Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Maureen Hoban, one of the producers with Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing. We're in the middle of our summer staff
Speaker 1: picks where those of us that Here's the Thing presents
Speaker 1: some of our favorite episodes from the archives. This week,
Speaker 1: I want to share with you two interviews from incredible
Speaker 1: American storytellers, host and producer Ira Glass and director producer
Speaker 1: Alex Gibney. As someone who has worked in media and
Speaker 1: documentary for some time now, I've always been bowled over
Speaker 1: by the unmatched abilities of Ira Glass. Before Everyone and
Speaker 1: their Brother had a podcast, and even before Alec, Ira
Speaker 1: Glass has been weaving incredible stories on public radio as
Speaker 1: producer and host of This American Life since. With his
Speaker 1: unmistakable voice and natural, winsome delivery, Ira Glass makes it
Speaker 1: look easy as he presents tales that can make you
Speaker 1: giggle as they break your heart, that prove the truth
Speaker 1: is indeed stranger than fiction, and that just might teach
Speaker 1: you something along the way. Here's Alex two thousand fourteen
Speaker 1: cover station with Ira Glass. Ira Glass caused a revolution
Speaker 1: in public radio, and he is now its primary kingmaker.
Speaker 1: Glass wasn't the first to share well crafted stories about
Speaker 1: so called ordinary people, but his show This American Life
Speaker 1: connected with a younger generation of public radio listeners, and
Speaker 1: they became fiercely loyal. Ira Glass has become so popular
Speaker 1: that the winner of this year's Halloween contest in Fort Green,
Speaker 1: Brooklyn was a dog, the small, white, fluffy type, dressed
Speaker 1: as Ira. This is a level of fame I didn't
Speaker 1: quite know existed. Is this what you bargain for? No?
Speaker 1: Has this happened to you? I've never won the Fort
Speaker 1: Queen Pupster Halloween custom event. You've got me there. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm a little jealous. Yeah, yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure jealousy is exactly the right word, but it's something.
Speaker 1: It's a weird thing to have happened. Um, how do
Speaker 1: you feel about? I mean, I listened to Fred Armison
Speaker 1: do the episode with you where he's doing you, and
Speaker 1: I try to do you all the time because you
Speaker 1: fit into a category all those yours works. Yours is
Speaker 1: yours is of a style of announcer, host, journalists, broadcaster,
Speaker 1: or whatever you want to call it. I mean, I
Speaker 1: hear so many people now on the radio who are
Speaker 1: the opposite of what I grew up with, and I
Speaker 1: think it comes down to, like, what do you think
Speaker 1: authority comes from? And back when we were kids, authority
Speaker 1: came from enunciation, precision, delivery, and a kind of gravitas
Speaker 1: that you are bringing to the character you're playing. And
Speaker 1: I think that you know, not just me, but a
Speaker 1: whole generation of people feel like, well, that character is
Speaker 1: obviously a phony pretending to be this like cartoon, sort
Speaker 1: of like the newscaster on The Simpsons with a deep voice,
Speaker 1: having gravitas, And so I think a lot of us
Speaker 1: just went in the other direction. And for me, I
Speaker 1: felt like, you know, any story hits you harder if
Speaker 1: the person delivering it doesn't sound like some news robot,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like a real person having the reactions
Speaker 1: a real person would have and be surprised and amazed
Speaker 1: and amused the very thing I'm talking about you were
Speaker 1: aware of when you were doing your show and conscious of,
Speaker 1: you know. And I mean I started off at MPR
Speaker 1: when I was nineteen, at MPRE and Washington doing what
Speaker 1: First it was an intern, and then I worked on
Speaker 1: a documentary series where I learned a lot of things.
Speaker 1: By the time I was I was I was a
Speaker 1: production assistant, and all things considered does that mean I've
Speaker 1: been between college basically, go to project to come back.
Speaker 1: I went to Northwestern for two years and then switched
Speaker 1: to Brown. Graduated from Brown in semiotics, which is a
Speaker 1: field of sort of pretentious literary theory, but actually is
Speaker 1: all about how to structure a narrative. So it's enormously
Speaker 1: practical training. And there are things that I learned in
Speaker 1: school that I use every day to this day. But anyway,
Speaker 1: then we go back and forth between college and working
Speaker 1: at MPR. And at first when I tried to be
Speaker 1: on the radio like most people like, I tried to
Speaker 1: be the official thing, and then at some point I
Speaker 1: trained myself out of it because I thought it's not
Speaker 1: as effective. Ut yeah, yeah, exactly, And are obviously has
Speaker 1: like a tradition of people going back to the seventies
Speaker 1: who talked not like normal announcers, but like people. Susan
Speaker 1: Stanberg was the host of All Things Considered, which I
Speaker 1: think people today might not even remember. This lady who
Speaker 1: really set a tone where she she just seemed like
Speaker 1: some Upper west Side New York lady, like leaning into
Speaker 1: the microphone mentally talking to you over the radio. Did
Speaker 1: you just say mentually the adverb mentally, you don't get it.
Speaker 1: You don't get that doesn't get that's that's that's an
Speaker 1: advert that's only on the oper But I got she
Speaker 1: was mentally leading into the microphone yes and talking like
Speaker 1: a person. So there were other people doing it. I
Speaker 1: heard people doing it. I was just like, that's the
Speaker 1: direction I gotta go in. I mean, when I think
Speaker 1: about your show, I wonder what it's like for you
Speaker 1: editorially in terms of do you sit there and you
Speaker 1: consciously try to take out of any political point of view?
Speaker 1: I mean, the kinds of stories we're doing, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, when we take on something that's in the news,
Speaker 1: you know, what we're working for is a story with
Speaker 1: characters and scenes and emotion and and looking for a
Speaker 1: way to to show something new that people don't know. So,
Speaker 1: for example, when we did an hour in Guantanamo, like,
Speaker 1: we didn't go into it advocating Guantanamo should be shut
Speaker 1: down or it shouldn't be shut down, you know, like
Speaker 1: we don't. We don't have an agenda that way. Like
Speaker 1: when we did an hour on it, we did an
Speaker 1: hour because it had been a couple of years into
Speaker 1: Guantanamo existing, and we read that I can't remember the
Speaker 1: number of people, the number of detainees, like a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred detainees had been released. We had discovered, like
Speaker 1: you know, the US did determined like you guys aren't
Speaker 1: enemy combatants. You guys, you know, go back to Pakistan
Speaker 1: or wherever. And we had noticed that nobody in America
Speaker 1: interviewed them just to ask like the normal things, you
Speaker 1: know that like you want to know, like how were
Speaker 1: you treated? Do you want to kill us? All on?
Speaker 1: And then so like you go into that, like you
Speaker 1: the question of like what our stand politically on Guantanamo is.
Speaker 1: It doesn't know. I appreciate that, but I'm warning to
Speaker 1: people sometimes view you as being liberal. Of course they
Speaker 1: do because we're because our public radio, which is seen
Speaker 1: as liberal. Though though when you look at the studies
Speaker 1: of like what actually gets covered on the news programs
Speaker 1: in the way it's covered, I feel like the numbers
Speaker 1: bear out the fact that it is not more liberal
Speaker 1: than other news sources. That said, there's a tone in
Speaker 1: the way certain things are covered that conservatives here, and
Speaker 1: from talking to conservatives, like I know like that, I
Speaker 1: think that's a real thing. Um, I think at one
Speaker 1: point there was a show that we did on one
Speaker 1: of the elections, and it was about how people voted
Speaker 1: them why they voted the way they voted. And I
Speaker 1: had a long series of discussions with these people who
Speaker 1: are like swing voters, because I was fascinated with it, Like, Alec,
Speaker 1: you just think about like an election of like Carry
Speaker 1: versus Bush, and you're coming down to like the last
Speaker 1: three weeks before the election. Who are the people who
Speaker 1: haven't decided? Like how can you like like whatever you say,
Speaker 1: like those are two very different Yeah, Like what do
Speaker 1: you have to know? Like you know them both really well?
Speaker 1: Like what exactly? Especially people who are following the news,
Speaker 1: like like what is there to wonder about at that point?
