Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: from My Heart Radio my guest today. Filmmaker Tony Palmer
Speaker 1: knows how to tell a story, particularly when it involves musicians.
Speaker 1: He's made more than one hundred films, featuring everyone from
Speaker 1: Cream to Stravinsky, Jimmy Hendrix to Yehudi menu In, Leonard
Speaker 1: Khne to Richard Wagner. He collaborated with Frank Zappa on
Speaker 1: the surreal cult classic Two Hundred Motels, and with his
Speaker 1: friend John Lennon on All You Need Is Love, a
Speaker 1: multi part series on the early days of rock and roll.
Speaker 1: Tony Palmer's work has been recognized with over forty international awards,
Speaker 1: not bad for someone who fell into filmmaking. Well, if
Speaker 1: I tell you the true story, I inclined to believe
Speaker 1: that you won't take it at my word, but I
Speaker 1: promise you this is what happened. I was at Cambridge
Speaker 1: University and had ambitions to be a minor academic. We're
Speaker 1: talking about October and I went to a press conference
Speaker 1: given by the Beatles, who were then famous, but not
Speaker 1: intergalactically or so as they became later on, and I
Speaker 1: went representing the university newspaper, and at the press conference
Speaker 1: held in the then Regal cinema at lunchtime they were
Speaker 1: giving a concert that night. I just thought the whole
Speaker 1: thing was rather silly. And as we were milling around afterwards,
Speaker 1: this rather scruffy lad came up to me and he said,
Speaker 1: you didn't ask any questions, and I said, no, that's
Speaker 1: perfectly true. Why not? Well, I thought it was all
Speaker 1: rather silly. Yes, it was very silly. He said, very silly,
Speaker 1: because it was very typical of those early Beatles conferences
Speaker 1: where they were sort of just laughing about. And then
Speaker 1: he said what do you do? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a student? What of? And I was doing
Speaker 1: something called moral sciences don't be confused by that had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with morality, little owned science. And then
Speaker 1: it surprised me and said would you take me around
Speaker 1: the University of this afternoon? And I first said no,
Speaker 1: why not? Well you'll be mobbed and that's not my
Speaker 1: idea of fun. And he he said, well, how about
Speaker 1: if I come in disguise? So I was having my
Speaker 1: bluff called at every turn, so finally I agreed. So
Speaker 1: I met him outside the hotel where he was staying
Speaker 1: an hour or so later, and sure enough this chap
Speaker 1: turned up, and this enormous fedora had a completely stupid,
Speaker 1: straggly beard, and if I say it was a dirty Macintosh,
Speaker 1: that's about right. And we both just fell around laughing,
Speaker 1: and he said he took the disguise off, and I
Speaker 1: managed to take him into King's College Chapel, which is
Speaker 1: that famous Henry the Eighth Chapel where the carols come
Speaker 1: from at Christmas time. But rather more importantly, I got
Speaker 1: him into the library at Trinity College, which is designed
Speaker 1: by Christopher Wren is always known as the Ren Library. Now,
Speaker 1: strictly speaking, we were trespassing because I wasn't supposed to
Speaker 1: be there, because I wasn't at that college, and he
Speaker 1: certainly wasn't supposed to be there. But having got him in,
Speaker 1: I mean he was just taking books of every shelf
Speaker 1: he could see. I couldn't get him out of there.
Speaker 1: And it occurred to me that this was an essential
Speaker 1: moment in John's life, as he later told me many times,
Speaker 1: that he suddenly realized, as you said, being a war baby,
Speaker 1: that he'd had no formal education, and that having been
Speaker 1: carried away in this sort of wave of Beatlemania, so
Speaker 1: young comparatively speaking, that he realized what he had missed.
Speaker 1: Eventually I got him out of there and he just
Speaker 1: he said, come to the concert. I was going to
Speaker 1: the concert anyway, and he scribbled a telephone number on
Speaker 1: a piece of paper and said, call me when you're
Speaker 1: coming to London. I said, well, I'm actually not coming
Speaker 1: to London, staying here and hope we will be some
Speaker 1: sort of completely minor and insignificant academic. Well well, well,
Speaker 1: he said. So. Three years later I eventually joined the BBC,
Speaker 1: still having absolutely no ambitions to make films that let
Speaker 1: alone get involved in any kind of documentary making. And
Speaker 1: I still had this bit of paper with this phone number,
Speaker 1: so I thought, well, nothing ventioned, nothing gained. So I
Speaker 1: telephoned the number, and to my absolute astonishment, somebody answered
Speaker 1: the phone and it was clear from the girl's tone
Speaker 1: of voice that I was the four hundredth person who'd
Speaker 1: rung up that morning. Said John Lennon said to call,
Speaker 1: and I said, well he really did, but don't worry
Speaker 1: about it. This is my phone number, and put the
Speaker 1: phone down. Half an hour later, a guy called Derek Taylor.
Speaker 1: You will know of Derek Taylor, he was the beg
Speaker 1: famous publicity. Yeah, rang me up and said I've got
Speaker 1: a message for you from John. So at this point
Speaker 1: I'm kind of in a state of shriveled excitement because
Speaker 1: now they were intergalactically fame us. And I kept thinking,
Speaker 1: what the hell is this message going to be? Is?
Speaker 1: Who the hell is this? What does he want? Why
Speaker 1: doesn't he leave me alone? So nervously finally I said, well,
Speaker 1: what is the message? Quick as a flash, Derek came
Speaker 1: back with the reply, well, John wants to know why
Speaker 1: it's taking you three years to call him. And that
Speaker 1: was the beginning of a rather bizarre relationship between the
Speaker 1: two of us. Interesting you mentioned that about Lennon and
Speaker 1: his yearning from for greater education. I worked with an actress,
Speaker 1: one who shall remain nameless. I don't want to embarrass anybody,
Speaker 1: but this actress was someone who we were talking about
Speaker 1: the scenes and there was an historical component, and the
Speaker 1: director was there and we're having a meeting, and then
Speaker 1: we went into her trailer and we talked a little
Speaker 1: bit more about the film and some aspect of history
Speaker 1: that informed the project. And I was going on and
Speaker 1: on and holding forth on some of the research. I
Speaker 1: don't mentioning this in this book, and so forth. And
Speaker 1: she started sobbing. She burst out sobbing, and I said,
Speaker 1: what's the matter, And she said, she said, I didn't
Speaker 1: go to college. And she goes, I regretted every day
Speaker 1: of my life. She goes, how I wish I'd gone
Speaker 1: to college. And she was a beauty queen who was
Speaker 1: a gorgeous a woman when she was young, and it
Speaker 1: was all modeling and advertising and then right into Hollywood.
