Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Errol Morris's documentaries are unmistakable. Whether they're about great figures
Speaker 1: in history or dueling pet cemeteries, they can be uncomfortably intimate.
Speaker 1: Their subjects faces are full frame, looking straight at you.
Speaker 1: Maurice told The New Yorker that his core belief is
Speaker 1: that the truth is out there, but he is a
Speaker 1: master of the unreliable narrator, of shifting perspectives that only
Speaker 1: come together slowly. Take his breakthrough project In The Thin
Speaker 1: Blue Line. That film, one of the most celebrated documentaries
Speaker 1: of all time, overturned a murder conviction. Maurice allowed all
Speaker 1: the key witnesses, over the course of hours and hours
Speaker 1: in front of the camera, to tangle themselves up in
Speaker 1: contradictions and ulterior motives. He's one of cinema's most distinctive
Speaker 1: a tours, but unlike most of his peers, he seems
Speaker 1: to have stumbled into filmmaking After college. Morris sold cable subscriptions.
Speaker 1: He wrote term papers for money, then at all. At
Speaker 1: the same time, and in the middle of a pH
Speaker 1: d in philosophy, Morris fell in love with film Noir,
Speaker 1: met Werner Herzog and developed a fascination with serial killer
Speaker 1: Ed Geen. At that moment in his life, if he
Speaker 1: was going to make something about Gain, a movie seemed
Speaker 1: like the thing. He never did make the film, but
Speaker 1: Erro Morris had gotten the documentary bug. He just wishes
Speaker 1: there were a better word for them. I don't like documentary,
Speaker 1: So there we'll explain that. Explain it if you care to. UM,
Speaker 1: it's a strange category. You don't have this in feature filmmaking.
Speaker 1: The minute you suggest that it's about reality, the truth
Speaker 1: clearly enters the picture. Is what you're seeing true false. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a documentary police, of course, but how you deal
Speaker 1: with truth and falsity is up for grabs. All that
Speaker 1: you have to do is pursue the truth, UM, in
Speaker 1: your own way. When The Thin Bool Line came out,
Speaker 1: I had so called re enactments in the movie. The
Speaker 1: documentary committee at the Oscars turned the movie off immediately,
Speaker 1: a movie that was on the top of most critics list.
Speaker 1: Guess what I don't do re enactments. What amazed me
Speaker 1: at the time of the Thin Boo Line as I
Speaker 1: showed scenes of the murder on this Desolate Road in
Speaker 1: West Dallas. They were all false. They weren't used to
Speaker 1: show you what happened. They were used to make you
Speaker 1: think about what didn't happen. I hate reenactments that are
Speaker 1: show and tell. Someone says blah blah blah, and then
Speaker 1: you illustrate it. Visual material in a movie, whether it's
Speaker 1: a documentary or a feature, it should take you to
Speaker 1: some unexpected place. It shouldn't be just illustrating dialogue. What
Speaker 1: was documentary film in your life? When did you first
Speaker 1: encounter these films and watch them and wear My introduction
Speaker 1: was not too ordinary traditional documentary film, but to whack
Speaker 1: out films. They didn't obey the standard rules of documentary
Speaker 1: at all. What is a whack out film? Something that
Speaker 1: doesn't really do what we imagine documentary to do. Documentary
Speaker 1: you're supposed to have an identifiable subject matter. It's about
Speaker 1: so and so, or it's about this issue or that issue,
Speaker 1: handheld camera available, light fly on the wall, blah blah
Speaker 1: and blah. And I never liked any of it. I
Speaker 1: like documentaries to be stranger, expressionistic. One of my favorites
Speaker 1: it was a film by bun Well, call it a
Speaker 1: serialist Um strange documentary Land without Bread, Um, Land Without Yeah,
Speaker 1: I recommend it. My connection the documentary film tenuous probably
Speaker 1: like everybody else. Um. And I was in graduate school Berkeley,
Speaker 1: and I started compulsively going to movies at a place
Speaker 1: called the Pacific Film Archive. And I met a young
Speaker 1: German filmmaker there who was making documentaries among other films,
Speaker 1: when he heard song and we went to visit a
Speaker 1: mass murderer together. It's a good first date. And we
Speaker 1: went up as phoe of psychiatrist Dr Hertzog, his producer
Speaker 1: Dr Sacks or Dr Morris. Um. I met him at
Speaker 1: a time when I was first doing interviews the ed
Speaker 1: Guime project. Well ed Geen. By the way, it's not German.
Speaker 1: Everybody thinks the name is German. It's from the Scottish,
Speaker 1: not the German. It's Gaen. I know if I was
Speaker 1: a mass murderer, serial killer, I would always hope people
Speaker 1: would get my name right. Yeah, we have to give
Speaker 1: the mass murderers there if they're due. When did okay,
Speaker 1: were you commissioned or this was your idea? Yeah, the
Speaker 1: commission that asked people to interview mass murders approached me
Speaker 1: one day. We want to make a movie and wanted
Speaker 1: to commit No, I wanted to do it. I was
Speaker 1: planning to write why I was playing to write PhD
Speaker 1: thesis on the Insanity play? Maybe because insanity interests me
Speaker 1: and what better way to examine those issues than to
Speaker 1: talk to a number of people who pled insanity. But
Speaker 1: my point was, you start to interact with this material,
Speaker 1: what was it that made you want to make it?
Speaker 1: I don't know, because your life is a kind of
Speaker 1: you're kind of a cork in the ocean before you
Speaker 1: start making films. You're into this and you're into that. Well,
Speaker 1: I still am into this and into that. Why not?
Speaker 1: Why not be lecture as a filmmaker? I guess is
Speaker 1: that what it is? Let me fill in that line
Speaker 1: in your bank application occupation filmmaker. But what I'm saying
Speaker 1: is that you know you're going to go to You're
Speaker 1: you're selling subscriptions, You're you're going a PhD program at Princeton.
Speaker 1: You know, you're you're kind of all over the place,
Speaker 1: not in any bad way before you land the plane,
Speaker 1: probably in a bad way. Well they'll let you say
Speaker 1: that it's in a bad way, in a very bad way.
Speaker 1: So when you're in Berkeley. Uh, and mean, filmmaking saved me.
Speaker 1: It gave me something to do with myself. My wife
Speaker 1: very kindly says that my office is a daycare center
Speaker 1: for myself. Well, I could consider filmmaking in general as
Speaker 1: a daycare center for myself. I didn't say that. I
Speaker 1: just said it was a daycare center. You're allergic to
Speaker 1: feeling good, I take it. I don't know. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: not allergic to feeling good, just don't feel good now.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I consider all the time
Speaker 1: is that, you know, because I've produced documentary films and
Speaker 1: I've produced narrative films. In a narrative film, presumable, you
Speaker 1: have to have some decent writing that at the very
Speaker 1: least will attract a cast. There's a beginning, middle, in
Speaker 1: an end. There might be a story, hopefully or not,
Speaker 1: as the case may be, well crafted characters and so forth,
Speaker 1: and you've got to lure people to the project. Where
Speaker 1: when you make documentary films, which I've always enjoyed, you
Speaker 1: do whatever the funk you want to do. This point
Speaker 1: the camera, this person. Sometime their reluctants, but I don't
Speaker 1: think they're so different. Really, don't tell me why I
Speaker 1: don't have to cast Alec Baldwin in order to get
Speaker 1: the money from my project. But getting the money for
Speaker 1: the project is still not a done deal. It's often
Speaker 1: difficult um. Getting people to agree to actually be interviewed
Speaker 1: can be an almost impossible task. I can think of
Speaker 1: countless projects where I thought I had people who are
Speaker 1: going to do the project with me, and then it
Speaker 1: all suddenly fell through. Give me an example of someone
Speaker 1: that was relatively easy. Was McNamara easy? No, McNamara is
Speaker 1: not easy to book to cajole Um. Someone wants to
Speaker 1: asked me why I was good at getting people to
Speaker 1: appear in front of a camera, and I said, I
Speaker 1: learned it from my mother. My mother was an exquisite
Speaker 1: nag and I like to think that I am too.
