Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio. Hey, Carol, you remember y
Speaker 1: two k right, really really good? You were actually working
Speaker 1: here at Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I had just started. And one of
Speaker 2: the things that we were thinking about big time was
Speaker 2: what happens when we go from nineteen ninety nine to
Speaker 2: two thousand and apparently that can be somewhat difficult, sophisticated,
Speaker 2: complicated when it comes to technology and computing devices, Like
Speaker 2: what does that mean?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: You go from a year that you specified right with
Speaker 2: two digits to office and you really needed all four?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: Can I just tell you that we were all of
Speaker 2: us in the news team. We went home, We were
Speaker 2: given walkie talkies and everything because we thought in case
Speaker 2: the phones don't work, and we had to be ready
Speaker 2: for when in I guess Asia, or whenever it struck
Speaker 2: two thousand around the globe first for like the world
Speaker 2: to come undone, and I got to sell Unlike I remember,
Speaker 2: like we're waiting, we're waiting, nothing.
Speaker 1: Happened, Nothing happened. Well, in new HBO documentary takes us
Speaker 1: back to that time. It's called time Bomb y two
Speaker 1: K HY two K, what doesn't mean using two digits
Speaker 1: rather than four made good economic sense.
Speaker 4: But when workers advanced clocks to the year two thousand,
Speaker 4: the world can melt down.
Speaker 3: Our systems are broken, and we've got a problem with
Speaker 3: a couple of digits.
Speaker 4: This has to be solved.
Speaker 1: All right. That was a clip just from time Bomb
Speaker 1: y two K, new documentary on HBO, taking us back
Speaker 1: to the years ahead of Y two K and all
Speaker 1: the chaos and prepping and fears about power grids failing,
Speaker 1: nuclear arsenals being at risks, planes falling out of the sky.
Speaker 1: People were very worried. Carol Well, Brian Becker and Marley
Speaker 1: MacDonald are the documentary filmmakers and producers behind time Bomb
Speaker 1: y two K. They join us on Zoom from New York.
Speaker 1: Good to have you both with us this afternoon. Brian,
Speaker 1: I want to start with you, why make a documentary
Speaker 1: about Y two K twenty four years later?
Speaker 4: So when Marlee and I first thought of this idea
Speaker 4: and started looking into it, it was the summer of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty and the first images you see when you
Speaker 4: google back YTK are shots of empty grocery store shelves
Speaker 4: and people checking out palettes of water and toilet paper
Speaker 4: at the supermarket and people in line at the gun store,
Speaker 4: and those images felt awfully familiar to us, as given
Speaker 4: the reality we were living through in the depths of
Speaker 4: the pandemic. We knew there was a countdown, We knew
Speaker 4: from our research that there was extensive footage and media
Speaker 4: coverage of the event, and kind of living in that
Speaker 4: moment of the pandemic made us realize that it wasn't
Speaker 4: just a countdown, It wasn't just something that we lived
Speaker 4: through and then had mostly forgotten about. It also had
Speaker 4: we thought lessons for our present moment.
Speaker 2: Well, I gotta say, Marley, I just remember doing interviews,
Speaker 2: you know, leading up to it. In every conversation, certainly
Speaker 2: if it was even just a general market and interview,
Speaker 2: it was like, okay, so how are you guys planning
Speaker 2: for Y two K? And concerns that you know, if
Speaker 2: things come undone and you know, we can't track investments
Speaker 2: or market stone, you know, work properly. Having said that,
Speaker 2: when you and Brian went to pitch this where people like, wait, wait,
Speaker 2: what was Y two K? Because it's a long time ago.
Speaker 3: Definitely, Well, everyone who lived through it remembers it, which
Speaker 3: definitely works in our favor when pitching this around and
Speaker 3: was a really special part of making this project. When
Speaker 3: you tell someone you're working on a movie about why
Speaker 3: do You Kate, everyone has to tell you what they
Speaker 3: were doing New Year's Eve nineteen ninety nine, But.