Speaker 1: And she said, I never went to school. And she said,
Speaker 1: and I consider it one of the most staggering acts
Speaker 1: of self robbery you could imagine. I wish I had.
Speaker 1: And you think about what Lennon might have men as
Speaker 1: a writer had he and he had a more of
Speaker 1: a formal education post high school. I think that's absolutely true.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was a man of such enormous imagination
Speaker 1: and energy and enterprise and creativity and courage that, as
Speaker 1: you said, I mean, how had he benefited. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, you know, once you start benefiting quotes and
Speaker 1: quotes from a formal education, to some extent, it restricts
Speaker 1: you and to some extent it prevents you from these
Speaker 1: huge leaps of imagination that you might otherwise have when
Speaker 1: you make a film, and you've made quite a few films,
Speaker 1: when you're doing research about Wagner, it's different when you're
Speaker 1: relying on what other people said about that person, and
Speaker 1: you're having to sift through their conclusions and assertions about
Speaker 1: someone who you don't get a chance to meet, and
Speaker 1: then you meet the person and you write your own
Speaker 1: film based on your observations. Can you describe the difference
Speaker 1: between the two involved. The thing I've learned about making
Speaker 1: films about people who are alive or appear to be alive,
Speaker 1: I think is more accurate is that practically everybody you
Speaker 1: talk to doesn't tell you the truth. They want their
Speaker 1: footnote in the major story, as it were. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can give you no I think about the perfect
Speaker 1: example of this. I made a film about Stevinsky at
Speaker 1: the request of Stevinsky's widow, and it was hoped to
Speaker 1: be the definitive film about Stevinsky. And one of the
Speaker 1: people I wanted to interview was a choreographer called sergeley Far.
Speaker 1: He was it was the Aguilev's last great choreographer, and
Speaker 1: he wants to be interviewed in French, which is fine,
Speaker 1: but he also wants to be interviewed at the hotel
Speaker 1: in Montre where Nabakov lived. And I later discovered that
Speaker 1: he had never been to that hotel before, but he
Speaker 1: thought it would be good for his image if I
Speaker 1: interviewed him in the same hotel where Nabakov lived. Interesting, Interesting,
Speaker 1: the bonkers. Anyway, the interview went well, but suddenly towards
Speaker 1: the end of the interview he started to tell this story,
Speaker 1: and he said, I arrived in Venice, I went over
Speaker 1: to the leader. I looked up at the hotel where
Speaker 1: Sergey Pavlovitch was de Aguilev was staying. He looked very
Speaker 1: ill to me. I went back across the lagoon. I
Speaker 1: found a doctor. We came, etcetera, etcetera, and then the
Speaker 1: concluding remarks were And then in my arms on the
Speaker 1: night of August twenty nine, and I was remember the
Speaker 1: date because it happens to be my birthday. In my arms,
Speaker 1: Sergey Pavlovitch Agilev died, and as he said died, tears
Speaker 1: were pouring down his cheeks, I mean literally sobbing. And
Speaker 1: I thought, but I don't say anything. I'll wait I'll
Speaker 1: pause and see what it said. The problem with the
Speaker 1: story is there's not a word of truth in it.
Speaker 1: He wasn't he wasn't Do you do when you're recording
Speaker 1: someone who's lying to you, just to just to hold
Speaker 1: their just to hold their seat at the table of history?
Speaker 1: Well exactly. But then the question is I knew that
Speaker 1: the story was not true, but do I include it
Speaker 1: in the film or do I not include it in
Speaker 1: the film? Now, all of my films, without exception, have
Speaker 1: no narration, so I can't have a narrator, even as
Speaker 1: distinguished narrator as you, to say, well, actually, Chaps, that
Speaker 1: story is not true. But it's a good story, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Like what do you do? Eventually I included it knowing
Speaker 1: it wasn't true, because you could see this that was
Speaker 1: filmed in nineteen Diaguilefford died in so here we are
Speaker 1: fifty some our years later, and you can still see
Speaker 1: the pact that that extraordinary man Diagilev had on someone
Speaker 1: like Surgeley far by the fact he's bursting into tears.
Speaker 1: I mean, I got fed up with a number of
Speaker 1: people I've met over the years in whose arms x
Speaker 1: Y and Zai have died. I mean Rostropovich, the great
Speaker 1: Cellis once told me in my arms procoffeev died completely
Speaker 1: forgetting to mention that that couldn't possibly been true, because
Speaker 1: when Procoffee have died, he died the same day as Stalin,
Speaker 1: and the entire center of Moscow was cordoned off. So
Speaker 1: how have Rostropovich smuggled himself in in order that Procoffee
Speaker 1: could very conveniently die in his arms? Was a question
Speaker 1: which I don't think he was prepared to answer. As
Speaker 1: you well know. You know documentary filmmaking stories that involved
Speaker 1: the past. You're going back and talking to rock and
Speaker 1: roll stars about wood stuck. It doesn't matter what it is.
Speaker 1: You know, memory becomes this watercolor, it becomes this very
Speaker 1: very blurry, undeveloped polaroid, and that's how they remember it.
