Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and this is stuff you should know. Just us today.
Speaker 2: Jerry's on vacation and that's cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think Jerry's in the Disney World.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it went right after me. She's in the in
Speaker 1: the d I said, hey, Jerry in the south bathroom
Speaker 1: of Frontierland, above the toilet I've left. I've taped a gun.
Speaker 1: Go shoot Mo Green. Go shoot Mo Green in the
Speaker 1: restaurant booth.
Speaker 2: Wow. No, Mo Green got it in the on the
Speaker 2: massage table.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right.
Speaker 2: Oh, police commissioner or the police chief. He was. He
Speaker 2: was tangential to the hit with the bathroom. I don't
Speaker 2: remember who was trying to hit.
Speaker 1: That's right. I goofed that up. Hey. Shout out to uh.
Speaker 2: Wait, no, we're not done sorting this out.
Speaker 1: Okay, go ahead, name all the hits in the Godfather.
Speaker 1: Shout out to our pal and friend of the show,
Speaker 1: Kevin Pollack, because that made me think of the great,
Speaker 1: great show that is one of my favorite shows called
Speaker 1: Better Things from the wonderful talented Pamela Adlin. They are
Speaker 1: entering their final season, and I watched the first episode
Speaker 1: the other night and Pollock, who plays her brother on
Speaker 1: the show, had a great line that I knew was
Speaker 1: improved where he was getting in his car and I
Speaker 1: can't remember what they were talking about, and he said
Speaker 1: right in the eye like Moe Green. And I texted
Speaker 1: him immediately and I was like, right in the eye
Speaker 1: like Mo Green. I was like, that was yours and
Speaker 1: he went, oh yeah, he said that was improv nice.
Speaker 1: It was very fun. It's always fun to be able
Speaker 1: to watch a TV show and text your pal that's
Speaker 1: on that TV.
Speaker 2: Show, right, Yeah, he's got the best parts. He just
Speaker 2: pops up in all the best stuff, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's in masl he's I think. And I've talked
Speaker 1: to Pollock about this and he's like, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: I think he could star in a really great indie film.
Speaker 1: I just think he's a really great actor and he's
Speaker 1: great at comedy. But I think he's, on top of that,
Speaker 1: just a really really great actor.
Speaker 2: Didn't he star in that Project green Light film? I
Speaker 2: don't know, did he which I'm pretty I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 2: I think the first season.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, I don't remember those movies. I know that
Speaker 1: Shila boff that was where he got his start, Is
Speaker 1: that right? Was he in one of those the Battle
Speaker 1: of Shaker Heights or something?
Speaker 2: I think that might have been the one that Pollock was.
Speaker 1: Was he in that? I don't think of that movie,
Speaker 1: but I mean a really good movie. And I'm not
Speaker 1: sure the Project green Light It was a cool show though,
Speaker 1: I dug it. Yeah, yeah, and brought that back in
Speaker 1: the iPhone filmmaking age.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a little surprising who would be who would
Speaker 2: bring it back? Though?
Speaker 1: Now Ben and Mack could bring him back. I mean
Speaker 1: they that's who did it the first time, right.
Speaker 2: Sure, But I mean are they still relevant? Aren't there too?
Speaker 2: Like younger version of math better?
Speaker 1: I don't know who the new Ben and Matt are.
Speaker 2: How about Whiz Khalifah.
Speaker 1: And Charlomagne the God?
Speaker 2: Sure there you go?
Speaker 1: All right? Great? Anyway, Keppa Bok's a great actor and
Speaker 1: a good dude.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agreed, And probably somebody I would guess who's
Speaker 2: seen the movie that we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 2: I would be really surprised if he hasn't seen it,
Speaker 2: just because I feel like, if you are into movies,
Speaker 2: if you're a movie maker. If you are if you
Speaker 2: consider yourself a cinemaphile, if you want to get punched
Speaker 2: in the stomach, you've probably seen Titty Cut Follies, right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean this is one that I saw in film class
Speaker 1: in college. It is one that you there's about a
Speaker 1: fifty to fifty chance that you will see this if
Speaker 1: you've seen it in film class in a college. People
Speaker 1: like Casey, our colleague, Casey Pegram, no doubt, is a
Speaker 1: Frederick Weisman fan. I'm surely if I texted him, he'd
Speaker 1: be like, oh, sure Weisman. Yeah, although I found Tittercut
Speaker 1: Follies was not one of his great at work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds like Casey.
Speaker 1: God bless Casey, all time greatest movie crush guest. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Fred Weisman made this film. He was a law professor
Speaker 1: in his thirties in the sixties and made this documentary
Speaker 1: film about a mental institution, specifically one for the criminally insane,
Speaker 1: that's what they called it. Yeah, and it was a
Speaker 1: very you know, it was a movie that gained a
Speaker 1: lot of reputation as like the most disturbing film you've
Speaker 1: ever seen, and it's been banned in this many places.
Speaker 1: And that kind of thing. But when you kind of
Speaker 1: peel it back, it's just a very straight up, sort
Speaker 1: of cinema verite documentary about a institution that needed to
Speaker 1: get their act together right.
Speaker 2: And that was kind of Wiseman's told jam. Like, he's
Speaker 2: made forty eight films. I think he just turned ninety
Speaker 2: two a couple months ago, amazing, and starting in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty six he made about a film a year. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and he has his own style, like you said, cinema
Speaker 2: verite you, which I feel like we should probably kind
Speaker 2: of just go ahead and explain, don't you sure, Yeah,
Speaker 2: go ahead, go ahead, film guy.