Speaker 1: And I think in that show I came out and said, look,
Speaker 1: I'm a Democrat, just said to the audience, because I
Speaker 1: felt like there was a point in the discussion. In
Speaker 1: my interviews people were identifying as Republican or Democrats, and
Speaker 1: I felt like, why pretend anything but this like usually
Speaker 1: about democratic that said, like many Democrats, I find them
Speaker 1: to be the most annoying party and so not representing
Speaker 1: what I believe on so many issues, and so lacking
Speaker 1: in so many ways, and so not doing what I
Speaker 1: would have them do. So even saying that I usually
Speaker 1: about democrat, I feel it doesn't even get near what
Speaker 1: my actual politics are. But if I have to pick,
Speaker 1: I make that choice reluctantly. It's the same thing as
Speaker 1: like we've done so many stories about God. At some
Speaker 1: point I've went on the air and said, like, look,
Speaker 1: I don't believe in God. Like, I'm just going to
Speaker 1: put that out in front, So take everything you're about
Speaker 1: to hear with the grain of salt that you should. Right,
Speaker 1: it's just truth and packaging. And I think that it's
Speaker 1: different for me as somebody who's on once a week,
Speaker 1: you know, doing a documentary show that's coming like a
Speaker 1: bunch of different stuff. It's different for me than it
Speaker 1: is for like the hosts of All Things Considered, or
Speaker 1: Brian Williams or you know what I mean. Like, it's
Speaker 1: just my role is different, and so I think I
Speaker 1: have that freedom. When did you realize you don't believe
Speaker 1: in God? How old were you a teenager? Did you
Speaker 1: grow up in a religious household? Up? It's weird. My parents,
Speaker 1: we were Jews in the suburbs. So I went to
Speaker 1: I went to Hebrew School and then went to the
Speaker 1: high school version of that, Like I continued past my environmentsvah,
Speaker 1: and at some point I realized I didn't It just
Speaker 1: didn't add up from it, like you know, you're in
Speaker 1: love or you're not in love. Like it's just like
Speaker 1: there's another explanation for everything around me, which makes more
Speaker 1: sense than there's a big dad who created this all
Speaker 1: you know, and just you know, universe have been here.
Speaker 1: There was like some sort of something happened, Yeah, something
Speaker 1: like you know, people climbed up on the shores of Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: when I was thirteen and fourteen, Like one of the
Speaker 1: things that was a huge influence on me was you
Speaker 1: remember remember these books Eric van Daniken was the author
Speaker 1: Chariots of the Gods. Oh my God, I love this,
Speaker 1: And I remember being in Hebrew College, bottom of Hebrew
Speaker 1: College and arguing with the teachers. They are these old
Speaker 1: rabbis about like, but this passage in like Exodus or Genesis,
Speaker 1: wouldn't this be better explained by these paintings on the ground,
Speaker 1: you know, like that we were actually visited by the
Speaker 1: whole theory of a For people who don't know what
Speaker 1: this is. It was like this series of books and
Speaker 1: there was TV specials and stuff that if you actually
Speaker 1: looked at it, it seems like what they're trying to
Speaker 1: tell us is people visited us from outer space and
Speaker 1: that's that's what they witnessed. Scientology really is closer to
Speaker 1: what we've been exactly. Scientology has a good point on
Speaker 1: to it. I remember arguing that in Hebrew College with
Speaker 1: my professors there, and they were not They did not
Speaker 1: buy it. Are you an atheist? No, I believe. I
Speaker 1: don't know what I believe in terms of the specific.
Speaker 1: I had a Catholic priest once say to me, listen,
Speaker 1: I believe in a piece of many religions. The Jews
Speaker 1: have something to say, and the Muslims have something to say,
Speaker 1: and the Buddhists have something to say, the Hindus have
Speaker 1: something to say. He says. Sometimes I think I'm a
Speaker 1: Catholic because they just own the nicest real estate and
Speaker 1: have the nicest places to hang out in. And I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a priest that said that to me. He says,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm I believe in a god. I
Speaker 1: believe in. I mean, I believe something had to be
Speaker 1: responsible for this, and I also believe, oddly enough, as
Speaker 1: a result of some stories I've heard on your show,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, life itself and stories that come
Speaker 1: to me make me believe there must be some God
Speaker 1: behind this is my belief on a fact. Obviously, my
Speaker 1: atheist message is not coming through the Subliminally you fail,
Speaker 1: failing hard for one thing. You fail exactly. Are there
Speaker 1: some shows? Having said that, I have to say, like
Speaker 1: we do a lot of shows and religion. We do
Speaker 1: a lot of shows on faith because I think it's
Speaker 1: it's not covered very well, like if it's it's a
Speaker 1: sort of an area of opportunity if you're if you're
Speaker 1: a reporter or documentary producer, like in America, it's one
Speaker 1: thing that's actually the media do is a terrible job
Speaker 1: with and it's gotten better over the last fifteen years,
Speaker 1: but still like not so great of covering people of
Speaker 1: faith and covering them in terms that are that actually
Speaker 1: document people's relationship with their faith, like generally in the media.
Speaker 1: Like there's a whole phase of our show where where
Speaker 1: this was like a big thing we were doing a
Speaker 1: lot of because my feeling like looking at the way
Speaker 1: people who were religious were covered, there would be these
Speaker 1: cartoon characters, right like there you know, you see them
Speaker 1: like these right wing inflexible like Doctrineaire and their beliefs.
Speaker 1: And when I compared that to the actual Christians who
Speaker 1: were in my life, they were super thoughtful and way
Speaker 1: more compassionate and way more just just the way they
Speaker 1: lived their religion was so radically different, even though they
Speaker 1: were very devout, radically different from what I was seeing.
Speaker 1: I was like, we need to document this because this
Speaker 1: is a whole territory of stuff. And so we did
Speaker 1: a whole set of stuff where I went out with
Speaker 1: kids on their mission trip and we did this thing
Speaker 1: about this minister named Carlton Pearson, and just we did
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff because it seemed like an uncovered
Speaker 1: territory and obviously like doing that without and he I
Speaker 1: wasn't trying to bring anybody over to my side. That
Speaker 1: would be boring. I wasn't interested. And I had a
Speaker 1: friend of mine who was an actor who I worked
Speaker 1: with once. He was very devout, very observant jew me
Speaker 1: and his wife, and I once said to him what
Speaker 1: does it mean to you? And like, what what is
Speaker 1: Judaism to you? And he said to me, it's the
Speaker 1: study of how we as human beings distinguished ourselves from
Speaker 1: the animals. And when he said that it has leveled me.
Speaker 1: I'll take that. I take all these little pieces and
Speaker 1: I say to myself, my dad died and I just
Speaker 1: had this such an incredible emotional connection to my father.
Speaker 1: The President of the United States were shot in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three. Their energy was such a force in my life,
Speaker 1: in the in the world at large. Where did they go?
Speaker 1: Does that energy that is the human soul and the
Speaker 1: human essence just dissipate? And is it, you know, like
Speaker 1: the light switch, like when you think when you die,
Speaker 1: it just over. It's over. And I do think that,
Speaker 1: though I'm always given pause by this. A Billy Collins
Speaker 1: poem called it the Afterlife, where the thesis of the
Speaker 1: poem is that each one of us goes to the
Speaker 1: afterlife that he believes in. And I'm always scared of like,
Speaker 1: oh no, if I believe that that's what I'm going
Speaker 1: to get. It's funny I thought the same thing. Someone
Speaker 1: said to me, what do you think is the afterlife?
Speaker 1: And do you believe in that idea? Maybe they based
Speaker 1: it off this poem. They said that when you die,
Speaker 1: it's as soul in your imagination, and they said, what
Speaker 1: do you think happen in the afterlife? I said, mine's
Speaker 1: pretty mundane, mine's pretty sad. He said why. I said,
Speaker 1: when you go into a room and it's a screening
Speaker 1: room and God is there. We sit down and it
Speaker 1: gets you some iced tea and of a sandwich, and
Speaker 1: he's like, so, what do you want to know? And
Speaker 1: you look at me and you know where he knows
Speaker 1: he's got and you're like, you know, He's like, okay,
Speaker 1: Larry roll the film and they showed me what really
Speaker 1: happened in Kennedy's assassination. I want them to start to
Speaker 1: tell me the truth. One can you also in that
Speaker 1: version of it, be like okay, So on this date
Speaker 1: in the year, my wife and I got into an argument.
Speaker 1: I swear she said this, and then I said this,
Speaker 1: and then she said this. She swears mine is very cinematic,
Speaker 1: and I say, they say, okay, show me the movie.
Speaker 1: Who was the girl that really loved me the most?
Speaker 1: Rolling see, you get your answers, you find out, you
Speaker 1: get your answers. You want your answers, You want your answers.
Speaker 1: What a shame you don't get to do anything with
Speaker 1: that information. You know, like as a film, Like if
Speaker 1: this were to be a film, the thing you're describing
Speaker 1: it needs a third act. Observing that my Afterlife of
Speaker 1: Fantasy requires a third act comes instinctively to Ira. He
Speaker 1: can't help but think about a conversation as if he's
Speaker 1: the editor, marking these structural strengths and weaknesses of each anecdote.
Speaker 1: More of my conversation with Ira Glass coming up. This
Speaker 1: is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: In January of two thousand twelve, This American Life Friend
Speaker 1: excerpts of performer Mike Daisy solo show The Agony and
Speaker 1: the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. The episode featured segments from
Speaker 1: Daisy's Peace, in which he visited a factory in China
Speaker 1: that made iPhones. Two months after Daisy's Peace aired, a
Speaker 1: reporter discovered discrepancies in his story. Mike Daisy had made
Speaker 1: things up. This American Life retracted the story, and Ira
Speaker 1: and his team had to ask themselves, how did this happen?
