Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from My Heart Radio. It's summer, and that means
Speaker 1: it's time for our tradition that Here's the Thing where
Speaker 1: the staff share their favorite episodes from our archives in
Speaker 1: our Summer Staff Picks series. My pick is Judith Vecchioni enjoy.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen sixties, which was a convulsive period in
Speaker 1: American history, one major story seemed to play on and
Speaker 1: on with no end in sight, the War in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: When that war officially ended in nineteen seventy five, journalists, artists,
Speaker 1: and public broadcasting began to conduct the autopsy. The result
Speaker 1: produced films like nineteen seventy eight's Coming Home, nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine Apocalypse Now, and a PBS series first broadcast in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three via KNAM, a television history. Over the
Speaker 1: course of thirteen hours, the program dug deep into the background,
Speaker 1: cost and toll taken on the principal figures involved in
Speaker 1: the war.
Speaker 2: Thirty years after the first American died in Vietnam, the
Speaker 2: last Americans were leaving, waiting on the US embassy roof
Speaker 2: to be flown to safety. The long war was ending
Speaker 2: in the defeat of the South Vietnamese state that America
Speaker 2: had supported for two decades. What kind of peace finally
Speaker 2: was at hand? What would be the meaning of peace?
Speaker 1: My guest today is Judith VECCHIONI, an Emmy and Peabody
Speaker 1: winning producer of that series. Vecchione has worked in documentary
Speaker 1: programming with Boston based PBS station WGBH since the seventies
Speaker 1: and has been an executive producer there for twenty three years.
Speaker 1: Her career has encompassed programs like Frontline and American Experience,
Speaker 1: documentary films like Blood, Sugar Rising, and the Peabody winning
Speaker 1: doc series Eyes on the Prize. I wanted to know
Speaker 1: what Veccione's upbringing was like and how her home environment
Speaker 1: influenced her career path.
Speaker 3: I grew up in a politically very aware household. My
Speaker 3: father read the newspaper from cover to cover, The New
Speaker 3: York Times cover to cover every day, and we talked
Speaker 3: about what was going on, and so the big issues
Speaker 3: of the day's civil rights the Vietnam War were live
Speaker 3: topics in my family. My parents worked with civil rights
Speaker 3: organizations making sure our community was not dismantling the housing
Speaker 3: discrimination in our suburban community. What area was this in
Speaker 3: south shore of Long Island?
Speaker 1: Where what time? I'm from Massapequa, I'm from Merrick, So
Speaker 1: you were in the south shore of the island. Was
Speaker 1: your dad? Was you a writer?
Speaker 3: He should have been, but he did not end up
Speaker 3: doing that. He should have been, he should have been
Speaker 3: an academic. Actually, I think the politics of the day
Speaker 3: for people who were very progressive made that hard. And
Speaker 3: my mother was a teacher, was a high school math
Speaker 3: teacher who I had for math actually, and luckily it's
Speaker 3: a subject where you get the answers right, you get
Speaker 3: them wrong, and so there's no favoriteism. Nobody ever got
Speaker 3: worried about whether mom was being nice to me, and
Speaker 3: half the class called her mom anyway.
Speaker 1: So when you leave, you go off to Yale, and
Speaker 1: as you head off to New Haven, was there a plan?
Speaker 1: Was there something you wanted to study? And what was that?
Speaker 3: Well, the first thing is that I'm in the first
Speaker 3: class of women at Yale, the first matriculating class, So
Speaker 3: I don't know that I knew what I was going
Speaker 3: to study at that time. I was interested in languages.
Speaker 3: I was interested in history, and I ended up being
Speaker 3: a linguist major, which probably wasn't the most useful thing
Speaker 3: to study. But it's such a rich environment. You know,
Speaker 3: in these big universities you get great education. I'm not
Speaker 3: sure I took full advantage of it. It was the
Speaker 3: middle of the Vietnam War. There was a lot going on,
Speaker 3: and Yale was very unprepared for us, for the women.
Speaker 3: How so, well they fifty years later, this is like
Speaker 3: five years ago, they invited the first women back. So
Speaker 3: that's my class, plus the two transferred classes. And they
Speaker 3: admitted that they just did it in a hurry to
Speaker 3: beat Princeton to co education. And I felt a lot
Speaker 3: better once they said, yea, we really didn't think about
Speaker 3: anything except well, we'll paint some bathrooms for you or something.
Speaker 3: But there were no you have to think about when
Speaker 3: you arrive in an environment like that a university, you
Speaker 3: expect the upper class people to gui you, to help you.