Speaker 1: Well, cinema verite. I mean, what's the direct translation, direct cinema. Yeah,
Speaker 1: direct cinema. And it's the idea that you kind of
Speaker 1: set a camera up and let it let life happen
Speaker 1: in front of it for whatever your subject is. Don't
Speaker 1: you don't do interviews, you don't do talking head shots,
Speaker 1: you don't. It's really just one good example is that
Speaker 1: documentary in the of course now I can't think of
Speaker 1: it in the seventies about the American family that ran
Speaker 1: on PBS that was so groundbreaking, where they just set
Speaker 1: up a camera and followed this family. And if you're
Speaker 1: thinking it sounds a lot like reality TV, I think,
Speaker 1: and it's purest form reality TV can be this, but
Speaker 1: it really turned into something else entirely.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's just so deeply manipulated by producers behind
Speaker 2: the scenes who tell them to do this or that
Speaker 2: or whatever. Yeah, cinema verites would would not would not
Speaker 2: want to do that. They they just shoot and hope
Speaker 2: hope also that people act like themselves. It's another thing
Speaker 2: and one thing Frederick Wiseman, the guy who made Titty
Speaker 2: Cut Follies, said like he believed that people basically acted
Speaker 2: like themselves when the camera was around, because people are
Speaker 2: in general lousy actors. Yeah, and they're behaving like you
Speaker 2: would expect them to behave. So they're probably acting like
Speaker 2: they would without the cameras, but especially in a cinema
Speaker 2: verite kind of setup, because it's it's intrusive. There's a
Speaker 2: camera there, but it's not nearly as intrusive as like
Speaker 2: a camera on like some rig that's flying around, Like
Speaker 2: there's lighting people and daffers and a craft services table
Speaker 2: that's calling your name, but it's just much less intrusive
Speaker 2: than that it's minimally intrusive as far as filmmaking goes,
Speaker 2: and that's the point of it, because they want to
Speaker 2: document reality without leading the viewer as much as possible.
Speaker 1: From what I understand, Yeah, that's exactly it. And I
Speaker 1: love cinema verite documentaries especially, and I also like sort
Speaker 1: of quasi cinema verite where there's a lot of like
Speaker 1: I don't mind interviews being put in there, as long
Speaker 1: as there's a lot of just sort of watching life happen.
Speaker 1: It's really amazingly engrossing. There were these two filmmakers that
Speaker 1: I think inspired Weissman, Richard Leecock and Robert Drew, who
Speaker 1: in the early I think in the fifties and early
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties were kind of dabbling in cinema verite documentaries.
Speaker 1: And they made one in particular called Mooney Versus Fowl,
Speaker 1: which is about a high school football championship and Mooney
Speaker 1: and Fowl are the two coaches. And I watched the
Speaker 1: trailer for that today. I guess I'm guessing it's his
Speaker 1: daughter that put this up on VIM along with some
Speaker 1: other like interviews with her dad, Drew's daughter that it's
Speaker 1: really engrossing, just to watch, and especially because all you
Speaker 1: see if you're a modern person in twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: and you're like, what was life like in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: you don't get that from I love Lucy and Dick
Speaker 1: Van Dyke, Like, those are great shows, but to be
Speaker 1: able to just sit in and take a peek at
Speaker 1: these high school football coaches and these people the community
Speaker 1: and the stands and these players, like, it's just so
Speaker 1: engrossing to me. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I
Speaker 1: really like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally, But yeah, I feel like, even if
Speaker 2: it isn't your cup of tea, you would, like you said,
Speaker 2: be engrossed by it. I don't think there's any way
Speaker 2: to just be like no, I don't know. Some people
Speaker 2: probably find it dull. I'm sure there are, but it's
Speaker 2: just it is engrossing. I don't think there's any other
Speaker 2: way to universally describe it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Drew, I sent you that one little interview
Speaker 1: snip and I don't know if you saw it, but he
Speaker 1: sort of was talking about being a new form of journalism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where he talked about you know, it's like a you know,
Speaker 1: they're like, well, what is this though? And he's like, well,
Speaker 1: it's like a play without a playwriter, a movie without actors,
Speaker 1: or journalism without opinions. And I was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's interesting to say in the nineteen.
Speaker 2: Fifties, yeah, all the way back then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's they saw it as leelock, and I
Speaker 1: think Drew saw it more as a form of journalism.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that's what documentaries used to be,
Speaker 1: and that's changed a lot, sometimes for the better. It
Speaker 1: can be all things, I guess, but it seems like
Speaker 1: documentaries used to be way more journalism and less at
Speaker 1: big time entertainment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you think about How do you feel
Speaker 2: about recreations and documentaries.
Speaker 1: I think it can be cool if you have a good,
Speaker 1: like a new spin on it, kind of like when
Speaker 1: the Kid Stays in the picture came out the documentary
Speaker 1: about the producer what's his face Robert Evans, Yeah, Robert Godfather,
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. They did those recreations through animation and this
Speaker 1: really cool style of animation that like was really engaging
Speaker 1: and awesome, and like, recrease can be really cool if
Speaker 1: you do it right, I think, yeah, or really bad
Speaker 1: if it's like some dumb cop show on TV.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, like, but those are kind of fun too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you mean like the one Headline News shows it one
Speaker 2: hundred episodes today. Forensic files.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it, but if it's the recrease, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of where it's like, you know, they recreated murder
Speaker 1: on like you got five hundred dollars to shoot this.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly right. Yeah, you're thinking of forensic files.
Speaker 2: But still, if you watch enough of it, it'll really
Speaker 2: like your whole life will turn dark. Yeah, i'd be
Speaker 2: careful with court files everybody.
Speaker 1: So should we go back and talk about Bridgewater State Hospital?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because this is the place where Frederick Wiseman showed
Speaker 2: up with his camera with permission, as we'll see. And
Speaker 2: by the time he got there in nineteen I think
Speaker 2: he shot in nineteen sixty five, maybe nineteen sixty six, yes, okay,
Speaker 2: when he got there, it had been around for over
Speaker 2: one hundred years. It didn't start out as a state hospital.
Speaker 2: It started out as a poor house, an almshouse, I think,
Speaker 2: all the way back in eighteen fifty four.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's interesting when you read these it's disturbing.
Speaker 1: But when you read these old timey classifications in medicine,
Speaker 1: or especially in mental health, where someone be you know,
Speaker 1: the description of someone that might be put there might
Speaker 1: just be bad. Like that's one of the descriptions, right.
Speaker 2: Like that'd be on par with like labeling them alcoholic
Speaker 2: or schizophrenia or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, if you were if you had
Speaker 1: an alcohol problem, or you had legitimate you know, mental
Speaker 1: health issues, or if you were pregnant maybe or blind,
Speaker 1: or you had syphilis, you might have been put in
Speaker 1: this poorhouse in eighteen fifty four.
Speaker 2: Right, so in Massachusett by the way, Yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: know if we said that or not. So that's how
Speaker 2: it started out. And then over time they started adding
Speaker 2: criminals and focused more on criminals and the mentally ill,
Speaker 2: and then by the time eighteen ninety five rolled around,
Speaker 2: it became the State Asylum for Insane Criminals at the
Speaker 2: State Workhouse at Bridgewater, and then eventually it became known
Speaker 2: as Bridgewater State Hospital, I think by nineteen oh nine.