Speaker 1: McNamara agreed to be interviewed because he thought I was
Speaker 1: part of a book tour. He wasn't really thinking, and
Speaker 1: after saying yes, he called me back and said, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been talking to people about you, and they tell
Speaker 1: me this is a very bad idea talking to you,
Speaker 1: and for about minutes explained to me why he wasn't
Speaker 1: going to do it, and then said, but I said,
Speaker 1: I would do it, So I'll do it. And as
Speaker 1: a friend of mine later said, well I know that story.
Speaker 1: That's the story of Vietnam. Um and he came. He
Speaker 1: said he'd give me five minutes, which is not particularly generous.
Speaker 1: He saw my interviewing machine, this machine that I used
Speaker 1: to preserve eye contact, the entire ron. Describe that for
Speaker 1: our listeners. Oh, good god, you don't want the description.
Speaker 1: It's so fucking boring. Of course people want. People want
Speaker 1: to know all about your technique. Describe the terrortron. What
Speaker 1: is it named by my wife because it had the
Speaker 1: word interview and terror in it? Um. I like eye contact.
Speaker 1: Right now, we're making an eye contact. What does the
Speaker 1: device do? It allows you to film an interview and
Speaker 1: to preserve eye contact, which you can't do otherwise. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: if we were filming this discussion rather than doing angle,
Speaker 1: you would have a raking angle on you. But what
Speaker 1: if I wanted to preserve what is happening right now?
Speaker 1: My looking into Alec Baldwin's eyes and you want to
Speaker 1: make you talk to Yes, it's two prompters cross connected.
Speaker 1: You go to Florida to do vernon. You go down
Speaker 1: there and there's a fascinating element to what was going
Speaker 1: on in Vernon that you didn't put in the movie
Speaker 1: about the South amputees. I'm a failed filmmaker who makes films.
Speaker 1: I think it's probably the most apt description. I read
Speaker 1: an article of the New York Times magazine about an
Speaker 1: insurance investigator, John J. Healely. Some of my best stories
Speaker 1: come out of the Times. People don't usually think of
Speaker 1: the Times as a tabloid newspaper, but inside every issue
Speaker 1: of the Times is excellent tabloid material. So I read
Speaker 1: about this insurance investigator and he describes the worst case
Speaker 1: that he ever worked on, which was a small town
Speaker 1: in the Panhandle of Florida where there was this extraordinary
Speaker 1: incidents of insurance fraud, people suspiciously losing arms and legs,
Speaker 1: sometimes an arm and a leg after taking out massive
Speaker 1: policies on themselves. And it became known in the insurance
Speaker 1: trade is nub City, the nub Club, the Nubbies, nub City,
Speaker 1: nub this. How many people were doing that? Roughly dozens
Speaker 1: scores or just a few, um dozens. I think it's contagious.
Speaker 1: If I were to mutilate myself in this studio, there's
Speaker 1: a good chance you might follow suit like that actor
Speaker 1: who was that famous actor who was very good looking
Speaker 1: through because and he was high. I think he was
Speaker 1: on acid. He was tripping, and he thought he wasn't
Speaker 1: getting all the interesting character work he wanted. There's probably right,
Speaker 1: because he was too beautiful. So he threw acid in
Speaker 1: his face in Central Park, and any man that boys
Speaker 1: wound up being a heavily scarred. I'll look it up,
Speaker 1: but please don't do that. Let's do a movie about him,
Speaker 1: and I'll play him in the re enacting footage. But
Speaker 1: the so nubsity, but you don't put that in the film. Correct.
Speaker 1: There's a problem with documentary Sometimes I wonder why in
Speaker 1: hell are you applying this particular trade. I am under
Speaker 1: psychiatric supervision, so I've had occasion to professionally address this issue.
Speaker 1: But often I'll embark on a story which cannot be
Speaker 1: done as a documentary. Um and nub City was the
Speaker 1: perfect example why it couldn't be done. Why we'll think
Speaker 1: about it for a moment, or we'll think about it together.
Speaker 1: People admitting that they committed this crime. There you go.
Speaker 1: So I kept investigating. I'm an investigator at heart. I
Speaker 1: would go around the town talking to Nubbies, members of
Speaker 1: the Nub Club, other people, and I got beaten up. Now,
Speaker 1: I sometimes think a person like me should probably be
Speaker 1: beaten up every single day. But it hasn't happened that often.
Speaker 1: And why should you? Why should you be? Because I'm impertinent,
Speaker 1: I asked questions. I'm an annoying person. Why shouldn't I be?
Speaker 1: In fact, I have to keep my eye out for
Speaker 1: you that you just jump across this table and throttle me.
Speaker 1: You live in fear of that? Not much. I wish
Speaker 1: i'd gotten a degree in psychiatry before we did this.
Speaker 1: You'd probably have a degree in psychiatry. Look kind of actually,
Speaker 1: I kind of do ye. But yet you make the
Speaker 1: movie Someone gives me money, and it's true, I get it.
Speaker 1: Someone gives you money, and you better do something. Nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with a little commerce every now and then. I
Speaker 1: agree with you, it's essential. So I made a different movie.
Speaker 1: What did you make? I made Vernon, Florida, which is
Speaker 1: a portrait of a lot of people in Vernon, Florida. Vernon,
Speaker 1: Florida was nub City, and it's one of my best films.
Speaker 1: But it has nothing whatsoever to do with nub City
Speaker 1: or the Nubclay didn't even sneak in A couple of
Speaker 1: shots of amputees at the Piggy Wiggily at the checkout
Speaker 1: count of none of that. Some limbless guy bench in
Speaker 1: front of civic hall um called dead Pecker Bench where
Speaker 1: these old guys would sit all day talking, the dead
Speaker 1: Pecker Bench in nub City. The Dead Pecker Bench in
Speaker 1: nub City. And one of them was an amputee. But
Speaker 1: here's supposed it was like Karl Hyacinth. To me, well,
Speaker 1: it's better than Karl Hyacin. The guy did not lose
Speaker 1: his limb through insurance fraud. It was a genuine accident.