Speaker 2: I just tell you one of my producers I think
Speaker 2: was in kindergarten, so that kind of like at home. Anyway, continue, please, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Brian and.
Speaker 3: I became historians of what everyone was doing on New
Speaker 3: Year's Eve nineteen ninety nine. But when we first started
Speaker 3: looking into the project, you know, the first question that
Speaker 3: comes up is was this a joke or was this real?
Speaker 3: And you know a lot of people remember why two
Speaker 3: K as a hoax? And it took us months of
Speaker 3: research to come to the conclusion that it was a
Speaker 3: very real problem that was solved. And we did that
Speaker 3: by talking to a lot of computer programmers and talking
Speaker 3: to a lot of people who actually worked on the issue,
Speaker 3: and so we knew we could kind of reclaim this
Speaker 3: narrative in this movie and shine a light on all
Speaker 3: the work and labor that went into actually fixing this
Speaker 3: very real problem.
Speaker 1: Mart Marley, can you talk about the style here. I enjoyed.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed the film, but I was surprised to see
Speaker 1: the way that the documentary was structured in the sense
Speaker 1: that there's no narrator, and it's nobody looking back or
Speaker 1: remembering or or there are no recollections. It's purely based
Speaker 1: on archival footage on videos that were sold at the time,
Speaker 1: news reports, home videos talk a little bit about building
Speaker 1: it in that sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we knew we wanted to do it all
Speaker 3: archival from the jump, because one, there was just enough footage.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of footage, and when we first
Speaker 3: started working with the material, we realized that, you know,
Speaker 3: everything was sort of there, and that if we kept
Speaker 3: it in the world of all archival, we could really
Speaker 3: kind of make this countdown feel more present, tense, feel
Speaker 3: like a time capsule of that actual moment. And Brian
Speaker 3: is an archival producer and found, you know, along with
Speaker 3: our team all of that footage. We ended up with
Speaker 3: over seven hundred hours of footage, and as far as
Speaker 3: the structure of the film goes, we knew that we
Speaker 3: wanted to sort of replicate the way that Y two
Speaker 3: K worked in the world. So starting with the technical problem,
Speaker 3: watching it sort of radiate out of cubicles and into
Speaker 3: the social consciousness and then follow that to sort of
Speaker 3: the fringes of America. And we knew we had to
Speaker 3: get to midnight at.
Speaker 2: Some point as you went through the footage and you
Speaker 2: guys were gathering at Brian, I mean, what was it
Speaker 2: that kind of jumped out? Was there certain things that like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, Like it was just kind of interesting
Speaker 2: because there was real nervousness about how does my play out?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean there's a certain attraction always to footage
Speaker 4: that is kind of unbelievable to watch in the present,
Speaker 4: whether it be you know, a tape made by a
Speaker 4: militia titled why to K Why Should I Care? I
Speaker 4: don't even on a computer. But I think what we
Speaker 4: really started looking for most specifically in the footage were
Speaker 4: moments that could clearly tether us from present to past.
Speaker 4: Because we didn't include interviews with individuals in the present day.
Speaker 4: We were looking for kind of moments of emotion or
Speaker 4: introspection or relevance between them and now. But of course,
Speaker 4: you know, when Matt Damon is recorded speaking about the
Speaker 4: nuclear arsenal and his fear of the nuclear arsenal, potentially
Speaker 4: shutting down. You kind of have to also include things
Speaker 4: like that in your movie.
Speaker 1: A very young Matt Damon promoting at the time the
Speaker 1: talented mister Ripley. I should note, Hey, Brian, did you
Speaker 1: hear Have you heard from any of these folks who
Speaker 1: were featured.
Speaker 3: In this Yes?
Speaker 4: Thanks for asking that we actually have relationships with all
Speaker 4: of the individuals who we built scenes around in this film.