Speaker 2: And then very crucially here it was handed over from
Speaker 2: the State Board of Charity, because remember it started out
Speaker 2: as a poorhouse, over to the Massachusetts Bureau of Prison.
Speaker 2: So for all intents and purposes, at least bureaucratically speaking,
Speaker 2: is a place where the criminally insane, how they were
Speaker 2: termed in the twentieth century is are held.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there were some bad criminals in there. I
Speaker 1: mean there were murderers, There were people who were convicted
Speaker 1: of can of rape of children or just generally of rape.
Speaker 1: So there were some bad dudes in there for sure.
Speaker 1: But then there were also and this was sort of
Speaker 1: one of the saddest things about sort of that time
Speaker 1: in this country. Those people were right alongside other people
Speaker 1: who either committed a very minor crime or maybe didn't
Speaker 1: commit a crime at all, and they were just quote
Speaker 1: unquote being held there temporarily, but that could stretch on
Speaker 1: into years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's still something today called civil commitment, and it's
Speaker 2: basically that you were being held not because of a
Speaker 2: crime or because of a minor crime, and you maybe
Speaker 2: you've even served your sentence, but you're being held because
Speaker 2: you had been deemed mentally unfit to return to society,
Speaker 2: even though maybe you didn't even start out like in
Speaker 2: a mental hospital, maybe you started out in jail and
Speaker 2: then you were just a trouble maker. They considered you
Speaker 2: a troublemaker in jail. And you got sent to the hospital.
Speaker 2: At that point, your sentence was just it just went away.
Speaker 2: It was you were there until a doctor decided you
Speaker 2: should be let out. And the problem was getting the
Speaker 2: attention of a doctor long enough to say, oh, actually
Speaker 2: you're fine, to let you out was really difficult to do.
Speaker 2: And so it was a really desperate place, especially for
Speaker 2: people who didn't feel like they should be there, belong there,
Speaker 2: because after a while it seemed to exert its influence
Speaker 2: on your mind and your outlook, and it would bend
Speaker 2: you to reflect it so that you kind of needed
Speaker 2: to be there after a while, even if you didn't
Speaker 2: start out that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, anyone who's ever seen one floor of
Speaker 1: the Cuckoo's Nests is kind of exactly that happens in
Speaker 1: the plot. Like people got worse at these places, right,
Speaker 1: And you mentioned the medical actual medical attention. President of
Speaker 1: the Massachusetts Bar Association at the time, Paul Tamborello, and
Speaker 1: big thanks to Livia for digging us up and putting
Speaker 1: us together for us. He told the Harvard Crimson back
Speaker 1: then that of the six hundred and fifty men held
Speaker 1: at the hospital at the time, actual medical staff were
Speaker 1: able to see less than half of them one time
Speaker 1: a year for about twenty minutes. So other than that,
Speaker 1: you're like, well, then who was it. If it wasn't
Speaker 1: medical staff, it was like prison guards basically, yes.
Speaker 2: And even then when you did get that twenty minutes,
Speaker 2: you were confronted by a person or group of people
Speaker 2: who were going on the premise that everything you said
Speaker 2: came out of your mouth was looney right and not
Speaker 2: based in reality or fact. No matter how well you
Speaker 2: put your case or stated your case or complained, like
Speaker 2: any show of emotion would just prove to them that
Speaker 2: you were meant to be in there for another year
Speaker 2: until they could hopefully see you again and reevaluate you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was this one example Olivia found of jeez,
Speaker 1: it's hard to believe. Matteo Kalicochi was arrested in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven, at my daughter's age almost years old, for
Speaker 1: stealing seven bucks from a grocery store, which is pretty
Speaker 1: good take in nineteen twenty seven, by the way, and
Speaker 1: he was found incompetent to stand trial and then sent
Speaker 1: to kind of sent all around over the years to
Speaker 1: different institutions. After he tried to escape in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: five was eventually landed at Bridgewater, and this is another
Speaker 1: one of those archaic terms. Was charged with bad habits
Speaker 1: and resisting authority. And this seven year old eventually ended
Speaker 1: up here later in life, but stayed there for twenty
Speaker 1: eight years and released in nineteen sixty three. So that's
Speaker 1: just one example of how like sort of a small
Speaker 1: petty crime, but if you maybe have an attitude or
Speaker 1: your troublemaker as a kid, and you bounce around from
Speaker 1: place to place, you just might wind up here with
Speaker 1: no one advocating for you. This all made me think
Speaker 1: of like what families were doing. But I guess at
Speaker 1: the time some families were kind of like maybe convinced
Speaker 1: themselves there were or off there, or they didn't want
Speaker 1: to deal with the trouble, or there were no family
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or their family was poor and had no influence
Speaker 2: over anybody, so they couldn't do anything about it.
Speaker 1: Very sad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I say, we take a break and we'll come
Speaker 2: back with Wiseman and his tenure while he was at Bridgewater.
Speaker 2: So Frederick Wiseman had an interesting origin story as a filmmaker.
Speaker 2: He was he went to law school at Yale supposedly
Speaker 2: to get out of the Korean War draft, but then
Speaker 2: when he graduated, he still ended up getting drafted anyway,
Speaker 2: and he was in there for almost two.
Speaker 1: Years kind of after the war.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, but I still I'll bet he was
Speaker 2: not happy about being drafted either way. Sure, so he
Speaker 2: he went he, I guess went to Korea for a
Speaker 2: couple of years, and then after the army he and
Speaker 2: his wife what is her.
Speaker 1: Name, Zippora Batshaw A great name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was a law professor as well. They went
Speaker 2: to Paris, lived for a couple of years and then
Speaker 2: decided they need to move back, so they moved back
Speaker 2: to like the Boston area. But while there, Frederick Wiseman
Speaker 2: got into filmmaking. He started just shooting stuff with a
Speaker 2: little eight millimeter camera about the time that cinema verite
Speaker 2: was being developed in France.