Speaker 1: We were pretty good fact checkers, I thought before Mcdaisy
Speaker 1: and and uh, you know, I worked at MPR News
Speaker 1: and we were at the level whether we were at
Speaker 1: an MPR News wake. We looked into it as well
Speaker 1: as we could. We talked to over a dozen people
Speaker 1: who had either been those factories or human rights groups
Speaker 1: that monitored those factories, and you know, people confirmed everything
Speaker 1: that he said in the story as things that really
Speaker 1: happened in these plants, with one exception. He said that
Speaker 1: he met a fifteen year old going into work at
Speaker 1: a factory making apple products, and all the human rights
Speaker 1: workers everybody we talked to said like, actually apples like
Speaker 1: super great about that, and like would be very hard
Speaker 1: for a subcontractor to have underage workers, and has been
Speaker 1: a leader in this so if that happened, it was
Speaker 1: a fluke. And in the original show we did with him,
Speaker 1: I confronted with that and he's like, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know what to tell you. Anyone to know, show
Speaker 1: me a picture of the person, which isn't really telling,
Speaker 1: but he said, you know they you know, they gave
Speaker 1: me proof, and we sort of put it all of
Speaker 1: that out there. Did that make you angry? Well, then
Speaker 1: we found out like the one thing that we didn't
Speaker 1: do is we didn't talk to his translator, and he said, look,
Speaker 1: I got this phone number, but when I call it
Speaker 1: it doesn't you know. It's some lady in China I
Speaker 1: met at the hotel and like, and so we you know,
Speaker 1: we we we gave up, you know, we didn't do that,
Speaker 1: which at that point we should not have put the
Speaker 1: thing on the radio. After we broadcast, another reporter found
Speaker 1: that translator and she said basically, she was with him
Speaker 1: his whole time, and all these things that he says
Speaker 1: happened did not happen. And so did that make you angry?
Speaker 1: People trust you, they admire you, and no one, no
Speaker 1: one falls you for that obviously, And I don't know,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna say this. This is me say this.
Speaker 1: Mike Daisy may be gifted, but he's full of shit.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, when that happened, did that piss
Speaker 1: you off? Did that make you angry? I wish him,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe at some level. Like honestly, like my
Speaker 1: first reaction was not being mad at him. Um is
Speaker 1: an atheist thing. No, yeah, we've just given up on life,
Speaker 1: alec no um. I mean, I mean honestly, like the
Speaker 1: main thing I thought is like I just wondered if
Speaker 1: we were all going to keep our jobs, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like I really wondered, like, is this
Speaker 1: it is the radio show over? Like that was the
Speaker 1: main thing. I thought, I don't know, I just I
Speaker 1: just it was a mix of things. Mad was in
Speaker 1: there somewhere about definitely was not the biggest part. Other
Speaker 1: people in my staff were definitely like, way matter at
Speaker 1: him and we're mad. But I had worked with him
Speaker 1: so closely and adapting the thing for the radio I
Speaker 1: felt very close to him actually, and I just felt like, like, like,
Speaker 1: your friend did something. I mean, what you know, I
Speaker 1: just made him do you had a bit of a relationship.
Speaker 1: With that relation, I said like, oh no, like what
Speaker 1: have you done? And that was a way bigger part
Speaker 1: of it. But but you were asking like they have
Speaker 1: things changed around the radio show since then? And the
Speaker 1: answer is is yes. And now, in addition to doing
Speaker 1: like all the stuff we did back when I worked
Speaker 1: on Morning Edition and all things considered to like, see
Speaker 1: the stories are true, we have professional fact checkers like
Speaker 1: the New York or something, and so every script has
Speaker 1: gone through by fact checkers who we hire, and they
Speaker 1: go back to all the sources in the story and
Speaker 1: they go back to everything and it's just like it's
Speaker 1: a huge it's a lot of work, but I have
Speaker 1: to say it's been glad Way, it's been awesome. What
Speaker 1: does Ira Glass do in his private time? I mean
Speaker 1: when you're not working, when you have downtime, When I
Speaker 1: have downtime. Honestly, I don't have a huge amount of
Speaker 1: downtime like usually on the sliver of it you have, Um,
Speaker 1: I walk my dog, try to spend a little time
Speaker 1: with my wife. What She helps run a website for
Speaker 1: teenage girls with Tommy Givenson. This now, I think she
Speaker 1: just turned eighteen year old girl who's starting on Broadway,
Speaker 1: but has this website called Rookie mag dot com. And
Speaker 1: basically Tavy decided that there should when she was fifteen
Speaker 1: years old and in high school. She thought, as a
Speaker 1: teenage girl, there was all this culture being marketed to her,
Speaker 1: and none of it accurately sort of described the world
Speaker 1: that she saw it or seemed to capture the things
Speaker 1: that were most interesting to her. And so she decided
Speaker 1: she would make that herself and organized kind of an
Speaker 1: army of young women to do it. It's three posts
Speaker 1: a day. It's really funny writing and just like it's
Speaker 1: it's wonderful. And so my wife helps her, helps her.
Speaker 1: I find it incredible that even with the slightest prompting,
Speaker 1: you can give me the bio or the story. You
Speaker 1: can tell everyone's story about your own. You can tell
Speaker 1: everyone can tell my story. You only gave us the
Speaker 1: dog walking, and you said, and I love that. I
Speaker 1: spent time with my wife. What other what do you
Speaker 1: watch news? Do you watch TV to like films? Music?
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, like, I have seen so little of
Speaker 1: anything in the last probably a year, just because um,
Speaker 1: we have the radio show we started the second show.
Speaker 1: I've been touring with a dance show all over the
Speaker 1: country and so on the weekends and either going and
Speaker 1: making a speech to earn enough money to live in
Speaker 1: New York City because I still work at a public
Speaker 1: radio salary and live in New York City, or I
Speaker 1: go out with this dance show where I tour with
Speaker 1: this professional dance troupe where I tell stories and they
Speaker 1: dance in this way. Whose idea was that? That was
Speaker 1: me and the choreographer. It was the choreographer of the
Speaker 1: dance company. We were trying to figure out a way
Speaker 1: to work together. She's like, well, let's do a thing
Speaker 1: where we combine our things, and I was like, yes,
Speaker 1: you're the speaking. Yes, you must be dancing very fast
Speaker 1: choreography sometimes sometimes yeah, must be flying through the air.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact. Yes, when you say trying
Speaker 1: to make a living on a public radio salary, I
Speaker 1: mean you you could pay yourself. I'm not saying this
Speaker 1: to embarrass you, but you could pay yourself X and
Speaker 1: you don't you fold it all back into the show, correct? Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean you decided to do that because I go
Speaker 1: on the radio and ask people for money, and I
Speaker 1: thought that it's unseemly to be making a crazy amount
Speaker 1: of money. If you had more time, what would you do?
Speaker 1: I think I would just consume more culture. I would
Speaker 1: I would go to more movies and read more. Like
Speaker 1: I still have never seen, you know, half the TV
Speaker 1: shows that I hear about, and I know that I'll like,
Speaker 1: but I haven't seen like in a few months ago.
Speaker 1: I watched all of Game of Thrones at some point,
Speaker 1: you know, a year ago. Yeah. I liked it a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And are you saying that in the tone of like, no,
Speaker 1: you did not like it? No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I never cast any judgment or what people like it entertainment? Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: And I watched all of Louis, you know, like I
Speaker 1: hadn't caught up on the light. I can watch old
Speaker 1: episodes of the match game on the Game show Network.
Speaker 1: I mean that's where that's my comfort zone when I
Speaker 1: was a kid growing up. Love it. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: so no, I do no watching of anything. Like basically
Speaker 1: I'm working. I'll see a friend maybe for food, see
Speaker 1: my wife walk the dog, and then that's that's it.
Speaker 1: It's midnight, and then I'll go to the gym. It's
Speaker 1: not so super glam and if I had more time,
Speaker 1: I would just basically, you're working, consume more culture. I
Speaker 1: feel like, if anything, it's it's a problem the way
Speaker 1: I'm doing this because I'm not consuming enough. Do you
Speaker 1: think it's gonna last forever? I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: have another plan besides this like this. I like this
Speaker 1: so like I like making stuff. I like editing, I
Speaker 1: like writeing to share in people. Yeah, I like like
Speaker 1: people love the show and and it's secure, like it
Speaker 1: just feels like, oh my god, it's it's there are
Speaker 1: enough people who like it that it's a totally solid business.
Speaker 1: And then also it does well enough that we can experiment.
Speaker 1: I put on a movie with Mike Barbiglia, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, and we can um, you know,
Speaker 1: and we do these events where we do them on
Speaker 1: stage and beam them into movie theaters around the country.
Speaker 1: And we did a show at BAM where we had
Speaker 1: you know, somebody wrote a musical for it and opera
Speaker 1: and all this stuff built out of real stories about
Speaker 1: journalism turned into like a Broadway musical with real Broadway
Speaker 1: you know, performers, you know, and so like it's big
Speaker 1: enough that we can kind of do anything we want
Speaker 1: with that, and that's just you know, it's just lovely,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know what else the person could want.