Speaker 4: It didn't feel fair for us to include their historic
Speaker 4: likenesses in our feature without talking to them first to
Speaker 4: gauge what y TK meant to them. So, for example,
Speaker 4: Peter Diager, who is one of the first individuals who
Speaker 4: kind of brought y t K to the public's attention,
Speaker 4: I spent two days in his basement with him outside
Speaker 4: of Toronto. He just published a new book focused on
Speaker 4: computer management, and we just appeared on Peter's podcast about why,
Speaker 4: which I can plug here. Candace Turner, who in the
Speaker 4: film calls herself farmer Jane. I emailed with Candace this
Speaker 4: morning and I went to her farm in Sarcoxi, Missouri.
Speaker 4: She moved there and she lived there in events in
Speaker 4: the lead up to YTK, and she still lives on
Speaker 4: that very same farm. I went to her mud room
Speaker 4: and came back to New York with some VHS tapes
Speaker 4: of hers toscin ins in d C. So we do
Speaker 4: have relationships with these people.
Speaker 1: I want to get back to Brian Becker and Marley McDonald.
Speaker 1: They are the documentary filmmakers and producers behind the new
Speaker 1: HBO documentary Time Bomb y two K. They join us
Speaker 1: on Zoom from New York.
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting, Brian and Marley that it's been
Speaker 2: a week where Tim and I have been talking a
Speaker 2: lot about the risks in twenty twenty four. We certainly
Speaker 2: did at the end of last year and into the
Speaker 2: new year, but this week, you know, some of the
Speaker 2: concerns were big time. The November elections and basically the
Speaker 2: US against itself geopolitics certainly came up, and it made
Speaker 2: Tim and I think about how your documentary kind of
Speaker 2: ends up. We're essentially just before midnight in the US
Speaker 2: December thirty first, nineteen ninety nine. You have Boris Yeltsin, right,
Speaker 2: conceding power to Vladimir Putin, who would take over to
Speaker 2: lead what was then what the Soviet Union, right.
Speaker 1: It was just Russia. Yeah, and there's this ominous sort
Speaker 1: of moment from the newscaster that says, you know, Putin
Speaker 1: wants this to be a strong Russia, but has no
Speaker 1: ambitions beyond like for expansion and to get bigger.
Speaker 2: Here we are twenty four years later, and we know
Speaker 2: that that's very different. But I do wonder how you
Speaker 2: guys are thinking about having gone through this process, about
Speaker 2: some of the risks and the concerns that are out
Speaker 2: there today, and coming off a global pandemic that really
Speaker 2: made us all realize whoa our life can change dramatically,
Speaker 2: and our life vibes are at risk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's an interesting thing. So our movie
Speaker 3: actually premiered at a festival last March, and during the
Speaker 3: Q and a's at that time, a lot of the
Speaker 3: questions were relating our film to COVID. Then sometime over
Speaker 3: the summer, the question started to become about the threat
Speaker 3: of AI. And so it's interesting to kind of see
Speaker 3: how this movie moves through the world as it continues,
Speaker 3: you know, going through different existential threats. And that's I
Speaker 3: think what we wanted to do with this film is
Speaker 3: really examined the ways in which America faces existential threats
Speaker 3: and kind of the focus on how interconnected and dependent
Speaker 3: we are on each other and really highlighting that aspect
Speaker 3: of getting through things like Y two K or COVID.
Speaker 1: Every time I think that we collectively go through an
Speaker 1: experience that will somehow bring us closer together as citizens,
Speaker 1: I turn out to be wrong. I felt this way
Speaker 1: to in COVID. That's sort of like everybody was in
Speaker 1: this together and it would be in this uniting force.
Speaker 1: And I look at the landscape right now, Brian, and
Speaker 1: I think that we've never been more divided ever than
Speaker 1: we have been right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I feel the same too, Tim. Why
Speaker 4: two K almost feels like this dry run in which
Speaker 4: we actually did succeed in solving a problem and then,
Speaker 4: of course, in very American fashion, quickly dismissed it as
Speaker 4: a joke or as a hoax after we went through it.
