 1: them when they commissioned you. How did that happen? Um,
Speaker 1: Laura Michael Chison, who's worked with Robert Redford, produced for him.
Speaker 1: I went to her and I was like, Laura, I
Speaker 1: think this is a Somebody had approached me about the
Speaker 1: fact that Sir hanster Hand was still in jail and
Speaker 1: alive and his lawyers were trying to mount one last
Speaker 1: effort to get him out. And I was like, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: But I think in order to understand how sensational that
Speaker 1: trial was and that time was, you gotta understand Bobby Kennedy,
Speaker 1: you gotta understand his life. You know. The other thing
Speaker 1: was Um and my Fami, Bobby Kennedy, John Kennedy. They're
Speaker 1: really important to black people. Like black people love the
Speaker 1: Kennedy brothers. You know, my grandmother's a picture. They eventually
Speaker 1: loved the Kennedy brothers. By the time I came around,
Speaker 1: they were beloved right early days maybe not so much. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: there was there was not necessarily the guardians of the
Speaker 1: civil rights that they became. It wasn't I think it
Speaker 1: wasn't there top of mine. It was a process. And
Speaker 1: so that's kind of what hooked me is is what
Speaker 1: was that process? How did you know a guy who
Speaker 1: he wasn't he wasn't a segregationist, he was an anti
Speaker 1: civil rights, but it really wasn't a priority, right, And
Speaker 1: and how does he go from that to breaking the
Speaker 1: fast with Caesar Chavez and working with dolors. We're done, Um,
Speaker 1: getting King out of jail. And you know, so I
Speaker 1: was like there's a complicated story there. So we then
Speaker 1: approach Netflix and said we thought it was a series,
Speaker 1: um and they kind of got it, you know, pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: There's just nothing that's more aching and more painful than
Speaker 1: the idea of what would this country be if both
Speaker 1: of them, or even Robert Kennedy had lived I've lived.
Speaker 1: That ache is even deeper because they were kind of
Speaker 1: this new light in the country. They convinced the country
Speaker 1: to try something new and to go in a new direction.
Speaker 1: And having sold them on you know, we can come
Speaker 1: together as a country. We can stop the word Vietnam.
Speaker 1: We can there is a way to racial reconciliation. Having
Speaker 1: sold at least half of the country on that premise,
Speaker 1: then Kennedy's killed. You know, you look back and you
Speaker 1: think we got Nixon, We got you know, law and
Speaker 1: order written large. There was a guy who did a
Speaker 1: film that's on the Internet called Evidence of Revision the Right,
Speaker 1: so Terry Raymond Evidence of Revision. The first three r
Speaker 1: JFK and RFK. Then the fourth is King, and the
Speaker 1: fifth is that Jonestown was an MK ultra breathing ground.
Speaker 1: I didn't get to Jon Jonestown and it was was
Speaker 1: it was an mk ultra breeding ground where they were
Speaker 1: breeding the next Sir Hans Hans was a Manchurian style. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a whole bunch of people who believe that there's
Speaker 1: like a you know, the run school. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of evidence that he did not act alone. There's questions.
Speaker 1: We cover that in the fourth episode. Um, what do
Speaker 1: you say about that? You know? Um, so I hired
Speaker 1: an investigative reporter and I said, you know what, you
Speaker 1: go at this clean, you just like read everything. Her
Speaker 1: name's Lauren Capps and her background, Um, she's like a
Speaker 1: Berkeley journalism you know, never met like a police report.
Speaker 1: She didn't want to read, you know that kind of
Speaker 1: She came back with what there's there's a lot of evidence,
Speaker 1: So she went to like the old police reports, you know,
Speaker 1: she went to the l A Archives. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: so a lot of evidence not there in the l
Speaker 1: A Archives because they destroyed it. They destroyed a bunch
Speaker 1: out of the wood trimming and the bullet holes holes
Speaker 1: all gone, um, and they said they couldn't afford to
Speaker 1: store it. Yeah, it was really Um, it's not satisfying explanation,
Speaker 1: you know. And it's Darryl Gates um like criminal justice system.
Speaker 1: So um. So Lauren went and she wrote this like
Speaker 1: exhaustive treatise and watched every film and you know, I
Speaker 1: think the unfortunately, what we were certainly able to conclusively
Speaker 1: determine is Sir hanser Hand had a terrible defense that
Speaker 1: his lawyers didn't question any of the ballistics, they didn't
Speaker 1: run down any of the alternative theories. So um, you know,
Speaker 1: I think what that does is it allows an opening.