Speaker 3: You expect the teachers to know where to draw. They
Speaker 3: didn't know what did. Nobody knew what to do. All
Speaker 3: the upper class women were as new as we were.
Speaker 3: It was a real pioneering experience.
Speaker 1: Is sixty nine.
Speaker 3: We arrived in sixty nine and that.
Speaker 1: Class were you as incoming freshmen and people who had
Speaker 1: transferred who were upper class people as well, right transfer
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 3: So graduating classes of seventy three, minds seventy two and
Speaker 3: seventy one. But they came from you know, Vassar, and
Speaker 3: from NYU and wherever. They didn't know Yale, They didn't
Speaker 3: know the professors. Nobody could say to you those key
Speaker 3: things of don't take this class, take that one. You
Speaker 3: know this, If you got a choice of teaching assistants,
Speaker 3: go with this one. It was, as I say, a
Speaker 3: tremendously rich environment. There was more than enough for anybody.
Speaker 3: But I know that the later classes had it easier
Speaker 3: than we did.
Speaker 1: When you leave Yale with a linguistic stigre, what's the
Speaker 1: plan then? Was you you had never no filmmaking? Had
Speaker 1: you done a minor in film? No?
Speaker 3: By that point I did have a plan though, Okay,
Speaker 3: which is my last semester. I got out in seven
Speaker 3: semesters instead of eight semesters, in part because I always
Speaker 3: had siblings in school. It was in college, so it
Speaker 3: was it was expensive for my family, even with scholarships
Speaker 3: and things. And my last semester I discovered I had
Speaker 3: extra credits that nobody had mentioned to me and I
Speaker 3: could take something fun instead of all my major classes.
Speaker 3: And I said, I think I'll take this class in video.
Speaker 3: What the heck in the Art and architecture building. And
Speaker 3: it got there and they had cameras the size of refrigerators, right,
Speaker 3: giant cameras. It was two inch videotape that you were
Speaker 3: recording on basically couldn't edit. And we took pictures of
Speaker 3: each other that that first day, you know, videos of
Speaker 3: each other. And I had two enormous light bulb moments,
Speaker 3: light bulbul over the head moments where I said I
Speaker 3: need to do this, this is what I should be doing.
Speaker 3: I had been doing radio, rock and roll, news radio,
Speaker 3: that sort of thing at WYBC, the GBH community station.
Speaker 3: I covered the panther trials and then the riots around
Speaker 3: that because wre were those in new Haven. New Haven
Speaker 3: had a black panther trial. Yeah, there was an event
Speaker 3: and they came and then there was a trial after
Speaker 3: that event on May Day. There was an event, But.
Speaker 1: What about it? Did you have the light bulb moment?
Speaker 1: Meaning when you're there. We used to have a joke
Speaker 1: we did a TV show where the guy in the
Speaker 1: period was period at television and he's drunk or he's
Speaker 1: halluciny or something, and he turns to the producers into
Speaker 1: producer and says, why are those people pointing those ovens
Speaker 1: at me? Meaning the cameras? They were so gigantic? But
Speaker 1: what instide when you're inside that environment? Because you go
Speaker 1: on to go ahead and have this obviously amazing career.
Speaker 1: What was the light bulb moment? What was attractive?
Speaker 3: I think it was telling stories that were real and
Speaker 3: that mattered to people, that these were important things that
Speaker 3: were happening around us, and there were ways of telling
Speaker 3: those stories that had impact and that were creatively satisfying.
Speaker 3: I mean I had done art before, painting and so forth,
Speaker 3: and it just it fed those same brain cells for me,
Speaker 3: that idea and it had impact. It had reasons, so
Speaker 3: reasons to do it that were not just entertainment or
Speaker 3: selling toothpaste, which is why, of course I went for
Speaker 3: public television, not to commercial television.
Speaker 1: So that was the beachhead was public television and SOLF.
Speaker 1: That's where you started.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I started at GBH and I stayed there for
Speaker 3: almost my entire career. I mean I left once or twice,
Speaker 3: but came back because public media is where you do documentaries.
Speaker 3: I mean, now there's HBO, but HBO does what five
Speaker 3: ten documentaries a year. They're wonderful, but that's not what
Speaker 3: they really do, whereas Frontline does forty a year, and
Speaker 3: American Experience does another you know, ten or fifteen. I
Speaker 3: don't know what they do. Inv POV is still on
Speaker 3: independent lens. Through GBH. I've worked with the POV people,
Speaker 3: I've worked with the Independent lens people, so those are
Speaker 3: the independent filmmakers, which is where I am now mostly focused.