Speaker 1: Do people when when you do the show, do people
Speaker 1: only the people in the house they pitched the ideas,
Speaker 1: or do people outside pitch you ideas? Oh my goodness. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean there was a period where I mean people
Speaker 1: right into our website and there's a place, you know,
Speaker 1: where you can pitch a story, and then there's a
Speaker 1: person or two on staff who go through that looking
Speaker 1: for the stories that might work. And there are faces
Speaker 1: where there's something on the show every week or every
Speaker 1: other week from that list. Like it's not unusual that
Speaker 1: people will pitch us and those stories will end up
Speaker 1: on the show. So yeah, I mean the opening of
Speaker 1: the show that we did at BAM was the story
Speaker 1: of this girl woman who accidentally locked herself into a closet.
Speaker 1: She was an opera singer, but she makes her living
Speaker 1: partly reading books on tape. And she was in a
Speaker 1: hotel room and she's like, I got to record this
Speaker 1: book on tape on a deadline. So she goes into
Speaker 1: the closet and puts you know, like pillows all around
Speaker 1: to like cushion the sound. And her computer is sitting
Speaker 1: in the hotel room and she pulls the microphone because
Speaker 1: the computer out of worrying sound, and she pulls the
Speaker 1: microphone into the closet, closes the door. She starts to record,
Speaker 1: and then she I messed that up and she's going
Speaker 1: to go out and started over again. Let's started to
Speaker 1: file and she goes to open the door, and the
Speaker 1: doors locked, like there's something wrong with the mechanics. You
Speaker 1: can't get out of the closet, But the thing is
Speaker 1: still recording. You hear her all the steps she goes
Speaker 1: through and trying to get out of this closet, including
Speaker 1: yelling to people down the hall, some German tourists go by,
Speaker 1: and so that was just somebody she wrote us, you know,
Speaker 1: like that that's the opening of the show. That that
Speaker 1: she told us that story. And at some point in
Speaker 1: the interview I was like, okay, so if you you're
Speaker 1: an opera singer, if you were to stage this as
Speaker 1: an opera, what would it be? And She's like, I
Speaker 1: think it would be a minimalist opera, like you know,
Speaker 1: just this repetitive music. And I was just saying help, help, help,
Speaker 1: over and over, and I was like, you know, I
Speaker 1: have the hook up for that. My cousin is Philip Glass.
Speaker 1: So we had him right. We commissioned that as an
Speaker 1: opera that we performed on stage at the brook On
Speaker 1: Academy of Music. Alright, gofred. Ira Glass has a natural
Speaker 1: talent for creating compelling radio. I wanted to follow up
Speaker 1: with him and find out why is his show so successful?
Speaker 1: We have him? You have me, Hello, I have you?
Speaker 1: Send it way? Weren't errantic than I met? You have me?
Speaker 1: Um Hi, this is Ira Glass Glass, They're life. I
Speaker 1: can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do
Speaker 1: it because I can't do it. When you try because
Speaker 1: to do it, it's like it's like a state of mind.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like a state of plan but you
Speaker 1: But you know what's funny is you are someone when
Speaker 1: I made that comment to you about the announcer thing
Speaker 1: and people who are front type of radio broadcaster, but
Speaker 1: you are someone who does not have uh. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got a good delivery, and you're a great radio
Speaker 1: broadcaster and everything and the speed of it and the
Speaker 1: velocity of it is obviously a signature of yours. But
Speaker 1: what kills me is your mastery of what you say,
Speaker 1: Like do you go back sometimes you have to record
Speaker 1: it again and again, or do you just zip through
Speaker 1: that thing like you're just shooting down a a louse ride.
Speaker 1: I wish I could. I wish I could do that.
Speaker 1: When we record my parts of the show, I'll do
Speaker 1: more than one take, for sure, but not a lot
Speaker 1: of takes. No too. Can I say it took me
Speaker 1: a long time to learn how to perform on the radio,
Speaker 1: Like I was so bad at the beginning. I was awful.
Speaker 1: Like sometimes I play for students, how I sounded not
Speaker 1: in my first year of my second year, but in
Speaker 1: year seven, and I could play for you on your
Speaker 1: podcast if you want to in your show like like
Speaker 1: I'm awful, like I had not mastered it. I had
Speaker 1: to consciously set it as a project for myself. I'm
Speaker 1: going to try to perform on the air of the
Speaker 1: way I talk. We would you so you wanted to
Speaker 1: stop doing what I sounded like somebody imitating an MPR
Speaker 1: reporter but failing. So again, this is not your one year,
Speaker 1: two year, three year, four year, five year, six This
Speaker 1: is years since you last week? Yeah, exactly, this is
Speaker 1: last weekend. Right. It's not such a long way from
Speaker 1: the local grocery store to the international debate over whether
Speaker 1: sorghum and meat production are causing corn to decline in
Speaker 1: Latin America. Okay, first of all, that makes no sense,
Speaker 1: but let's keep going. It's a general air of prosperity here,
Speaker 1: partly thanks to Mexican imports of US grains, which helped
Speaker 1: boost our farm economy. I just want to say, if
Speaker 1: you're going to be an announcer, just don't emphasize every
Speaker 1: other word random. But what kills me is you are
Speaker 1: doing exactly what like you know cent of all the
Speaker 1: NPR radio host too, is hitting that you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things we realize about the downturn in the
Speaker 1: stock market today is the revel of the bit and
Speaker 1: they're doing exactly what you're doing. It's before I understood
Speaker 1: that to sound okay on the radio, you should just
Speaker 1: talk like a person, talks like a human being, talks
Speaker 1: like you're playing a character, and the character as a
Speaker 1: human being. Mexico is now one of our biggest grain customers,
Speaker 1: playing a half billion to a billion dollars worth every year,
Speaker 1: including corn defeat its people and sorghum defeat its livestock.
Speaker 1: This helps cut our own trade deficit and benefits everyone
Speaker 1: in the US economy. But in Mexico this policy has
Speaker 1: led to fewer tortillas for the poor and on appetizing
Speaker 1: tortillas for everyone else. I would just note also that
Speaker 1: but this makes no sense at all. Like the writing
Speaker 1: is awful. It's not just that the performance is awful,
Speaker 1: like literally, like you can't tell what the story is.
Speaker 1: It's a style. I mean that was you, you were
Speaker 1: working it out. I mean, it is funny. You do
Speaker 1: make Kai Wisdal sound like Lenny Bruce. But it's incredible.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there must be an acting version
Speaker 1: of this because I think when people become reporters, they
Speaker 1: want to sound like the real deal, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, And so you want to sound I wanted
Speaker 1: to sound like a reporter, and so this is what
Speaker 1: I thought the equivalent in in in the businesses. I
Speaker 1: was did a TV show years ago, and in the
Speaker 1: show there was a woman who was the matriarch of
Speaker 1: a town and I had the scene with her where
Speaker 1: I'm kind of shaming her, like well, you know, how
Speaker 1: could you do this and turn your back? And we
Speaker 1: did take one and I was like, you know, how
Speaker 1: could you do this? And like the tears are rolling
Speaker 1: down my face. Take two, and finally like take through.
Speaker 1: The director goes, what are you doing? And I'm sorry, goes,
Speaker 1: what do you what? Why are you charging it with
Speaker 1: so much emotional Like you're playing the whole episode in
Speaker 1: the swan scene, You're putting every beat of the entire
Speaker 1: He's like, well, you don't got to calm down. We're
Speaker 1: gonna get there. When you're a young actor, you emote
Speaker 1: and you kind of imbue things with that unnecessarily and
Speaker 1: inappropriately just to do it. You think that's that you
Speaker 1: do too much? I think that's acting. It's in interviewed
Speaker 1: Billy Collins, who was the poet laureate who's writing I
Speaker 1: really love and so idiosyncratic, like he so sounds like himself.
Speaker 1: And I asked him, like, did you always write like this?
Speaker 1: He's like, no, At first I wrote like I thought
Speaker 1: it was a beat poet, you know, like, and I
Speaker 1: tried to write like that. I think it's common that
Speaker 1: people try to do like the official deal that they
Speaker 1: think it is before they realized like, no, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do a version of me in this is the show
Speaker 1: reflective of who you are. I mean, this show reflects
Speaker 1: my taste, but also I have to say the taste
Speaker 1: of my coworkers, you know, like it's not just mine
Speaker 1: at this point, like it's something that we all share,
Speaker 1: and I happened to be the frontman, which in that
Speaker 1: way it's different than than it was from the beginning,
Speaker 1: Like I am the frontman for this thing that we
Speaker 1: make together. Like somebody who's in a band that's been
Speaker 1: playing for a long time. What tips do you have
Speaker 1: for people that are interviewers? Oh? Wow, um, what tips
Speaker 1: do you have from me? Quite frankly, I think, I
Speaker 1: mean I've I've heard tons of your shows, and I
Speaker 1: really like your show. I think you're a very skilled interviewer. Um.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that you do an interview
Speaker 1: as a party, and you're the host of the party,
Speaker 1: and the interviewee will do what you do, what you
Speaker 1: model is what they do too. Like it's just human nature.