Speaker 1: People don't feel satisfied by that verdict. When they look
Speaker 1: closely at what happened, you get like all kinds of
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, and you know, you don't get a satisfactory answer. Um,
Speaker 1: there's real questions. You know. The coroner in the in
Speaker 1: the case said Nagucci said that Kennedy was shot at
Speaker 1: a matter of inches. There's no witness that puts Sir
Speaker 1: hanser Hand a number of inches. Nagucci. He's not put
Speaker 1: on by the defense, he's not cross examined by the defense.
Speaker 1: One of the most integral parts of the case the
Speaker 1: angle of the gun, the mastoid in the back of
Speaker 1: Kennedy said, and Sir Ham was more to the front
Speaker 1: and to the right of him. I mean, I've I've
Speaker 1: read all this stuff. He's not put on by the defense,
Speaker 1: He's not cross examined by the defense, like the defense
Speaker 1: stipulated to Sir Hans guilt. So you know what kind
Speaker 1: of defense lawyer stipulates to guilt in the most infamous murder.
Speaker 1: You know, the whole country is watching for this this
Speaker 1: quote unquote trial, and that does not give you confidence
Speaker 1: in our justice system. If you see that happening, I
Speaker 1: can't prove there's a second gunman or you know that's
Speaker 1: not my cross debay it. You hear you hear audio tapes,
Speaker 1: you've heard this of the detective brow beating the woman
Speaker 1: that was the eyewitness of the cocon at dress situation,
Speaker 1: and you hear him like, I mean, you've never Yeah,
Speaker 1: we interviewed her, Yeah yeah, and she's film she has.
Speaker 1: She says the same thing today. I mean we literally
Speaker 1: put it side by side. I found her incredibly compelling.
Speaker 1: She was one of the first witnesses. Yeah, she was
Speaker 1: one of the first witnesses. There was no reason whatsoever
Speaker 1: for this young girl to make anything up. She said,
Speaker 1: people came down the steps, they said we shot him.
Speaker 1: I said, who did you shoot? She said, we shot
Speaker 1: Senator Kennedy. It was a girl and it was a
Speaker 1: guy who was Mexican American, and she's very very upset.
Speaker 1: And if you go through, you know, so Lauren like my,
Speaker 1: you know, Nancy Drew girl detective goes through and she's like,
Speaker 1: she's incredibly consistent, and you know, it also turns out
Speaker 1: that there's like funny stuff happening with the bullets. They
Speaker 1: do this like crazy like doctored test. This. This gentleman
Speaker 1: in our film, Paul Shrade, who is now ninety two.
Speaker 1: He was a labor advisor to Kennedy. UM, and Paul
Speaker 1: was shot that day. He was the other a person
Speaker 1: who was grievously injured, shot in the head. And he's
Speaker 1: a James Brady. He kind of believes that Sirhan isn't
Speaker 1: the person. But the you know, the bigger thing is
Speaker 1: none of this is brought out of the trial. None
Speaker 1: of this, so the jury doesn't even consider that there's
Speaker 1: a possible alternate conclusion. So it's like, that's not what
Speaker 1: Bobby would want. So, you know, um, the focus of
Speaker 1: our film is Bobby Kennedy's life and legacy. But I
Speaker 1: felt like we couldn't ignore this huge gaping question. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, and it feels it's very unsatisfied because it
Speaker 1: feels like it will not be solved. And you know,
Speaker 1: to your point earlier about Americans hate not to have
Speaker 1: an answer, did it make you just so sad to
Speaker 1: think about where we are now? It was excruciating. Netflix.
Speaker 1: Um so we so what I really wanted to do
Speaker 1: was use archive material as much as possible. So we
Speaker 1: literally were living with footage, and from like a news
Speaker 1: nerd perspective, it was it was kind of dreamy because
Speaker 1: what we did is we digitized hundreds of hours of
Speaker 1: film footage. So the networks at that time that's expensive.
Speaker 1: By the way, it is expensive all the docs I've
Speaker 1: worked as a consultants, they just die on paying for
Speaker 1: that time. I have to say, like Netflix, this is
Speaker 1: where they were a really, really great partner because I
Speaker 1: knew from my time at ABC that there was all
Speaker 1: this film on digitized film, like in cans in the
Speaker 1: ABC archive. So I thought, you know, I said, you know, listen,
Speaker 1: if we go with specific asks for like time periods,
Speaker 1: ABC was just an upstart network trying to make its mark.