Speaker 1: That's absolutely true. I made a film with great English
Speaker 1: composer William Walton, and Walton arguably is most famous for
Speaker 1: having written coronation marches for various queens and kings, and
Speaker 1: the first big hit he had was for the coronation
Speaker 1: of George the Six, Queen Elizabeth's father, for which he
Speaker 1: wrote Crown Imperial Right. So I now go to it.
Speaker 1: I'm now interviewing Walton, who very old but very articulately.
Speaker 1: So also spoke very very slowly, so I won't do that.
Speaker 1: But he said, you know, I wrote that thing called
Speaker 1: Crown Imperial for whatever he was called. It's called George
Speaker 1: the six. William, Oh, yeah, yes, George is something or other.
Speaker 1: And then I wrote another one for his daughter, what
Speaker 1: was she called, Queen Elizabeth the Second? Oh? Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and that was called orb and Scepter. And now I'm
Speaker 1: writing another one for the next king, Charles something or other,
Speaker 1: and that's called the Bed Majestical. So I it, William,
Speaker 1: Wait a second, where'd you get these wonderful titles from, Oh,
Speaker 1: dear boy, don't be so silly? Crown Imperial Orban Sceptor
Speaker 1: bed Majestical. It's a line from Henry the Five. There's
Speaker 1: no line at all, but it's just a great thought,
Speaker 1: you know that the three Since he wrote the music
Speaker 1: for Lawrence Olivier's film version of Henry the Fifth, you're
Speaker 1: beginning to terrify me. That should be down in all
Speaker 1: the British history, now which it's been recounted by the Brits.
Speaker 1: How much of it is true well British history very
Speaker 1: little filmmaker Tony Palmer. If you love hearing stories of
Speaker 1: how directors approached their work, be sure to check out
Speaker 1: my conversation with Stephen Daldry. His films include Billy Elliott,
Speaker 1: The Hours, The Reader and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
Speaker 1: I love editing you do. It's my favorite bit of pressure.
Speaker 1: Is a film is written three times. You write it
Speaker 1: to start it, and you rewrite it as you make it,
Speaker 1: and then you do the final and proper right as
Speaker 1: you put it all together. And it's like a jigsaw puzzle.
Speaker 1: And I would imagine that the experience of editing makes
Speaker 1: anyone a better filmmaker in terms of teaching you what
Speaker 1: you need to have in the can people say to me,
Speaker 1: you know, what should I do to learn how to
Speaker 1: make a film? Just getting by final clup pro and
Speaker 1: just start shooting stuff and then just start editing, and
Speaker 1: you'll learn everything you need to know about making a
Speaker 1: movie from editing. Here more of my conversation with Stephen
Speaker 1: Daldry at Here's the Thing dot Org. After the Break,
Speaker 1: Tony Palmer talks about the enduring trait he believes all
Speaker 1: great artists possess. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Tony Palmer's prolific work includes not one
Speaker 1: or two, but three films about British composer Benjamin britt
Speaker 1: Britain was the subject of Palmer's very first film, which
Speaker 1: was released in nineteen sixty seven. He was in his
Speaker 1: mid twenties then and making his way up the ranks
Speaker 1: at the BBC. Now, the very first film I made
Speaker 1: I actually inherited. I had worked with my boss Humphrey Burton,
Speaker 1: who was biographer of Lenard Burnstein, amongst others. He and
Speaker 1: I were developing a film about Benjamin Britain. Britain had
Speaker 1: always resisted having a film made about him at home.
Speaker 1: He didn't mind coming into a studio, he didn't mind
Speaker 1: being filmed in a concert, but no way was anybody
Speaker 1: going to get anywhere near his home. You know why
Speaker 1: he wanted privacy, Yeah, absolutely, I mean he was already
Speaker 1: in a classical world, incredibly famous, especially after the war
Speaker 1: requim and he just didn't need it, didn't want it.
Speaker 1: I was also told, interestingly enough, I should never ever
Speaker 1: mentioned to Britain the name of john S Lessingship wonderful
Speaker 1: director John S Lessingshire, because he had made a ten
Speaker 1: minute little film about Britain and I think eight or
Speaker 1: fifty nine, which Britain apparently had absolutely hated, and every
Speaker 1: time I looked at the film, I couldn't see why
Speaker 1: he hated it. Many years later, Peter Pears, Britain's lover
Speaker 1: and the great tenor, said to me, well, he's not
Speaker 1: sure whether Ben made a pass at Lessinger or Slessinger
Speaker 1: made a pass at Ben, but it had gone wrong,
Speaker 1: so that's why you can't there was something afoot anyway,
Speaker 1: Humphrey Burton had spent years trying to set up a
Speaker 1: film about Benjamin Britain. Seven was the opening of the
Speaker 1: big new concert hall, which is now one of the
Speaker 1: great concert halls of the world, and it was going
Speaker 1: to be what is in effect state occasion. The Queen
Speaker 1: was coming members of the royal family and it was
Speaker 1: going to be the grand inauguration of this wonderful, wonderful
Speaker 1: concert or so Britain was eventually persuaded that we'd be
Speaker 1: there filming the Queen anyway, so you might as well
Speaker 1: go along with this and give us a bit of help.
Speaker 1: As it were so was all set up and then
Speaker 1: we were due to start filming on a Monday, and
Speaker 1: on the previous Wednesday, Humphrey Burton, who was making the film,
Speaker 1: he got fired by the BBC. And he got fired
Speaker 1: because it had been leaked to London Evening Press that
Speaker 1: he was off to set up a commercial radio station. Now,
Speaker 1: if you'd worked for the BBC, the notion that you
Speaker 1: were going to abandon ship and go and set up
Speaker 1: a commercial radio station, television station, that was anathema and
Speaker 1: there were cries of betrayal, betrayal, betrayal. So I'm sort
Speaker 1: of sitting in Oldboro and Suffolk, where Britain lived, thinking
Speaker 1: what the hell do I do. Humphrey Burton, my boss
Speaker 1: to them out is going to make the film is fine?