Speaker 3: But I've also worked with Frontline, Nova, American Experience and
Speaker 3: all the background ones, and that brings in an enormous
Speaker 3: cadre of incredibly talented people that you get to learn from.
Speaker 3: I can't tell you the number of people who I've gone, Oh, Now,
Speaker 3: I understand why we do these things this way. And
Speaker 3: I also have a I'm old enough that my career
Speaker 3: spans from film to digital. So when we start, Vietnam
Speaker 3: was shot on film, My fire film was shot on film,
Speaker 3: and that's way later, so you're kind of in the
Speaker 3: midst of really smart, dedicated people.
Speaker 1: Now when you arrive at GBH, the CPB is formed
Speaker 1: in sixty seven and before you have a government centralized
Speaker 1: funding mechanism for public broadcasting and in this case obviously
Speaker 1: a public TV. I'm wondering if they were off on
Speaker 1: their own doing their own thing and raising the money.
Speaker 3: I don't think so. I think the system was formulated
Speaker 3: after the Carnegie Commission report that they said, we need
Speaker 3: to have MINO.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: We need to have a federally supported system that could
Speaker 3: be independent and could be therefore able to cover topics
Speaker 3: that commercial stations needing to fill a bottom line and
Speaker 3: pay stockholders and so forth that they couldn't do.
Speaker 1: So when you show up at GBH, maybe everything is
Speaker 1: concretizing at the same time and congealing at the same time.
Speaker 1: What was the terrain, like, you're a woman, Yes, you
Speaker 1: have a degree from Yale, so that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: Did you get in there and roll up your sieves
Speaker 1: and start working or were you making coffee for a
Speaker 1: year or what happened?
Speaker 3: At first? I was a part time vacation replacement secretary
Speaker 3: and I worked in the design department, which, as I remember,
Speaker 3: it was pretty self contained and had a photographer and
Speaker 3: a photography studio. And this is pre digital. There's not
Speaker 3: even three quarter inch tapes, so you know, it's mostly
Speaker 3: serving news and local very labor intensive, very labor intensive,
Speaker 3: and I didn't have a lot to do except observe,
Speaker 3: learn and watch the Watergate hearings. It's a good summer
Speaker 3: to be employed there. And then I worked for the
Speaker 3: finance department. And then I saw some people. I continued
Speaker 3: to do these fill in replacement stuff and I saw
Speaker 3: these people in the cafeteria waving their fingers about and
Speaker 3: I looked at them and I said, what are you doing?
Speaker 3: And they said, we're learning sign language because we're going
Speaker 3: to start the first captioning for the deaf and we
Speaker 3: need to know how to speak to our deaf employees.
Speaker 3: And I said, languages, linguistics. I'm interested in this. And
Speaker 3: they said, well, you know, we meet when we can.
Speaker 3: And I said, you know, i'm a secretary in the
Speaker 3: finance department or something. They'll let me take lunch at
Speaker 3: three if that's when you do it. They don't care
Speaker 3: when I take lunch. And I went in and I
Speaker 3: learned to sign, not fluently, but enough. And when they
Speaker 3: had trouble recruiting someone for a deaf person, they intended
Speaker 3: to have a certain number of people one of whom
Speaker 3: was deaf doing this job, and it took them along
Speaker 3: than anticipated to get the first deaf person to pay
Speaker 3: attention because it was it was untried captioning. So they
Speaker 3: hired me as the non deaf replacement for the deaf people,
Speaker 3: and that was again an excellent learning process. It was
Speaker 3: writing because you were writing, you were taking the ABC
Speaker 3: Evening news and writing it into caption language and putting
Speaker 3: it in computers. Early computers again, the size of refrigerators
Speaker 3: extremely slow, and when things went wrong and the machines
Speaker 3: broke down, we had a sign language interpreter who'd show
Speaker 3: up in the little corner of the screen and do it.
Speaker 1: And between when you start these beginnings at GBH and
Speaker 1: when you become part of your first project that you're
Speaker 1: on the crew, you're helping to write, you're helping to
Speaker 1: pro do whatever your contribution. I'm assuming you didn't direct
Speaker 1: right out of the gate, right, so you get what's
Speaker 1: the first filmed project? Or I guess so it's all
Speaker 1: filmed back then, what's the first filmed project you work on?
Speaker 3: What year was that I went over to Nova from captioning,
Speaker 3: and I would say we be like seventy six that.
