Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: If you've been moved by a documentary in the past
Speaker 1: forty years, there's a chance you have Sheila Nevins to thank.
Speaker 1: As head of HBO documentary Films since nine she's exerted
Speaker 1: more influence on the medium than perhaps anyone in its history,
Speaker 1: so much so that The New York Times says filmmakers
Speaker 1: quote fret about her outsized power, but also worry about
Speaker 1: what will happen when she's gone. Sheila Nevins has overseen
Speaker 1: the production of literally hundreds of documentaries, which have won
Speaker 1: dozens of Oscars, and she's credited or blamed for being
Speaker 1: one of the creators of reality television through nineties hits
Speaker 1: like Real Sex and Taxi Cab Confessions. Whether they're shot
Speaker 1: in a war zone or the back of a taxi,
Speaker 1: Sheila nevins productions are powerful, brazen, and unflinchingly honest. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to telling her own story, truth gets trickier.
Speaker 1: Her new book, You Don't Look Your Age and Other
Speaker 1: Fairy Tales blends fiction and reality. It's not a bio,
Speaker 1: as someone said to me, it's a sly memoir. Who
Speaker 1: counsel do you want? How to write the book? Who? Nobody?
Speaker 1: Nobody nobody? You knew instinctively to do this this way.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what's right. I knew when to hide,
Speaker 1: and I knew when to over here, and I knew
Speaker 1: the names of the characters without ever some of them
Speaker 1: are Sheila, and some of them are Priscilla or Melissa.
Speaker 1: And I was going to do that in my book,
Speaker 1: and I didn't maybe nicer than me, more honest, I
Speaker 1: just felt that when I gave the character name, I
Speaker 1: protected a lot of people, or when I overheard it,
Speaker 1: I wasn't in it, and then I could write more
Speaker 1: freely about the truth of it. I don't know that
Speaker 1: I could have written certain things if it had been me.
Speaker 1: In her book, Nevin's uses a few characters to paint
Speaker 1: a portrait of the male dominated world she navigated. Only
Speaker 1: one of those characters is named Sheila Nevans, but they're
Speaker 1: all strong, smart women who fight and sleep their way
Speaker 1: to the top. In a way, the sexual politics of
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies is a sideshow. Sheila nevans true
Speaker 1: passion is to immerse herself in the lives of her subjects,
Speaker 1: and like many passions, this one makes you suffer. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think if you're a surgeon, the person is anesthetized
Speaker 1: when you're cutting out their heart, but when you're making
Speaker 1: a documentary, the person is alive and kicking and they
Speaker 1: stay with you. Um, you know, I can't explain it.
Speaker 1: When you go to sleep at night, they they interrupt
Speaker 1: counting sheep. You know, you see, you see sadness all
Speaker 1: the time. There's a lot of suffering in this world.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people who have no way out.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have a way out, We have a
Speaker 1: way out, more options, we have more options, and without empathy,
Speaker 1: there's no humanity. And I think docus are the last
Speaker 1: resort for effective if that's the right use of the
Speaker 1: word feeling for someone you didn't know. That's a great
Speaker 1: thing about a document You turn it on, it's in
Speaker 1: your living room. Okay, you didn't invite it. You thought
Speaker 1: i'll try it, and then suddenly you're crying for someone
Speaker 1: you never knew before, and they're not. It's not an
Speaker 1: actor playing apart. It's not something that was scripted. It's
Speaker 1: another human being trying to live in this country or
Speaker 1: another country. And it stays with you. It's very difficult.
Speaker 1: I mean you really, you really agonize. I agonize. I'm
Speaker 1: not happy. Just squoke into that closet full of Emmys
Speaker 1: and oscars. You have them, make you happy that you
Speaker 1: should fall on your foot, and their doorstoppers for most
Speaker 1: couple of I don't have them. But pick one if
Speaker 1: you can, and tell us a bit about one that
Speaker 1: really really just crushed you. What was the one that
Speaker 1: was an extraordinarily difficult experience for you to bring that
Speaker 1: film to the public. Maybe the one about even though
Speaker 1: it was by far not the best documentary on HBO.
