WEBVTT - Judith Vecchione - Summer Staff Picks 0:00:00.720 --> 0:00:04.000 This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the 0:00:04.040 --> 0:00:08.320 Thing from My Heart Radio. It's summer, and that means 0:00:08.320 --> 0:00:11.319 it's time for our tradition that Here's the Thing where 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:15.320 the staff share their favorite episodes from our archives in 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:21.840 our Summer Staff Picks series. My pick is Judith Vecchioni enjoy. 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:28.240 In the nineteen sixties, which was a convulsive period in 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:32.320 American history, one major story seemed to play on and 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:36.720 on with no end in sight, the War in Vietnam. 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:43.199 When that war officially ended in nineteen seventy five, journalists, artists, 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:48.360 and public broadcasting began to conduct the autopsy. The result 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:53.040 produced films like nineteen seventy eight's Coming Home, nineteen seventy 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:58.080 nine Apocalypse Now, and a PBS series first broadcast in 0:00:58.160 --> 0:01:03.279 nineteen eighty three via KNAM, a television history. Over the 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:07.959 course of thirteen hours, the program dug deep into the background, 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:12.280 cost and toll taken on the principal figures involved in 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:12.760 the war. 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:17.880 Thirty years after the first American died in Vietnam, the 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:21.559 last Americans were leaving, waiting on the US embassy roof 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:25.240 to be flown to safety. The long war was ending 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:28.119 in the defeat of the South Vietnamese state that America 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:32.640 had supported for two decades. What kind of peace finally 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:35.720 was at hand? What would be the meaning of peace? 0:01:38.760 --> 0:01:43.039 My guest today is Judith VECCHIONI, an Emmy and Peabody 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:48.200 winning producer of that series. Vecchione has worked in documentary 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:54.000 programming with Boston based PBS station WGBH since the seventies 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:57.640 and has been an executive producer there for twenty three years. 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:03.440 Her career has encompassed programs like Frontline and American Experience, 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:08.040 documentary films like Blood, Sugar Rising, and the Peabody winning 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:12.000 doc series Eyes on the Prize. I wanted to know 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:16.400 what Veccione's upbringing was like and how her home environment 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:18.560 influenced her career path. 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:23.400 I grew up in a politically very aware household. My 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:26.280 father read the newspaper from cover to cover, The New 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:29.880 York Times cover to cover every day, and we talked 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:33.080 about what was going on, and so the big issues 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:36.920 of the day's civil rights the Vietnam War were live 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:40.880 topics in my family. My parents worked with civil rights 0:02:40.960 --> 0:02:46.320 organizations making sure our community was not dismantling the housing 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:51.120 discrimination in our suburban community. What area was this in 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:52.600 south shore of Long Island? 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:58.440 Where what time? I'm from Massapequa, I'm from Merrick, So 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:00.120 you were in the south shore of the island. Was 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:01.360 your dad? Was you a writer? 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:05.280 He should have been, but he did not end up 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:06.880 doing that. He should have been, he should have been 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:10.040 an academic. Actually, I think the politics of the day 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:13.640 for people who were very progressive made that hard. And 0:03:13.800 --> 0:03:15.920 my mother was a teacher, was a high school math 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:22.000 teacher who I had for math actually, and luckily it's 0:03:22.040 --> 0:03:24.720 a subject where you get the answers right, you get 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:28.519 them wrong, and so there's no favoriteism. Nobody ever got 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:31.360 worried about whether mom was being nice to me, and 0:03:31.760 --> 0:03:33.680 half the class called her mom anyway. 