Speaker 1: I went I think three years and you were Nova
Speaker 1: doing what.
Speaker 3: I was a production assistant, mostly doing post, so learning
Speaker 3: how you mix in film and how you taking care
Speaker 3: of bringing in narrators.
Speaker 1: And contracting it together.
Speaker 3: So forth you putting it together started producing promos a
Speaker 3: very good learning experience. If you've got to tell people
Speaker 3: why they should watch this film on wolves in thirty seconds,
Speaker 3: what are you going to put up there? I had
Speaker 3: very good mentors there, some of whom came over from
Speaker 3: the BBC because they had been doing the Horizon Science series,
Speaker 3: which was an inspiration for Nova. Nova was the first
Speaker 3: big national project that GBH did, and it was clear
Speaker 3: at that point that the person who was running national
Speaker 3: Productions was interested in expanding the national series the documentary series,
Speaker 3: and so Nova and then World, which was the predecessor
Speaker 3: to Frontline, and then American Experience all came in under
Speaker 3: that five or ten year period.
Speaker 1: So you're doing post and it seems like, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to be too polite or whatever, but it
Speaker 1: seems like, did you feel that everywhere you when people
Speaker 1: saw that you had it in terms of the capacity
Speaker 1: to do this work Because the business relies on mentoring
Speaker 1: the business relies on someone who's in a more powerful
Speaker 1: position than you are, turning to you and going, let's go.
Speaker 1: You're going to come with us. We're going to go
Speaker 1: on the shoot together. Right, what's the first film you make?
Speaker 1: You go and shoot?
Speaker 3: I was a PA at Nova in post production and
Speaker 3: they would occasionally need somebody to go out in a
Speaker 3: field on a production for them. And there was a
Speaker 3: film that was done on very early genetic engineering, and
Speaker 3: I became the PA on that one, and I traveled
Speaker 3: with the two producers. This was, you know, back in
Speaker 3: the day when crews were bigger. You had generally a
Speaker 3: producer and associate producer and a production assistant, plus your
Speaker 3: three person camera sound team going out. Nowadays it would
Speaker 3: be maybe two people with the equipment that we have
Speaker 3: and the ability to do things remotely. So that was
Speaker 3: one of the early ones, the genetic engineering film.
Speaker 1: Were most of the people involved in that project and
Speaker 1: the early projects you became a part of after that,
Speaker 1: was it mostly men?
Speaker 3: Mostly? Yes, mostly, But actually on that film there were
Speaker 3: co producers and it was a man and a woman,
Speaker 3: and the woman actually eventually became Nova's executive producer, Paula Apsel,
Speaker 3: but GPH, I thought was always pretty friendly to women.
Speaker 3: There weren't as many women at the very top levels
Speaker 3: for a while. Now there are, and in fact GBH
Speaker 3: now has its first woman CEO as of last year.
Speaker 3: And I would say it's more women than men in
Speaker 3: production at GBH. I'm not sure that's true across the
Speaker 3: system for public broadcasting, and it's certainly I don't think
Speaker 3: I'm not part of the larger commercial world. It's not true.
Speaker 3: It's certainly true in the independent world that it doesn't
Speaker 3: matter whether you're not really being downgraded.
Speaker 1: Yes or No is the first film you make? Correct?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that might have been. And that's for World, the
Speaker 3: predecessor for Frontline. And I did that one in Canada
Speaker 3: and I'm the producer. I'm not the director on that.
Speaker 3: The director is Michael Rubo.
Speaker 1: What was the topic of Yes or No? What was
Speaker 1: it about?
Speaker 3: This was in the period when Quebec was looking to
Speaker 3: secede from Canada. Yes, and Michael Rubau knew this impersonator
Speaker 3: an impressionist named Jean Quie Moreau and Janui did impressions
Speaker 3: of Ronie Levex, the premiere of Quebec, who was the
Speaker 3: great driver for secession and Jeanquie Moreo was so well
Speaker 3: known in French Canada. This is not an experience I
Speaker 3: had had before. You'd walk through the streets of Montreal
Speaker 3: or wherever, and little girls would faint in front of you.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it's Janquie Moreau. He's so well known,
Speaker 3: he's so wonderful. And Jean Gui decided he would take
Speaker 3: his show to Toronto to see if it would play there.
Speaker 3: So it was about the difference between French and English
Speaker 3: Canada told through this story of Shuanghi's journey.
Speaker 1: I've got to get a copy of that. That sounds amazing,
Speaker 1: documentary producer Judith ACCIONI. If you enjoy conversations with brilliant
Speaker 1: documentary filmmakers, be sure to check out my episode with
Speaker 1: director and producer Rory Kennedy.