Speaker 1: And so if you tell a lot of funny stories,
Speaker 1: they will tell you funny stories back. And if you
Speaker 1: tell personal stories, they'll tell personal stories back. And I
Speaker 1: feel like there was a phase in your show where
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, you had on a series of people
Speaker 1: and it was like her Balbert and uh, I don't
Speaker 1: get a predict to have it was like this, but
Speaker 1: her Baber was definitely like this, where people who went
Speaker 1: through their lives and we're hugely successful and then had
Speaker 1: their hearts broken or had failed and then had to
Speaker 1: call their way back. Where in those interviews you talked
Speaker 1: about yourself in this way that made them talk about
Speaker 1: themselves more. It's not exactly an interviewing trick, but in interviews,
Speaker 1: you know, I will talk about myself with the interviewees
Speaker 1: because I know that if I talk about myself in
Speaker 1: a way that's real. First of all, they feel safer
Speaker 1: because I'm also talking about myself, and we'll open up
Speaker 1: more and then they talk about themselves, and so it's
Speaker 1: like a fair swath. And the other thing I try
Speaker 1: to do is like with Outbert is a perfect example
Speaker 1: of the first question I asked myself as what are
Speaker 1: they used to? Herb Albert and his partner Jerry Moss
Speaker 1: sold A and M records for like hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars back then. And this is a
Speaker 1: guy that had artistic success as a musician. He was
Speaker 1: very admired as an instrumentalist. He had as many hits
Speaker 1: as like the Beatles, and then and then he has
Speaker 1: his career as a record producer with all these legendary acts.
Speaker 1: And then they walk in the room and so many
Speaker 1: people in the room might go, I don't know who
Speaker 1: that is, but you have to sit there and go,
Speaker 1: this person was big time once they were big, you know,
Speaker 1: and you got to treat them like they're big. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's so interesting at one time. You have to treat
Speaker 1: them with the respect that they once commanded the phrase
Speaker 1: I always uses what are they used to? And I
Speaker 1: give it that is so interesting. I never interview anybody
Speaker 1: that famous like I don't interview anybody who's big. I
Speaker 1: sort of took myself out of that game because it
Speaker 1: made me so nervous. And also I think that that's
Speaker 1: a different kind of interview then I'm especially good at.
Speaker 1: Like I feel like interviewing somebody who's famous, you're constantly
Speaker 1: battling against the fact that they've been interviewed so many
Speaker 1: times and had to tell their stories so many times,
Speaker 1: and so you constantly are having to struggle for an
Speaker 1: angle in on them that will seem alive to them
Speaker 1: and and no knock against them, Like it's hard to
Speaker 1: be interviewed over and over and over about your own
Speaker 1: life and how many stories do any of us have,
Speaker 1: and how many anecdotes do we have? They're even worth
Speaker 1: telling other people, especially a group of strangers. And then
Speaker 1: the thing that I think Terry Gross does really beautifully,
Speaker 1: and the thing that I hear you do, is like
Speaker 1: it's almost like an empathetic act of like, like what
Speaker 1: is the world to them? And how am I going
Speaker 1: to angle something in that will get them to say something.
Speaker 1: I remember one of my favorite questions I ever heard
Speaker 1: Terry Gross ask she she she was interviewing Ricky Jay,
Speaker 1: you know that's right, the magician and um and sort
Speaker 1: of scholar of magic but also an incredible card magician
Speaker 1: and m and super smart on Jesus anyway, So so
Speaker 1: she's interviewing him, and yeah, she says to him. At
Speaker 1: some point in the interview of this thing which requires
Speaker 1: like so going inside his head, she says to him, Um, sometimes,
Speaker 1: are there ever any magic tricks that you do where
Speaker 1: the thing that we don't see, that you know is happening,
Speaker 1: is actually more interesting than the thing that we see.
Speaker 1: And he totally got excited. He's like, yes, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And she says, well, can you tell me about that?
Speaker 1: And he's like, oh, no, of course you child. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but for even get to that question means so imagining
Speaker 1: her way into his life. And I feel like when
Speaker 1: interviewing goes well, like somebody's just has good taste about
Speaker 1: doing that, you know, Ira a Glass. Having worked in
Speaker 1: the documentary genre for many years, I've never seen a
Speaker 1: filmmaker with the reach and prolific output of director and
Speaker 1: producer Alex Gidney. I've encountered many friends with an interesting,
Speaker 1: dark idea that needs to be made only to realize well,
Speaker 1: Alex Gibney is already making that documentary, called the most
Speaker 1: Important documentary of our Time by Esquire Magazine. The Oscar
Speaker 1: Emmy and Peabody winning Gibney directed the film's Enron, The
Speaker 1: Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side,
Speaker 1: and Going Clear, among many many others. His films wrestled
Speaker 1: with tales of power and corruption, cults and corporate greed,
Speaker 1: in the public interest and in search of the truth.
Speaker 1: He's not afraid to ask the hard questions and help
Speaker 1: shed light on the most complex topics of our time
Speaker 1: in a way that truly no one else can. Here's
Speaker 1: Alex conversation with Alex Gibney from two thousand twenty one.
Speaker 1: Gibney's most recent film, The Crime of the Century, which
Speaker 1: he wrote, directed, produced, and narrated for HBO, tells the
Speaker 1: origin story at the heart of the opioid crisis poisoning
Speaker 1: our nation. Big Farmas celebrated its marketing muscle, using parties
Speaker 1: to lure doctors to write scripts. This was a new
Speaker 1: drug cartel. They were drug dealers wearing suits and lab coats. Basically,
Speaker 1: here's some money, write scripts. Yes, I'm looking at this
Speaker 1: and I'm gone. Clearly, we're breaking the Law Up. Alex
Speaker 1: Gibney has made more than thirty films in the last
Speaker 1: twenty years. In two thousand and eight, he won the
Speaker 1: Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Taxi to the
Speaker 1: Dark Side, his film on the CIA's use of torture.
Speaker 1: Whether he's taking on scientology or Russian interference in our elections,
Speaker 1: or iconic figures like Steve Jobs, Lance Armstrong and Frank Sinatra,
Speaker 1: Gibney never flinches and his stories stand up. In fact,
Speaker 1: he can't think of a time when he wanted to
Speaker 1: reissue one of his docks to make a correction. I
Speaker 1: can't think of a time when it did happen. And
Speaker 1: I think about that a lot, because I try to
Speaker 1: find a moment in time where it feels like we're
Speaker 1: absolutely right. And sometimes, you know, I'm afraid that things
Speaker 1: may come out that would cause me to want to
Speaker 1: redo it. But I I sort of feel like the
Speaker 1: films represent a certain wisdom at a moment in time,
Speaker 1: and it's it's best to leave them. I am kind
Speaker 1: of following up in a film I did and doing
Speaker 1: another film to kind of dig a little bit deeper.
Speaker 1: The film I did, A Taxi to the dark Side.
Speaker 1: I'm doing a kind of follow up to it, but
Speaker 1: I've never been motivated to really go back in it's
Speaker 1: it seems like such a painful process. But I usually
Speaker 1: do think about, like, if I'm going to end this
Speaker 1: film here, why are we ending it here? And will
Speaker 1: it stand the test of time? When the film is over?
Speaker 1: Do you ever privately follow up about certain aspects of it?
Speaker 1: Does you're caring? Does your curiosity? Does your concern end
Speaker 1: when the film is distributed? No, the ghosts of all
Speaker 1: my films tend to follow me, and I often keep
Speaker 1: in touch with sources and interview subjects, and in odd ways,
Speaker 1: they keep coming back two films I make henceforth, so
Speaker 1: they kind of reverberate. It's it's a little bit like
Speaker 1: that moment in in Ghostbusters where they say don't cross
Speaker 1: the streams. Well, my streams are constantly getting crossed. It
Speaker 1: seems like characters from one film are intruding into another.
Speaker 1: They all stay with me, which becomes a little bit vexing.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's hard to keep them straight. In your career,
Speaker 1: your fabulous career, You've made thirty films or so in
Speaker 1: the last twenty years. One an Oscar but of course
Speaker 1: documentary films have become content for streamers and major major broadcasters.
Speaker 1: What are your observations about that change during your career, Alma,
Speaker 1: Was it like in the beginning, Well, in the beginning
Speaker 1: it was terrible. My wife used to tell me, I
Speaker 1: want you to go out and get a job, and
Speaker 1: whatever you do, don't mention that you're interested in documentaries,
Speaker 1: because they'll kick you right out the door. So I
Speaker 1: had to be very cautious. And then there was that
Speaker 1: terrible era of cable television where every channel had to
Speaker 1: be branded, which meant if you were clicking through chan nals,
Speaker 1: as soon as you got to a channel, it had
Speaker 1: to look like it was the History Channel or whatever,
Speaker 1: and which meant that as a creator, you were just
Speaker 1: cranking out sausages. It was the worst possible thing. But
Speaker 1: then I discovered, particularly for political documentaries, there was a
Speaker 1: moment where theatrical films could say things that we're pretty
Speaker 1: potent so long as you made them entertaining. And that
Speaker 1: was a huge revelation which changed everything. And because suddenly
Speaker 1: you weren't operating in a commercial environment where it was
Speaker 1: the least common denominator and basically we were trying to
Speaker 1: sell audiences to advertisers. People were buying the content, that
Speaker 1: is to say, they go to a movie because they
Speaker 1: wanted to see the movie, not because they wanted to
Speaker 1: buy soap. So that was great, and I think that's
Speaker 1: what helped to explode the moment that we're in now.