0:03:34.440 --> 0:03:37.960 So when you leave, you go off to Yale, and 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:40.160 as you head off to New Haven, was there a plan? 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:43.560 Was there something you wanted to study? And what was that? 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:46.280 Well, the first thing is that I'm in the first 0:03:46.280 --> 0:03:49.520 class of women at Yale, the first matriculating class, So 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:53.320 I don't know that I knew what I was going 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:56.360 to study at that time. I was interested in languages. 0:03:56.440 --> 0:03:59.480 I was interested in history, and I ended up being 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:03.960 a linguist major, which probably wasn't the most useful thing 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:07.120 to study. But it's such a rich environment. You know, 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:12.640 in these big universities you get great education. I'm not 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:16.520 sure I took full advantage of it. It was the 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:19.400 middle of the Vietnam War. There was a lot going on, 0:04:20.080 --> 0:04:22.839 and Yale was very unprepared for us, for the women. 0:04:23.240 --> 0:04:28.600 How so, well they fifty years later, this is like 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:32.440 five years ago, they invited the first women back. So 0:04:32.560 --> 0:04:37.000 that's my class, plus the two transferred classes. And they 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:39.039 admitted that they just did it in a hurry to 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:42.599 beat Princeton to co education. And I felt a lot 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:45.560 better once they said, yea, we really didn't think about 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:50.480 anything except well, we'll paint some bathrooms for you or something. 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:53.360 But there were no you have to think about when 0:04:53.360 --> 0:04:57.000 you arrive in an environment like that a university, you 0:04:57.120 --> 0:05:00.960 expect the upper class people to gui you, to help you. 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:05.160 You expect the teachers to know where to draw. They 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:07.280 didn't know what did. Nobody knew what to do. All 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:09.760 the upper class women were as new as we were. 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:12.279 It was a real pioneering experience. 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:13.200 Is sixty nine. 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:16.479 We arrived in sixty nine and that. 0:05:16.880 --> 0:05:19.920 Class were you as incoming freshmen and people who had 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:22.479 transferred who were upper class people as well, right transfer 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:22.920 as well. 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:28.320 So graduating classes of seventy three, minds seventy two and 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:32.200 seventy one. But they came from you know, Vassar, and 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:35.960 from NYU and wherever. They didn't know Yale, They didn't 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:38.680 know the professors. Nobody could say to you those key 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:41.880 things of don't take this class, take that one. You 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:45.400 know this, If you got a choice of teaching assistants, 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:47.920 go with this one. It was, as I say, a 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:52.360 tremendously rich environment. There was more than enough for anybody. 0:05:52.960 --> 0:05:55.520 But I know that the later classes had it easier 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:56.120 than we did. 0:05:56.880 --> 0:06:01.039 When you leave Yale with a linguistic stigre, what's the 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:04.360 plan then? Was you you had never no filmmaking? Had 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:06.600 you done a minor in film? No? 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:09.320 By that point I did have a plan though, Okay, 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:13.400 which is my last semester. I got out in seven 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:18.919 semesters instead of eight semesters, in part because I always 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:22.160 had siblings in school. It was in college, so it 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:26.040 was it was expensive for my family, even with scholarships 0:06:26.080 --> 0:06:29.560 and things. And my last semester I discovered I had 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:31.880 extra credits that nobody had mentioned to me and I 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:35.000 could take something fun instead of all my major classes. 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:39.080 And I said, I think I'll take this class in video. 