Speaker 4: I love Boeing and what Boeing stood for in this country,
Speaker 4: and we really celebrate that in the film because it's
Speaker 4: been an extraordinary company for decades. You know, it helped
Speaker 4: us get out of World War two, it helped get
Speaker 4: us to the moon with my uncle Jack, and for
Speaker 4: many decades, Boeing did one thing, which was to say
Speaker 4: we're going to prioritize excellence and safety, and the McDonald
Speaker 4: douglas people were put in charge, and they had a
Speaker 4: very different business model, which was very Wall Street focused.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Rory Kennedy, go
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Judith
Speaker 1: Vecchioni shares the weight of responsibility she felt bringing the
Speaker 1: series Vietnam A Television History to the American public. I'm
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Documentary producer Judith Veccioni can spend years behind the scenes
Speaker 1: making a series before it sees the light of day.
Speaker 1: Vietnam A Television History was no exception. It was an
Speaker 1: incredible undertaking, with its thirteen episodes being produced over six years.
Speaker 3: I think it was two years of fundraising and four
Speaker 3: years of production. Yeah, and it was in part it
Speaker 3: took so long because we were making up a format
Speaker 3: for America. Nobody had ever done this kind of large,
Speaker 3: multi part series right where the stories fed to each other.
Speaker 3: You could watch them separately, but if you really want
Speaker 3: to understand it, you watched all of them roughly the
Speaker 3: order that they were presented. So we were inventing that,
Speaker 3: and one of the reasons we had a British producer,
Speaker 3: Martin Smith. Martin Smith came because he had worked at
Speaker 3: World at War and that was the only really big
Speaker 3: linked series that had been done before that. So he
Speaker 3: came over and was one of our producers and was
Speaker 3: tremendously helpful in talking about how do you divide up
Speaker 3: stories that are happening virtually simultaneously, how do you pick
Speaker 3: away to do that, and things that we did for
Speaker 3: Vietnam I brought with me when we went to Eyes
Speaker 3: on the prize not to jump too far ahead, and
Speaker 3: other people used for other linked series. An example is school.
Speaker 3: At the beginning of each of these projects, we sat
Speaker 3: down all the production staff and went to school together.
Speaker 3: We had lecturers, We watched films, we discussed the stories.
Speaker 3: We talked about what's a source and what's not a source.
Speaker 3: It was a combination of film school and journalism, and
Speaker 3: it meant that what we did was as unimpeachable as
Speaker 3: we could possibly make it. And for Vietnam that was
Speaker 3: since we were working within the decade of the Fall
Speaker 3: of Saigon.
Speaker 1: Vietnama television history. I saw that in its original production,
Speaker 1: how do you feel and this goes throughout your career.
Speaker 1: Eventually we get to Eyes on the Prize. I mean
Speaker 1: you do two back to back. I mean you climb
Speaker 1: with your compatriots, You climb big mountains that set the
Speaker 1: tone for public television for decades to come. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get into Eyes of the Prize in a minute.
Speaker 1: But for me, when I watched Vietnama television history, I go,
Speaker 1: this is it, this is what happened for you? Did
Speaker 1: you sense did you realize at the time, because you
Speaker 1: seem like such an incredibly bright and thoughtful person that
Speaker 1: you're sitting there going, you know, I'm carving history in
Speaker 1: stone here? Did you feel that sense of responsibility when
Speaker 1: you were doing this show?
Speaker 3: We did, and we didn't know how people would react.
Speaker 3: I know that every single person we called up to
Speaker 3: interview to bring on board, whether they were American or
Speaker 3: Vietnamese or whatever they were, every single person said, which
Speaker 3: side were you on? That was their first question. They
Speaker 3: wanted to know. Were we going to say it was
Speaker 3: American imperialism? Where were we going to say America was
Speaker 3: saving democracy? Where were going to Where were we going
Speaker 3: to be? And we we said and I think we
Speaker 3: worked very, very hard. It's not just fair but balanced
Speaker 3: to say there are multiple sides to this story. There's
Speaker 3: the South Vietnamese, there's the North Vietnamese, there's the Viet
Speaker 3: Min viet Cong, there's the Yes, there's multiple and so
Speaker 3: what we want to be doing is over and over
Speaker 3: again showcasing the complexity of the history with as much
Speaker 3: as possible, and it had to be very strong. Back up,
Speaker 3: I'll tell you a story that we in the story
Speaker 3: of d NBN Foo, we had a story of North
Speaker 3: Vietnamese heroism, the legends they told about how hard that
Speaker 3: victory was for them. We also had in that section
Speaker 3: a story of heroism from the South Vietnamese and how
Speaker 3: they marched into the battles singing the French national anthem
Speaker 3: because they didn't have their own anthem yet. It was
Speaker 3: too young a country. That kind of balancing, that constant balancing,
Speaker 3: and the research to find and verify these was enormous.