Speaker 1: That's right. So, like you said, he came back from France,
Speaker 1: started teaching law at BU and sort of had that
Speaker 1: filmmaking bug still. So he bought the rights to a book,
Speaker 1: a novel called The Cool World about poverty and Harlem,
Speaker 1: and he hired a woman named Shirley Clark Clark sorry
Speaker 1: to direct it and It was a very small I
Speaker 1: don't think it was much of a big film at all,
Speaker 1: but it was a very small sort of indie film
Speaker 1: at the time, which is to say it was probably
Speaker 1: not seen much. But Wiseman was like, hey, like, if
Speaker 1: Shirley Clark can do this thing, I can do this thing.
Speaker 1: And I don't like law school. I don't like teaching law.
Speaker 1: And one of the things he did because he didn't
Speaker 1: love teaching law was take his class on a lot
Speaker 1: of field trips, I guess, just to mix things up.
Speaker 1: And they used to go to Bridgewater, and after a
Speaker 1: few visits he was like, wait a minute, I think
Speaker 1: everything kind of came together. His love of filmmaking, his
Speaker 1: cinema verite kind of becoming popular, and his interest in that,
Speaker 1: and then his interest disinterested in law and interest in Bridgewater.
Speaker 1: So he had this idea to make this film there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, as we'll see later, this is kind of crucial.
Speaker 2: He got permission to show up. He's said many times
Speaker 2: in later interviews, Bridgewater is no the kind of place
Speaker 2: she just kind of parachute in at night, do all
Speaker 2: your filming and then creep away at dawn with all
Speaker 2: of your footage, Like he had to get extensive permission.
Speaker 1: From sounds like he's done that before though, which is.
Speaker 2: Kind of cool. Yeah, we've done that before too in
Speaker 2: grocery stores. Remember, Oh, that's right. So he got permission
Speaker 2: from the Lieutenant governor, he got permission from the Department
Speaker 2: of Corrections head, he got permission of the superintendent of Bridgewater.
Speaker 2: They all knew he was there, and they would have
Speaker 2: figured out eventually anyway, because he spent twenty nine days
Speaker 2: filming in Bridgewater, and he would just do his cinema
Speaker 2: verita style where he would just walk around and just
Speaker 2: film stuff, film whatever. He could, just film film film.
Speaker 2: And I saw something where he said that for his
Speaker 2: documentaries he films anything from like seventy five hours at
Speaker 2: a minimum chuck now, to two hundred and fifty hours,
Speaker 2: and then he goes through it all and edits all
Speaker 2: the stuff he likes, and then after like month eight
Speaker 2: of editing, he'll start piecing it together into like an
Speaker 2: arc A story arc.
Speaker 1: Wow, which boiled down in this case to eighty three
Speaker 1: minutes of a movie. Yeah, And the name Tittcut Follies
Speaker 1: comes from I think Titticut was a Native American name.
Speaker 1: I would guess somewhere in the region.
Speaker 2: I didn't really pin pink for the Bridgewater area, that's
Speaker 2: what they called it.
Speaker 1: Okay, And the follies were that, you know. The film
Speaker 1: opens up with a musical performance by the I guess
Speaker 1: there were inmates with a song strike up the band
Speaker 1: where all they're all dressed the same and you can
Speaker 1: see you can see quite a few clips on YouTube.
Speaker 1: But as Livia points out, like Wiseman has always been
Speaker 1: really guarded with how his films are exhibited, and so
Speaker 1: I don't think you can just like go YouTube this
Speaker 1: thing up and watch the whole thing still, even.
Speaker 2: I did last night.
Speaker 1: Oh on YouTube?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay? And not on YouTube, nos on vimeo.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, all right? I wonder if that's like some
Speaker 1: sort of pirated upload.
Speaker 2: It was. It's it was a VHS copied put online,
Speaker 2: so I'm thinking, yeah, it was pirated.
Speaker 1: Did you watch it all?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 2: I watched I'd never seen it before. I was familiar
Speaker 2: with it the title. I had not a lot of
Speaker 2: idea of what it was about, but yeah, it was
Speaker 2: what do you think certainly striking? It was really something
Speaker 2: like I had ups and downs and highs and lows.
Speaker 2: And I think I it was everything Wiseman wanted me
Speaker 2: to feel about it. It was pretty great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it is great. It's even the eighty
Speaker 1: three minutes. It's tough to sit through the whole thing
Speaker 1: because I think by its nature, cinema verite can be taxing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even while engrossing, it can be pretty taxing. That's the
Speaker 1: best way to put it. But it's also obviously in
Speaker 1: this case, it's not about high school football championship. It's
Speaker 1: it's literally watching these people. I mean, I guess we
Speaker 1: should just talk about some of the scenes maybe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And a lot of the people are going to
Speaker 2: go back and be like, justa this was great. Bear
Speaker 2: with us everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, hey, you're a cinophile, right, punch me
Speaker 1: in the face.
Speaker 2: No, the stomach, he says, way too hostile stomachs. A
Speaker 2: little bit of friendliness left in it, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, like Kudini style, Right, that'll do. Uh well.
Speaker 1: One of the scenes that Livia picked out that certainly
Speaker 1: stands out in my mind too, and I think you
Speaker 1: can actually find parts of this one on YouTube is
Speaker 1: a guard. I guess was he dry shaving him? It
Speaker 1: looked like dry shaving or was it a wet shave.
Speaker 2: No, they put like shaving cream on him and everything.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, And everybody seems to characterize it as like
Speaker 2: really rough, like forceful, kind of almost like he's being
Speaker 2: tortured with the shave.
Speaker 1: It was fast, It was fast, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I didn't. It didn't look like it hurt the patient,
Speaker 2: so it didn't. And it didn't seem like the guy
Speaker 2: was trying to torture him. It just seemed like he
Speaker 2: was being very quick and efficient. And he does like
Speaker 2: cut him at the edge of one of his mouth,
Speaker 2: one of the edges of a corner of his mouth. Sorry. Right,
Speaker 2: so he's eat a little bit, but he doesn't seem
Speaker 2: like he doesn't seem in distress at all while he's
Speaker 2: shaving him. At the very least, he's not in distress
Speaker 2: because of the shaving, right. But then what happened, Well,
Speaker 2: there are these at least two guards, right, and this inmate,
Speaker 2: by the way, his name Jim. He's probably the most
Speaker 2: famous character in the in the movie. Yeah, or patient,
Speaker 2: I should say, he's not a character he has he's
Speaker 2: very it's easy to get a rise out of Jim,
Speaker 2: as hard as Jim tries to not let you get
Speaker 2: a rise out of him. If you press his buttons,
Speaker 2: he's gonna like, yeah, he's gonna get mad. He's going
Speaker 2: to try to contain himself. And there were a couple
Speaker 2: of guards that were guarding Jim while he was being
Speaker 2: like like washed and shaved and all that stuff, who
Speaker 2: just spent the entire scene trying to get a rise
Speaker 2: out of him by saying like, why is your room
Speaker 2: so dirty, Jim? Or is your room going to be
Speaker 2: clean tomorrow? Jim, You've got to keep your room clean Jim,
Speaker 2: just ceaselessly and incessantly, and we see eventually when they
Speaker 2: take him back to his room, it's totally empty. There's
Speaker 2: a window, there's nothing in the room. Yeah, and in fact,
Speaker 2: Jim is kept naked in his room, so there's no
Speaker 2: way for Jim for Jim's room to be dirty, and
Speaker 2: also for no way for Jim to keep his room clean.