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:43.200 What the heck in the Art and architecture building. And 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:47.400 it got there and they had cameras the size of refrigerators, right, 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:51.080 giant cameras. It was two inch videotape that you were 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:55.080 recording on basically couldn't edit. And we took pictures of 0:06:55.120 --> 0:06:58.200 each other that that first day, you know, videos of 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:02.680 each other. And I had two enormous light bulb moments, 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:06.680 light bulbul over the head moments where I said I 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:09.520 need to do this, this is what I should be doing. 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:12.600 I had been doing radio, rock and roll, news radio, 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:17.240 that sort of thing at WYBC, the GBH community station. 0:07:17.640 --> 0:07:21.280 I covered the panther trials and then the riots around 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:24.000 that because wre were those in new Haven. New Haven 0:07:24.040 --> 0:07:27.040 had a black panther trial. Yeah, there was an event 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:30.200 and they came and then there was a trial after 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:32.680 that event on May Day. There was an event, But. 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:35.360 What about it? Did you have the light bulb moment? 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:37.680 Meaning when you're there. We used to have a joke 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:39.920 we did a TV show where the guy in the 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:43.360 period was period at television and he's drunk or he's 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:45.960 halluciny or something, and he turns to the producers into 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:48.920 producer and says, why are those people pointing those ovens 0:07:48.920 --> 0:07:52.680 at me? Meaning the cameras? They were so gigantic? But 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:55.480 what instide when you're inside that environment? Because you go 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:57.840 on to go ahead and have this obviously amazing career. 0:07:58.280 --> 0:08:00.760 What was the light bulb moment? What was attractive? 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:04.400 I think it was telling stories that were real and 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:08.160 that mattered to people, that these were important things that 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:13.040 were happening around us, and there were ways of telling 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:16.960 those stories that had impact and that were creatively satisfying. 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:20.960 I mean I had done art before, painting and so forth, 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:24.920 and it just it fed those same brain cells for me, 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:28.760 that idea and it had impact. It had reasons, so 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:32.400 reasons to do it that were not just entertainment or 0:08:32.440 --> 0:08:35.360 selling toothpaste, which is why, of course I went for 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:38.760 public television, not to commercial television. 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:41.320 So that was the beachhead was public television and SOLF. 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:41.959 That's where you started. 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:45.880 Absolutely. I started at GBH and I stayed there for 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:50.800 almost my entire career. I mean I left once or twice, 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:56.080 but came back because public media is where you do documentaries. 0:08:56.320 --> 0:09:01.400 I mean, now there's HBO, but HBO does what five 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:06.920 ten documentaries a year. They're wonderful, but that's not what 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:10.920 they really do, whereas Frontline does forty a year, and 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:14.680 American Experience does another you know, ten or fifteen. I 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:18.240 don't know what they do. Inv POV is still on 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:24.280 independent lens. Through GBH. I've worked with the POV people, 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:28.040 I've worked with the Independent lens people, so those are 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:32.880 the independent filmmakers, which is where I am now mostly focused. 0:09:33.080 --> 0:09:37.640 But I've also worked with Frontline, Nova, American Experience and 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:41.000 all the background ones, and that brings in an enormous 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:46.560 cadre of incredibly talented people that you get to learn from. 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:50.520 I can't tell you the number of people who I've gone, Oh, Now, 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:53.360 I understand why we do these things this way. And 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:55.880 I also have a I'm old enough that my career 0:09:55.920 --> 0:10:01.400 spans from film to digital. So when we start, Vietnam 0:10:01.480 --> 0:10:05.080 was shot on film, My fire film was shot on film, 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:09.240 and that's way later, so you're kind of in the 0:10:09.280 --> 0:10:13.640 midst of really smart, dedicated people. 