Speaker 3: I had a French speaking production assistant to make sure
Speaker 3: that we were hitting the right records, not just the
Speaker 3: American records, but the French records for my French based films.
Speaker 1: Now I'm assuming that you know you might have worked
Speaker 1: on other things, but Vietnam a television history and it's
Speaker 1: a original release was in eighty three, and you're working
Speaker 1: on Eyes on the Prize after that. In your career
Speaker 1: at this point, are you commissioned, are you assigned? Or
Speaker 1: do you pitch? How does Judith vic Joni get on board?
Speaker 1: You know one of the most seminal public television productions in.
Speaker 3: History, Well, Vietnam. I pitched myself to be part of it,
Speaker 3: as I said to you an associate producer, I'll do that.
Speaker 3: And then as I'd worked on the first I worked
Speaker 3: on episodes three and twelve as an associate producer and
Speaker 3: it became clear that I should do the first two programs,
Speaker 3: and so they just said you want to do them,
Speaker 3: and I said, yes, I will. For Eyes, it was
Speaker 3: Henry Hampton's series. Henry Hampton was the visionary behind Eyes
Speaker 3: on the Prize and he had been trying for years
Speaker 3: and years to get funding. He tried several times, got started,
Speaker 3: had to stop, and when he finally really got it
Speaker 3: together to do it, he came and looked around the
Speaker 3: Vietnam cadre to say, I need someone who has this
Speaker 3: experience of making linked films, and I know he talked
Speaker 3: to some of my colleagues and he said to me,
Speaker 3: do you want this? And I said, exactly what I
Speaker 3: had said about Vietnam. Yes, this is my story. I
Speaker 3: want to be part of it. So I left GBH
Speaker 3: to do Ice On the Prize was an independent production,
Speaker 3: and I said to my boss at the time, can
Speaker 3: I have a leave of absence? It'll be probably two years,
Speaker 3: three years, I don't know, and he said, we don't
Speaker 3: give long leaves of absence. I said, then I have.
Speaker 1: To leave and who produce? And who produced that? Because
Speaker 1: I'm assuming that, like I mean, in our podcast world,
Speaker 1: there's a number of places to go and you know,
Speaker 1: look for funding. GBH itself be easy where IRA is
Speaker 1: and so forth. But I'm assuming that at this point
Speaker 1: in the eighties GBH is like the mothership for this
Speaker 1: kind of producing or were there other stations that were
Speaker 1: doing more of this kind of production as well?
Speaker 3: I think GBH was doing most of it. Other stations
Speaker 3: like WNT were doing some. They did the Adams Chronicles.
Speaker 3: What was that called the which was a fictionalization of
Speaker 3: John and Abigail Adams, but a long piece. But the
Speaker 3: documentaries were from GBH, but Henry Hampton, who was black
Speaker 3: Side's founder and president, really wanted to do it independently.
Speaker 3: It was a black owned company. He wanted to staff
Speaker 3: it and run it, and he himself had been at SELMA,
Speaker 3: so it was a very very important story to him
Speaker 3: to tell.
Speaker 1: And he got the money from where do you think.
Speaker 3: The NH and CPB money but directly, and we were
Speaker 3: running out of money all the way through it, and
Speaker 3: at a certain point he got some company money from
Speaker 3: I think Lotus Incorporated came in and gave him and
Speaker 3: that was how he made payroll that week. We were
Speaker 3: not going to make payroll the independent world. I always say,
Speaker 3: do you think you're the poorest of the poor when
Speaker 3: you work for public television and then you go independent
Speaker 3: for public television and you really know what poverty is.
Speaker 1: Documentary producer Judith Vecchioni. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell
Speaker 1: a friend and be sure to follow here's the thing
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Judith Vecchioni shares her advice for
Speaker 1: the next class of documentary filmmakers. I'm Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you're listening to here's the thing. In the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: there were multiple high profile resignations from the board of
Speaker 1: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or CPB, which funds PBS.