Speaker 1: But because I had been there twenty five years before,
Speaker 1: I was willing to come out as a parent of
Speaker 1: a child who had Tourette's and my son David, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I think that with his permission, I was
Speaker 1: able to write about it my book. But mainly I
Speaker 1: was able to make a film for schools so that
Speaker 1: kids that had Turets would not be bullied because it was, um,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're a fat you were bullied, If
Speaker 1: you studded, you were bullied. But if you had Tourette's,
Speaker 1: nobody knew what you had. They thought you were dopey,
Speaker 1: they push you, they'd imitate you. This one was tough
Speaker 1: because I had to go to my bosses and say,
Speaker 1: I want to make this film about Turette's doesn't affect everybody.
Speaker 1: I want to do it for my kid. And this
Speaker 1: is a big place called HBO, and they said do it.
Speaker 1: You've earned it, and I did it. Now for people
Speaker 1: who don't understand Tourette's beyond you know, the outbursts, the
Speaker 1: vocal outbursts and so forth, when did you when do
Speaker 1: you first become aware of a child having that? At
Speaker 1: what ages? And exhibit itself? Well, the vocal outbursts are
Speaker 1: less than five percent, So the fact that that's called copperalia,
Speaker 1: and um, that means that you yell four letter words?
Speaker 1: Can I say them on this show? I think our
Speaker 1: answers if you're here, they know, okay. So the kid
Speaker 1: who yells funck shit, fuck you, fuck you in your
Speaker 1: ask your motherfuck that is less than five percent, But
Speaker 1: the media has it's the most it. First of all,
Speaker 1: it gave the media chance to use the words and
Speaker 1: bleep them and make it exciting. And secondly, it was
Speaker 1: unfair to the kids. But people like Robin Williams. There's
Speaker 1: also a very interesting part of Turetts, which is called
Speaker 1: eiliad that yes, where imitative behavior is part of the affliction.
Speaker 1: So in other words, you go to a movie, you
Speaker 1: come back. The kid does the whole almost the whole movie,
Speaker 1: and does the actual sounds of the voices of the
Speaker 1: different people. But the film is difficult film. It was
Speaker 1: very painful because, for one, I had to tell David
Speaker 1: we were going to do it too. Um. He had
Speaker 1: to be willing to come out as a kid who
Speaker 1: had to read. We both agreed that it was a
Speaker 1: necessary film. It wasn't great, but it was useful. You
Speaker 1: know that there are different kinds of document What about
Speaker 1: a filmmaker, meaning you have people coming in, they all,
Speaker 1: you know, many of them want something from you, They
Speaker 1: want you to help. But I cast I cast the
Speaker 1: films the way you would cast a movie, you know,
Speaker 1: And I try to find filmmakers who have a passion
Speaker 1: for a subject, and then I try to put them
Speaker 1: together with that subject. So if it's me a maximum
Speaker 1: copa about abuses, let's say in the Catholic church, I'll
Speaker 1: find someone who is a renegade Catholic to be able
Speaker 1: to go after it both with the passion of being
Speaker 1: a kid who's brought up that way and at the
Speaker 1: same time someone who's able to look at it with
Speaker 1: with the right amount of subjective involvement. And in that
Speaker 1: case it turned out to be Alex Gibney. But it's
Speaker 1: very different. I mean, Alexander Pelosi is doing a film
Speaker 1: for us now on everybody says, let's do an anti
Speaker 1: Trump film. Okay, I must get five pictures a day
Speaker 1: about let's do this, Let's do who voted, Let's do
Speaker 1: the Democrats who voted, Let's do the women the college
Speaker 1: graduated every day, there's something. And so it occurred to
Speaker 1: us that maybe what we should do is go back
Speaker 1: to the founding fathers. Maybe we should go back to
Speaker 1: the dream of what democracy was. And so this film
Speaker 1: is about the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence in the
Speaker 1: Bill of Rights. And I watched it last night, pretty late,
Speaker 1: and I found myself getting weepy over the dream, you know,
Speaker 1: not laughing at it, but weepy over the original, into
Speaker 1: the beauty of it, the beauty of being free from
Speaker 1: the king. And in the descriptions of breaking away from
Speaker 1: the king, it was as if it was on you know,
Speaker 1: CNN that night the king had just transmigrated into somebody else,
Speaker 1: and it was terrifying and also illuminating about the prophetic
Speaker 1: vision of the founding fathers. It's really extraordinarily interesting and
Speaker 1: at the same time, you know complex, but you know,
Speaker 1: this whole country was founded on getting away from from
Speaker 1: a dictatorship. So who's someone and I'm being euphemistic here
Speaker 1: when you have the agenda in the morning and you
Speaker 1: come into the office and you see this name is
Speaker 1: coming in to see you, and you got really excited.