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:18.960 Now when you arrive at GBH, the CPB is formed 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:23.520 in sixty seven and before you have a government centralized 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:27.520 funding mechanism for public broadcasting and in this case obviously 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:30.640 a public TV. I'm wondering if they were off on 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:32.760 their own doing their own thing and raising the money. 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:36.080 I don't think so. I think the system was formulated 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:40.080 after the Carnegie Commission report that they said, we need 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:41.319 to have MINO. 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:42.320 That's right. 0:10:42.400 --> 0:10:46.920 We need to have a federally supported system that could 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:52.880 be independent and could be therefore able to cover topics 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:56.720 that commercial stations needing to fill a bottom line and 0:10:56.800 --> 0:10:59.520 pay stockholders and so forth that they couldn't do. 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:03.400 So when you show up at GBH, maybe everything is 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:06.559 concretizing at the same time and congealing at the same time. 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:09.480 What was the terrain, like, you're a woman, Yes, you 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:11.800 have a degree from Yale, so that's a good thing. 0:11:12.320 --> 0:11:14.400 Did you get in there and roll up your sieves 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:16.480 and start working or were you making coffee for a 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:17.720 year or what happened? 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:23.199 At first? I was a part time vacation replacement secretary 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:30.520 and I worked in the design department, which, as I remember, 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:35.760 it was pretty self contained and had a photographer and 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:39.880 a photography studio. And this is pre digital. There's not 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:43.200 even three quarter inch tapes, so you know, it's mostly 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:48.040 serving news and local very labor intensive, very labor intensive, 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:50.880 and I didn't have a lot to do except observe, 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:57.200 learn and watch the Watergate hearings. It's a good summer 0:11:57.240 --> 0:11:59.040 to be employed there. And then I worked for the 0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:04.280 finance department. And then I saw some people. I continued 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:07.080 to do these fill in replacement stuff and I saw 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:11.960 these people in the cafeteria waving their fingers about and 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:15.040 I looked at them and I said, what are you doing? 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:18.600 And they said, we're learning sign language because we're going 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:22.440 to start the first captioning for the deaf and we 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:25.560 need to know how to speak to our deaf employees. 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:32.320 And I said, languages, linguistics. I'm interested in this. And 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:34.640 they said, well, you know, we meet when we can. 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:37.120 And I said, you know, i'm a secretary in the 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:40.280 finance department or something. They'll let me take lunch at 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:42.360 three if that's when you do it. They don't care 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:45.320 when I take lunch. And I went in and I 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:49.840 learned to sign, not fluently, but enough. And when they 0:12:49.880 --> 0:12:55.120 had trouble recruiting someone for a deaf person, they intended 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:57.600 to have a certain number of people one of whom 0:12:57.679 --> 0:12:59.920 was deaf doing this job, and it took them along 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:03.080 than anticipated to get the first deaf person to pay 0:13:03.120 --> 0:13:06.240 attention because it was it was untried captioning. So they 0:13:06.320 --> 0:13:10.120 hired me as the non deaf replacement for the deaf people, 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:14.880 and that was again an excellent learning process. It was 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:19.160 writing because you were writing, you were taking the ABC 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:23.520 Evening news and writing it into caption language and putting 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:28.120 it in computers. Early computers again, the size of refrigerators 0:13:28.440 --> 0:13:32.680 extremely slow, and when things went wrong and the machines 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:35.720 broke down, we had a sign language interpreter who'd show 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:39.040 up in the little corner of the screen and do it. 