WEBVTT - Filmmaker Judith Vecchione on Vietnam, Civil Rights and Beyond 0:00:02.759 --> 0:00:06.000 This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the 0:00:06.080 --> 0:00:11.119 Thing from iHeart Radio. In the nineteen sixties, which was 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:16.040 a convulsive period in American history, one major story seemed 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:19.079 to play on and on with no end in sight, 0:00:19.680 --> 0:00:24.400 the War in Vietnam. When that war officially ended in 0:00:24.520 --> 0:00:30.240 nineteen seventy five, journalists, artists, and public broadcasting began to 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:35.320 conduct the autopsy. The result produced films like nineteen seventy 0:00:35.360 --> 0:00:40.159 Eight's Coming Home, nineteen seventy nine Apocalypse Now, and a 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:45.680 PBS series first broadcast in nineteen eighty three, Vietnam a 0:00:45.800 --> 0:00:50.559 Television History. Over the course of thirteen hours, the program 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:55.080 dug deep into the background, cost and toll taken on 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:57.520 the principal figures involved in the war. 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:02.640 Thirty years after the first American died in Vietnam, the 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:06.319 last Americans were leaving, waiting on the US embassy roof 0:01:06.360 --> 0:01:10.000 to be flown to safety. The long war was ending 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:12.840 in the defeat of the South Vietnamese state that America 0:01:12.920 --> 0:01:17.360 had supported for two decades. What kind of peace finally 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:20.440 was at hand? What would be the meaning of peace? 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:27.800 My guest today is Judith Vecchioni, an Emmy and Peabody 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:32.920 winning producer of that series. Vecchione has worked in documentary 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:38.720 programming with Boston based PBS station WGBH since the seventies 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:42.360 and has been an executive producer there for twenty three years. 0:01:43.120 --> 0:01:48.160 Her career has encompassed programs like Frontline and American Experience, 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:52.760 documentary films like Blood, Sugar Rising, and the Peabody winning 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:56.720 doc series Eyes on the Prize. I wanted to know 0:01:56.800 --> 0:02:01.160 what Vecchione's upbringing was like and how her home environment 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:03.320 influenced her career path. 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:08.160 I grew up in a politically very aware household. My 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:11.040 father read the newspaper from cover to cover, The New 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:14.640 York Times cover to cover every day, and we talked 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:17.840 about what was going on, and so the big issues 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:21.640 of the day, civil rights, the Vietnam War were live 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:25.560 topics in my family. My parents worked with civil rights 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:31.080 organizations making sure our community was not dismantling the housing 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:35.560 discrimination in our suburban community. But what area of was 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:38.360 this in south shore of Long Island? Where what town 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:43.760 from Massapequa. I'm from Merrick, so you were in the 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:44.720 south shore of the Island. 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:46.120 Was your dad? Was your writer? 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:50.040 He should have been, but he did not end up 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:51.600 doing that. He should have been He should have been 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:54.760 an academic. Actually, I think the politics of the day 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:58.400 for people who were very progressive made that hard. And 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:01.560 my mother was a teacher, a school math teacher who 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:07.320 I had for math actually, and luckily it's a subject 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:10.000 where you get the answers right or you get them wrong, 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:14.079 and so there's no favoriteism. Nobody ever got worried about 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:16.840 whether mom was being nice to me, and half the 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:18.440 class called her mom anyway. 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:22.720 So when you leave, you go off to Yale, and 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:24.880 as you head off to New Haven, was there a plan? 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:28.280 Was there something you wanted to study? And what was that? 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:31.040 Well, the first thing is that I'm in the first 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:34.240 class of women at Yale, the first matriculating class. So 0:03:34.760 --> 0:03:38.040 I don't know that I knew what I was going 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:41.120 to study at that time. I was interested in languages. 0:03:41.160 --> 0:03:44.240 I was interested in history, and I ended up being 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:48.720 a linguistics major, which probably wasn't the most useful thing 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:51.840 to study. But it's such a rich environment, you know, 0:03:52.800 --> 0:03:57.360 in these big universities, you get great education. I'm not 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:01.280 sure I took full advantage of it. It was the 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:04.160 middle of the Vietnam War. There was a lot going on, 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:07.560 and Yale was very unprepared for us, for the women. 