Speaker 1: After you do that film, After I do that film,
Speaker 1: I'm out of work for a long period of time,
Speaker 1: and I become a private detective in order to earn
Speaker 1: a living. And where did you apply that trade? You
Speaker 1: have to get licensed. I'm assuming you don't have to
Speaker 1: get a license I worked for. You have to pass
Speaker 1: the psychiatric tests to get that license. Now, thankfully no,
Speaker 1: And I work for a guy was probably one of
Speaker 1: the best private detectives in the world. And where did
Speaker 1: I work. I worked in this very obscure place called Manhattan,
Speaker 1: which is just pristine in terms of people's behavior and
Speaker 1: their code of ethics and what's what's what's defined there?
Speaker 1: And I did big cases. It was if you open
Speaker 1: the financial pages of the New York Times, usually there
Speaker 1: would be one or two of the cases that I
Speaker 1: was working on. What kind of cases did you work
Speaker 1: on your Private Eye where we Wall Street financial fraud?
Speaker 1: Exactly right? What did you find whether if you can describe,
Speaker 1: leaving out the identifiers, what's one case you worked on? Uh?
Speaker 1: There was wash trading um commodities fraud. I worked on
Speaker 1: this huge case involving a rogue trader. There's so many
Speaker 1: rogue trading stories, but this was one of the first
Speaker 1: where a rogue trader builds up a position loses a
Speaker 1: very large sum of money. In those days, it wasn't
Speaker 1: so big as it is now. It was roughly a
Speaker 1: billion and change. But I worked on that case for
Speaker 1: over a year. What made you decide that that was over?
Speaker 1: You go back? I mean, we're getting close in the amount.
Speaker 1: Don't mean to be so linear here, but in the timeline,
Speaker 1: we're getting close to the movie that makes your reputation
Speaker 1: as a filmmaker within Blue Line. I like to think
Speaker 1: that almost everything I've ever done is out of desperation
Speaker 1: and some kind of necessity one does have to earn
Speaker 1: a living. Um. Eventually I found commercials I've directed. This
Speaker 1: is something to be proud of. I've directed over a
Speaker 1: thousand of them. Um. When I couldn't get any work
Speaker 1: as a filmmaker none, I was lucky enough to be
Speaker 1: offered a private detective job and I was able to survive.
Speaker 1: H I sent a proposal to public television for a
Speaker 1: project I didn't really even want to do. It was
Speaker 1: to interview a psychiatrist in Dallas, Dr James Griggson, who
Speaker 1: had the name Doctor Death. He told me he had
Speaker 1: lost most of his private patients in psychiatry because they
Speaker 1: felt nervous confiding their deepest thoughts to someone named doctor Death.
Speaker 1: Started to interfere with his bus. This and his main
Speaker 1: business became making predictions about future behavior at death penalty trials.
Speaker 1: So I went down and I interviewed him. I got money,
Speaker 1: and that was the start of the thin Blue Line.
Speaker 1: By accident, it was only at this guy's behest that
Speaker 1: I started doing death row interviews and discovered this guy
Speaker 1: named Randall Dale Adams, who told me he was innocent,
Speaker 1: and that was the beginning of two and a half
Speaker 1: years of investigation. I said to myself when I started
Speaker 1: this whole thing, thank God, you don't have to be
Speaker 1: a private detective anymore. And of course it's probably the
Speaker 1: best work I've ever done as a detective. I agreed. Now,
Speaker 1: um slollowing between the creative and the monetary has been
Speaker 1: a tremendous strain for me as well. I'm gonna turn
Speaker 1: sixty two years old in April and four my six
Speaker 1: the second birthday, my wife is giving me another baby.
Speaker 1: We're having our fifth child. Congratulations, thank you so um.
Speaker 1: Being from the Five Towns on Long Island, I was
Speaker 1: hoping you would have said most thank you. What that
Speaker 1: means the world to me? So um, I like a
Speaker 1: good Long Island maltop. What time do you reven? Five Towns,
Speaker 1: you little Long Island. So you're old enough to remember
Speaker 1: where I bought my suit from my prom which was
Speaker 1: Edward Miller's Town and Country and Cedarhurst, Lord Eddie Miller's.
Speaker 1: I bought my first eve, said, la raw three piece
Speaker 1: suit there when I was a boy. Do you know
Speaker 1: the Chinese restaurant in the Five Towns, the Chinese. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a number of Chinese, but it's my favorite. Which
Speaker 1: one It's called Chosen? Chosen. That's very funny, that's right.
Speaker 1: But when you're doing this over the ark of a
Speaker 1: couple of years, you said, a couple of years, you're
Speaker 1: doing the work on the thin blue line, and you're
Speaker 1: getting paid. I was in trouble, okay, but you felt
Speaker 1: you see, this is what I find to me, this
Speaker 1: is the nvil of a career. Sometimes you've tasted this
Speaker 1: difficulty and worried about money, but there's something about this
Speaker 1: film that you had to see it through, and then
Speaker 1: your life changes after this film comes out. Why I
Speaker 1: started to believe this guy was innocent. He had been
Speaker 1: sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit. Sentenced
Speaker 1: to death for the first degree murder of a Dallas
Speaker 1: police officer. Well you if you truly believe in someone's innocence,
Speaker 1: someone who has been on death row, who in all
Speaker 1: likelihood will never get out of prison, came within a
Speaker 1: couple of days of being executed. What are you supposed
Speaker 1: to do? Punt? Whatever happen. Stories are sort of like
Speaker 1: prison cells, and sometimes you get trapped in them and
Speaker 1: you have to fight your way out. You have to
Speaker 1: fight your way to some kind of conclusion. Dig a tunnel.
Speaker 1: Did Emily Miller ever get punished for her perjury? This
Speaker 1: is the chief prosecution witness against Randall Adams at his
Speaker 1: capital murder trial. Whatever happened to her? Nothing which was unpunished?
Speaker 1: Nothing and she did commit perjury? Oh yes. Filmmaker crime
Speaker 1: solver Aero Morris. Another great documentarian is Dawn Porter, director
Speaker 1: of Bobby Kennedy for President. It features footage of the
Speaker 1: Attorney General with his family. Porter had worked at ABC
Speaker 1: News and knew about a trove of unseen tape from
Speaker 1: the months leading up to r F K's assassination. ABC
Speaker 1: was just an upstart network trying to make its mark.
Speaker 1: Who do you do you follow the like sexy, good looking,
Speaker 1: charismatic candidate. ABC was the most recent. So they're following
Speaker 1: Kennedy and shooting him, and we had to watch it all.
Speaker 1: So it was like living in that time and living
Speaker 1: with Kennedy. The rest of that interview can be found
Speaker 1: in our archive a Here's the Thing dot org Erro
Speaker 1: Morris talks about the terrible men he's made movies about
Speaker 1: coming up. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. Recently,
Speaker 1: filmmaker Erro Morris has become known for his deep dives
Speaker 1: into the men in suits who lead our country into
Speaker 1: armed conflict. First was his two thousand three Oscar winning
Speaker 1: Fog of War and unsparing and yet human portrait of
Speaker 1: Johnson's Defense secretary Robert McNamara. Then came Unknown Guns in
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, which gave Iraq war architect Donald Rumsfeld
Speaker 1: the same treatment. And out now is American Dharma, about
Speaker 1: the architect of a war of culture and politics, Steve Bannon,
Speaker 1: who led Donald Trump to victory. But accomplishing this trip
Speaker 1: tick portrait of American power hasn't cured marris Is neurosis.