Speaker 1: And I was also in a hotel that had no
Speaker 1: phone in the room, so there was an endless knocks
Speaker 1: on the door. There's a phone call for you come downstairs,
Speaker 1: and then it was a man probably doesn't mean too
Speaker 1: much of your American listeners, but the man called Hugh
Speaker 1: Weldon was one of the greats of public service broadcasting,
Speaker 1: and it was Hugh Olden on the phone. Now, apart
Speaker 1: from Hugh Weldon, being the head of television. Effectively, he
Speaker 1: was also a military cross. I mean, he was a
Speaker 1: very distinguished soldier. So the conversation went a bit like this, partner, Yes, sir,
Speaker 1: don't panic, I said, no, I'm not panicking. He said,
Speaker 1: the cavalry are coming, and then slammed the phone down.
Speaker 1: I had no idea what that do. So I go
Speaker 1: back upstairs, still now in a state of real panic.
Speaker 1: Twenty minutes later, knock knock on the door, and I said,
Speaker 1: to the poor manager of the hotel, who kept running
Speaker 1: up downstairs, I said, I don't care who it is,
Speaker 1: but I'm not coming. He said, I think you'll want
Speaker 1: to take this call. I said, why, who is it?
Speaker 1: It's Mr Brittain on the phone. So I go, I
Speaker 1: knew Britain by now. Yeah, I knew him by now,
Speaker 1: but so, I mean, I wasn't thrown by that, but
Speaker 1: I thought of having to explain myself. And when he
Speaker 1: comes on the phone, he says, Tony always called me.
Speaker 1: Tony said, don't worry, We've heard nothing to worry about.
Speaker 1: I think you should come up and have tea in
Speaker 1: our house with me and Peter and we'll discuss what
Speaker 1: we do. And I remember two things from from that
Speaker 1: t One he couldn't sit still. He was cutting this
Speaker 1: really beautiful fruitcake, which I remember I can taste it
Speaker 1: even today. And then the second thing was the two
Speaker 1: of them were giggling all the time while telling me,
Speaker 1: don't worry, we'll get you through it. We'll get you
Speaker 1: through it. So I said fine. Years and years later,
Speaker 1: after Britain had died and I began to make other
Speaker 1: films about Britain, especially with Peter Peers, and I asked, Peter,
Speaker 1: remember that occasion. Why were you giggling? You know? Was
Speaker 1: it something I was wearing, something I said, or did
Speaker 1: I smell wrong? He said no, he said, you missed
Speaker 1: the point. He said. We never wanted to make that film.
Speaker 1: Humphrey had talked us into it, and we thought, now
Speaker 1: we're stout with you and you're clearly an idiot and
Speaker 1: have no idea what you're doing. We'll go along with it.
Speaker 1: We stuck with We stuck with the B squad. Here,
Speaker 1: B squad, the D s. God absolutely, So this is
Speaker 1: your Bruno Walter moment at the Carnegie Hall. You get
Speaker 1: summoned to conduct, you step up. This is your Leonard
Speaker 1: Bernstein moment to step into the sunlight and take over.
Speaker 1: How did it go? What was the experience like for you? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean direct. It was, in fact the first color
Speaker 1: film of the BBC ever to be networked in America.
Speaker 1: It went out as a Bell Telephone Hour, which was
Speaker 1: a tremendous thrill, and I mean it was not unsuccessful,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately it came to the attention of one John
Speaker 1: Lennon who summoned me again and said now then, he said,
Speaker 1: now that you're well established at the BBC, I just
Speaker 1: made one quite short films about fifty five minutes. Now
Speaker 1: you're going to do something serious. And I said, right, what?
Speaker 1: And he said, there are all these musicians who ought
Speaker 1: to appear on the BBC. Either they refused to appear
Speaker 1: on the BBC or they don't like the idea of
Speaker 1: appearing on the BBCO and Morris the same, And I said,
Speaker 1: like who. He said, well, can you imagine Jimmie Hendrix
Speaker 1: appearing on the BBC? And I said, tell me what
Speaker 1: the problem is. He said, well, you know, you're the
Speaker 1: camera and over there is Jimmie Hendrix playing as wonderfully
Speaker 1: as he does. But between the camera and Jimmie Hendrix.
Speaker 1: There are an awful lot of gyrating new biles who
Speaker 1: are in the ways, and that's insulting to Hendrix as
Speaker 1: a man and also more particularly as a musician. And
Speaker 1: for that reason, a great list of musicians said John,
Speaker 1: will not appear on the BBC's your job to get
Speaker 1: them on there without the gyrating new biles. And he
Speaker 1: gave me this extraordinary list. Hendrix was one, Cream was another,
Speaker 1: Frank Zappa was another. There's a story in a half,
Speaker 1: Eric Byrdon and the animals Donovan. Now, at that point
Speaker 1: none of these people had appeared on television on the BBC.
Speaker 1: So we made a film Pink Floyd. It was the
Speaker 1: first time Pink Floyd had he appeared on television. And
Speaker 1: oddly enough I was at school with Roger Waters of
Speaker 1: Pink Floyd, but he was the only one I knew
Speaker 1: personally what year was this. So John said, well, I
Speaker 1: will make the introductions, you make the film. So I
Speaker 1: said fine. So I went back to the BBC slightly
Speaker 1: riding the crest of a very small wave as a
Speaker 1: result of the Benjamin Britten film, and said, now I'm
Speaker 1: going to make a film called All My Loving which
Speaker 1: is about the Beatles, I said, lying, It wasn't just
Speaker 1: about the Beatles. It was about what that group of
Speaker 1: people represented great musicians, great musicians, but also people who
Speaker 1: were articulate and had something to say and wanted to
Speaker 1: say it clearly and loudly on the BBC. So we
Speaker 1: made the film. The BBC absolutely hated it. That was
Speaker 1: predictable to some extent. David Amber wrote me a memo
Speaker 1: which I've still got in which he said, this film
Speaker 1: is a disgrace. Over my dead body, will this film
Speaker 1: ever be shown on the BBC. He was then control
Speaker 1: of the BBC and we were kept waiting for nine months.