Speaker 1: It was a time of public disputes and allegations of
Speaker 1: politicization attributed to the Reagan administration's multiple appointees. I wanted
Speaker 1: to know if Veccione had any awareness of the tumult
Speaker 1: happening at the top of the CPB.
Speaker 3: I did not, and I think that's a testimony to
Speaker 3: the firewall between content and fundraising that I wasn't doing
Speaker 3: the fundraising at that point as a producer, as a
Speaker 3: senior producer, I wasn't doing any of that. Henry did it,
Speaker 3: Henry Ampton, for Eyes and for Vietnam, Richard Ellison had
Speaker 3: done it. I wasn't a part of it. It was there,
Speaker 3: It was certainly an issue, but it wasn't something I saw,
Speaker 3: and GBH was very clear about we have to keep
Speaker 3: a firewall going or else we're commercial station. Then you know,
Speaker 3: we're just responding to different masters. I'm not saying it
Speaker 3: wasn't true. I'm just saying I wasn't at that level.
Speaker 1: So I worked very heavily in the nineth on campaign
Speaker 1: finance reform Arizona main events where we raise money for
Speaker 1: the Legal Defense Fund for those laws. And I worked
Speaker 1: with a group of people who we solemnly believe, I mean,
Speaker 1: without an ounce of hesitation, thought that the campaign finance
Speaker 1: reform was the lynchpin of all the problems in this country,
Speaker 1: you know, spending a speech, money a speech, and campaigns.
Speaker 1: And we came up with all the cliches you here now,
Speaker 1: which is will have money as speech and the person
Speaker 1: with the most money speaks loudest. And I believe that
Speaker 1: every single person in the United States Congress Democratic Republican,
Speaker 1: and they might as well wear decals on them and
Speaker 1: stickers on them like they're NASCAR race car drivers above
Speaker 1: who's promoting them and owning them. You can't run for
Speaker 1: office unless you get the money. Most of the people
Speaker 1: who win, overwhelmingly, the overwhelming majority win who have the
Speaker 1: most money. Campaign finance reform was really just the biggest problem.
Speaker 1: So we go see Burt Newborn, He's from the Brennan Center,
Speaker 1: the think Teket NYU Law School in Bert Newborn said,
Speaker 1: when Brown versus the Board of Education comes he says,
Speaker 1: they didn't wake up that morning and they had some
Speaker 1: new information. He said, they knew the country was ready,
Speaker 1: They knew the country was read, that the country needed this.
Speaker 1: We had to go in this direction order for the
Speaker 1: country to remain healthy and eyes on the prize comes
Speaker 1: and it's a huge success, huge one of the most
Speaker 1: successful documentaries that I can recall. And did you feel
Speaker 1: the same thing, which was that it was timing that
Speaker 1: people were just ready to start to really do the
Speaker 1: deep dive into the civil rights movement.
Speaker 3: That and also the commitment to strong journalism made the
Speaker 3: stories really forceful. I remember a screening that we had.
Speaker 3: We would have screenings of rough cuts with not just
Speaker 3: ourselves the team, but with larger groups. And I remember,
Speaker 3: you know this that when you're watching one of your
Speaker 3: films with a group, you don't watch the film, you
Speaker 3: watch the people watching. And I remember the hairs rising
Speaker 3: on the back of my neck and saying, we got it,
Speaker 3: we have this. This was the Emmett Till story in
Speaker 3: episode one, it's are we speaking to the audience? Are
Speaker 3: we driving new understanding? I am a firm believer that
Speaker 3: journalists need to not enter into political discussions. I know
Speaker 3: some journalists who don't vote because they don't believe they
Speaker 3: can do that and still remain impartial. I'm not that
Speaker 3: far alone, but I am very very careful about expressing
Speaker 3: my let me admit, quite strong feelings, because I don't
Speaker 3: see how I can be effective in my.
Speaker 1: Job now with the time we have left. Of course,
Speaker 1: your career spans many years, and now there are far
Speaker 1: more women working in the documentary film world, and I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: do you do any teaching? Are you do you teach?
Speaker 3: I do a lot of mentoring. I don't teach, but
Speaker 3: I do a lot of mentoring. For twelve years I
Speaker 3: ran a project for PBS nationally called the Producer's Workshop
Speaker 3: at WGBH, where for a week we would bring in
Speaker 3: promising associate producers and local producers and run them through
Speaker 3: a very tough boot camp, like ten twelve hour days
Speaker 3: about how do you bring your projects up to the
Speaker 3: national level. And we looked very much for women, for
Speaker 3: people of color, for people from rural areas to bring
Speaker 3: in new voices for public media. A lot of those
Speaker 3: people have gone on and made wonderful, wonderful films, So
Speaker 3: that's been a very important part of my job, and
Speaker 3: I'm now working as senior editorial advisor for World Channel, which,
Speaker 3: if viewers don't know, is part of the ps ecosystem.