Speaker 1: He remains as insecure in his success as he was
Speaker 1: in ninet when he leapt from day jobs and rejection
Speaker 1: to comfort and creative freedom. After the Thin Blue Line,
Speaker 1: things did change. Yes, well, I still feel like a pariah.
Speaker 1: But what why? I don't know. Because you thrive in
Speaker 1: a place of discomfort. We gotta keep that underdog thing going.
Speaker 1: Is it an underdog thing? It's a self loathing whatever.
Speaker 1: But then we'll say the arrow Morris self loathing technique
Speaker 1: of filmmaking is that, but you felt like you had
Speaker 1: to keep that going. Do you hate yourself? Um? I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say hey, because that if I'm trying, at my
Speaker 1: age now with my young children to exercise hate. But
Speaker 1: I do. I'm I'm I disappoint myself constantly when I
Speaker 1: talk to myself, I look at myself across the room
Speaker 1: and go, oh, alec. But for you, you you have
Speaker 1: this success and then once you have more options because
Speaker 1: in the creative world, when things change, what changes is
Speaker 1: we can go do more what we want to do.
Speaker 1: What's the first thing you want to do? Once Thin
Speaker 1: Blue Line becomes a big sensation, what do you want
Speaker 1: to do next? I was confused what I should do? Uh?
Speaker 1: And as you become more successful, there are always people
Speaker 1: out there to tell you what you should do or
Speaker 1: could do. Um? What was next? After Thin Blue Line?
Speaker 1: You got involved in doing a feature with people that
Speaker 1: I should never have been in business with, which was
Speaker 1: Robert Redford teacher. It was called dark Wind. Who finally
Speaker 1: went up directing it? Me? Or you did? You did
Speaker 1: direct dark Wind? Luta? Who did it? I'm the fall guard?
Speaker 1: You didn't walk away? No, call me a coward. They
Speaker 1: come to you and they want you to make a movie.
Speaker 1: And did you think to yourself maybe that you just
Speaker 1: didn't want to do those kinds of movies. You want
Speaker 1: to go back to documentary. You didn't want to be
Speaker 1: a filmmaker like that. But I did. Finally I did
Speaker 1: get an opportunity to work with actors in a series
Speaker 1: that I did for Netflix called worm would um why
Speaker 1: be polluted by reality? Well? Why be polluted by reality?
Speaker 1: You were asked, what's the one thing you most strongly believe?
Speaker 1: Your answer was, there is such a thing as objective truth.
Speaker 1: But aren't all your movies about subjectivity? Your own films?
Speaker 1: Do I believe there's a real world out there and
Speaker 1: which things happen? Do you believe it's an objective truth? Yes?
Speaker 1: You do. I don't know if we can ever know it.
Speaker 1: I have often thought that history is about the evasion
Speaker 1: of history. Cover ups are endlessly interesting evasions, and say interesting,
Speaker 1: it's a route to truth. Truth is never handed over
Speaker 1: to you as such. Were you pursuing that when you
Speaker 1: talk to McNamara? Uh? I wanted to learn something about McNamara.
Speaker 1: I was certainly pursuing it when I was working on
Speaker 1: the Thin Blue Line in Dallas. That was the part
Speaker 1: of it. Do you want to answer some fundamental question?
Speaker 1: And did this guy shoot the cop? Right? And and
Speaker 1: and and in that film that the falsely accused man,
Speaker 1: there's an that doesn't need to be stated. There's an
Speaker 1: abundant empathy people have for the guy that's wrongly convicted.
Speaker 1: What's the idea when you go in the room with McNamara,
Speaker 1: who I studied assiduously because I played him in a
Speaker 1: movie I did well, and and and and and McNamara
Speaker 1: as somebody who like LBJ and like Nixon, I find
Speaker 1: it impossible to let them off the hook. When I
Speaker 1: see Bob Caro and he's gonna write his fifth volume
Speaker 1: about Johnson, and I want to say, Bob, we are
Speaker 1: you gonna really write the truth about what a monster?
Speaker 1: I mean, even I just imply it that Johnson McNamara
Speaker 1: was a monster. The men who were the engineers of
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War, I mean, they're among the worst war
Speaker 1: criminals in history and human history. The Vietnam War was
Speaker 1: something we will never get out from under, you will
Speaker 1: never get off from under. And McNamara is largely to
Speaker 1: blame for that. I mean he was. It was he was,
Speaker 1: you know, he was that velvety, ivy league. Uh, you know, monster,
Speaker 1: He's a monster, you know when I'm what's funny is
Speaker 1: you interview him? And I just want to share this
Speaker 1: story really quickly. A friend of mine or at some
Speaker 1: congressional office, and Kissinger's mother had just died up in Harlem.
Speaker 1: She lived up there for her whole life and was
Speaker 1: a big community activists up there. She was like nineties
Speaker 1: something news. And my friend is introduced me here Senator
Speaker 1: so and so, Congressman so and so. And as I turned,
Speaker 1: just out of my field the vision in my blind
Speaker 1: s about my friends and you know, Secretary Kissinger, and
Speaker 1: I turned and I gasp, here is Kissinger on par
Speaker 1: with McNamara, one of the great war criminals of all
Speaker 1: human history. I didn't know what to say, and I go,
Speaker 1: I'm very sorry about your mother. And he hugged me.
Speaker 1: He thank you a very much for saying this to me,
Speaker 1: and he hugs me, and I thought, I'm comforting and Kissinger,
Speaker 1: you're suggesting that I don't think he's a war criminal.
Speaker 1: I told his son. I really came to love Robert
Speaker 1: McNamara came to dinner at our home several times. But
Speaker 1: do I think he's a war criminal? Yes, I'm not
Speaker 1: a great believer in redemption. I think the whole idea
Speaker 1: is a kind of bad idea. After all, I am
Speaker 1: a Jew, not a Christian. I think you do bad things,
Speaker 1: they stay bad forever. There ain't the thousand or ten
Speaker 1: thousand or a hundred thousand hours of community service that's
Speaker 1: going to erase that, like lifting up the acetate window
Speaker 1: on a magic slate. Um, badness stays badness. When when
Speaker 1: you started the project with McNamara, I mean when you
Speaker 1: ended the project with mcmarray. In terms of your own opinion,
Speaker 1: what was the journey? I'm not sure what I thought
Speaker 1: of him in the beginning. I certainly demonstrated against the
Speaker 1: war as a young student, like you, I find the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War to be a horrible, horrible episode in American history. Um,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to know. It's hard to know whether
Speaker 1: the sixties and early seventies were worse than it is now,
Speaker 1: because it seems pretty bad now. Um. At the end
Speaker 1: of all of it, I came to like McNamara, why
Speaker 1: because he was so smart. I enjoyed talking to him.
Speaker 1: We invited him to dinner. He went to the bathroom
Speaker 1: and tripped on a rug in our living room, hit
Speaker 1: his head on a footstool, opened up this cash in.