Speaker 1: Who's a filmmaker? You thought, oh God, he's coming in today,
Speaker 1: or she's coming in today. Who's someone you just loved
Speaker 1: working with. I love working with John Albert because he's fearless,
Speaker 1: because we send him to Baghdad, to the Green Zone
Speaker 1: and um just to look at wounded gies. And he
Speaker 1: called me up and he said, there's a real story
Speaker 1: here of the camaraderie of the wounded to the wounded.
Speaker 1: Can I stay? And I was very moved by it
Speaker 1: because I felt that I had earned the right to say,
Speaker 1: without checking through the hierarchy, stay there, just stay there
Speaker 1: and tell his story. And you did, and we did
Speaker 1: and we were able to stay there. It's called Baghdaddy
Speaker 1: Are and it turned out to be about a hospital
Speaker 1: and in the process there was a young marine who
Speaker 1: is dying. And he dies in the process of the
Speaker 1: film and we film it and um he was a
Speaker 1: marine and the Army, I guess you called. The army
Speaker 1: said that we could use the footage provided the mother
Speaker 1: would see the film. We called her. Turns out she
Speaker 1: was an emergency room nurse and she said, may I
Speaker 1: see this film. You know, at this point I'm not
Speaker 1: intimidated by much, but I was intimidated by this woman
Speaker 1: watching the death of her child. Paula came in to
Speaker 1: HBO and she came with her husband and she said,
Speaker 1: may I see it alone? And we put it on
Speaker 1: and I kissed her. I didn't even know her, and
Speaker 1: I shut the door and we played it and she
Speaker 1: watched her son die. She came out and she said,
Speaker 1: come here, and I thought, oh my god, what did
Speaker 1: I do? What did I do just for this great scene?
Speaker 1: I'm such a funk up. She came in, she said,
Speaker 1: my son got the same care there that he would
Speaker 1: have gotten in a hospital in New York City. There
Speaker 1: was a priest Overraymo's cathol and he said a prayer
Speaker 1: and she said, do me one favorite, sweetheart, just cover
Speaker 1: his face. I don't want his friends to see him go.
Speaker 1: And she became the associate producer of the next film
Speaker 1: because a year later I called her. This is the
Speaker 1: thing when something stays with you, because all you can
Speaker 1: think of is what if it was my son? And
Speaker 1: a year later I called her up and I said, Paula,
Speaker 1: how are you. She said, I'm with Robert. Robert was
Speaker 1: the name of her son. So I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I think she was in church. What do I I
Speaker 1: didn't know her that well. And she was in Arlington.
Speaker 1: She was in Section sixty of Arlington where the wounded
Speaker 1: that didn't make it, you know, the young men and
Speaker 1: women who died um and if Afghanistan and Iraq were buried.
Speaker 1: It's a special section. And I said, you're with Robert.
Speaker 1: She said, yes, I'm at Arlington. And I said what
Speaker 1: are you doing there? She said, I'm talking to Robert.
Speaker 1: And I said are you alone? She said, Now, there
Speaker 1: are lots of people here. There are relatives, there are children,
Speaker 1: there are friends. You know. I called up John Albert
Speaker 1: and I said, John, I said first. I said, Paula,
Speaker 1: how long will you be there? She said, I'm going
Speaker 1: to stay till tomorrow. And I said, would you mind
Speaker 1: if John came, because she had known him from Bagdaddy
Speaker 1: Are and John went it hid in a tree and
Speaker 1: they watched the full house of people coming to be
Speaker 1: with their lost children. There was a guy there. I
Speaker 1: think it's one of the best films we ever did.
Speaker 1: There was a guy there. I'm sorry all you other
Speaker 1: people who made films, they're good too, but this one
Speaker 1: really got me. There was a guy there who was
Speaker 1: the uncle of a dead soldier, and he brought him
Speaker 1: his favorite drink and he spilled it on the grave.
Speaker 1: And it was a chilly day in June, and Paula
Speaker 1: had taken off her coat and put it over Robert's
Speaker 1: grave so he wouldn't be cold. It was a surreal,
Speaker 1: amazing experience. And um, you can't drive by Arlington anymore
Speaker 1: without that resonating in you. They'll tremendous lowsome sorrow. And
Speaker 1: then there was a kid there who came to put
Speaker 1: flowers on it. A little, tiny little girl maybe three
Speaker 1: or four, putting flowers on her daddy's grave because it
Speaker 1: was her birthday and she wanted to know that she
Speaker 1: missed him. And then so in the midst of all,
Speaker 1: there is the drink being poured, the coat on the grave.