Speaker 1: My only concern about streaming environment is the extent to
Speaker 1: which some of the streamers begin to start relying too
Speaker 1: much on their algorithms so that they come to you
Speaker 1: and say, well, our algorithms says that a you know,
Speaker 1: minute thirty two, you should really be changing the narrative
Speaker 1: to this so that we'll keep our viewers. We're hearing
Speaker 1: a little bit of that, and that to be a nightmarish. Now,
Speaker 1: when you talk about your company and you talk about
Speaker 1: what you're producing and not producing, and I want you
Speaker 1: to explain, what's the difference between an executive producer and
Speaker 1: a producer. There's a couple of different types of producers.
Speaker 1: How do you function as a producer in your company's work.
Speaker 1: On the projects where I'm named as a producer or
Speaker 1: an executive producer, I generally have a creative role and
Speaker 1: sometimes it has to do with raising the money but
Speaker 1: often it has to do with having some say or
Speaker 1: guidance in terms of the overall creative direction. Though you know,
Speaker 1: we try very hard to empower our directors to do
Speaker 1: films the way they want to do them. But sometimes
Speaker 1: on a series in particular, where you're coalescing around something
Speaker 1: like I did a series for Netflix for a couple
Speaker 1: of years called Dirty Money, which I was very proud of.
Speaker 1: It's all about corporate malfeasance, and you know, we purposefully
Speaker 1: engaged directors to do things their own way. That said.
Speaker 1: You know, it came out of my experience on en Ron,
Speaker 1: which was one where you invest in the wild criminality
Speaker 1: of the purpose and it's a kind of colorful, kind
Speaker 1: of heist like vibe that you engage in. So as
Speaker 1: executive producer, I'm trying to encourage the directors to lean
Speaker 1: into that kind of thing without being overbearing about it.
Speaker 1: So sometimes I'm the beard and sometimes, uh, sometimes I
Speaker 1: come come out a little stronger than that. You now
Speaker 1: have what like a hundred or a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: people working at Jigsaw, So the company itself, that is
Speaker 1: to say, permanent employees, as fairly small. It's like fourteen
Speaker 1: or fifteen people, but at times we can have as
Speaker 1: many as two hundred people working in the in the
Speaker 1: space on various projects. So that's where things get pretty daunting.
Speaker 1: Are you ever sitting in your office screaming into a
Speaker 1: cushion or you're gonna cry and you're telling your staff
Speaker 1: please don't bring me any more projects to do, because
Speaker 1: there's the fear you're gonna become the Jeff Coon's of
Speaker 1: documentary filmmaking, where like you're running from room to room
Speaker 1: and going, yes, no, change this brightenness. Yeah. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: I really try. I mean, that would be the stereotype.
Speaker 1: And I do scream into my pillow, but usually not
Speaker 1: because of that. I mean, if if I can get
Speaker 1: projects made, great, But I purposely tell you know, the
Speaker 1: other executives at the company, there are many projects here
Speaker 1: I don't want to be involved in, not because they're
Speaker 1: bad projects, but because it's important that they run themselves,
Speaker 1: because otherwise I get spread too thin, and who needs that.
Speaker 1: Then it becomes a kind of proxy system. The whole
Speaker 1: idea is to create a company that will run of
Speaker 1: itself and last long after I've left the field. Now
Speaker 1: you have a great volume of work where you are
Speaker 1: developing material, making films and series and so forth limited
Speaker 1: series with some great, great writers. So great, I mean,
Speaker 1: just keep you alone and Larry Right, who I worship
Speaker 1: because you worked with Larry before and Going Clear, Going
Speaker 1: Clear in My Trip to al Qaeda, and and also
Speaker 1: obviously Looming Tower. So what was your first connection with Right? Somehow?
Speaker 1: We were put together on My Trip to Al Qaida,
Speaker 1: which was a play that he had done about a
Speaker 1: one man play that he started about the writing of
Speaker 1: the Looming Tower. And we got together on that and
Speaker 1: I did a doc about it. It's part half of
Speaker 1: it or a lot of it is the play itself,
Speaker 1: and then we cut in and out of the play
Speaker 1: to do various documentary thing and we got on really well,
Speaker 1: and so then we were determined to do other stuff together.
Speaker 1: You know, I have a kind of a shorthand I
Speaker 1: think with writers because my dad was a journalist, and
Speaker 1: that's the business I was supposed to go into. It
Speaker 1: was around me all my life. So in my films,
Speaker 1: while I make them consciously as films, they also they
Speaker 1: have what I would call journalistic baggage. That is to say,
Speaker 1: I'm really invested in in a journalistic aspect of them
Speaker 1: that tries to get the facts right. But with somebody
Speaker 1: like Larry Right, it's a similar process in terms of
Speaker 1: the storytelling aspect of it, you know, at greater length
Speaker 1: and the New Yorker pieces or in his books which
Speaker 1: often come out of his New Yorker pieces. There is
Speaker 1: at once a kind of fact finding discipline and also
Speaker 1: a storytelling discipline where you're trying to engage an audience
Speaker 1: to come along this journey with you, and part of
Speaker 1: that is investing in the propulsion of the narrative, which
Speaker 1: is I mean, that's storytelling, right. So Larry and I
Speaker 1: got on really well because he's always talking about stuff
Speaker 1: like that and and devices that he uses in his
Speaker 1: writing and and so ongoing clear that was maybe the
Speaker 1: biggest collaboration we had in terms of impact. The Looming
Speaker 1: Tower was also you know, had pretty broad reach. When
Speaker 1: you do a Crime of the Century, when you do
Speaker 1: with something with HBO, the budgets pretty high, correct it is,
Speaker 1: relatively speaking. Relatively speaking, though, and on this one it
Speaker 1: it got a lot higher than the original budget because
Speaker 1: our original deal with HBO said we were going to
Speaker 1: do a two hour film, and then when we showed
Speaker 1: them the material. They said, well, this is clearly, you know,
Speaker 1: going over the bounds of the two hours. We've got
Speaker 1: much more material than that, and they let us expand
Speaker 1: it to a four hour And in the case of
Speaker 1: Crime of the Century, I mean to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: we actually started out working with the Washington Post. There
Speaker 1: were some journalists there, Scott Higham and Lenny Bernstein and
Speaker 1: others who had first made me kind of aware of
Speaker 1: the breadth of this story. And along the way, you know,
Speaker 1: I decided they had were focusing mostly post Sackler, and
Speaker 1: I decided I really needed and wanted to tell the
Speaker 1: sacular part of the story to get the breadth of it.
Speaker 1: And that's what led me to Patrick, And in fact
Speaker 1: Patrick and I ended up teaming up on not only
Speaker 1: this but also a scripted version of the Sackler story
Speaker 1: called pain Killer, which is going to start shooting later
Speaker 1: this fall. When you're working on the Sacler story as
Speaker 1: well as perhaps other stories, is there ever a fear
Speaker 1: of litigation? I mean talk about a deep pockets opponent
Speaker 1: ofview wound up getting litigated. Were you were afraid that
Speaker 1: they would sue you? Yes, And that's why the reporting
Speaker 1: has to be really good, and I give a lot
Speaker 1: of credit to HBO for being really rigorous about that.
Speaker 1: But once you have the facts right, being very brave.
Speaker 1: I mean I learned that on Going Clear. You know,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of lawyers attached to that film,
Speaker 1: but we were very good about getting our facts right.
Speaker 1: And it's not only the stuff that's in but the
Speaker 1: reporting that surrounds it. That's what gives you the foundation
Speaker 1: to put some of the stuff you put in the film.
Speaker 1: And so with Patrick, because we were working in different media,
Speaker 1: we were able to share things that we might not
Speaker 1: otherwise have shared. If he was, say another filmmaker, and
Speaker 1: he would give me some documents, I would give him
Speaker 1: some documents. And also we could geek out with each other.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you're deep into a project like this,
Speaker 1: very few people, particularly significant others, want to hear from
Speaker 1: you about the arcana of the opioid crisis. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, Han, that's enough. You know, we got
Speaker 1: your what's wrong? And like, look at the molecular structure
Speaker 1: of this active ingredient. Look at this molecule. Have you
Speaker 1: ever seen a molecule? Now, But when you're doing these projects,
Speaker 1: you talked about all the lawyers attached to going clear.
Speaker 1: We were talking before about how the early days for
Speaker 1: you because you work so much in unearthing truth and facts,
Speaker 1: and there's a journalistic stripe to what you do that
Speaker 1: you've got a staff of people doing research and maybe
Speaker 1: you have a part time lawyer. I'm kind of joking here,
Speaker 1: and now your company, the difference is you've got a
Speaker 1: lot more people on the payroll doing research. You have
Speaker 1: ten lawyers on the payroll, you know, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: do you need more of everything to get the facts clear?