Speaker 2: These guards, you realize, we're just trying to get a
Speaker 2: rise out of Jim, and they do over and over again,
Speaker 2: and it's really hard and sad to watch Jim like
Speaker 2: like just get up, saying he's trying so hard to
Speaker 2: just not let these guys get to him. Because he
Speaker 2: knows what they're doing. He's fully aware of what they're doing,
Speaker 2: and he just can't help himself. Probably like five different
Speaker 2: times he reacts and then tries to regain his composure again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost as if they're trying to drive him mad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're also doing I saw somebody describe it
Speaker 2: as they're they're goading him with the kind of like
Speaker 2: bored desensitization or desensitivity of somebody who does this like
Speaker 2: every day and know exactly what he's gonna do, and
Speaker 2: there's no fun in it anymore. But they just kind
Speaker 2: of do it to amuse themselves as much as they
Speaker 2: can from it, which is even worse, you know, because
Speaker 2: they're torturing this poor guy mentally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we should point out too that you know,
Speaker 1: Wiseman showed scenes like this, but it wasn't it wasn't
Speaker 1: like a indictment on the people who work there, because
Speaker 1: he did also show some parts where there was some caretaken.
Speaker 1: I mean, what was your like, I haven't seen the
Speaker 1: whole thing since college, so what was your net net
Speaker 1: on that?
Speaker 2: So? I think the thing that I got from it
Speaker 2: was that Wiseman treats everybody as human and equal in
Speaker 2: that he's not expressing like empathy necessarily, he's not trying
Speaker 2: to even get you do to empathize or sympathize. He's
Speaker 2: not trying to get you to form an opinion. He's
Speaker 2: just showing you what he found right. And if he
Speaker 2: is trying to get you to form an opinion, it's
Speaker 2: so obtuse that it's tough to put your finger on.
Speaker 2: In retrospect, maybe maybe you respond exactly the way he
Speaker 2: wanted you to, but he's not very rarely does he
Speaker 2: like hammer you with it. So yeah, I feel like
Speaker 2: he just treats everybody the same. Like there's a guy,
Speaker 2: there's a patient who talks about all of the children
Speaker 2: he's raped, and he knows that it's bad. He knows
Speaker 2: that it's like that, like what he's doing is wrong
Speaker 2: and he can't help himself. But there's like Wiseman makes
Speaker 2: no effort to make this man seem despicable or evil
Speaker 2: or anything like that. He might as well be talking
Speaker 2: about like a car he's thinking about buying. Yeah, for
Speaker 2: how Wiseman portrays it, And so like, if he's treating
Speaker 2: that guy equal, he's definitely treating like the guards and
Speaker 2: the clinical staff and everybody equally. But I think more
Speaker 2: than that, he just turns the camera on and lets
Speaker 2: them behave as they're going to behave. He lets them
Speaker 2: present themselves to you, rather than him trying to manipulate
Speaker 2: it so that you see what Wiseman I want you
Speaker 2: to see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's the purest form of cinema verite,
Speaker 1: which you know, it's interesting how conditioned we are to
Speaker 1: even hearing an ominous musical score during a scene where
Speaker 1: a guy might talk about crimes like that, and when
Speaker 1: all that's stripped away, like it can be like more
Speaker 1: unsettling I think than hearing that creepy score totally. It
Speaker 1: reminds me then this is certainly not the same thing.
Speaker 1: But we went to a Cleveland Indians baseball game one
Speaker 1: time when Emily's family still lived in Ohio, and it
Speaker 1: was this throwback game where they didn't do any modern
Speaker 1: things at all, and you don't really think about that.
Speaker 1: You're like, when was a baseball game? What do they do? Like?
Speaker 1: All they had was the organ player and the announcer going,
Speaker 1: you know, all off the bat number five, so and
Speaker 1: so so and so awesome, man done that you didn't
Speaker 1: play a song when they came up that the batter
Speaker 1: picked out. They didn't have the home depot hammer and
Speaker 1: nail and shovel chase each other around the field between
Speaker 1: innings and a race. They didn't. You know, there's you
Speaker 1: don't realize when you go to a pro sports game
Speaker 1: of all the extra boy, especially in an NBA game, sure,
Speaker 1: all the extra stuff that's there until it's gone. And
Speaker 1: it was really really weird. I liked it. Our family
Speaker 1: was like, I'm bored, and I was like, I think
Speaker 1: this is kind of cool.
Speaker 2: Did they have jacks at least?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, I mean they sold this stuff and it
Speaker 1: wasn't throwback prices, of course, but it was. It's weird
Speaker 1: when you're so conditioned though, kind of like with film,
Speaker 1: just to background noise and just sort of the things
Speaker 1: that we hear in movies, lighting or a camera move
Speaker 1: or you know, cinema verite is all about sort of
Speaker 1: just locking that camera down or handholding it. Sometimes when
Speaker 1: all that artifice is gone, it can have a reverse
Speaker 1: effect that all the artifice has like you're using it for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think in addition to what is added
Speaker 2: to kind of manipulate you emotionally or unconsciously. There's also
Speaker 2: a lot that's removed, a lot of reality that's removed,
Speaker 2: like the background noise. If they put background noise in,
Speaker 2: it's folly artists, it's not the actual background noise that
Speaker 2: was there when they were filming. Yeah, that's not what
Speaker 2: Wiseman does. This film is replete with disturbing background noise,
Speaker 2: like televisions that are on that you can't see, other
Speaker 2: people's conversations that you can't make out what they're saying.