0:04:07.960 --> 0:04:13.320 How so, well they fifty years later, this is like 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:17.200 five years ago, they invited the first women back. So 0:04:17.320 --> 0:04:21.720 that's my class plus the two transferred classes. And they 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:23.800 admitted that they just did it in a hurry to 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:27.320 beat Princeton to co education. And I felt a lot 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:30.040 better once they said, you know, we really didn't think 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:34.320 about anything except well, what we'll paint some bathrooms for 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:37.359 you or something. But there were no You have to 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:39.800 think about when you arrive in an environment like that 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:44.960 a university, you expect the upper class people to guide you, 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:48.599 to help you. You expect the teachers to know where 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:51.800 to draw. They didn't know what. Nobody knew what to do. 0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:54.520 All the upper class women were as new as we were. 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:57.080 It was a real pioneering experience. 0:04:57.160 --> 0:04:57.880 Is sixty nine. 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:00.839 We arrived in six and. 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:04.520 That class were you as incoming freshmen and people who 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:06.720 had transferred, who were upper class people as well, right 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:07.960 transfer as well. 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:13.080 So graduating classes of seventy three, minds seventy two and 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:16.960 seventy one. But they came from you know, Vasser and 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:20.719 from NYU and wherever. They didn't know Yale. They didn't 0:05:20.720 --> 0:05:23.400 know the professors. Nobody could say to you those key 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:26.640 things of don't take this class, take that one. You 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:30.160 know this. If you got a choice of teaching assistance, 0:05:30.240 --> 0:05:32.680 go with this one. It was, as I say, a 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:37.120 tremendously rich environment. There was more than enough for anybody. 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:40.279 But I know that the later classes had it easier 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:40.880 than we did. 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:45.760 When you leave Yale with a linguistics degree, what's the 0:05:45.839 --> 0:05:49.080 plan then? Was you you had never no filmmaking? Had 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:51.360 you done a minor in film? No? 0:05:51.560 --> 0:05:54.080 By that point I did have a plan though, Okay, 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:58.159 which is my last semester. I got out in seven 0:05:58.200 --> 0:06:03.880 semesters instead of eightsters in part because I always had 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:07.080 siblings in school. It was in college, so it was 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:11.240 it was expensive for my family, even with scholarships and things. 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:15.120 And my last semester I discovered I had extra credits 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:17.080 that nobody had mentioned to me, and I could take 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:21.320 something fun instead of all my major classes. And I said, 0:06:22.040 --> 0:06:24.599 I think I'll take this class in video what the 0:06:24.640 --> 0:06:28.560 heck in the Art and Architecture building. And it got 0:06:28.600 --> 0:06:33.160 there and they had cameras the size of refrigerators, giant cameras. 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:36.359 It was two inch videotape that you were recording on, 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:40.080 so basically couldn't edit. And we took pictures of each 0:06:40.080 --> 0:06:43.440 other that first day, you know, videos of each other. 0:06:43.880 --> 0:06:47.920 And I had two enormous light bulb moments, light bulb 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:51.839 over the head moments where I said, I need to 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:54.560 do this, this is what I should be doing. I 0:06:54.600 --> 0:06:57.720 had been doing radio rock and roll, news radio, that 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:03.000 sort of thing at WYBC GBH community station. I covered 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:06.640 the panther trials and then the riots around that before 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:09.000 there were those in New Haven. New Haven had a 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:12.480 black panther trial. Yeah, there was an event and they 0:07:12.560 --> 0:07:15.560 came and then there was a trial after that event 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:17.480 on May Day, there was an event, But. 0:07:17.480 --> 0:07:20.120 What about it? Did you have the light bulb moment? 0:07:20.160 --> 0:07:22.440 Meaning when you're there? We used to have a joke 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:24.600 We did a TV show where the guy in the 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:28.600 period was period television, and he's drunk or he's halluciny 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:31.120 or something and he turns to the producers into producer 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:33.920 and says, why are those people pointing those ovens at me? 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:38.160 Meeting the camerace They were so gigantic, But what instide 0:07:38.160 --> 0:07:40.520 when you're inside that environment? Because you go on to 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.360 go ahead and have this obviously amazing career. What was 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:45.520 the light bulb moment? What was attractive? 