Speaker 1: You couldn't write this. There's no way you could write this.
Speaker 1: If somebody wrote it, they think it was Schmaltz. Let
Speaker 1: me ask you this, which is maybe some kind of
Speaker 1: a stereo track. You can um you can try to
Speaker 1: paint a picture from me what the what the company
Speaker 1: was like when you started, because when I always joke
Speaker 1: with people that HBO. When I was first living in
Speaker 1: New York in the early eighties, HBO would come on
Speaker 1: and they had that theme song that sounds like an
Speaker 1: ISRAELI played the same like MTV. They played Billie Idol
Speaker 1: and Flock of Seagulls all day long. They had the
Speaker 1: same two fucking videos over and over again. An HBO show,
Speaker 1: An HBO showed what was that show? Brian ben Ben
Speaker 1: dream On, Brian ben Ben dream On, the husband of
Speaker 1: Madaline Stough, the Great Medal and Stow And so in
Speaker 1: that time, how was it changed, and how was it
Speaker 1: changed for you as a woman in the business. Since
Speaker 1: in your time, I'm not sure how much has changed
Speaker 1: I really argue, I don't think so. I don't really
Speaker 1: think so. I think I was an anomaly. So I
Speaker 1: was not a threat because who else was going to
Speaker 1: work twenty hours a day, have a sick kid, take
Speaker 1: all the jokes, do the whole thing. I've had nine
Speaker 1: bosses in thirty five years. It's pretty hard because each
Speaker 1: one was a magic slate, so anything you've done before
Speaker 1: was unknown or not necessarily valid to them because I
Speaker 1: had to re establish themselves. So it was Listen, I'm
Speaker 1: not complaining. I've had the greatest job in the world,
Speaker 1: but I was an anomaly. Who what woman wanted to
Speaker 1: work twenty hours a day? Who wanted to do docues? Anyway?
Speaker 1: It was an eight hour services So it was tough
Speaker 1: for you as a woman. What was hard not getting pinched.
Speaker 1: That's the great advantage to getting older. You're from the neck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's nick up now, But do I do don't do
Speaker 1: with that In the early days, maybe okay, I want
Speaker 1: to keep mind job, Okay, but not even yes. Of
Speaker 1: course I had to do deal with that. Of course
Speaker 1: I did, and I dealt with it readily and aggressively
Speaker 1: and happily because I didn't know any better and I,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've discussed this with Gloria Steinum. It was
Speaker 1: the only thing I knew. I wanted that job badly.
Speaker 1: I wanted to make something of it. And if it required,
Speaker 1: you know, a hand on a knee or whatever else,
Speaker 1: you overlooked. I looked, but then I turned away. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say I overlooked. I felt it deep down, but
Speaker 1: I you weren't compromise in some in some extreme way.
Speaker 1: People just took it was the rules of the game.
Speaker 1: I thought it was the rules of the game. Why
Speaker 1: would I know it was like shooting a gun. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't like it, but I need to learn how
Speaker 1: I knew that was the way I did what I
Speaker 1: had to do. You didn't want me to not get
Speaker 1: this job, did you. I'm glad that you were as
Speaker 1: open minded to the benefit of the documentary, happily slutty,
Speaker 1: happily so because I didn't know anything else. The job
Speaker 1: was worth more than my sexual identity. There were no
Speaker 1: human resources to protect me. There was nothing, and I
Speaker 1: was pretty you had no exactly, you had no protector, no,
Speaker 1: no protector, and I wanted to do it and to
Speaker 1: give it away. Yeah, I just had just gotten married. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at the time, would you go home and like, did
Speaker 1: your husband know that you were enduring all this groping
Speaker 1: in those crap? No, because I could brush it off.
Speaker 1: You know, I've done a lot of shows with hookers,
Speaker 1: and I've done a lot of stuff. At cat House
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas. Were the men being taken advantage of
Speaker 1: all the women? Have you ever seen our Catouse show?
Speaker 1: They bought a hundred books the cathouse, you see. I
Speaker 1: don't have anyone else probably giving it out now, the book.
Speaker 1: When you make films and you get involved, you're giving notes,
Speaker 1: you're telling them. I'm watching the clip of you from
Speaker 1: Alexandra's thing where you're saying I'm bored, I'm bored, I'm bored.