Speaker 1: You know, we don't operate the company that way. And
Speaker 1: and actually, while we started to veer in that direction,
Speaker 1: I think we're going back to baseline to be a
Speaker 1: little bit more entrepreneurial. What we do is try to
Speaker 1: set it up more as units, you know, try to
Speaker 1: function not as a machine or a factory, but more
Speaker 1: like a studio where each film or series has its
Speaker 1: own people and and it's a small but dedicated group,
Speaker 1: and attached to them are are sometimes lawyers we've freakingly
Speaker 1: work with, and sometimes journalists we frequently work with, but
Speaker 1: they're attached to that particular project, so each one is
Speaker 1: bespoke it's has its own d n A, and that
Speaker 1: that tends to work out better because sometimes these things
Speaker 1: take a long time, like Crime of the Century took
Speaker 1: close to three years to do. With a small group
Speaker 1: that really gets intensively into the subject, that's what allows
Speaker 1: it to happen, rather than a kind of big machine
Speaker 1: which attempts to crank these things out. They can't be
Speaker 1: cranked out because the rhythm of them sometimes depends on
Speaker 1: when you get documents or when you get people to
Speaker 1: talk at the pace of their own. But I'm even
Speaker 1: talking about the creative DNA or biology of the project
Speaker 1: to project. I'm just talking about resources in terms of
Speaker 1: when you're first starting out, you might not have everything
Speaker 1: you need, and as you become this phenomenally successful filmmaker,
Speaker 1: one thing it affords you to do is to have
Speaker 1: more people come on and do more research and deepen
Speaker 1: your research, and have more legal help to protect you.
Speaker 1: You know, I was in Sundance. I saw you there.
Speaker 1: I went to the screening and uh, I'm in that
Speaker 1: rarefied position where I'm friends with Tom. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: he's a friend in terms of my career. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't see each other for long periods of time
Speaker 1: where we pick up where we left off. He had
Speaker 1: me come into a couple of smaller parts and two
Speaker 1: am I movies and so forth. And I've often speculated,
Speaker 1: and I even wrote in my memoir, so I thought,
Speaker 1: what was it? What did he need this involvement in
Speaker 1: this organization and this uh in this faith or whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it. What did he need it for?
Speaker 1: I wasn't quite sure what its purpose was. You know,
Speaker 1: he has everything, you know, wealth and fame and legacy
Speaker 1: and the respect of the community. He has everything you
Speaker 1: could possibly imagine in a career as as as a
Speaker 1: movie star. So what did this add to his life?
Speaker 1: And I I speculated about that in my book. I
Speaker 1: came up with an answer. But when you were doing
Speaker 1: Going Clear, the scientology community, which is diverse, I mean
Speaker 1: the different people is not all just Tom incorporated maybe,
Speaker 1: but all those people have been able to in some
Speaker 1: way chew away any real close examination. And when I
Speaker 1: watched your movie, I was mildly taken aback by how
Speaker 1: deep you got. Your film was among the first people
Speaker 1: from a major filmmaker to say that the the institution
Speaker 1: is guilty of certain abuses. I mean they abuse people.
Speaker 1: Their attitude to me was always like, hey man, we're
Speaker 1: not hurting anybody. You know, we manipulate people no more
Speaker 1: or no less than U S military recruitment companies, do
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, we have a certain kind of
Speaker 1: thing we do to get people to want to join
Speaker 1: and sign up with us, But no one's being abused
Speaker 1: or hurt. And you and what was the genesis of
Speaker 1: that movie? Why did you decide you wanted to go
Speaker 1: further and look into that even further. You know what's
Speaker 1: interesting about that is that I had been offered to
Speaker 1: do that movie any number of times, and I had
Speaker 1: always turned it down because I always felt it was
Speaker 1: too fringed. There weren't that many scientologists in the world
Speaker 1: as opposed to say, the Roman Catholic Church. I did.
Speaker 1: I did a film about the church, and coincidentally or not,
Speaker 1: two weeks after it premiered, the Pope resigned. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I was familiar with deep seated religious organizations
Speaker 1: and also you know the pushback you can get. But
Speaker 1: in the case of Going Clear, it was Larry who
Speaker 1: convinced me. Larry Wright who convinced me to take it on.
Speaker 1: There's a phrase in his you know, subhead of his
Speaker 1: book is the Prison of Belief, And that idea was
Speaker 1: really interesting to me because then it was a deep
Speaker 1: dive into scientology and indeed the abuses of scientology. I
Speaker 1: mean that that's the reason to be concerned, is that
Speaker 1: the prison of belief leads to real human rights abuses.
Speaker 1: But the other reason I was interested in it is
Speaker 1: because people like to demonize scientologists as crazies, and the
Speaker 1: prison of Belief allowed me to put scientologists in a
Speaker 1: mainstream tradition of how people invest or get lost in
Speaker 1: a prison of belief, whether it be religious belief or
Speaker 1: political belief, and can get out even though the bars
Speaker 1: of the cell are open. So that's what really motivated
Speaker 1: me to get there. And then as we dug in,
Speaker 1: we took testimony and checked facts and found out stuff
Speaker 1: that other people hadn't found out before. And and I
Speaker 1: actually had a pretty big impact on the scientology community itself.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of people who either left the
Speaker 1: church or who as ex members of Scientology, suddenly felt
Speaker 1: empowered to speak up in a way that they hadn't
Speaker 1: been able to do so before because because Scientology using
Speaker 1: its threat of litigation, because they had launched the maybe
Speaker 1: the most expensive lawsuit ever against the media company when
Speaker 1: they went after Time Warner. You know, people were afraid,
Speaker 1: and HBO was incredibly impressive in terms of its ability
Speaker 1: to back us up once we convinced them that we
Speaker 1: had the goods. What was the first time you picked
Speaker 1: up a camera as a child? Were interested in filmmaking
Speaker 1: as a child. We're a huge filmgoer. I was into
Speaker 1: it as a kid, and I was always into cinema.
Speaker 1: But the thing that I think really changed me or
Speaker 1: turned me around, were these great film societies at Yale,
Speaker 1: and there was there was always an interesting film on
Speaker 1: every night. You know, this is pre video, so you
Speaker 1: you go to these film societies and sit and watch
Speaker 1: and and at the time, documentaries and fiction films were distinctions,
Speaker 1: weren't made. It wasn't like one was up and one
Speaker 1: was down. They were all interesting. And I can remember
Speaker 1: you know too in particular that really floored me. One
Speaker 1: was Gimme Shelter by the Mazel's Brothers, you know about
Speaker 1: the Rolling Stones, and the other was Exterminating Angel by
Speaker 1: Louis Bunuel, and I thought, wow, you know, the possibility
Speaker 1: for expression in this medium is so enormous. So that's
Speaker 1: when I started to veer away from what my dad
Speaker 1: had in mind for me, which was to be a
Speaker 1: print journalist. Did you seriously I did. I did. But
Speaker 1: he lived in Japan for a lot of his life,
Speaker 1: and I was studying Japanese literature at the time, which
Speaker 1: meant I was like head buried in these endless character dictionaries.
Speaker 1: I start to veer away and and found my own direction.
Speaker 1: But he really wanted me after college to go and
Speaker 1: take the interviews at Time Life Newsweek, you know, and
Speaker 1: and and go into the family business, which is what
Speaker 1: he had done. Where did you study of Yale Japanese literature? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm impressed because of all the Japanese documentaries you've made,
Speaker 1: it's incredible. Well, I did study under Donald Ritchie, the
Speaker 1: great Japanese film critic who knew so much about Core Sawa.
Speaker 1: And I'll give you one. I'll give you. I can
Speaker 1: do one film quote in Japanese, which is Chigo Mateo's it.
Speaker 1: And that's uh, that's the end of your Jimbo. He says,
Speaker 1: I'll wait for you at the gates of hell. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, my god. Now when you know when you
Speaker 1: make it. So you're studying Japanese literature Yale, You're not,
Speaker 1: You're making films at the same time I did, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I was studying film with a famous documentary
Speaker 1: named Murray Learner. He did a lot of those docs
Speaker 1: about the New or jazz and folk festivals and that
Speaker 1: in store from now teaches at Columbia, and so she
Speaker 1: was she was one of my advisors. I mean she
Speaker 1: was very young then, as as we all were. So
Speaker 1: I was studying film, and ultimately, towards the end of
Speaker 1: my sojourn there, I was starting to to to move
Speaker 1: into that territory. And then I went to u c
Speaker 1: l A Film School. So so you go to graduate
Speaker 1: school and and how many years you were you in
Speaker 1: l A. Well, I ended up staying in l A
Speaker 1: for a good many years, like twelve thirteen years. But
Speaker 1: and I never actually finished U c l A. That
Speaker 1: they're happy to claim you cling me to their bosom now,
Speaker 1: But I loved it there. I just I got a
Speaker 1: job with the Samuel Goldwyn Company at the time, and
Speaker 1: I started doing things like cutting exploitation trailers. What exploitation
Speaker 1: trailers did you cut? Oh? There was one called my
Speaker 1: favorite was one called shock Waves. It was a film
Speaker 1: about mutant Nazis who come up from the ocean floor.