Speaker 1: His forehead was bleeding profusely. My wife and I are
Speaker 1: going crazy. You want to get him to an emergency
Speaker 1: room immediately. We get coal, compresses to put on his forehead, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: My wife later says to me, oh, my god, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty years ago, forty years ago, if we had killed
Speaker 1: Robert S. McNamara, we'd be heroes. They put a plaque
Speaker 1: on your house, and now we're The footstool would be
Speaker 1: in the Smithsonian. Now we're worried about him. It's one
Speaker 1: thing to respond to another human being who you've become
Speaker 1: friendly with for whatever reason. Is that? Is that the
Speaker 1: danger of what you do Where there's a person that's
Speaker 1: a sebject matter, you develop a relationship with them, and
Speaker 1: does that color the process? Inevitably it does? You know,
Speaker 1: it's a danger. It's a danger which I believe, maybe
Speaker 1: there's a self deception on my part, can be overcome.
Speaker 1: I've interviewed over the years some pretty nasty characters. What
Speaker 1: would Trump call them? Nasty? Ambrese bad ambres. It's a
Speaker 1: I don't think in the case of Robert McNamara, I've
Speaker 1: lost a perspective on who he is and what he's done. Um,
Speaker 1: he's a person you could talk to about things. The
Speaker 1: other hand, Donald Rumsfeld was a person I never felt
Speaker 1: that you could talk to really about anything except his self,
Speaker 1: his legacy, even well maybe his legacy. But he Um,
Speaker 1: he radiated a supreme self satisfaction, pleased enormously with himself
Speaker 1: and what he had done. No apologies, no remorse, no guilt,
Speaker 1: no nothing. I called him the least Jewish person I'd
Speaker 1: ever met. No self hatred, no no introspection, no none, nothing.
Speaker 1: What year did fog of work him out? Um? Two thousands?
Speaker 1: Right after? Because I we did a path to war,
Speaker 1: we shot it in the fall of two thousand one,
Speaker 1: and and and I'm watching fog of war. And for
Speaker 1: the love of God, I lean in and I listened.
Speaker 1: I lean and I listened. That's one of the nicest
Speaker 1: things anyone's ever said. Say go I said, Mr Mcnamaric,
Speaker 1: go a, you have my attention. Tell me, tell me,
Speaker 1: teach me what what What was your perspective? And you
Speaker 1: could tell obviously in the film that he had his
Speaker 1: regrets and he's interviewing is about listening. It's about creating,
Speaker 1: in my maybe not so humble view, it's about creating
Speaker 1: a situation where people want to talk to you, where
Speaker 1: they want to reveal things to you. Um. It's not
Speaker 1: about difficult questions. It's not holding treating people feed to
Speaker 1: the fire. I'm not Mike Wallace. It's not Mike Wallace. Um,
Speaker 1: it's something very, very very different for me. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying for brand X. But to get to this in
Speaker 1: terms of then you do Bannon, and I must say
Speaker 1: I don't really feel like leaning in and listening to Bannon.
Speaker 1: I mean when you say there is such a thing
Speaker 1: as an objective truth, and I want to think to myself, well,
Speaker 1: how could the guy at Bright bart Or understand what
Speaker 1: objective truth is? Probably maybe he can't write part as
Speaker 1: a lie factory of the highest order. You can have
Speaker 1: no understanding of objective truth, no interest in objective truth.
Speaker 1: But guess what that doesn't mean There isn't such a thing.
Speaker 1: There's a fact of the matter. Going back to the
Speaker 1: thin blue line, someone shot this Dallas police officer. It's
Speaker 1: not up for grabs. You put a hundred people in
Speaker 1: a room with a hundred different opinions, it doesn't change
Speaker 1: the underlying reality of what happened. Who pulled the trigger
Speaker 1: and shot the underlying reality of the Bannon film. He won,
Speaker 1: and I think it's really important for us to understand
Speaker 1: how that happened. People don't want to deal with it.
Speaker 1: I don't even want to deal with it, although I
Speaker 1: have dealt with it. People would prefer to see that
Speaker 1: election and when he's sixteen as conspiracies of one kind
Speaker 1: or another. Um m hm. To me, it's one of
Speaker 1: the worst things that's happened in my lifetime, a nightmare
Speaker 1: that America is still in the middle of. How and why?
Speaker 1: And I do believe that Bannon was instrumental in putting
Speaker 1: Trump in the White House. How did this happen? Or
Speaker 1: if you prefer, how the fund did this happen? And
Speaker 1: it's a question that my movie tries to answer. How
Speaker 1: did you? How did you connect with him? How did
Speaker 1: you reach out to him? Uh? I have this very
Speaker 1: little known agent. Are you, Emmanuel who have connected me
Speaker 1: with people who knew Bannon? And as a result, we
Speaker 1: set up a meeting at the Bright Bart mansion, which
Speaker 1: is a townhouse very close to the Supreme Court in Washington,
Speaker 1: and I met Steve Steve Bannon and we agreed to
Speaker 1: make a movie together. What do you What do you think?
Speaker 1: Was his reasoning for making the movie. His main reason
Speaker 1: was he was a fan of my movies. He was
Speaker 1: at the Tell Your Ride Film Festival when I appeared
Speaker 1: with The Fog of War and Robert S. McNamara. He
Speaker 1: was in the audience. Um. He's during his movie executive days.
Speaker 1: The end of his movie executive days, he had become
Speaker 1: a documentary filmmaker. He made over a dozen documentary films.
Speaker 1: I've seen all of them. Do I want to admit
Speaker 1: to this? I think there might be consequent brain damage.
Speaker 1: Take out from Chosen, watch them. We'll go out to
Speaker 1: take out from Chosen and ten Bannon films. That sounds
Speaker 1: like a weekend of May point. If that doesn't kill you,
Speaker 1: nothing will. Was there a good one among them? Was
Speaker 1: there an adequate one among them? They're crazy. They're crazy
Speaker 1: because they're filled with unbelievable violence. Even if you were
Speaker 1: a connoisseur of violence, you would find these to be
Speaker 1: unusually violent. Guillotines, crucifixions, shootings, Garrottings, electrocutions, documentary film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're about how the world is going to hell because
Speaker 1: we've lost our connection with God. Their films and praise
Speaker 1: of Ronald Reagan. They might not be exactly. No, I
Speaker 1: don't want to to suggest something that might be wrong,
Speaker 1: but I don't believe they would be your cup of tea.
Speaker 1: I'll be the judge of that. Errol Morris, please, Now,
Speaker 1: when you sat down with him, described me, what is
Speaker 1: this list of films? You you you you you watched?
Speaker 1: He had you watch, You had him watch. I asked
Speaker 1: him about his favorite films. He's a film producer and
Speaker 1: a film lover, film lover, filmmaker. UM, I asked him
Speaker 1: about his favorite films. His favorite favorite film Twelve o'clock High,
Speaker 1: which you know I've seen thousands of American films. I
Speaker 1: hadn't seen twelve o'clock. Um. The first week of Harvard
Speaker 1: Business School, what does the entire class watch Twelve o'clock High?
Speaker 1: Gregory pecks best performance? Much better than To Kill a
Speaker 1: mocking Bird? Yes, yes, yes, it's a lot less sappy
Speaker 1: and the movie is amazing. It's insane, it's neihilistic, it's dark.