Speaker 3: The way PVS Kids is a part of it. This
Speaker 3: is documentaries, short form and long form, digital and broadcast
Speaker 3: and bringing in new voices to the system. So we
Speaker 3: have a series called America Refrained, where the stories are
Speaker 3: you haven't heard this that tells you something about the
Speaker 3: town of Orangeburg, the town of Chicago, the farming communities
Speaker 3: of wherever. We also have a series called Local USA,
Speaker 3: which looks at really hyperlocal stories being told by the
Speaker 3: people within them. So that new voices is an important
Speaker 3: part of what I'm doing now.
Speaker 1: Now, two quick things. I watched the diabetes blood Sugar
Speaker 1: Rising and I have type two. I went back and
Speaker 1: forth and had pre diabetes for a long time. When
Speaker 1: I see this, and obviously there's no comparison in terms
Speaker 1: of content with the Vietnam thing. But what was the reason?
Speaker 1: Was this an assignment? Why did you do the diabetes Though?
Speaker 3: I'm fascinated by stories that are at the edges of society.
Speaker 3: They are very very important to the communities that face
Speaker 3: these issues, but not necessarily to everyone. And I realized
Speaker 3: that diabetes is a national emergency. If we hadn't just
Speaker 3: had COVID, we would be calling diabetes a pandemic that
Speaker 3: there were. It was a moment when things were starting
Speaker 3: to shift. The first continuous glucose monitors were coming in,
Speaker 3: the first real fights over the cost of insulin. We're
Speaker 3: gearing up, and that's just born fruit. You know, a
Speaker 3: week before we're talking with the cap on insulin costs.
Speaker 3: So it just seemed to me to be an important
Speaker 3: story that wasn't being told and that we needed to
Speaker 3: get out there. I have it in my family too.
Speaker 1: Right, And some people have talked about, you know, putting
Speaker 1: warnings on candy. You know that, you know, whatever that
Speaker 1: might be. But like, excessive consumption of this product can
Speaker 1: lead to certain health issues. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: you know, what the answer to that is, but I
Speaker 1: do realize it's like when you live inside the minefield
Speaker 1: of diabetes, when you live inside the minefield of blood
Speaker 1: sugar issues everywhere you go, you just can't believe it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, I might have seen a beautiful
Speaker 1: woman years ago, when I was younger, I might have
Speaker 1: said to myself, my God, look how beautiful that woman is.
Speaker 1: Now I hold up a drink in my hand in
Speaker 1: a deli and go, my god, this says eighty eight
Speaker 1: grams of sugar in it. You know, the sugar content
Speaker 1: of food has taken over my life. Last question, your
Speaker 1: advice to newcomers, your advice to people who are coming.
Speaker 3: In, Well, this is a little bit like yours and
Speaker 3: a little bit different. When I book to young makers
Speaker 3: who come to me with a brilliant idea, I say,
Speaker 3: this is a brilliant idea, It probably shouldn't be your
Speaker 3: first film. It should be your second film. Make something
Speaker 3: first that you can learn and make mistakes on, and
Speaker 3: then make the one that really matters.
Speaker 1: To you interesting.
Speaker 3: I also say to people, don't reinvent the wheel if
Speaker 3: you can work for someone. I worked for people like
Speaker 3: David Fanning who started Frontline, and I worked for Paula Apsel,
Speaker 3: who ran Frontline. These are people who I learned from
Speaker 3: by watching, by making my mistakes in front of them
Speaker 3: instead of in front of an audience and letting them
Speaker 3: say to me. I have an absolute memory of David
Speaker 3: saying to me at one point, if you moved that
Speaker 3: scene from here to there, what would happen, and I said,
Speaker 3: oh my god, it open up so many possibilities if
Speaker 3: I just I keep the scene, but I just move
Speaker 3: it a little later in the film. And he had
Speaker 3: that kind of knowledge that I could accumulate and not
Speaker 3: have to make my mistakes and put the film out rolling.
Speaker 3: So don't reinvent the wheel, learn from the people around you,
Speaker 3: and go forward.
Speaker 1: My thanks to Judith Vecchione. This episode was recorded at
Speaker 1: CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo,
Speaker 1: Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hoven. Our engineer is Frank Imperial.
Speaker 1: Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.