Speaker 2: The lighting he uses is only the lighting at Bridgewater.
Speaker 2: He doesn't use any of his own light. It's all
Speaker 2: whatever it's called available light. And Yeah, when you just
Speaker 2: kind of watch it, you're like, this is just like
Speaker 2: looking in on real life, which makes what you're seeing
Speaker 2: all the more disturbing because, in addition to almost being there,
Speaker 2: you almost feel guilty, especially if you have half a
Speaker 2: conscience of witnessing the stuff that you're seeing, because you're
Speaker 2: seeing some of these people like Jim when he's taken
Speaker 2: back to his cell after those guards got a rise
Speaker 2: out of him while he was being shaved, he's naked,
Speaker 2: fully naked, stomping around, Yeah, basically throwing a tantrum trying.
Speaker 2: You can tell he's trying to calm himself down. This
Speaker 2: is how he's like getting out his anger, and Wiseman
Speaker 2: just sits there and films the whole thing. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: you're forced to watch as the viewer. You're I saw
Speaker 2: somebody put it. It's basically like you're the one standing
Speaker 2: in the doorway. Even after the guards have left, you're
Speaker 2: still standing there watching this man in one of the
Speaker 2: probably one of the several worst points of his recent life,
Speaker 2: just gawking at him, basically, and it's it's that's the
Speaker 2: hard part of it for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Or you know, at the other end of the spectrum,
Speaker 1: there's a scene with a guy named Vladimir, and this
Speaker 1: guy is very lucid, and he's speaking very clearly about
Speaker 1: you know, I think my my, I've deteriorated since i've
Speaker 1: been here. I think all this noise that you're hearing,
Speaker 1: all these TVs that are always turned on full blast,
Speaker 1: it's sort of driving me crazy. And I would like
Speaker 1: to go back to prison where I actually could work
Speaker 1: out in a gym and I could take classes. And
Speaker 1: this medication that they're giving me is making me worse,
Speaker 1: Like I feel that it's harming me. And when he's
Speaker 1: you know, when the guards take him out of the room,
Speaker 1: then there's a scene of the clinicians like discussing things,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of like sounds like we need to
Speaker 1: up his medication and his tranquilizers because he's paranoid. So
Speaker 1: when you see something like that, it's sort of the
Speaker 1: other end of the spectrum from Jim equally disturbing. But
Speaker 1: part of the beauty of this and the rawness of
Speaker 1: this film is like, these people are all into here together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's never lost on you.
Speaker 2: His is a particularly sad case. Yeah, because you can tell,
Speaker 2: like you no, he's with it. This guys. He knows
Speaker 2: what he's saying. He's not trying to manipulate. He's pleading
Speaker 2: his case in a logical way. He's trying so hard
Speaker 2: not to get worked up. How would you not get
Speaker 2: worked up when you're when you're pleading your case to
Speaker 2: be released from a mental institution from somebody who's just
Speaker 2: taking you as as you know, nuts, So why should
Speaker 2: you be listened to? There's even one of the one
Speaker 2: of the medical staff at that meeting after he leaves
Speaker 2: the room and they're discussing him, she says, what did
Speaker 2: she say? She's like, if you take his basic premise
Speaker 2: as true, then everything he says from that is totally logical.
Speaker 2: But of course his basic premise is total hogwash or whatever.
Speaker 2: She says something like that. I'm paraphrasing. So it's like
Speaker 2: that guy never had a chance. He just wasted his breath.
Speaker 2: He just like they they were never going to listen
Speaker 2: to him, And it's like red, yeah, yeah, what was
Speaker 2: he not supposed to be there? He was supposed to
Speaker 2: be there, wasn't he?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, but every time he came up for parole,
Speaker 1: he would plead his case and they would deny it,
Speaker 1: and then and finally in the end he was like,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't matter what I say in here,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna let me out anyway. That's my Morgan Freeman.
Speaker 2: But that's sound a little more like boss Hog un tranquilizers.
Speaker 2: What yeah, that was boss Hog sedated. Oh man, let's
Speaker 2: hear it again.
Speaker 1: No, no, I can't.
Speaker 2: Maybe Jerry can edit that.
Speaker 1: I can't have a new mom. Morgan Freeman again one
Speaker 1: of the great voices. But uh yeah, he basically says,
Speaker 1: you know, institutionalized you're not You're not gonna let me
Speaker 1: out no matter what I say. And of course that's
Speaker 1: when they let him out, because it's a dramatic film
Speaker 1: and with a great, wonderful, happy ending, not like titty
Speaker 1: cut follies.
Speaker 2: No one other thing that I think we should point
Speaker 2: out too, for people who haven't seen the movie, Like
Speaker 2: we know Vladimir's name in Jim's name, just because it
Speaker 2: comes up like in discussion, like they're calling him Jim,
Speaker 2: or somebody addresses Vladimir's Vladimir. There's no chiron at the
Speaker 2: bottom of the screen says Vladimir or Jim. There's no
Speaker 2: no one explaining how Jim got here or what Vladimir did.
Speaker 2: There's no nothing, Nothing is explained. It's just here's a scene.
Speaker 2: Here's another scene. Here's another scene, here's another scene. Nothing
Speaker 2: necessarily leads into anything else. There's one part that scene
Speaker 2: that Wiseman says he regrets because it was so he
Speaker 2: calls it ham fisted. Where there's it's really hard to watch.
Speaker 2: It is the main doctor, the main clinician, who's a
Speaker 2: recurring character whose name we have no idea who it is,
Speaker 2: at least if you just watch the movie he force
Speaker 2: feeds a patient who stopped eating and through with a
Speaker 2: naso gastric tube stuff down knows all the way into
Speaker 2: his stomach. And this guy is just stoically taking this,
Speaker 2: like he's decided he is not going to eat. They
Speaker 2: even give him a choice, They like, you can drink
Speaker 2: the super you're gonna we're gonna force feed you. And
Speaker 2: he's like, you're gonna have to force feedback. I don't
Speaker 2: even think he says anything. So there's a there's a
Speaker 2: force feeding scene. You watch an emaciated man who's starving
Speaker 2: himself force fed, and he intercut that part with scenes
Speaker 2: from the man's preparation for burial right to kind of
Speaker 2: show like, you know, he didn't make it, he was
Speaker 2: successful in ending his own life through starvation. And then
Speaker 2: also I think what Wiseman was trying to get across
Speaker 2: was that he was, you know, he's really being cared for.