Speaker 1: What do you do you follow the like sexy good looking,
Speaker 1: charismatic candidate. ABC was the most recent. So they're following
Speaker 1: Kennedy and shooting him. But what what also that that
Speaker 1: did is you know, we had to watch it all,
Speaker 1: so it was like living in that time and living
Speaker 1: with Kennedy. And what you see what emerges is um
Speaker 1: over time. Particularly you know, he doesn't start out that way,
Speaker 1: but once he digs in, he brings the same zeal
Speaker 1: that he brought to prosecuting a mob bosses. He brings
Speaker 1: that same passion and zeal and energy to fighting poverty
Speaker 1: and to saying like, we can do better than this.
Speaker 1: You believed he cared. There's no other conclusion that that
Speaker 1: he's doing his best. And you know, and then you
Speaker 1: also see and I don't think this came into such
Speaker 1: stark reality until Trump came into office, but we sincerely
Speaker 1: believe he does not care. And you know, it's like
Speaker 1: literally the first time, like you know, I'm like, certainly
Speaker 1: not a reaganade or a bush ad or you know,
Speaker 1: but um, I I did think although I might disagree
Speaker 1: with the way they implement policy, I did believe that
Speaker 1: they cared. You know, that that was their version of things.
Speaker 1: And you literally see Bobby Kennedy saying to people, not
Speaker 1: only do does he care, but you must care, Like
Speaker 1: that's what makes us human people and that's what is
Speaker 1: going to ultimately bring us together. That's right, and people
Speaker 1: sign on for that, they believe that, And I think
Speaker 1: that that's partly why you know, it's such a hard,
Speaker 1: hard turn when he's executed and where the country ends up. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's such a like a blow to people.
Speaker 1: Members of the family. Did you talk to? So I
Speaker 1: didn't interview them. You know, I'm friends with Rory, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd like talked to Rory about it, and I thought,
Speaker 1: I don't think Ethel's gonna do it like the people
Speaker 1: I would Yeah, the people I would like to talk to.
Speaker 1: I'd like to talk to Ethel because really what we
Speaker 1: wanted to understand where um, you know, like him as
Speaker 1: a person, um, what kind of what he was going through.
Speaker 1: But I thought, like, you know, I feel like we
Speaker 1: should just make the archive interviews speak for themselves. And
Speaker 1: then what I did is have people who worked with
Speaker 1: Kennedy or for Kennedy. Um, so there's like firsthand kind
Speaker 1: of people who were there, and you know that's different
Speaker 1: than having it be your father right, So, UM, I
Speaker 1: think that there's a certain amount of distance that is
Speaker 1: is a little healthier there. Ums. No one speaks better
Speaker 1: to who Kennedy was than Kennedy himself. Just stick him
Speaker 1: out there, pretty much done, you know that. The other
Speaker 1: thing is um, I think that that that's you know,
Speaker 1: like you can't get enough of actually watching like Bobby
Speaker 1: and Jack together with Ethel with their kids. The other
Speaker 1: thing is, um, it's painful. It is still excruciatingly painful,
Speaker 1: um for all of them. And I thought, you can't
Speaker 1: get enough of actually watching like Bobby and Jack together
Speaker 1: with Ethel with their kids. The other thing is, um,
Speaker 1: it's painful. It is still excruciatingly painful, um for all
Speaker 1: of them. And I thought, like I don't even want
Speaker 1: to drag them through that. Um. You know this is
Speaker 1: gonna be a hard year, like for all of us.
Speaker 1: He's a public figure, he's historic figure, you know. UM.
Speaker 1: I mean, I hope Rory doesn't mind me saying that,
Speaker 1: but she's like, I can't watch all these things. And
Speaker 1: then when when you watch the footage, like as a mother,
Speaker 1: it was hard, Like he's so physical with his kids,
Speaker 1: he was such a present, active father. You could see
Speaker 1: how close this family was. You know, he brought his
Speaker 1: kids everywhere. These were not kids who were lined up
Speaker 1: like sound of music and supposed to be seen not heard.
Speaker 1: They were just like in it. There's the footage of
Speaker 1: carry Um during like the crisis running out. You know,
Speaker 1: she's yeah, She's just do you want to say hi
Speaker 1: to carry? You know It's like no, no, I don't
Speaker 1: want to say hi to carry right now. There's like
Speaker 1: a whole army outside. But there was this blending of
Speaker 1: family and seeing that, I thought, just just what a
Speaker 1: huge loss. Dawn Porter. She advocated for ABC and A
Speaker 1: and E. Now she advocates for the powerless through storytelling.
Speaker 1: It's a good time to be a filmmaker. I picked
Speaker 1: a good time. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's
Speaker 1: the thing.