Speaker 4: It almost feels as if we worked on it so
Speaker 4: well and solved it to an extent that we would
Speaker 4: have learned more if more things went wrong after the
Speaker 4: clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve nineteen ninety nine. Instead,
Speaker 4: we kind of missed this opportunity to think so much
Speaker 4: about how our lives had come to depend upon technology
Speaker 4: and also on each other tune.
Speaker 2: You know, it's kind of interesting on a day where
Speaker 2: safe to say, we all got fooled about the approval
Speaker 2: by the SEC of a spot bigcoin etf where a
Speaker 2: headline crossed on Twitter from the official SEC account, and
Speaker 2: then ten minutes later the chair of the SEC comes
Speaker 2: out and said, Nope, that's not correct. They have not
Speaker 2: received approval and that the SEC Twitter account was compromised.
Speaker 2: You just realize how quickly and how vulnerable we are
Speaker 2: and reliant on technology, and how things can be misconstrued
Speaker 2: got wrong, and you just, I don't know, when you
Speaker 2: start to extrapolate that, you just wonder kind of tim
Speaker 2: where we could go with this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also, you know, it was so interesting to
Speaker 1: see that the way technology is shifted, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's been a quarter century roughly since since this time period,
Speaker 1: but the technology shifts that we've seen have been absolutely massive.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Reliance, Yeah, reliance is and it's and there's this picture
Speaker 1: there was a picture painted Barley in the nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: about the optimism about technology. And I'm wondering if you
Speaker 1: think that the optimism that these folks in the nineties
Speaker 1: talked about and alluded to about school children being able
Speaker 1: to access information at any time, has actually manifested in
Speaker 1: something that looks optimistic or looks you know, scary. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's talk about parents being concerned about TikTok, mental
Speaker 1: health and social media, government controlled this stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: what are your thoughts there?
Speaker 3: Certainly, I'm very concerned with the state of our relationship
Speaker 3: to technology, and I think that was something that we
Speaker 3: really wanted to sort of capture that techno optimism of
Speaker 3: the nineties in our film. You know, this was the
Speaker 3: first time that people were really welcoming computers into their lives.
Speaker 3: You know, it was at their office or in their
Speaker 3: home for the first time. But I think what YGK
Speaker 3: revealed is just how dependent we actually already were on
Speaker 3: computer systems that we weren't seeing, you know, to get
Speaker 3: on the train or how we get the news in
Speaker 3: the morning. Like everything had our already been kind of
Speaker 3: operated by these giant systems, but we hadn't come face
Speaker 3: to face with that. So I think y g Q
Speaker 3: was an interesting moment for kind of deconstructing our reliance
Speaker 3: on technology. But yeah, as far as where we've come today,
Speaker 3: you know, we've only gone deeper in that hole, Mike.
Speaker 3: Brian says, it could have been a moment where we
Speaker 3: had pivoted and maybe taken a different route. But because
Speaker 3: we did get in front of the problem and solve it,
Speaker 3: we've just gone further and further down this road. And
Speaker 3: if something like this were to happen today, you know
Speaker 3: the same questions would arise.
Speaker 1: Hey, we only have about thirty seconds left, Brian, but
Speaker 1: I want to give you the last word. What's the
Speaker 1: next thing you guys are working on.
Speaker 4: I'm working on a film about the rise and fall
Speaker 4: of the American enclosed shopping mall, and Marle opensity to describe.
Speaker 3: What you're working out I'm working on. I'm developing a
Speaker 3: film based on the archives at the Museum of Natural
Speaker 3: History and the origins of natural history museums. Very cool.
Speaker 1: Big thank you to both of you for joining us.
Speaker 1: Everybody check out the new film. It's on HBO. It
Speaker 1: is all about y two K. It's called time Bomb
Speaker 1: y two K. A big thank you to our guests
Speaker 1: Brian Becker and Marley McDonald, the documentary filmmakers and producers
Speaker 1: behind Time Bomb.