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:49.160 I think it was telling stories that were real and 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:52.920 that mattered to people, that these were important things that 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:57.800 were happening around us, and there were ways of telling 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:01.720 those stories that had impact and that were creatively satisfying. 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:05.679 I mean I had done art before, painting and so forth, 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:09.520 and it just it fed those same brain cells for 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:13.400 me that I did, and it had impact. It had reasons, 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:17.000 so reasons to do it that were not just entertainment 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:20.000 or selling toothpaste, which is why, of course I went 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:23.520 for public television, not to commercial television. 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:26.080 So that was the beachhead was public television and stuff. 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:26.680 That's where you started. 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:30.720 Absolutely. I started at GBH and I stayed there for 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:35.560 almost my entire career. I mean I left once or twice, 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:40.800 but came back because public media is where you do documentaries. 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:46.120 I mean, now there's HBO, but HBO does what five 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:51.679 ten documentaries a year. They're wonderful, but that's not what 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:55.360 they really do, whereas Frontline does forty a year, right, 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:59.280 and American Experience does another you know, ten or fifteen. 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:03.000 I don't know what they do. Pov is still on 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:09.040 independent lens. Through GBH. I've worked with the POV people, 0:09:09.600 --> 0:09:12.800 I've worked with the independent lens people, so those are 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:17.600 the independent filmmakers, which is where I am now mostly focused. 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:22.400 But I've also worked with Frontline, Nova, American Experience and 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.760 all the background ones, and that brings in an enormous 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:31.320 cadre of incredibly talented people that you get to learn from. 0:09:31.640 --> 0:09:35.280 I can't tell you the number of people who I've gone, Oh, Now, 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:38.080 I understand why we do these things this way. And 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:40.600 I also have a I'm old enough that my career 0:09:40.679 --> 0:09:46.120 spans from film to digital. So when we started, Vietnam 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:49.800 was shot on film. My fire film was shot on film, 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:53.840 and that's way later. So you're you're kind of in 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:58.760 the midst of really smart, dedicated people. 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:03.120 Now when you when you arrive at GBH. The CPB 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:06.880 is formed in sixty seven, and before you have a 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:11.640 government centralized funding mechanism for public broadcasting and in this 0:10:11.679 --> 0:10:14.719 case obviously a public TV. I'm wondering if they were 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:17.079 off on their own, doing their own thing and raising 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:17.520 the money. 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:20.800 I don't think so. I think the system was formulated 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:24.559 after the Carnegie Commission report that they said. 0:10:24.360 --> 0:10:27.040 We need to have MINO, that's right. 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:31.680 We need to have a federally supported system that could 0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:37.599 be independent and could be therefore able to cover topics 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:41.480 that commercial stations needing to fill a bottom line and 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:44.280 pay stockholders and so forth that they couldn't do. 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:48.040 So when you show up at GBH and maybe everything 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:50.679 is concretizing at the same time and congealing at the 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:54.080 same time, what was the terrain like, you're a woman, Yes, 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:56.520 you have a degree from Yale, so that's a good thing. 0:10:57.080 --> 0:10:59.120 Did you get in there and roll up your sieves 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:01.520 and start working or are you making coffee for a year? 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:02.480 Or what happened? 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:07.920 At first? I was a part time vacation replacement secretary, 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:15.280 and I worked in the design department, which, as I remember, 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:20.480 it was pretty self contained and had a photographer and 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:24.600 a photography studio. And this is pre digital. There's not 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:27.960 even three quarter inch tapes, so you know, it's mostly 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:32.800 serving news and local very labor intensive, very labor intensive, 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:35.600 and I didn't have a lot to do except observe, 0:11:36.000 --> 0:11:41.920 learn and watch the Watergate hearings. It's a good summer 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:43.760 to be employed there. And then I worked for the 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:49.040 Finance Department and then I saw some people. I continued 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:51.800 to do these fill in replacement stuff and I saw 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:56.679 these people in the cafeteria waving their fingers about and 0:11:56.760 --> 0:11:59.760 I looked at them and I said, what are you doing? 