Speaker 1: What do you have to do in order to win
Speaker 1: a battle against Nazi Germany. You do what you're told
Speaker 1: to do, and you do it, no matter whether you're
Speaker 1: going to live or die. You do it because that's
Speaker 1: a fulfillment of your destiny, your dharma, your duty. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe that's what you have to do in
Speaker 1: order to win a war against fascism. But Bannon uses
Speaker 1: twelve o'clock High as the model for the twenty sixteen election.
Speaker 1: So a movie about battling fascism becomes suddenly a story
Speaker 1: about promoting fascism, or in their mind, battling the deep
Speaker 1: state and the entrenched political permanent political class in Washington.
Speaker 1: Remember he says that the permanent political class in Washington.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly ironic, the railing against the deep state, the
Speaker 1: permanent political class, the Party of Davos. This is a
Speaker 1: guy who went to Harvard Business School, who worked for
Speaker 1: Goldman Sachs, who gets his money from right wing fascist billionaires,
Speaker 1: and is telling you that he is a champion of
Speaker 1: the people. It's right out of Facing the Crowd, one
Speaker 1: of my very very favorite movies. But he wasn't willing
Speaker 1: to watch that movie video. I didn't pick these movies
Speaker 1: at all. He picked them and we discussed them. Uninterested
Speaker 1: in getting inside somebody's head, and how do you even
Speaker 1: do that? You have to have some kind of strategy.
Speaker 1: My strategy was movies. Put him in a set which
Speaker 1: is based on his favorite movie, Twelve o'clock High. Put
Speaker 1: him right in the Kanci Hut where Gregory Peck General
Speaker 1: Savage in the movie addresses the troops. There he is
Speaker 1: addressing the troops kind of sort of in my movie
Speaker 1: and Action and Action. I love this movie. I showed
Speaker 1: it to a group of journalists at the Nieman Foundation
Speaker 1: at Harvard, and one of these journalists said, now, you
Speaker 1: know this is not how you should interview Stephen Bannon.
Speaker 1: You know it, well, guess what I don't know it?
Speaker 1: And what did they mean? They meant that this should
Speaker 1: have been Charlie Rose, where David Frost, no metaphors, no filmmaking,
Speaker 1: no desire to tease out the unexpected or something that
Speaker 1: you don't know? Did you? Yes, what's an example of
Speaker 1: something he said that you thought? There it is. It's
Speaker 1: the overwhelming feeling that this is not a plan for
Speaker 1: anything but a plan for destruction. In the film, at
Speaker 1: some point I called Trump the fuck You President because
Speaker 1: for all those people out there in the world who
Speaker 1: have wanted to say fuck you to their teachers, fuck
Speaker 1: you to their neighbors, fuck you to their families, fuck
Speaker 1: you to the state, he's their guy. And Stephen Bannon.
Speaker 1: Despite all of the populous talk doing good for the
Speaker 1: working class, um, preserving jobs for American labor, despite all
Speaker 1: of that whoha, at the heart of it is something
Speaker 1: deeply destructive and nasty. Um. There is a destructive anger
Speaker 1: I feel at the heart of almost everything that he says. Um.
Speaker 1: Trump as well, that's the one thing that does unite them.
Speaker 1: Wherever the truth was damaged, altered, defaced, Vietnam, the Rand Corporation, Elsberg,
Speaker 1: all these seismic events in our life. When people see
Speaker 1: truth corrupt, truth is never corrupted. Baby, our willingness to
Speaker 1: pursue the truth because we're burned out, and we're also
Speaker 1: and I can speak for myself here, we're scared. Um,
Speaker 1: there's this shock. I remember people talk about the day
Speaker 1: where they were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. For
Speaker 1: those people old enough to remember, like myself, I will
Speaker 1: never forget the day that Trump was elected president of
Speaker 1: the United States when it beg came clear that he
Speaker 1: actually was going to win the election. A nightmare, A
Speaker 1: nightmare that I hope eventually we recover from. Um and
Speaker 1: people got angry. It's a really interesting phenomenon. Someone said
Speaker 1: to me, I don't want to believe this to be true,
Speaker 1: but alas I think it is true. People got so
Speaker 1: angry at this movie and got angry at me for
Speaker 1: having made the movie that I was attacked. You know
Speaker 1: that theory kill the messenger. It's a good a good theory.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're going to kill someone, the messenger
Speaker 1: standing right there, why not kill him or her? I UM,
Speaker 1: I received this anger, and it's as if people don't
Speaker 1: want to deal with it. They want it just so badly.
Speaker 1: Please Mommy, make it go away. You want to treat it.
Speaker 1: Look at an emily, it's an anomaly, or even worse
Speaker 1: that it's not even happening, that somehow, if I patiently
Speaker 1: hide in the closet, that it'll go away. Mommy will
Speaker 1: fix it. Mommy will see to it that this bad
Speaker 1: guy is pushed out of office and America is restored
Speaker 1: to the splendor that it once was. We're a world
Speaker 1: of magical thinking today. I mean, Bannon is a he's
Speaker 1: a wizard. He is a wizard, he's a snake oil salesman,
Speaker 1: he is a very frightening guy. And he won, and
Speaker 1: he won. I think that's important to remember, and then
Speaker 1: ask yourself the important question, do you want him to
Speaker 1: win again? I most certainly do not. This is Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. After our
Speaker 1: your view, I realized I still had a couple more
Speaker 1: questions for Maras. Thank you so much. It's Alec, Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for taking this phone call. This is
Speaker 1: not a cold call from some policeman's benevolent association. I
Speaker 1: hope it's a caulle from a T and T. Years ago,
Speaker 1: when I kept failing to pay my phone bill, phone
Speaker 1: company was after me. They were hot on my ass,
Speaker 1: and my stepfather took me aside and said to me, Errol,
Speaker 1: don't you think it's time you turned yourself into the
Speaker 1: phone company? And I looked at him and I said, hmmmmm, no,
Speaker 1: I don't think I want to do that. Well, while
Speaker 1: I have you, I want to ask you. I want
Speaker 1: to ask you about collaboration. We wanted to append every
Speaker 1: now and then I think about things I did not
Speaker 1: due to my satisfied action. And I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you just briefly about collaborations, because obviously as a
Speaker 1: filmmaker you have fairly steady you know, there's a couple
Speaker 1: of films you've made with different people, and I just
Speaker 1: wanted to go through some of these folks. Now. Of course,
Speaker 1: the first one that comes to mine is Glass, because
Speaker 1: I downloaded and I watched Fog of War again the
Speaker 1: other day, and I've rarely I'm kind of a nut
Speaker 1: for score and music and how well it fits or
Speaker 1: how intrusive it is, and blah blah blah. And he
Speaker 1: composed that original score. You didn't access some material of
Speaker 1: this that was original score for the film? Correct, I
Speaker 1: with him at the piano. I've rarely heard score that
Speaker 1: was more compelling than that score for Fogg of War
Speaker 1: was beautiful, And I was wondering, how did you first
Speaker 1: begin your collaboration with Glass? How did you guys find
Speaker 1: each other? Well, I had shot most of the symbol
Speaker 1: line I was editing. I was using scratch tracks. When
Speaker 1: you're editing a film music hasn't been written for the film,
Speaker 1: you need something to edit with what had I added with?