Speaker 1: We couldn't get it on the air. We were rescued
Speaker 1: nine months or so later by the new head of music,
Speaker 1: who was a man called John Culture who ran Decca
Speaker 1: Record Company with whom I had worked and have become
Speaker 1: a very good friend. And he looked at the film
Speaker 1: and said, well, we have to get this on. We
Speaker 1: have to get it on peak viewing our So we
Speaker 1: were then taken to see the man who was a
Speaker 1: controller of BBC one, I mean the main channel, who
Speaker 1: said he'd obviously been very well brief because as I
Speaker 1: went in He just waved his hand at me. I
Speaker 1: don't want his discussion. He said, I will trade you
Speaker 1: three fs to two pieces. In other words, if you
Speaker 1: get rid of three f's, I'll let you have to
Speaker 1: show the film. So that was that, and that caused,
Speaker 1: if I may say so, a sensation that film. Now,
Speaker 1: when you say that the BBC didn't want to show it,
Speaker 1: did they not want to show anything on that subject?
Speaker 1: They didn't want to show that. Did they offer you
Speaker 1: any explanation? Nothing on that subject, nothing from that uber,
Speaker 1: not those particular people. What was their reasoning. Their reasoning
Speaker 1: was that popular music on television at that time consisted
Speaker 1: of two shows, one of which was called Jukebox Jury,
Speaker 1: where four people sat in the line and played a
Speaker 1: new piece of music and they had to push a
Speaker 1: button one to five. That was it. And then the
Speaker 1: other thing was I mentioned the Top of the Pops
Speaker 1: where you had all these gyrating new birds and no
Speaker 1: real appreciation of the music itself. And what we had
Speaker 1: presented in all my loving was very articulate. People names
Speaker 1: I mentioned who had a lot to say about the
Speaker 1: world in which they lived. Don't forget that's the time
Speaker 1: of the Vietnam War. And other deeply divisive social issues.
Speaker 1: They wanted to talk about it. They wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about what they they thought their role as musicians was
Speaker 1: in that society, and they weren't going to be shut up.
Speaker 1: And that's what that film managed to express. And who,
Speaker 1: by your estimation, was among the most articulate of the subjects, well,
Speaker 1: I mean the two obvious ones who sweep to minded,
Speaker 1: John Lennon and Paul McCartney. And McCartney had a lot
Speaker 1: to say on that subject. But also the other one,
Speaker 1: from a slightly oblique angle, was Frank Zappa. Now you
Speaker 1: had you had a little bit of a lilt when
Speaker 1: you talked about him before. What was the story with
Speaker 1: Zappa that was amusing or interesting? Well, I mean I
Speaker 1: later made I think the worst film in the entire
Speaker 1: history of the universe, in spite of the fact that
Speaker 1: has a colossal cult following called two hundred Motels. I
Speaker 1: don't regret making Totels, but I mean I had a
Speaker 1: deeply upsetting experience. Not many years ago, the one hundredth
Speaker 1: anniversary of the premier of the Writers Spring caused me
Speaker 1: to be invited to numerous orchestral organizations on the West
Speaker 1: coast of America, mostly in California, which the most auspicious,
Speaker 1: I suppose, was for the music school in Los in
Speaker 1: u c. L A. And what did they perform? Right
Speaker 1: A spring firebird? What did they do well? This was
Speaker 1: a pure lecture. In most of the events, what happened
Speaker 1: was they played bits of Stravinsky in the first half.
Speaker 1: I then talked for twenty minutes, and then they play
Speaker 1: the writer spring. But on this occasion it was just
Speaker 1: purely a lecture, and I rambled on for about an
Speaker 1: hour about Stevinsky and procoffee f and Sakovich and what
Speaker 1: all the great Russian composer had undergone. Brachmaninov had suffered
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century, partly as a result of Stalin
Speaker 1: and others. So this was a very somber and serious address.
Speaker 1: I don't think there were too many jokes. There were
Speaker 1: three or four hundred, I can't remember, but that sort
Speaker 1: of size audience. And at the end of the one
Speaker 1: hour lecture, the interlocutor said, looking at the audience, said
Speaker 1: would anybody like to ask Mr Palmer a question? And
Speaker 1: one guy almost in the first row put his hand
Speaker 1: up straight away and he said, yes, sir can you
Speaker 1: tell me what Frank Zapple was? Like? I thought, I've
Speaker 1: just been talking about thirty million dead in the on
Speaker 1: all he wants to know Stalin tortured rockman enough and
Speaker 1: you want to hear about it? Yeah, exactly, Well, don't
Speaker 1: you go with the huskies? Go? Don't you eat that
Speaker 1: yellow snow? I remember from Zapples from my part smoking days.
Speaker 1: But when you've ex am in the world's the universes
Speaker 1: of classical the late grape maestros and composers of the
Speaker 1: repertoire and popular music, you know, there's nothing in my
Speaker 1: mind like popular music in terms of its ephemeral nature.
Speaker 1: There's many people who come up and they have that opportunity,
Speaker 1: they take the stage, they have that moment to capture
Speaker 1: the world's attention, and they go away. Most of them
Speaker 1: don't make it. Most of them don't go to Mount
Speaker 1: Olympus if you will. And the ones who do. I'm
Speaker 1: wondering what do Stravinsky and Wagner and the Beatles and
Speaker 1: the who have in common, meaning those that endure, What
Speaker 1: do they have in common? Is it the same in
Speaker 1: popular music as it is for classical music. Well I
Speaker 1: can answer the question. I think slightly a tan genital way. Initially,
Speaker 1: the thing that attracts me to all of these people
Speaker 1: that I've made films about, whether you're talking about Maria
Speaker 1: Carlos or Margot Fonte, Noor Stravinsky that you mentioned, or
Speaker 1: even the Beatles, there's one element which they've all got,
Speaker 1: which is courage, whether you're talking about intellectual courage, or
Speaker 1: emotional courage, or artistic courage, or in some cases physical courage.