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:03.360 And they said, we're learning sign language because we're going 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:07.160 to start the first captioning for the deaf and we 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:10.320 need to know how to speak to our deaf employees. 0:12:11.160 --> 0:12:17.080 And I said, languages, linguistics. I'm interested in this, and 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:19.400 they said, well, you know, we meet when we can. 0:12:19.480 --> 0:12:21.880 And I said, you know, i'm a secretary in the 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:25.000 finance department or something. They'll let me take lunch at 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:27.079 three if that's when you do it. They don't care 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:30.080 when I take lunch. And I went in and I 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:34.600 learned to sign, not fluently but enough. And when they 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:39.880 had trouble recruiting someone for a deaf person, they intended 0:12:39.920 --> 0:12:42.360 to have a certain number of people, one of whom 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:44.920 was deaf, doing this job. And it took them longer 0:12:44.920 --> 0:12:47.840 than anticipated to get the first deaf person to pay 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:50.960 attention because it was it was untried captioning. So they 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:54.880 hired me as the non deaf replacement for the deaf people, 0:12:55.080 --> 0:13:00.560 and that was again an excellent learning process. It was writing. 0:13:01.000 --> 0:13:04.440 Because you were writing, you were taking the ABC Evening 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:08.400 News and writing it into caption language and putting it 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:14.640 in computers. Early computers again, the size of refrigerators extremely slow. 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:18.000 And when things went wrong and the machines broke down, 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:20.720 we had a sign language interpreter who'd show up in 0:13:20.760 --> 0:13:23.800 the little corner of the screen and do it. 0:13:23.960 --> 0:13:28.000 And between when you start these beginnings at GBH and 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:31.600 when you become part of your first project that you're 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:34.240 on the crew, you're helping to write, you're helping to produce, 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:37.840 whatever your contribution. I'm assuming you didn't direct right out 0:13:37.880 --> 0:13:40.400 of the gate, right, so you get what's the first 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:43.880 filmed project? Or I guess so it's all filmed back then, 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:45.960 what's the first filmed project you work on? 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:50.080 What year was that I went over to Nova from 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:53.199 captioning and I would say would be like seventy six 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:54.000 that I. 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:56.920 Now you think three years and you were Nova doing 0:13:56.960 --> 0:13:58.120 what I was. 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:02.960 A production assistant, mostly doing post so learning how you 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:07.160 mix in film and how you taking care of bringing 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:11.600 in narrators and contracting and so forth, you putting it together, 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:17.240 started producing promos. A very good learning experience if you 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:19.840 got to tell people why they should watch this film 0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:22.600 on wolves in thirty seconds? What are you going to 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:26.200 put up there? I had very good mentors there, some 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:30.000 of whom came over from the BBC because they had 0:14:30.000 --> 0:14:33.520 been doing the Horizon Science series, which was an inspiration 0:14:33.680 --> 0:14:37.360 for Nova. Nova was the first big national project that 0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:41.120 GBH did, and it was clear at that point that 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:45.360 the person who was running National Productions was interested in 0:14:45.440 --> 0:14:50.400 expanding the national series the documentary series, and so Nova 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:55.600 and then World, which was the predecessor to Frontline, and 0:14:55.640 --> 0:15:00.440 then American Experience all came in under that for ten 0:15:00.520 --> 0:15:01.200 year period. 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:05.720 So you're doing post and it seems like, and I 0:15:05.800 --> 0:15:08.200 don't want to be too you know, polite or whatever, 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:10.320 but it seems like did you feel that everywhere you 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:13.640 when people saw that you had it in terms of 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:17.080 the capacity to do this work? Because the business relies 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:20.960 on mentoring. The business relies on someone who's in a 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:23.800 more powerful position than you are, turning to you and going, 0:15:23.880 --> 0:15:25.360 let's go. You're going to come with us and we're 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:27.560 going to go on the shoot together. Right, what's the 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:30.320 first film you make? You go and shoot? 