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:43.280 And between when you start these beginnings at GBH and 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:46.840 when you become part of your first project that you're 0:13:46.880 --> 0:13:49.160 on the crew, you're helping to write, you're helping to 0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:52.760 pro do whatever your contribution. I'm assuming you didn't direct 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:55.160 right out of the gate, right, so you get what's 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:58.440 the first filmed project? Or I guess so it's all 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:01.200 filmed back then, what's the first filmed project you work on? 0:14:01.280 --> 0:14:06.000 What year was that I went over to Nova from captioning, 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:09.079 and I would say we be like seventy six that. 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:11.880 I went I think three years and you were Nova 0:14:12.000 --> 0:14:12.360 doing what. 0:14:13.000 --> 0:14:17.480 I was a production assistant, mostly doing post, so learning 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:21.800 how you mix in film and how you taking care 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:24.280 of bringing in narrators. 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:25.240 And contracting it together. 0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:30.160 So forth you putting it together started producing promos a 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:33.440 very good learning experience. If you've got to tell people 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:37.120 why they should watch this film on wolves in thirty seconds, 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:39.240 what are you going to put up there? I had 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:42.840 very good mentors there, some of whom came over from 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:47.360 the BBC because they had been doing the Horizon Science series, 0:14:47.600 --> 0:14:50.880 which was an inspiration for Nova. Nova was the first 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:55.520 big national project that GBH did, and it was clear 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:57.920 at that point that the person who was running national 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:04.440 Productions was interested in expanding the national series the documentary series, 0:15:04.720 --> 0:15:09.240 and so Nova and then World, which was the predecessor 0:15:09.280 --> 0:15:14.400 to Frontline, and then American Experience all came in under 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:16.400 that five or ten year period. 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:21.040 So you're doing post and it seems like, and I 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:23.680 don't want to be too polite or whatever, but it 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:26.120 seems like, did you feel that everywhere you when people 0:15:26.160 --> 0:15:29.680 saw that you had it in terms of the capacity 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:33.720 to do this work Because the business relies on mentoring 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:36.920 the business relies on someone who's in a more powerful 0:15:36.960 --> 0:15:39.480 position than you are, turning to you and going, let's go. 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:40.920 You're going to come with us. We're going to go 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:44.400 on the shoot together. Right, what's the first film you make? 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:45.600 You go and shoot? 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:49.680 I was a PA at Nova in post production and 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:52.480 they would occasionally need somebody to go out in a 0:15:52.520 --> 0:15:56.000 field on a production for them. And there was a 0:15:56.000 --> 0:16:00.720 film that was done on very early genetic engineering, and 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:03.440 I became the PA on that one, and I traveled 0:16:03.840 --> 0:16:07.800 with the two producers. This was, you know, back in 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:11.600 the day when crews were bigger. You had generally a 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:15.560 producer and associate producer and a production assistant, plus your 0:16:15.600 --> 0:16:19.640 three person camera sound team going out. Nowadays it would 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:23.120 be maybe two people with the equipment that we have 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:27.120 and the ability to do things remotely. So that was 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:30.720 one of the early ones, the genetic engineering film. 0:16:31.120 --> 0:16:33.560 Were most of the people involved in that project and 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:36.400 the early projects you became a part of after that, 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:37.320 was it mostly men? 