Speaker 1: I remember Margot Fontein trying to explain to me one
Speaker 1: day when she later in her life, when she was
Speaker 1: just on tour as a solo star artist, sometimes with area,
Speaker 1: sometimes not with neuro She'd say, you know, we'd go
Speaker 1: to a new theater which we didn't know it's a
Speaker 1: wooden stage, fine, but would moves and sometimes you have
Speaker 1: little nails sticking up out of the wood. Now, if
Speaker 1: they have not prepared the stage properly, or even if
Speaker 1: they have not swept the stage properly, I'm standing in
Speaker 1: the side of the stage and I'm hearing my music
Speaker 1: coming up, and then I hear my cue and I
Speaker 1: whoops off I go. If I land on one foot
Speaker 1: and that foot slips or gets on a nail because
Speaker 1: the stage has not been properly prepared. My career is over.
Speaker 1: So in that single moment, there is an act of
Speaker 1: physical courage which is beyond most of us. And I
Speaker 1: think all the people that I've dealt with exhibit that
Speaker 1: courage in one form or another, and that's something I'm
Speaker 1: in all of attracted to want to celebrate. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've sometimes been accused of making films where all I've
Speaker 1: chosen to do is any great if you see what
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean big film I made about Menu
Speaker 1: and got me into a hell of a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1: You're referring to the great violinist yr Whodi. Menu went correct? Correct?
Speaker 1: So you did? You did a film about Menu went
Speaker 1: and what happened? Well, in the end he didn't approve it.
Speaker 1: Why Well, in his autobiography he makes two for me
Speaker 1: or three fatal admissions. The one is he repeats over
Speaker 1: and over again, and this became a kind of mantra
Speaker 1: with him that I had this wonderfully idyllic childhood and
Speaker 1: I grew up thinking the world was lovely. Secondly, that
Speaker 1: if you look in the autobiography as published, you can
Speaker 1: find no reference to his first wife. If you know,
Speaker 1: her name was Nicholas, you can find Nicolas Nola, but
Speaker 1: not menu In Nola. That was an interesting admission. And
Speaker 1: the third thing was that I became very puzzled by
Speaker 1: the fact that if you asked man in Street, well
Speaker 1: you who he was still very active man in Street?
Speaker 1: Who's the most famous violinist alive? Most of them, especially
Speaker 1: in England, would say you who him? Anuin He was
Speaker 1: an extraordinary man. I'm not that if you asked musicians
Speaker 1: who is the greatest violinist of our time, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure you who he would get in the top fifty.
Speaker 1: So where was this? Yeah? So where was this disparity?
Speaker 1: What was the problem. I went to a particular concert
Speaker 1: where he and the leader of the particular orchestra he
Speaker 1: was playing with played a Mozart double concerto. He was
Speaker 1: making lots of wrong notes. I think he was almost
Speaker 1: making it up as he goes along. The other guy,
Speaker 1: who the leader of the orchestra, was of course absolutely
Speaker 1: spot on. But your eye and your ear went to Yehudi.
Speaker 1: Didn't matter who the other guy was, You went to Yehudi.
Speaker 1: But the thing that upset you who he was? That
Speaker 1: we found he had two sisters, one of whom was Hepsiba,
Speaker 1: who was a very good pianist, and she had died
Speaker 1: of cancer, and I discovered that he hadn't gone to
Speaker 1: her funeral, and in fact, he never mentioned it. Then
Speaker 1: I discovered that in his autobiography he talks about playing
Speaker 1: for displaced persons after the war, and through my Benjamin
Speaker 1: Britain connection, I knew and I was certain that Britain
Speaker 1: and Menuin had actually gone to play in the newly
Speaker 1: liberated concentration camps, not displaced persons, the actual concentration camps. There.
Speaker 1: They were in bergen Belson months or so after it
Speaker 1: was liberated. Now, Yehudi means the Jew, so you can
Speaker 1: imagine the shock that that had on him. But that's
Speaker 1: why he didn't mention it. But I thought it was
Speaker 1: important to try and understand the man who was in
Speaker 1: front of us. But then the fatal observation was to me,
Speaker 1: it was the fatal observation was that he had had
Speaker 1: this happy childhood. His two sisters, Hepster was dead, died
Speaker 1: of cancy, had another sister called Yalta who was the
Speaker 1: little one. And we'd tracked down Yalta and we interviewed her,
Speaker 1: and she told a totally different stories. She said, our
Speaker 1: childhood was a nightmare. You know, we were locked in cupboards,
Speaker 1: We were prevented from meeting other children because they weren't
Speaker 1: good enough for us. It was a horror story, she said,
Speaker 1: And she articulated this quite extensively. And ye who he
Speaker 1: had said, he didn't know that. He knew that we
Speaker 1: had interviewed his younger sister, but he obviously didn't know
Speaker 1: what she'd said. But he kept saying. At the end
Speaker 1: of the filming, I'm going to persuade my mother, who
Speaker 1: is only I think, to allow you to film her
Speaker 1: and me together. Are you happy about that? She lived
Speaker 1: in Los Gatos in California, So I said fine. So
Speaker 1: we dutifully trooped off to Lost Catos to film you HOODI.
Speaker 1: And there there this midget who was five foot arrived
Speaker 1: wearing black glasses, black clothes, looking really menacing, and she
Speaker 1: invited into her house for tea, and before anything had
Speaker 1: got going, luckily the camera was running by now she
Speaker 1: began to tell Yahudi off in front of us, don't
Speaker 1: do that. That's very silly. What who do you think
Speaker 1: you are? And you just saw it in one. So
Speaker 1: our portrait of Rhodimnuin was, if I say Watts and all,
Speaker 1: it wasn't there to diminish him in any way whatsoever.
Speaker 1: It was to celebrate the man. How had he managed
Speaker 1: to do this in this background? Margaret Fontein was the same.