0:15:30.800 --> 0:15:34.400 I was a PA at Nova in post production and 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:37.240 they would occasionally need somebody to go out in a 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:40.760 field on a production for them. And there was a 0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:45.480 film that was done on very early genetic engineering, and 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:48.200 I became the PA on that one, and I traveled 0:15:48.600 --> 0:15:52.560 with the two producers. This was, you know, back in 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:56.360 the day when crews were bigger. You had generally a 0:15:56.400 --> 0:16:00.360 producer and associate producer and a production assistant, plus your 0:16:00.360 --> 0:16:04.440 three person camera sound team going out. Nowadays it would 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:07.880 be maybe two people with the equipment that we have 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:11.840 and the ability to do things remotely. So that was 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:15.760 one of the early ones, the genetic engineering. 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:17.880 Film were most of the people involved in that project 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:21.160 and the early projects you became a part of after that, 0:16:21.240 --> 0:16:21.960 was it mostly men? 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:26.040 Mostly? Yes, mostly, But actually on that film there were 0:16:26.080 --> 0:16:28.040 co producers and it was a man and a woman, 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:33.280 and the woman actually eventually became Nova's executive producer, pla Apsel. 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:40.000 But GBH, I thought was always pretty friendly to women. 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:43.640 There weren't as many women at the very top levels 0:16:43.720 --> 0:16:46.480 for a while. Now there are, and in fact GBH 0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:50.560 now has its first woman CEO as of last year. 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:53.400 And I would say it's more women than men in 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:57.120 production at GBH. I'm not sure that's true across the 0:16:57.160 --> 0:17:00.560 system for public broadcasting, and it certainly I don't think 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:04.720 I'm not part of the larger commercial world. It's not true. 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:08.160 It's certainly true in the independent world that it doesn't 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:12.000 matter whether you're not really being downgraded. 0:17:12.680 --> 0:17:16.440 Yes or No is the first film you make? Correct? 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:20.520 Yeah, that might have been, and that's for World, the 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:25.800 predecessor for Frontline. And I did that one in Canada, 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:28.320 and I'm the producer. I'm not the director on that. 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:29.760 The director is Michael ruba. 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:31.680 What was the topic of Yes or No? What was 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:32.080 it about? 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:37.240 This was in the period when Quebec was looking to 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:43.440 secede from Canada. Yes, and Michael Rubau knew this impersonator, 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:49.280 an impressionist named Jean Gui Moreau and Jeanie did impressions 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:52.439 of rone Levec, the premiere of Quebeco was the great 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:58.560 driver for secession. And Jeanque Morovo was so well known 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:01.520 in French Canada. This is not an experience I had 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:05.960 had before. You'd walk through the streets of Montreal or wherever, 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:09.760 and little girls would faint in front of you. Oh 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:13.240 my god, it's Janqui. He's so well known, he's so 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:18.320 wonderful and Seanki decided he would take his show to 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:22.040 Toronto to see if it would play there. So it 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:26.320 was about the difference between French and English Canada told 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:29.160 through this story of Shunky's journey. 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:31.320 I've got to get a copy of that. That sounds amazing, 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:41.200 documentary producer Judith Decioni. If you enjoy conversations with brilliant 0:18:41.240 --> 0:18:44.879 documentary filmmakers, be sure to check out my episode with 0:18:45.000 --> 0:18:47.480 director and producer Rory Kennedy. 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:51.280 I love Boeing and what Boeing stood for in this country, 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:54.240 and we really celebrate that in the film because it's 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:58.360 been an extraordinary company for decades. You know, it helped 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:00.199 us get out of World War Two, it helped get 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:02.720 us to the moon with my uncle Jack, and for 0:19:02.800 --> 0:19:06.320 many decades, Bowing did one thing, which was to say, 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:10.840 we're going to prioritize excellence and safety. And the McDonald 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:14.119 douglas people were put in charge and they had a 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:18.080 very different business model, which was very Wall Street focused. 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:24.000 To hear more of my conversation with Rory Kennedy, go 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:28.520 to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Judith 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:32.840 Vecchioni shares the weight of responsibility she felt bringing the 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:45.680 series Vietnam A Television History to the American public. I'm 0:19:45.720 --> 0:19:48.560 Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:54.400 documentary producer Judith VECCHIONI can spend years behind the scenes 0:19:54.760 --> 0:19:57.720 making a series before it sees the light of day. 