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:41.320 Mostly? Yes, mostly, But actually on that film there were 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:43.280 co producers and it was a man and a woman, 0:16:43.560 --> 0:16:48.520 and the woman actually eventually became Nova's executive producer, Paula Apsel, 0:16:49.120 --> 0:16:55.280 but GPH, I thought was always pretty friendly to women. 0:16:55.720 --> 0:16:58.880 There weren't as many women at the very top levels 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:01.720 for a while. Now there are, and in fact GBH 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:05.840 now has its first woman CEO as of last year. 0:17:06.320 --> 0:17:08.639 And I would say it's more women than men in 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:12.359 production at GBH. I'm not sure that's true across the 0:17:12.400 --> 0:17:15.760 system for public broadcasting, and it's certainly I don't think 0:17:16.240 --> 0:17:20.040 I'm not part of the larger commercial world. It's not true. 0:17:20.160 --> 0:17:23.399 It's certainly true in the independent world that it doesn't 0:17:23.440 --> 0:17:27.240 matter whether you're not really being downgraded. 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:31.320 Yes or No is the first film you make? Correct? 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:35.760 Yeah, that might have been. And that's for World, the 0:17:35.800 --> 0:17:41.040 predecessor for Frontline. And I did that one in Canada 0:17:41.359 --> 0:17:43.560 and I'm the producer. I'm not the director on that. 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:45.040 The director is Michael Rubo. 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:46.960 What was the topic of Yes or No? What was 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:47.359 it about? 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:52.520 This was in the period when Quebec was looking to 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:58.680 secede from Canada. Yes, and Michael Rubau knew this impersonator 0:17:58.880 --> 0:18:04.560 an impressionist named Jean Quie Moreau and Janui did impressions 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:07.240 of Ronie Levex, the premiere of Quebec, who was the 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:13.520 great driver for secession and Jeanquie Moreo was so well 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:16.600 known in French Canada. This is not an experience I 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:20.480 had had before. You'd walk through the streets of Montreal 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:24.600 or wherever, and little girls would faint in front of you. 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:28.000 Oh my god, it's Janquie Moreau. He's so well known, 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:32.120 he's so wonderful. And Jean Gui decided he would take 0:18:32.160 --> 0:18:36.520 his show to Toronto to see if it would play there. 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:40.440 So it was about the difference between French and English 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:44.399 Canada told through this story of Shuanghi's journey. 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:46.560 I've got to get a copy of that. That sounds amazing, 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:56.480 documentary producer Judith ACCIONI. If you enjoy conversations with brilliant 0:18:56.480 --> 0:19:00.159 documentary filmmakers, be sure to check out my episode with 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:02.760 director and producer Rory Kennedy. 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:06.560 I love Boeing and what Boeing stood for in this country, 0:19:06.600 --> 0:19:09.520 and we really celebrate that in the film because it's 0:19:09.560 --> 0:19:13.600 been an extraordinary company for decades. You know, it helped 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:15.440 us get out of World War two, it helped get 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:17.960 us to the moon with my uncle Jack, and for 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:21.560 many decades, Boeing did one thing, which was to say 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:26.120 we're going to prioritize excellence and safety, and the McDonald 0:19:26.160 --> 0:19:29.399 douglas people were put in charge, and they had a 0:19:29.480 --> 0:19:33.359 very different business model, which was very Wall Street focused. 0:19:35.480 --> 0:19:39.240 To hear more of my conversation with Rory Kennedy, go 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:43.760 to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Judith 0:19:43.880 --> 0:19:48.080 Vecchioni shares the weight of responsibility she felt bringing the 0:19:48.160 --> 0:20:00.960 series Vietnam A Television History to the American public. I'm 0:20:00.960 --> 0:20:03.840 Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing. 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:09.640 Documentary producer Judith Veccioni can spend years behind the scenes 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:13.000 making a series before it sees the light of day. 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:17.360 Vietnam A Television History was no exception. It was an 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:22.479 incredible undertaking, with its thirteen episodes being produced over six years. 0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:26.120 I think it was two years of fundraising and four 0:20:26.200 --> 0:20:30.479 years of production. Yeah, and it was in part it 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:34.160 took so long because we were making up a format 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:37.960 for America. Nobody had ever done this kind of large, 0:20:38.600 --> 0:20:42.680 multi part series right where the stories fed to each other. 