Speaker 1: How did it come about that the most one of
Speaker 1: the most famous ballerinas of her time finished up in
Speaker 1: a mud hut in Panama when there was no water,
Speaker 1: no no running water, no telephone, nothing. He was living
Speaker 1: off cornflicts. How did that happen? And we have to
Speaker 1: try and understand it? Director Tony Palmer, If you're enjoying
Speaker 1: this conversation, be sure to follow Here's the Thing on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. When we come back, Tony Palmer discusses
Speaker 1: his seven hour and forty five minute film about Richard Wagner.
Speaker 1: It starred Richard Burton, Lawrence Olivier and Vanessa Redgrave. The
Speaker 1: l A Time has called it one of the most
Speaker 1: beautiful films ever made. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing. When you make over on films
Speaker 1: in the course of a career, there are operat tunities
Speaker 1: to experiment with different styles of storytelling, and while Tony
Speaker 1: Palmer has certainly been adventurous, one thing he decided he
Speaker 1: would not use in his films his voiceover narration. The
Speaker 1: story has to speak for itself. I mean this My job,
Speaker 1: as it were, is to present the evidence and let
Speaker 1: you make up your mind. I mean, at no point
Speaker 1: in the menu and film, since we talked about it,
Speaker 1: does anybody say anything derogatory of menu in other than
Speaker 1: the eyewitnesses as it were. And then at the end
Speaker 1: you have to decide, you know, was this guy's goody
Speaker 1: two shoes as he just hiding really important moments in
Speaker 1: his past. It makes your job quite difficult. But I
Speaker 1: mean I I don't only make films about music, but
Speaker 1: I mean the music films I've made, I would consider
Speaker 1: the music as an essential narrative point part of the film.
Speaker 1: The music drives the story forward. I mean rachaman and
Speaker 1: Off since you mentioned him, I mean Rachamanov provided me
Speaker 1: with plenty of musical evidence for that actually happened in
Speaker 1: his life, and so I was able to construct a
Speaker 1: film entirely around pieces of music. I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of people talking and a lot of I hope, very
Speaker 1: pretty shots of where he lived and what he did,
Speaker 1: especially in Russia. But it's it's it's essentially the music
Speaker 1: is the driving force, the narrative of the film that
Speaker 1: makes it. It's it's not easy, it's difficult, but I'm
Speaker 1: a better editor. I think that I am a director,
Speaker 1: and I mean I can edit to our film in
Speaker 1: ten fourteen days simply because it's very clear in my
Speaker 1: mind what I want to do. Because I could sing
Speaker 1: most of whatever composer I'm working on, I could sing
Speaker 1: the music backwards. So when you're making a film that
Speaker 1: seven hours and forty five minutes, the Wagner film, does
Speaker 1: the length of the film present itself prior to the making.
Speaker 1: So for example, now you do a podcast for like
Speaker 1: Netflix or I Heart of Someone, and they'll say to
Speaker 1: you literally, they'll say, we only break even after five episodes.
Speaker 1: We don't make any money the graviest episode six, seven,
Speaker 1: and eight, and we don't care how you have, how
Speaker 1: loaded it needs to be, how much you have to
Speaker 1: stretch it out, how much you have to kind of
Speaker 1: pump oh, you know, very true, And they'll say, we
Speaker 1: need an eight episodes shure, even if there is an
Speaker 1: eight episodes there in the story. Now in your case,
Speaker 1: tell us about the length and the scope of your
Speaker 1: incredible project about er Well. I mean, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're dumb enough or stupid enough to make films about composers,
Speaker 1: I've made a few. Then as far as the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century is concerned, the shadow of Wagner hangs over everything.
Speaker 1: You can't avoid it. At some point, you've got to
Speaker 1: face up to it and do it. Wagner, of course,
Speaker 1: is immensely complicated because of what happened to his music
Speaker 1: in the third right, among others, and so that makes
Speaker 1: trying to find a perspective on the story of Wagner difficult.
Speaker 1: The other thing which is difficult is that I think
Speaker 1: at the time that we made the film, which was
Speaker 1: for the hundred anniversary of his death, we reckon that
Speaker 1: there were more books about Wagner than any other person
Speaker 1: who had ever lived, including Jesus Christ and including Napoleon.
Speaker 1: So you're suddenly faced with this mountain of information. When
Speaker 1: we were planning the film about Vargner, we didn't really
Speaker 1: know that it would be either that short or that long.
Speaker 1: We just knew it was a big subject would require
Speaker 1: big film, and so we were lucky in that I
Speaker 1: had already been approached by Vittorio Seraro, great Oscar winning cameraman.
Speaker 1: Have you got a project that would interest me? Yes, sir,
Speaker 1: I have. It's called I'm there, he said. So we
Speaker 1: got Victoria's Steraro straight away. Richard Burton, oddly enough, was
Speaker 1: not the first choice. It was Albert Finnie, who I
Speaker 1: had worked with before, wouldn't give me a start date,
Speaker 1: and of course we were under some pressure to have
Speaker 1: a start date that we could stick to. And in
Speaker 1: fact that the whole film of seven hours forty five minutes,
Speaker 1: it only took seven months to film. I mean it
Speaker 1: wasn't long, and about three months then to edit. But
Speaker 1: going back to the main subject. When we started on
Speaker 1: the project, I mentioned this chat earlier deck John Culshaw.
Speaker 1: John Culshaw had recorded many of Wagner operas, and he
Speaker 1: took me to meet Wagner's grandson, Wolfgang. And Wolfgang and
Speaker 1: I got very drunk with John Culshaw and Volkang's wife.