Speaker 1: That's where they went to a secret cat underwater cavern.
Speaker 1: They manufactured a group of mutant Nazis that couldn't be killed,
Speaker 1: and their ships sank somewhere in the Caribbean, and then
Speaker 1: one day a fishing boat happened to dislodge it, and
Speaker 1: up they came out out from the water that I
Speaker 1: thought they were in Buenos Aires. Peter Cushing. Peter Cushing
Speaker 1: was in it. Peter Cushing was in it. Brook Adams
Speaker 1: was in it. Oh God, that was a documentary about that. Well.
Speaker 1: The other trailer I did was for it was for
Speaker 1: a TV trailer I think for the First Assault on
Speaker 1: Precinct thirteen. And there was one the Nicholas Meyer Rock
Speaker 1: called Invasion of the b Girls. These were women who
Speaker 1: were half human, half b and when they'd have sex
Speaker 1: with you, they'd sting you to death. I know that woman,
Speaker 1: I know her. Yeah, I went out with her from
Speaker 1: times I got I got out on stage, but she
Speaker 1: tried and tried her best. Now I had a small
Speaker 1: part in Looming Tower. I was very grateful to come
Speaker 1: and work with you. Guys, and I understand you're doing
Speaker 1: more of that. You're gonna be doing more narrative work. Yes,
Speaker 1: with luck, that's gonna I'm doing a feature this coming year,
Speaker 1: and this is one that's a real passion project. It's
Speaker 1: a story I've been thinking about for a long time
Speaker 1: and it took a long time to get the script right.
Speaker 1: But I'm really looking forward to doing it. And a
Speaker 1: guy named Matt Cook he wrote a Patriots Day which
Speaker 1: was directed by Peteburgh, but interesting to me, he was
Speaker 1: a in the infantry in Iraq and this is ah,
Speaker 1: this is very much of a war story. It's actually
Speaker 1: Vietnam War, and it's what it's really about is how
Speaker 1: hard it is to be a hero. And with Looming Tower,
Speaker 1: what was your input into that? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: Larry Danny Futterman and I were, um, you know, co
Speaker 1: conspirators early on in terms of coming up with the
Speaker 1: kind of the overall concept because Looming Tower is a
Speaker 1: vast book, and so how to contain it and how
Speaker 1: to focus it And we decided to focus it on
Speaker 1: this battle between the FBI and the CIA in the
Speaker 1: run up to nine eleven, and to focus on to
Speaker 1: Harraheem's character. Uh, you know, Ali Soufan is the guy
Speaker 1: in which he was based in and Jeff Daniels character
Speaker 1: John O'Neill, and obviously you know I mean you played
Speaker 1: George Tennant, who is a critical character in this battle
Speaker 1: between the FBI and the CIA. In terms of the
Speaker 1: overall conceit, I had a lot of input. I think
Speaker 1: that it's fair to say that Danny and I had
Speaker 1: some creative differences on it, and I want some and
Speaker 1: lost others. But that's the way things go. We'll have
Speaker 1: more of Alex conversation with director Alex Gibney after the break.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Alex Gibney is known for his films that challenged entrenched power,
Speaker 1: but he also has a deep catalog of work featuring musicians,
Speaker 1: from an early blues series with Martin Scorsese to Jimmy Hendricks,
Speaker 1: James Brown, The Ths, The Rolling Stones and Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 1: When Gibney is working with a subject as lionized as Sinatra,
Speaker 1: I wondered, is there an expectation he'll put a shine
Speaker 1: on their legacy? Trust me? As the Sinatra family will
Speaker 1: tell you about some of the conversations we had. They
Speaker 1: weren't always pretty. They were of the opinion that I
Speaker 1: didn't shine the statue enough, though I think I think
Speaker 1: Tina over time came to to become a much bigger
Speaker 1: believer in in what we had done, even though she
Speaker 1: was the skeptic going in. So you know, I had
Speaker 1: editorial control, so I could do what I wanted. I
Speaker 1: was focused in this film, though a little bit more
Speaker 1: on Sinatra the musician and as kind of gats b
Speaker 1: s character who kind of represented both the American dream
Speaker 1: in the American nightmare, and that to me was was
Speaker 1: interesting because because I have to be honest, I mean,
Speaker 1: Frank Marshall was the one who who encouraged me to
Speaker 1: take this project on, and I was not a big
Speaker 1: Sinatra fan. I knew him as kind of the guy
Speaker 1: who you know, hung around with Spiro Agnew and I
Speaker 1: wasn't that interested. But I became, you know, in doing
Speaker 1: the film, which is one of the great things about
Speaker 1: doing docs. You become curious and you learn about a subject.
Speaker 1: I became a huge admirer of his in terms of
Speaker 1: his ability to tell stories in three minutes through his voice,
Speaker 1: but also the tension, the rough and tumble tension between
Speaker 1: where he came from and and where he was ending up.
Speaker 1: And you know, we could have we've gone deeper into
Speaker 1: the obvious up probably, and but I think that there
Speaker 1: was enough there to give you a sense of what
Speaker 1: was going on, and that it wasn't like we skipped it.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that we got that was
Speaker 1: so valuable. I mean, not only did we get this
Speaker 1: sixteen millimeter film of his first retirement concert in which
Speaker 1: we kind of used as a structure to tell the
Speaker 1: story of his life, but the more important thing we
Speaker 1: got were a couple of audio taped interviews that were
Speaker 1: done at great length because of the problem with most
Speaker 1: TV interviews, particularly back in the day, they were either
Speaker 1: rolling these huge video cameras where you're having to sit
Speaker 1: under these massive lights and everyone's sweating, or their film
Speaker 1: cameras and you're changing the magazine, you know, every twelve minutes.
Speaker 1: With audio, you could really have a conversation, which is what,
Speaker 1: of course I try to do when I'm doing my interviews,
Speaker 1: to just have a conversation rather than ask questions. And
Speaker 1: it was those interviews with Sinatra, the audiotaped interviews, which
Speaker 1: I think he was doing to explore whether or not
Speaker 1: he might want to do, you know, an autobiography. Those
Speaker 1: are the gold for us because they were very candid,
Speaker 1: as well as a few sort of off the cuff
Speaker 1: kind of Q and A sessions he did, including one
Speaker 1: he did at Yale, which was wildly fun, you know,
Speaker 1: because when you got him in a moment where he
Speaker 1: didn't feel he wasn't kind of prethinking his answers, it
Speaker 1: was gold. You could feel his pain, his ambitions, his passions.
Speaker 1: It was It was great and and he's his sort
Speaker 1: of profane reactions to everything around him. Now, for you,
Speaker 1: do you tend to be with the same group of
Speaker 1: people shooting, you have a you have a crew that
Speaker 1: you prefer, or have you mixed it up with the
Speaker 1: people you've used for your cinematic crew? Well I mixed
Speaker 1: it up a lot. But there's one woman, Marie's Alberti,
Speaker 1: who shot She shot the wrestler, she shot Creed, but
Speaker 1: she also shot Enron Taxi to the dark Side and
Speaker 1: others and armstrong laws. She was a key collaborator for
Speaker 1: me early on because she took a weakness of mine,
Speaker 1: which was cinematography and visualizing the frame. I came up
Speaker 1: as an editor and really expanded my horizons in that area.
Speaker 1: She's an extraordinary talent because you bridged the worlds of
Speaker 1: documentary and and fiction. So Marie's the key collaborator for
Speaker 1: me for a long period. She was also did a
Speaker 1: bunch of Going Clear as well. But then the editors
Speaker 1: have been I've been just blessed. I mean, and those
Speaker 1: people I tend to go back to over and over
Speaker 1: and over again, Alison Elwood and he Grieve, Sloan Clevin,
Speaker 1: Mikey Palmer. Now people view you, I mean, you're heading off,
Speaker 1: it seems like into a more dedicated period of making
Speaker 1: narrative films. People view you as a great truth seeker.
Speaker 1: You know, you want to go out and I don't
Speaker 1: want to say catch the bad guy. I don't want
Speaker 1: to make it like as a prosecutorial. But exposing abuses
Speaker 1: of power seems to be a really in my mind,
Speaker 1: that obviously potent theme in the work you do. Does
Speaker 1: it have a fade or are you like you describing
Speaker 1: the chemical molecist You're right as you see are you
Speaker 1: still walking over the beach of vacation and you're looking
Speaker 1: at your phone going God damn it, I can't believe
Speaker 1: these people. Did you know is outrage and indignation follow
Speaker 1: you everywhere you go? I'm afraid so, and I wish
Speaker 1: it wouldn't. And you outline my vacation. I'm about to
Speaker 1: go on a vacation for two and a half weeks,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure I'll be consumed with the issue of
Speaker 1: torture when I should just be dipping my lobster claw
Speaker 1: and butter. Thanks for listening to this week's Summer staff Pick.
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
Speaker 1: We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeice, and myself Maureen Hoban.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
Speaker 1: Danielle Gingrich. Alec Balden will be back next week.