0:20:42.960 --> 0:20:46.040 You could watch them separately, but if you really want 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:49.280 to understand it, you watched all of them roughly the 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:52.399 order that they were presented. So we were inventing that, 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:54.800 and one of the reasons we had a British producer, 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:58.399 Martin Smith. Martin Smith came because he had worked at 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:02.359 World at War and that was the only really big 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:06.080 linked series that had been done before that. So he 0:21:06.200 --> 0:21:09.600 came over and was one of our producers and was 0:21:09.640 --> 0:21:13.520 tremendously helpful in talking about how do you divide up 0:21:14.080 --> 0:21:18.200 stories that are happening virtually simultaneously, how do you pick 0:21:18.240 --> 0:21:21.480 away to do that, and things that we did for 0:21:22.200 --> 0:21:25.920 Vietnam I brought with me when we went to Eyes 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:28.520 on the prize not to jump too far ahead, and 0:21:28.760 --> 0:21:32.800 other people used for other linked series. An example is school. 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:37.280 At the beginning of each of these projects, we sat 0:21:37.359 --> 0:21:40.840 down all the production staff and went to school together. 0:21:41.240 --> 0:21:44.760 We had lecturers, We watched films, we discussed the stories. 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:47.879 We talked about what's a source and what's not a source. 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:52.399 It was a combination of film school and journalism, and 0:21:52.720 --> 0:21:56.880 it meant that what we did was as unimpeachable as 0:21:56.920 --> 0:21:59.720 we could possibly make it. And for Vietnam that was 0:22:00.760 --> 0:22:05.800 since we were working within the decade of the Fall 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:06.760 of Saigon. 0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:10.880 Vietnama television history. I saw that in its original production, 0:22:12.640 --> 0:22:15.199 how do you feel and this goes throughout your career. 0:22:15.680 --> 0:22:17.520 Eventually we get to Eyes on the Prize. I mean 0:22:18.000 --> 0:22:21.520 you do two back to back. I mean you climb 0:22:22.040 --> 0:22:26.960 with your compatriots, You climb big mountains that set the 0:22:27.000 --> 0:22:30.040 tone for public television for decades to come. I mean, 0:22:30.040 --> 0:22:31.680 we're gonna get into Eyes of the Prize in a minute. 0:22:31.680 --> 0:22:34.919 But for me, when I watched Vietnama television history, I go, 0:22:35.080 --> 0:22:39.440 this is it, this is what happened for you? Did 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:42.639 you sense did you realize at the time, because you 0:22:42.640 --> 0:22:46.840 seem like such an incredibly bright and thoughtful person that 0:22:46.880 --> 0:22:50.159 you're sitting there going, you know, I'm carving history in 0:22:50.280 --> 0:22:53.440 stone here? Did you feel that sense of responsibility when 0:22:53.440 --> 0:22:54.800 you were doing this show? 0:22:54.960 --> 0:22:57.840 We did, and we didn't know how people would react. 0:22:57.960 --> 0:23:01.199 I know that every single person we called up to 0:23:01.320 --> 0:23:05.560 interview to bring on board, whether they were American or 0:23:05.680 --> 0:23:09.880 Vietnamese or whatever they were, every single person said, which 0:23:09.880 --> 0:23:13.840 side were you on? That was their first question. They 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:16.479 wanted to know. Were we going to say it was 0:23:16.640 --> 0:23:20.040 American imperialism? Where were we going to say America was 0:23:20.080 --> 0:23:23.400 saving democracy? Where were going to Where were we going 0:23:23.440 --> 0:23:27.120 to be? And we we said and I think we 0:23:27.160 --> 0:23:33.000 worked very, very hard. It's not just fair but balanced 0:23:33.240 --> 0:23:36.879 to say there are multiple sides to this story. There's 0:23:37.240 --> 0:23:41.240 the South Vietnamese, there's the North Vietnamese, there's the Viet 0:23:41.359 --> 0:23:47.719 Min viet Cong, there's the Yes, there's multiple and so 0:23:47.800 --> 0:23:50.160 what we want to be doing is over and over 0:23:50.280 --> 0:23:54.880 again showcasing the complexity of the history with as much 0:23:54.920 --> 0:23:59.040 as possible, and it had to be very strong. Back up, 0:23:59.600 --> 0:24:04.560 I'll tell you a story that we in the story 0:24:04.600 --> 0:24:09.400 of d NBN Foo, we had a story of North 0:24:09.480 --> 0:24:14.280 Vietnamese heroism, the legends they told about how hard that 0:24:14.440 --> 0:24:18.000 victory was for them. We also had in that section 0:24:18.680 --> 0:24:22.760 a story of heroism from the South Vietnamese and how 0:24:22.840 --> 0:24:27.879 they marched into the battles singing the French national anthem 0:24:28.240 --> 0:24:31.240 because they didn't have their own anthem yet. It was 0:24:31.280 --> 0:24:35.240 too young a country. That kind of balancing, that constant balancing, 0:24:35.320 --> 0:24:40.320 and the research to find and verify these was enormous. 0:24:40.359 --> 0:24:43.919 I had a French speaking production assistant to make sure 0:24:44.359 --> 0:24:48.840 that we were hitting the right records, not just the 0:24:48.880 --> 0:24:53.800 American records, but the French records for my French based films. 0:24:53.920 --> 0:24:56.600