Speaker 1: And what you were looking for in a film, what
Speaker 1: you're expecting of a filmmaker of a film. Did you
Speaker 1: expect the same of yourself when you wrote this book?
Speaker 1: You did? Okay? Talk about that? Why? Because in a
Speaker 1: strange way, I wrote the book in a very selfish way,
Speaker 1: and when I'm in an editing room, I don't think
Speaker 1: I'm particularly selfish. I wrote it because I didn't want
Speaker 1: to be the legend of documentaries. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: be a docu diva. What did you want to be?
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a person. Like everybody? Are you
Speaker 1: in this book? I think so? Would you say that
Speaker 1: there's some writing here that's the equivalent of the plastic
Speaker 1: surgery of writing without questions? There's a lot of plastic
Speaker 1: surgery in this a lot. There's enough. I mean, you
Speaker 1: said I looked good, so it must be enough. And
Speaker 1: if the book sells, good for you. If the book
Speaker 1: doesn't realis as you look. So the plastic surgery in
Speaker 1: the writing as well part of it, that's only part
Speaker 1: of it. Why does everybody pick up the plastic surgery?
Speaker 1: I remember the lawyer from UM McMillan asking me if
Speaker 1: there was someone named Melissa, Melissa van Holden boss sleeps
Speaker 1: with her boss. It's the sixties and she can't get
Speaker 1: ahead any other way. And um he called and he said,
Speaker 1: do you know anyone named Melissa? And Mr Penny Broth
Speaker 1: is the name of the boss? Now, who is named
Speaker 1: Mr Penny Broth? Let's be real, he said, is, but
Speaker 1: it just came. The name came, Um, Mr Penny Broth,
Speaker 1: you know, fuck Melissa? And Melissa got a promotion and
Speaker 1: it was three. It wasn't her fault and that's the
Speaker 1: way that was. Were the rules of the game? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean they drove me crazy. Is there anyone named
Speaker 1: Melissa at HBO? I said, I'm sure there are a
Speaker 1: number of women named Melissa? Here? Is there? Mr Pennybroth?
Speaker 1: Have you ever worked for Mr? Penny Broth? I said,
Speaker 1: nobody would have the name Mr Pennybroth. They said, you
Speaker 1: never know. So then I looked in the you know,
Speaker 1: I typed it into my iPad. I couldn't find a
Speaker 1: Penny Broth similar. But I don't know where those names
Speaker 1: came from. So is it really am I hiding? If
Speaker 1: there's nobody by that name, then is it there must
Speaker 1: be me? Right? I don't know the answer, but I
Speaker 1: mean I don't still don't know. It might not be
Speaker 1: the bravest riding in the world, but it's very interesting.
Speaker 1: Brave I never would say I was brave. I'm honest
Speaker 1: about adultery. It's also about I don't care about falling
Speaker 1: in and out of love. It's also about anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: It's also about your heart being broken. Can we pick
Speaker 1: let's stop there. Can we pick one topic? Are you
Speaker 1: talking about adultery. Who's adultery? Certainly not my own? Okay,
Speaker 1: not your own. How do I know those eyes of yours?
Speaker 1: You've got those wonderful eyes, and in the morning they
Speaker 1: don't I don't want to know what they looking at
Speaker 1: the more, that's not my business. Is not my business.
Speaker 1: You've been happily married to Sydney all these years, of course,
Speaker 1: And did you ever describe what it's like for you
Speaker 1: to fall in love? Because you're pretty tough broad, You're
Speaker 1: a pretty no nonsense woman. You're tough, well, I mean
Speaker 1: in a good way. Would it like to fall in love?
Speaker 1: Love redefines itself as you get older, when you fell
Speaker 1: in love with him? What did you fall in love with? Sydney?
Speaker 1: Or my heartbreak? In my book both take sax to
Speaker 1: Sydney first. No, my heartbreak first, my heartbreak. This is
Speaker 1: my show. No, it's my show now, I mean, where
Speaker 1: would you be without me sitting here? You'll be talking
Speaker 1: to yourself. Heartbreak happens once, I believe real heartbreak. What happened?
Speaker 1: You don't repair describe the situation? We'll do what you do.
Speaker 1: In your book, the woman in the third person meets
Speaker 1: who Sometimes I'm myself. Sometimes I'm not. I'm really quite
Speaker 1: crazy though. It's a young girl who goes to the
Speaker 1: Yale Drama School. She falls in love with a guy.