Speaker 1: I think he was then his mistress, but became his
Speaker 1: wife at a hotel in Bustledorff. And at the end
Speaker 1: of this long drunken lunch, he said, making this film,
Speaker 1: you'll find two important pieces of advice. He said. The
Speaker 1: one is that as you go on, you were discovered
Speaker 1: that everybody, without exception, knows exactly where my grandfather was
Speaker 1: on the third Thursday of the fourth month of eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy two. He said, you will even find and it
Speaker 1: turned out to be true. You will even find somebody
Speaker 1: who knows how many eggs he had for breakfast and
Speaker 1: how long he cooked the eggs for. That was turned
Speaker 1: out to be absolutely true. But then the other thing
Speaker 1: he said was you have to understand about my grandfather
Speaker 1: that if he were alive today, we're talking about the
Speaker 1: end of He said, it's the only one place he
Speaker 1: would want to work. He'd go to Hollywood straight away.
Speaker 1: Hollywood all has all the technical needs and money and
Speaker 1: so on and so on. He'd be straight in there
Speaker 1: in Hollywood. I think that would have been a shock
Speaker 1: for Hollywood. But nonetheless, those two pieces of advice were kept.
Speaker 1: They would like Manchester. They kept me going and kept
Speaker 1: me sane all the time. Richard Burton was very confused
Speaker 1: about why I'd chosen him. What role do Burton and
Speaker 1: Olivier and Vanessa Redgrave play if you have no announcers,
Speaker 1: what do they do with their hosts on camera? No,
Speaker 1: it's a drama. It's not a documentary. It's a drama.
Speaker 1: So Richard Richard Burton plays Richard Wagner, Vanessa Redgrave plays Kozma,
Speaker 1: his wife, and the Three Great Nights Olivia, Richardson and Gilgud.
Speaker 1: They played the three Ministers of Luding, the second of
Speaker 1: Bavaria and Ludwing the second later in life, was Wagner's
Speaker 1: principal patron. In fact, the famous Ring Cycle is dedicated
Speaker 1: to my co creator, Ludwiger Bavarious. An extraordinary situation. Once
Speaker 1: Olivia was on board, of course, everybody wanted to be
Speaker 1: in the film because they wanted to be with Olivia
Speaker 1: or they wanted to be with Burton. Richard got a
Speaker 1: bit annoyed by this, and it said to me one day,
Speaker 1: said why the hell did you choose me? And I said, well, Richard, Firstly,
Speaker 1: you're both called Richard, how about that? Secondly, you talked
Speaker 1: too much, how about that? Thirdly you definitely drink too much.
Speaker 1: And fourthly, you have an indescribable charm, as I'm sure
Speaker 1: the original Wagner did, otherwise he couldn't have got away
Speaker 1: with what he did. And lastly, I said, don't take
Speaker 1: this the wrong way. You both have a strong element
Speaker 1: of genius and that I want to celebrate. I mean,
Speaker 1: the crucial point about the Wagner film is that it
Speaker 1: explores as a drama written by a very good English
Speaker 1: dramatist called Charles Wood who wrote Charge the Light Brigade
Speaker 1: you might know who actually wrote the Beatles film Help
Speaker 1: is that it explores what was the politics of Germany
Speaker 1: at that time, in the middle of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and Wagner was absolutely determined to unify Germany, to make
Speaker 1: it a power in the land. And having failed to
Speaker 1: do that by burning down an opera house, which is
Speaker 1: what he did, or he was involved in the burning
Speaker 1: down of an opera, then issuing endless pamphlets about this,
Speaker 1: that and everything you ever heard of, finally thought, well,
Speaker 1: there any way to do it is to write a
Speaker 1: huge music drama, the ring Cycle for for operas, because
Speaker 1: that will show them, that will show them what the
Speaker 1: real purpose of being a united Germany is. And of
Speaker 1: course that led to Pitland, that made it very, very complicated.
Speaker 1: But I think that the most telling image in the
Speaker 1: whole film. This was a guy who had wanted notices
Speaker 1: published all over Germany, dead or alive, Wagner five dollars.
Speaker 1: That was certainly a part of it. He was on
Speaker 1: the run from creditors, from political adversaries, from people who
Speaker 1: wanted to do him down. Finally, in August eighteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: this time, and little man, he was only about five
Speaker 1: ft three or five ft four, stood on the top
Speaker 1: of a hill behind which was this theater he had
Speaker 1: built with Ludwig's money, the theater in Byroid, and the
Speaker 1: crowned heads of Europe came up to say hello, Mr Bagnets,
Speaker 1: and honor to meet you. Can you imagine an artist
Speaker 1: sent to stage greeting the crown heads of Europe. I
Speaker 1: mean that that's never happened, since it probably happened a
Speaker 1: bit in the time of the Greeks, but that's it.
Speaker 1: This was an artist, a musician, a composer, and yet
Speaker 1: he was sent to stage, not all these conniving, mendacious
Speaker 1: politicians courtiers. Now you spent your entire career over there.
Speaker 1: If you were, you never lived in America, you never
Speaker 1: lived in Los Angeles and made films in California. Well,
Speaker 1: I did a huge series called All You Need Is Love,
Speaker 1: The History of American Popular Music, where I mean I
Speaker 1: was camped in the United States for a year tracking
Speaker 1: down everybody. But you never wanted to relocate here and
Speaker 1: make film. You've made documentary films and narrative films. You
Speaker 1: never wanted to become just a regular filmmaker shooting narrative
Speaker 1: films over here and make I think I would want
Speaker 1: to say that I never had the opportunity. Nobody ever
Speaker 1: asked me. I mean, I just kind of plodded on
Speaker 1: doing my own things. I mean, I've worked at the BBC.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, I left the BBC after about five
Speaker 1: years because I felt it was very restricting. And I've
Speaker 1: been a freelance ever since. And as you mentioned, I
Speaker 1: mean I've made rather a lot of films. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean about a hundred and twenty films entirely as
Speaker 1: a freelance, trying to find the money than doing it,
Speaker 1: than getting it on television, and so on and so
Speaker 1: on and so on. I'm a one man band, a
Speaker 1: one man band. Indeed. This episode was produced by Kathleen Russo,
Speaker 1: Kerry Donahue, and Zach McNeice. Our engineer is Frank Imperial.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing. Is brought to you
Speaker 1: by iHeart Radio