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:01.879 Vietnam A Television History. He was no exception. It was 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:06.440 an incredible undertaking, with its thirteen episodes being produced over 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:07.199 six years. 0:20:08.320 --> 0:20:10.880 I think it was two years of fundraising and four 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:15.239 years of production. Yeah, And it was in part it 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:18.920 took so long because we were making up a format 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:22.679 for America. Nobody had ever done this kind of large, 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:27.440 multipart series right where the stories fed to each other. 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:30.800 You could watch them separately, but if you really want 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:34.000 to understand it, you watched all of them roughly the 0:20:34.160 --> 0:20:37.159 order that they were presented. So we were inventing that. 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:39.560 And one of the reasons we had a British producer, 0:20:39.640 --> 0:20:43.080 Martin Smith. Martin Smith came because he had worked at 0:20:43.160 --> 0:20:47.080 World at War and that was the only really big 0:20:47.359 --> 0:20:50.840 linked series that had been done before that. So he 0:20:50.960 --> 0:20:54.359 came over and was one of our producers and was 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:58.280 tremendously helpful in talking about how do you divide up 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:02.920 stories that are happening virtually simultaneously, How do you pick 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:06.240 away to do that? And things that we did for 0:21:06.960 --> 0:21:10.680 Vietnam I brought with me when we went to Eyes 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:13.280 on the Prize not to jump too far ahead, and 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:17.879 other people used for other linked series. An example is school. 0:21:18.280 --> 0:21:22.000 At the beginning of each of these projects, we sat 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:25.560 down all the production staff and went to school together. 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:29.480 We had lecturers, we watched films, we discussed the stories. 0:21:29.800 --> 0:21:32.639 We talked about what's a source and what's not a source. 0:21:32.920 --> 0:21:37.160 It was a combination of film school and journalism, and 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:41.640 it meant that what we did was as unimpeachable as 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:44.560 we could possibly make it. And for Vietnam that was 0:21:44.640 --> 0:21:50.240 critical since we were working within the decade of the 0:21:50.280 --> 0:21:51.560 Fall of Saigon. 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:55.600 Vietnam and television history. I saw that in its original production. 0:21:57.400 --> 0:21:59.919 How do you feel? And this goes throughout your career. 0:22:00.440 --> 0:22:02.280 Eventually we get to Eyes on the Prize. I mean 0:22:02.760 --> 0:22:06.280 you do two back to back. I mean you climb 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:11.720 with your compatriots, you climb big mountains that set the 0:22:11.760 --> 0:22:14.760 tone for public television for decades to come. I mean 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:16.080 we're gonna get into the eyes of the prize in 0:22:16.119 --> 0:22:19.480 a minute. But for me, when I watched Vietnama television history, 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:23.120 I go, this is it, this is what happened. For you? 0:22:24.000 --> 0:22:27.280 Did you sense did you realize at the time, because 0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:30.800 you seem like such an incredibly bright and thoughtful person 0:22:31.480 --> 0:22:34.240 that you're sitting there going, you know, I'm carving history 0:22:34.760 --> 0:22:38.040 in stone here? Did you feel that sense of responsibility 0:22:38.040 --> 0:22:39.040 when you were doing this show? 0:22:39.680 --> 0:22:42.560 We did, and we didn't know how people would react. 0:22:42.680 --> 0:22:45.600 I know that every single person that we called up 0:22:45.840 --> 0:22:50.040 to interview to bring on board, whether they were American 0:22:50.240 --> 0:22:54.360 or Vietnamese or whatever they were, every single person said, 0:22:54.400 --> 0:22:58.040 which side were you on? That was their first question. 0:22:58.440 --> 0:23:01.000 They wanted to know where we going to say it 0:23:01.119 --> 0:23:04.639 was American imperialism? Where were we going to say America 0:23:04.720 --> 0:23:07.800 was saving democracy? Where were we going to Where were 0:23:07.840 --> 0:23:11.359 we going to be? And we we said, and I 0:23:11.400 --> 0:23:16.280 think we worked very very hard. It's not just fair 0:23:16.680 --> 0:23:21.040 but balanced to say there are multiple sides to this story. 0:23:21.320 --> 0:23:25.639 There's the South Vietnamese, there's the North Vietnamese, there's the 0:23:25.720 --> 0:23:32.280 Viet Min viet Cong, there's the Yes, there's multiple and 0:23:32.320 --> 0:23:34.679 so what we want to be doing is over and 0:23:34.720 --> 0:23:39.200 over again showcasing the complexity of the history with as 0:23:39.400 --> 0:23:43.120 much as possible, and it had to be very strong. 0:23:43.320 --> 0:23:46.639 Back up, I'll tell you a story that we in 0:23:47.280 --> 0:23:52.760 the the story of d NBN Foo, we had a 0:23:52.800 --> 0:23:57.960 story of North Vietnamese heroism, the legends they told about 0:23:57.960 --> 0:24:01.879 how hard that victory was for them. We also had 0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:05.320 in that section a story of heroism from the South 0:24:05.440 --> 0:24:11.320 Vietnamese and how they marched into the battles singing the 0:24:11.359 --> 0:24:15.240 French national anthem because they didn't have their own anthem yet. 0:24:15.680 --> 0:24:18.920 It was too young a country. That kind of balancing, 0:24:18.960 --> 0:24:23.200 that constant balancing, and the research to find and verify 0:24:23.359 --> 0:24:27.720 these was enormous. I had a French speaking production assistant 0:24:27.880 --> 0:24:32.600 to make sure that we were hitting the right records, 0:24:33.040 --> 0:24:36.520 not just the American records, but the French records for 0:24:37.040 --> 0:24:38.520 my French based films. 0:24:38.640 --> 0:24:41.359 Now I'm assuming that you know you might have worked 0:24:41.359 --> 0:24:44.600 on other things, but Vietnam of Television History in its 0:24:44.600 --> 0:24:48.000