Speaker 1: She goes home to his very fancy house in Connecticut
Speaker 1: with initials on the thing and Gilbert Stewart pictures and
Speaker 1: all that. He goes to Harvard. They meet at a
Speaker 1: law school moot court thing, and um, the mother says
Speaker 1: to her, aren't there any interesting Jewish men in the
Speaker 1: law school? And you never see him again? That's heartbreak,
Speaker 1: that's heartbreak. You liked him, care about him, I loved him.
Speaker 1: How long were you with him? Semester a year of
Speaker 1: you know, sort of make believe in thinking that life
Speaker 1: made sense. Semester is a big chapter of your life
Speaker 1: when you're young, big chapter of your life, especially when
Speaker 1: you've never really been in love before. You don't get
Speaker 1: over that. You don't get over that hurt. It takes
Speaker 1: a long, long, long What did you fall in love with?
Speaker 1: About Sydney? Comfort? Kindness and good partner, good partner friendship, intelligence.
Speaker 1: But I'm not sure he could have ever broken my heart.
Speaker 1: I think you break your heart one time, do you?
Speaker 1: I think if you're someone who becomes other people. Then
Speaker 1: you become capable of other stages of a rocket and
Speaker 1: pretty much the same. I'm pretty the same, much the
Speaker 1: same person. So you mean you change. I'm the same
Speaker 1: person I was fifty years ago and just don't coming up.
Speaker 1: Sheila Evans talks about being raised by a communist. Sheila
Speaker 1: Nevans has nurtured many documentary filmmakers. Joe Burlinger, creator of
Speaker 1: HBO's Paradise Lost, is one of them. His films tell
Speaker 1: a shocking story of justice denied three boys in the
Speaker 1: Bible Belt, wrongfully convicted of ritual sexual abuse and murder.
Speaker 1: Burlinger said the story haunted him. You know, my first
Speaker 1: kid was born while we were editing this film, and
Speaker 1: I would be sitting, you know, at the editing bay
Speaker 1: looking at the most horrific autopsy photos and crime scene footage.
Speaker 1: You know, I would go home at night after having
Speaker 1: these images like emblazoned on your brain and I would
Speaker 1: drop the you know, the door of the crib and
Speaker 1: pick up my new infant, who was just arrived a
Speaker 1: few months ago. And every hallmark that my child would
Speaker 1: go through, you know, kindergarten, middle school, high school, I think,
Speaker 1: my god, these guys are still rotting in prison. I
Speaker 1: just felt we had a you know, we had a
Speaker 1: moral obligation to keep telling the story. Listen to the
Speaker 1: full conversation, and here's the thing, Dot Org. I'm Alec Baldwin,
Speaker 1: and you're listening to here's the thing. Sheila and Evans.
Speaker 1: Nearly four decades stewardship of HBO documentaries has helped usher
Speaker 1: in a golden age for the form. But when she started,
Speaker 1: the very word documentary could doom a project to obscurity.
Speaker 1: I think that documents have become hot. What I began
Speaker 1: in this business, we didn't even want to use the
Speaker 1: word documentary. When we did promos for films, we would
Speaker 1: call them docutainment. We invented this lultic word because we're
Speaker 1: afraid that if we said documentary, people would feel that
Speaker 1: it was for the elite and that it was about politics,
Speaker 1: and that it was not going to be about human stories.
Speaker 1: And so we we hid behind this word docutainment. And
Speaker 1: then slowly but surely it took a good years we
Speaker 1: began to say, well, maybe it's not such a dirty word,
Speaker 1: and reality programming sort of said real people can be
Speaker 1: interesting in a trivial way. Now, how do we take
Speaker 1: that real people think and bring it back to real
Speaker 1: stories that have heart and soul. So then somehow it
Speaker 1: went docutainment, reality TV. Yeah, documentary, go for it. Say
Speaker 1: that real people, people without celebrity, people who are trying
Speaker 1: to survive in a complicated world, and say it in
Speaker 1: their own words and not either have to have scripted
Speaker 1: or apologize for it, but let it go for itself.