Speaker 1: I added with Philip Glass, various tracks from music that
Speaker 1: he had written previously, from Glass works from in the
Speaker 1: upper Room. It works. So kept saying, we need to
Speaker 1: find somebody who can write like Philip Glass. And then
Speaker 1: there was that do we want to call it an epiphany?
Speaker 1: Why I'd get the dude himself when I'd get Philip
Speaker 1: not so easy. I just kept nagging him and nagging
Speaker 1: him to see the film, and we set up a screening.
Speaker 1: He reluctantly came in, looked at the kind of the
Speaker 1: sinboo line and immediately said, I'm righting, wow, And it
Speaker 1: was really really I mean, we've done many things together now,
Speaker 1: but it was really interesting collaboration. Um. I remember sitting
Speaker 1: at the piano with him and one, you know, the
Speaker 1: trouble with this music is it's just not repetitive enough.
Speaker 1: And he gave me this very funny look and he said,
Speaker 1: that's a new one. But the collaboration works. I believe
Speaker 1: we work really really well together. Fantastic now when he
Speaker 1: when you work with someone like that, and I apologize
Speaker 1: because I should have asked you this earlier, but uh,
Speaker 1: did you have any background of music? You say, you
Speaker 1: sat at the piano, so you played. And when you're
Speaker 1: there with him, is he putting four things and playing
Speaker 1: selections for you and music, you know, pieces of it
Speaker 1: for you and you are just going great? Yes? Or
Speaker 1: do you actually make suggestions to him about what you
Speaker 1: want in terms of the film's music. I was, I mean,
Speaker 1: I said all kinds of crazy things to him that
Speaker 1: are probably deeply inappropriate. How so, why well? I remember
Speaker 1: him playing the main cue for the thin Boe line.
Speaker 1: I said, you know, if you raise that voice up
Speaker 1: an octave, I think it could be much even two octaves.
Speaker 1: And he did, and then he said, I think you're right.
Speaker 1: What's the last project you did with him? Oh? We
Speaker 1: did Fog of War. We did a filmed commemorate hundredth
Speaker 1: anniversary of IBM together, and he for my new series.
Speaker 1: So it's an ongoing relationship. And I am a fan.
Speaker 1: I've always been a fan, and I remain a fan.
Speaker 1: You two had the same music teacher over in France?
Speaker 1: Is that correct? We did? Who was that teacher? Can
Speaker 1: you believe that? Well? I guess I can act with you.
Speaker 1: Anything is possible. Was it was the the formidable, frightening
Speaker 1: Naughtia Bolage herself, and you were with her when still
Speaker 1: in high school. It's a thousand years ago. The done
Speaker 1: um one of the other collaborations. I just want to
Speaker 1: hit some of the key ones here was Doug Able
Speaker 1: and you just did Fog of War with him. He
Speaker 1: didn't You didn't do any other projects with him. I
Speaker 1: did something you would really really like, which is a
Speaker 1: portrait of Rick Rossner, one of the smartest men in
Speaker 1: the world. What's the name of the film. I think
Speaker 1: it's called One in a thousand million trillion. Was it released,
Speaker 1: It was on television. It was part of a person
Speaker 1: It's really one of the strangest and one of the
Speaker 1: funniest things I've ever done. I'll look it up. I
Speaker 1: have this misfortune. No one thinks. Maybe I can convince
Speaker 1: you that I'm funny, But it's that rum Sell. Did
Speaker 1: we talk about Rumsfeld? Well, you told me that you
Speaker 1: thought Rumsfeld was the least I don't want to say
Speaker 1: self disclosive, but that's really not the goal, I guess
Speaker 1: when you're talking to people like that, but just the
Speaker 1: most up to If that's a version I have a
Speaker 1: version of his, oh none unknown, etcetera. Etcetera. My version
Speaker 1: is the known funny. For example, you would be the
Speaker 1: known funny. I know that you're funny. I find you funny.
Speaker 1: You constantly say funny things. And there is the known unfunny.
Speaker 1: We're all familiar with that. Yes, I would put RUMFLD
Speaker 1: in that category, the known unfunny, the known deeply unfunny.
Speaker 1: We released the film and call it that. Well, let's
Speaker 1: look at some old footage to see if we can
Speaker 1: foot Then there's another category, the unknown unfunny, which is
Speaker 1: a very scary category. It's deeply unfunny, but you don't
Speaker 1: know it yet. For that describes half the things I
Speaker 1: see on TV. Only half. Yeah, well, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: be kind. I'm trying to be too negative. If I
Speaker 1: told the truth about how I felt about you know,
Speaker 1: much of what's going on after that would be a
Speaker 1: sunny from this conversation. Are you going to work with me?
Speaker 1: That's the only question that I'm interested in the answer
Speaker 1: is yes. The answer is fuck yes, Well, I would
Speaker 1: be pleased to work with you. We will think of
Speaker 1: what we can do, think of what we could anything.
Speaker 1: You need, anything you need to please, don't don't hesitate
Speaker 1: to contact me. Now. So, so when you're with able
Speaker 1: and someone like that, I mean, I'm assuming that you're
Speaker 1: very hands on editing. What does an editor do for
Speaker 1: you other than just give you an assembly? They work
Speaker 1: with me, We talk, we think about what we're doing together.
Speaker 1: They're a companion. Did you have an editor that you
Speaker 1: thought you worked really really closely with it? You had
Speaker 1: fabulous editors? My editor as we speak, Stephen Hathaway here,
Speaker 1: who is one of the editors on Fog of War,
Speaker 1: Doug Abel. I've been lucky. I've been lucky with cameraman,
Speaker 1: with editors, with producers, I've been unlucky too, But I
Speaker 1: for the most part, been very very lucky. I mean,
Speaker 1: have you ever worked with an editor more than once?
Speaker 1: Of course you have, because I look, I look at
Speaker 1: the I look at the you know, I am my
Speaker 1: current editor, Stephen Hathaway has been working for me for
Speaker 1: twenty years. What makes it? What makes a good editor? Uh?
Speaker 1: He's really smart, really good idea of structure and story,
Speaker 1: and he actually rolls up the sleeves and immediately gets
Speaker 1: to work. All he lives on the dailies. You know,
Speaker 1: the only thing, it's not clear that I'm really good
Speaker 1: for anything. But I'm a dailies producer. It's what an
Speaker 1: editor wants. Please give me more dailies. The ted Bathe
Speaker 1: Lucas was your production designer, an amazing and amazing character.
Speaker 1: He workedn't in Baffal Lucas work with Let me look
Speaker 1: up and see he worked with Levinson and he uh
Speaker 1: trying to see what else he did. It is a
Speaker 1: kind of um not that every story is in a
Speaker 1: tragic story properly considered. But one of the most talented
Speaker 1: people that I have ever met, certainly one of the
Speaker 1: most talented people I've ever worked with, and he was
Speaker 1: never really given his due. He should have been directing many, many,
Speaker 1: many films. He directed one film limited distribution, but as
Speaker 1: a kind of film called Rockers. What was his wife?
Speaker 1: Didn't he have a wife in the business? That was
Speaker 1: almost he did that. That's that Eugenie Buffaloucas, that I
Speaker 1: worked with her, I worked with her. That that's the
Speaker 1: ke the connection I had with him. I remember his wife.