Speaker 2: He's given like a decent burial and like I think
Speaker 2: eight that he has eight pallbearers from the institution and
Speaker 2: he's like treated very well compared especially to this this
Speaker 2: force feeding through a tube down his nose. And Wiseman
Speaker 2: thought that was a little ham fisted. That is, that
Speaker 2: is the most cinematic part of the entire movie. Nothing
Speaker 2: else is anywhere remotely like that. It's all just seen, seen,
Speaker 2: scenes seen, and like no explanation of who these people are,
Speaker 2: what they are trying to say.
Speaker 1: All right, should we take a break? Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll take our second break and be back right after this,
Speaker 1: so before we talk about the sort of court cases
Speaker 1: in the whether or not this film could be banned
Speaker 1: or exhibited. It's interesting you talk about like it's just seen, seen, seen,
Speaker 1: But on the flip side of that, it is like
Speaker 1: a such a carefully curated edit from all those hundreds
Speaker 1: of hours of footage down to eighty three minutes. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that Weissman sort of talked
Speaker 1: about was he didn't apparently he didn't. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he came around, but he didn't even like the
Speaker 1: term cinema verite because he felt it sounded too much
Speaker 1: like you were just shooting stuff and putting it in
Speaker 1: front of people. And he said, I am manipulating people.
Speaker 1: But it's through the edit. So while you may not
Speaker 1: think that, I mean, I guess he was a master
Speaker 1: at it, because you probably shouldn't feel manipulated. But he's
Speaker 1: still putting together that careful edit. You know, it's interesting.
Speaker 2: He is a master edit and it's pretty remarkable. This
Speaker 2: was his first film and he was that masterful at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I said earlier that it was crucial that he
Speaker 2: had gotten permission to film, not only from you know,
Speaker 2: the Lieutenant governor in the Superintendent of Bridgewater, but also
Speaker 2: from everyone he shot. He got either written permission from
Speaker 2: them or verbal permission audio visual I guess, on camera
Speaker 2: them giving him permission to use them in his film.
Speaker 2: So he was covered up in permission. And don't forget
Speaker 2: he was a law professor too. And when the movie
Speaker 2: first came out, when he finished, he showed it to
Speaker 2: the Superintendent of Bridgewater and to the Lieutenant governor. They
Speaker 2: both apparently liked it, according to Wiseman, But it wasn't
Speaker 2: until the movie came out into wider release at the
Speaker 2: very beginning I think New York Film Festival or something
Speaker 2: like that. Yeah, and people started responding by saying, like,
Speaker 2: this is barbaric, this treatment at Bridgewater, what's wrong with
Speaker 2: the state of Massachusetts that they suddenly turned on the
Speaker 2: film and Wiseman had on his hands what would come
Speaker 2: to become a banned film.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So one of the central players here is Elliott Richardson,
Speaker 1: who was that lieutenant governor you referenced at the time,
Speaker 1: had a loftier political aspiration, so when it came time
Speaker 1: to run for an office higher than that, tried to
Speaker 1: suppress this film, thinking it would you count against him,
Speaker 1: and it became sort of like O Livy calls it
Speaker 1: a political tool, that's exactly what it became. Richardson would
Speaker 1: end up accusing Wiseman of double crossing this, and it
Speaker 1: all sort of hinged on the idea, not like, oh,
Speaker 1: you showed these awful things, but it hinged on the
Speaker 1: idea of permissions in privacy was sort of the legal
Speaker 1: framework of it, because the argument was, sure, you might
Speaker 1: have gotten the permission from these men, but they are
Speaker 1: in no state to give real permission. And so there
Speaker 1: were a series of court cases over the years that
Speaker 1: sort of debated this, like for many many years. In
Speaker 1: sixty eight, it was a judge, spirit court judge named
Speaker 1: Harry Callous who found that it breached privacy. And this
Speaker 1: was interesting though, because like, I get that as a
Speaker 1: legal basis for argument, but this judge said he kind
Speaker 1: of attacked the filmmaking process and said it's just a
Speaker 1: hodgepodge of sequences with no narrative, and said each viewer
Speaker 1: is left to his own devices as to what's being
Speaker 1: portrayed and in what context. And in the meantime, Weisman's
Speaker 1: over there going to a duh, Like that's what cinema
Speaker 1: verite is. But I thought that was like this judge
Speaker 1: just said you should destroy that should like ordered it
Speaker 1: to be destroyed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He also called it a nightmare of ghoulish obscenities
Speaker 2: and said the negative has to be burnt and judge judge, yeah,
Speaker 2: And of course Wiseman was like, well, I'm not burning
Speaker 2: my negative. I'm going to fight this and appealate.
Speaker 1: Oh sure.
Speaker 2: That case, by the way, was the first one in
Speaker 2: Massachusetts history where a court affirmed that a right to
Speaker 2: privacy exists. Yeah, it had never been affirmed in a
Speaker 2: court case, and it was established in that case. So
Speaker 2: it was it was. It was not cut and dried, though,
Speaker 2: because Wiseman has First Amendment right to freedom of expression.
Speaker 2: So it became freedom of expression versus freedom of privacy
Speaker 2: or right to privacy, I should say, And it the
Speaker 2: I think the ACLU got involved and they formed it.
Speaker 2: They submitted an amicus brief that basically said, we think
Speaker 2: that this film has value, but to a very limited
Speaker 2: number of people, specifically lawyers, judges, law students, medical students, psychiatrists,
Speaker 2: people in those fields should be able to see this
Speaker 2: and that is about it. And so that kind of
Speaker 2: became the ruling shortly after that initial you need to
Speaker 2: burn the negatives an appeal, that's what they came up with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so for a number of years after that,
Speaker 1: for those reasons, it was shown in like film class,
Speaker 1: it was shown in medical schools, it was shown in
Speaker 1: the library. Yeah, it was shown in libraries that was
Speaker 1: a great place to see something like this, or in
Speaker 1: different institutions would show this and say this is what
Speaker 1: not to do, like you can't do stuff like this.