Speaker 1: I remember his wife. We worked and we worked, we
Speaker 1: worked together for um. I think probably something with Denny,
Speaker 1: something with DEMI. That makes sense. Yeah, let me ask
Speaker 1: you just two more here. Robert Chappell. I can't reraman
Speaker 1: that I've worked again and again with Chopsky, who did
Speaker 1: the Sinbouline, who also did Batman Returns. Someone asked me
Speaker 1: I was being interviewed for the d g A. They
Speaker 1: asked me, why are all so dark in the thin law?
Speaker 1: And I thought, what what are you saying? This is
Speaker 1: about a murder that occurred on a dark roadway in
Speaker 1: West Dallas close to midnight? Film noir documentary, if anything?
Speaker 1: Would you ask a film noir director say you're talking
Speaker 1: to Jacques Tuner about how to the Past. Would you
Speaker 1: say to him, Oh, no, no, sancha so dark? What
Speaker 1: was that about? It's a dark story involved the cop killing. Still,
Speaker 1: to this day, the way people see documentary, it's as
Speaker 1: if they don't even see it. They see something other
Speaker 1: than I want to show the Eugenie Baffalupas did Miami Blues,
Speaker 1: the movie that I did that Demi produced and George
Speaker 1: Armitage were directed, and then she did Grass Point movie.
Speaker 1: It's it's a looping movie, but but I had a
Speaker 1: good time. Ye. George did Gross point Blank with um sure,
Speaker 1: and let's not forget the guy that I work now.
Speaker 1: It was my dp Igor Mortinovich, who is just kind
Speaker 1: of fabulous. He did Wormwood, he did American Dharma. He's
Speaker 1: doing my news here. You're not the best I've seen,
Speaker 1: but you're up there in terms of this game you
Speaker 1: play where you just you know, people love you and
Speaker 1: admire you, and you do what I do. And I
Speaker 1: mean in the Irish maybe the Jews are like the Irish,
Speaker 1: where it's like, let's just get this over with. That's
Speaker 1: my theory of life. We know what's gonna end. The
Speaker 1: Irish way of living is, let's just get this over
Speaker 1: we know what's gonna end. Let's just cut to the ending.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can be in a nursing home together. I
Speaker 1: always told my wife literally, I said, when I die,
Speaker 1: if I could, maybe you could shoot this movie. It
Speaker 1: would be great you and all your gang. Philip Glass
Speaker 1: could do the music. It would be so compelling. I
Speaker 1: said to my wife. If I found that I'm gonna
Speaker 1: die they had a terminal illness, we'll go to film
Speaker 1: it all. We're gonna film. You know, the doctor's gonna say,
Speaker 1: I think you need to come in and see me
Speaker 1: as soon as possible. Boom, we get the cameras. Do
Speaker 1: we go in he says you have cancer, and we
Speaker 1: find that I'm sick, and by the end I'm in
Speaker 1: the bed and we do split screen and you kind
Speaker 1: of see a camera like kind of like raking over
Speaker 1: my face, a little little light coming through the window,
Speaker 1: but you see the monitor at the foot of the
Speaker 1: bed in the other split screen. So when I flatline
Speaker 1: and I'm dead, the moment I die, it's on camera.
Speaker 1: We filmed the moment. I just go, did he really
Speaker 1: he filmed the moment of his death. He filmed the
Speaker 1: whole week his dropping dead? Yeah, and when was anything
Speaker 1: ever done? I think that we did it come out?
Speaker 1: You mean that your local multiplex? Yes, it's available where
Speaker 1: it's like everything else on YouTube. Of course it's on YouTube.
Speaker 1: What isn't on YouTube? Oh god, oh god, oh god.
Speaker 1: Let's make a movie about that. I'll play Leary. No,
Speaker 1: you don't want to do a narrative film. We're doing
Speaker 1: a narrative film. Let's do it all right, Let's do
Speaker 1: do me a favor. I always say the same thing,
Speaker 1: just but let me finish my question. Representation. Have you
Speaker 1: ever agents managers? Has anybody ever helped guide your career
Speaker 1: and open doors for you? Are you. Like most people
Speaker 1: I know who are extraordinarily talented, you just get the
Speaker 1: work yourself. It all just comes to you yourself. I
Speaker 1: have perhaps the most powerful agent in the business. I
Speaker 1: can't really recall what he's done for me. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: my agent would say to me, I want you to
Speaker 1: read this script, and he would start to describe the
Speaker 1: merits of the film, and I would say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no no, don't do that, don't do that, don't
Speaker 1: do that. I said, you're an air traffic controller. You
Speaker 1: just land the plane and make sure there's plenty of
Speaker 1: peanuts and diet coke on board, and then we take
Speaker 1: off again. And I said, I'm not interested in your
Speaker 1: creative interpretation of the material. This way on the plane,
Speaker 1: there was a terrible crash at San Francisco International Airport.
Speaker 1: Some plane came in from I believe it was Korea
Speaker 1: and they crashed. Um people were killed horribly. And very
Speaker 1: shortly after that, I flew into San Francisco and as
Speaker 1: I'm getting off the plane, I looked at the pilot
Speaker 1: and said, thank you for not hitting the sea wall.
Speaker 1: It's a very strange look, but I thought it was appropriate.
Speaker 1: Thank you. For landing the plane. Well, let me just
Speaker 1: say this to you. I'm gonna find out how I
Speaker 1: can email your office. I don't want your personal contact,
Speaker 1: but i'll get like an assistant and office email something
Speaker 1: that's appropriate. And I'm gonna make you so sorry that
Speaker 1: you mentioned working with me, because I'm just going to
Speaker 1: keep pulsing you and pinging you and driving you insane
Speaker 1: until you let me come. I'll play a cab driver,
Speaker 1: I'll play a Somali. Yeah. I don't give a ship,
Speaker 1: how small it is. I just want to shoot something
Speaker 1: with you. I have trouble driving me insane because I'm
Speaker 1: already there. Well, we're gonna drive you further down down
Speaker 1: the well of insanity. Many thanks to you. I wanted
Speaker 1: to put this in there about collaborations with you. That's
Speaker 1: very important, okay, and thank you for doing this. People
Speaker 1: bonded to it. What's the word favorably? I gotta I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how many people have said this something
Speaker 1: to me. People come up to me all the time
Speaker 1: and they'll go and the more unusual if it's somebody
Speaker 1: that we know is on a tour and you know
Speaker 1: somebody who's selling a book or what have you. We
Speaker 1: don't object to that. I mean, that's a part of
Speaker 1: the business. But I have had so many people say
Speaker 1: to me how much they love this interview with you.
Speaker 1: You have many, many, many, many many admirers out there. Many. Well,
Speaker 1: I am on a tour. I'm on a tour to nowhere.
Speaker 1: I want to go on that tour with you. Let
Speaker 1: me come on tour with you, tour again. I'd have
Speaker 1: a lovely day and thank you. Okay, we're on a
Speaker 1: tour to nowhere together. M Errol Morris, the director of
Speaker 1: the Steve Bannon portrait American Dharma. I'm Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: this is here's the thing.