Speaker 1: There was a believe and this was sort of through
Speaker 1: the seventies and then in the eighties some attorneys got
Speaker 1: involved that said there were some suicides at Bridgewater in
Speaker 1: the mid to late eighties, there were some class action
Speaker 1: lawsuits that followed by patients where the attorneys that they
Speaker 1: could draw a direct line basically between a patient dying
Speaker 1: by suicide and the fact that this film wasn't shown,
Speaker 1: like it should be allowed to be shown for these reasons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like had it been shown, there would have been
Speaker 2: a public outcry for more reforms, and that wouldn't have
Speaker 2: led you know, those reforms might have prevented those suicides
Speaker 2: at Bridgewater. And so Wiseman said that he never gave
Speaker 2: up on the film being released to a wider audience,
Speaker 2: and he saw that that was a good time to
Speaker 2: bring this up again, and it actually worked out. He
Speaker 2: got a judge to basically say, like, okay, this is
Speaker 2: a Yes, you should be able to show this, but
Speaker 2: we need to blur the faces of the men out,
Speaker 2: and Wiseman said, it's impossible. This is film, it's not video.
Speaker 2: And then also work with me here man, right, he said, Also,
Speaker 2: it'll artistically ruin my film. Yeah, but you remember when
Speaker 2: we did that one gorilla filming in the supermarket, we
Speaker 2: ended up having to go back. I can blur every
Speaker 2: single thing in the supermarket aut exo for us. I
Speaker 2: kind of screwed it up a little bit. I could
Speaker 2: see where he's coming from, right, And so he appealed
Speaker 2: again and finally they said, you know what, not a
Speaker 2: single inmate at Bridgewater, and none of their families has
Speaker 2: ever filed a formal objection to this film being shown,
Speaker 2: So how about this just show it. It's unbanned officially
Speaker 2: by the early nineties.
Speaker 1: Right, that was a ninety one with Judge Andrew Gilmeyer
Speaker 1: of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and then after that
Speaker 1: it was still because Weisman is, like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: very picky about house films are exhibited, and so it
Speaker 1: wasn't like it was just everywhere. I think PBS aired
Speaker 1: it in ninety three in full. You could always buy
Speaker 1: the DVD from him from his website or if there
Speaker 1: was a film festival or a film class, like I said,
Speaker 1: when I saw it was in college film class from
Speaker 1: a VHS tape that the professor owned, probably bought it
Speaker 1: from Weisman, and that's sort of how it lived its life.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting that like this still is a
Speaker 1: relevant topic and irrelevant film, and you know, is being
Speaker 1: talked about today, like in twenty twenty two. I think
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen he even tried to or I think
Speaker 1: he successfully finally got it on a streaming service called
Speaker 1: Canopy with a K, which is also kind of through
Speaker 1: the library system, which is awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can watch it for free if you sign
Speaker 2: up for a Canopy account with your library card number. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can go watch I think all of Wiseman's films
Speaker 2: all forty eight, which is pretty great. But there seems
Speaker 2: to have been some direct effects of the film on Bridgewater,
Speaker 2: but still from what it sounds like, there's still a
Speaker 2: long way to go with Bridgewater too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think they made a lot of strides, and
Speaker 1: then they found even as recently as this year that
Speaker 1: they were using what they call chemical restraints, basically just
Speaker 1: oping people up more than they said they were doing.
Speaker 1: So this is ongoing there. And then we Wispan, like
Speaker 1: you said, made forty eight films and they had names
Speaker 1: like hospital or high school, and it's just sort of
Speaker 1: that very bare bone cinema verite look at a single
Speaker 1: topic that's sort of been his bread and butter. I
Speaker 1: think it's a really cool thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is really cool. He's just fascinated with institutions,
Speaker 2: although he even says he has no idea how they work,
Speaker 2: and I think he's even said he's not quite sure
Speaker 2: he understands his film himself. Yeah, which is pretty awesome.
Speaker 2: To say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Zuppora Films is named after his wife, who
Speaker 1: passed away a couple of years ago at the age
Speaker 1: of ninety. And he's, like you said, still going strong.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What's his latest one City Hall?
Speaker 1: Yeah about Boston City Hall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it came out in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Well, if you want to know more about Tidny Cut Follies,
Speaker 2: you should probably go watch it, but be warned it
Speaker 2: is really rough, even though it is great. In the
Speaker 2: term of a cinema file, I would use it. How
Speaker 2: about that a centopis I always add an extra syllable,
Speaker 2: so that, of course means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call this follow up on the effective altruism.
Speaker 1: One of our favorite things is when we talk about
Speaker 1: a topic and someone from that topic gets in touch
Speaker 1: and as a listener, yeah for real, And that's what
Speaker 1: happened in this case with Grace Adams. Hey, guys, we
Speaker 1: are so excited that you covered effective altruism and you
Speaker 1: did so wonderfully and graces with giving what we can.
Speaker 1: Giving what we can. Would love to give your listeners
Speaker 1: a free book on effective altruism if you include this
Speaker 1: link in the show notes, which we don't have, but
Speaker 1: we'll just say here people can opt to have a
Speaker 1: free book sent to them, including the precipice by Toby
Speaker 1: Ord anywhere in the world. We love sending out books
Speaker 1: and things is a great way for people to engage
Speaker 1: more at the ideas. Wishing you all the best from
Speaker 1: a big personal fan, Grace Adams And oh I should
Speaker 1: have made this into a bit lead Should I do
Speaker 1: that real quick?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: All right, so you just talk to people while I
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, hey, everybody.
Speaker 1: Actually could edit this together.
Speaker 2: But Toby Ord wrote in and said the same thing too.
Speaker 2: But he also sent us well wishes and said we
Speaker 2: did a good job on the effective Altruism episode, which
Speaker 2: I thought was pretty good because I like to think
Speaker 2: we're fairly fair handed with it. We weren't too over
Speaker 2: the top a subjective, don't you think?
Speaker 1: I think so, although we did get one email from
Speaker 1: someone that's like kind of acted like we didn't point
Speaker 1: out any of the downsides, which I disagree with.
Speaker 2: I disagree with that. But anyway, how's that Bitley coming, Chuck?
Speaker 1: Okay, my friend, I am done. I have the bit lee.
Speaker 1: If you go to bit b T dot L y
Speaker 1: slash s y sk give you can get your free book.
Speaker 2: Yes, pretty great free books on effective altruism and free
Speaker 2: books by Toby Ord on existential risks, which I mean,
Speaker 2: come on. If you want to get in touch with us,
Speaker 2: like Grace from GiveWell did, we would love to hear
Speaker 2: from you. You can send us an email whether you
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