Speaker 1: So if a woman would be living on a minimum wage,
Speaker 1: for instance, UM, we would almost cast that woman to
Speaker 1: be someone who could tell that story. I got three kids,
Speaker 1: I'm working in a nursing home. I'm making seven dollars
Speaker 1: an hour. I gotta have three job jobs. My husband
Speaker 1: is on drugs, he's left me. We we felt we
Speaker 1: could tell those stories with real people. We didn't have
Speaker 1: to use narrative, all due respect, but we could. We
Speaker 1: could elevate the common man's story and use the word documentary.
Speaker 1: And I think they became somewhat precious and difficult um
Speaker 1: and and had parody at festivals. Began to have parody
Speaker 1: at festivals with narrative. So suddenly Toronto would have a
Speaker 1: whole section on documentary. Sundance was actually the first but
Speaker 1: docums at that time were hot docs. They had their
Speaker 1: own festivals. They were not part of festivals that had
Speaker 1: actors and famous people, and you know, they were sort
Speaker 1: of an offshoot. I think now docums have gotten parody.
Speaker 1: But is it safe to say, I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: your viewpoint about this that and not that it's a
Speaker 1: seller's market now. But is it tougher for you to
Speaker 1: find what you want? It's so competitive, horrifying. Your job
Speaker 1: is harder than it was. Job is much harder because,
Speaker 1: first of all, of people have monopoly money and I'm
Speaker 1: still playing with real cash, so I really can't play
Speaker 1: the well. Netflix has tons of dollars and they don't. No,
Speaker 1: not for docues. No. Why why is that the company?
Speaker 1: Is the company's mission or what happened? I can't speak
Speaker 1: for the company peon I would say that, um, it's
Speaker 1: not a high priority. Stars rule and series still feel
Speaker 1: themselves as almost like a studio. I think so. I
Speaker 1: think the development of a series is where the money's at.
Speaker 1: It's where the sales are at. Want to shut they're
Speaker 1: chasing that, that's where they're there. They're not there. If
Speaker 1: you took docues off HBO, I think they have a
Speaker 1: million places to go. Ten years ago, if you took
Speaker 1: docums off HBO, you wouldn't have a place to find them.
Speaker 1: So it's tough. It's really tough. Let's talk about benzos.
Speaker 1: You say dependent but not addicted. I know it's complicated.
Speaker 1: Isn't it help us understand that? I'm not sure it's
Speaker 1: that curate, but I know that I have never changed
Speaker 1: the dosage in forty years. It still help you. I
Speaker 1: don't know whether it helps me in the sense that
Speaker 1: I color is working or whether it's a police but
Speaker 1: I don't want to know because I can't sleep. And
Speaker 1: if I take two oranges, one blue and one white,
Speaker 1: I go to sleep. So what then do I want
Speaker 1: to step to clon and do you fear? Because I
Speaker 1: was told that that's like that and will beautron are
Speaker 1: like really heavy heavy, and he well, beautron is an
Speaker 1: antidepress and clonopin is a benzone. See. I believe that
Speaker 1: one day they'll discovered that anxious people like myself are
Speaker 1: missing whatever that chemical is. Why should anxiety be different
Speaker 1: than epilepsy or diabetes. I don't really understand it. I
Speaker 1: made peace with it because I don't think I could
Speaker 1: have functioned that it was. I don't think I could
Speaker 1: have talked back. I don't think I could have flown
Speaker 1: as much as I did. I don't think I could
Speaker 1: have kind of stress of your career. I don't think
Speaker 1: I could have done it. Can I tell you about
Speaker 1: my audio book? Um, let's pause for a moment for
Speaker 1: Sheila to tell us about her audio book. Now. The
Speaker 1: reason I'm doing that is because I'm a salesman and
Speaker 1: I'm a hook I'm aware of that to distance myself
Speaker 1: even further from from some of the characters in this book.
Speaker 1: I was writing a poem about Larry Kramer, who I love,
Speaker 1: and Christine Bransky came to my house in the country
Speaker 1: to celebrate Larry's eightieth birthday. And I had never read
Speaker 1: Larry this poem. It wasn't really a whole book yet,
Speaker 1: and so I gave him the poem to read and
Speaker 1: he kissed me, and then Christine sat on the couch
Speaker 1: next to him, and I thought it was a u
Speaker 1: week a moment, I thought I got it. I'm going
Speaker 1: to get well known people to read my book and
Speaker 1: that will distance everything even further. And I said, Christine,
Speaker 1: would you read the Larry Kramer, and she said, of
Speaker 1: course I would. I said, would you read on an audiobook?
Speaker 1: Of course I would. So did you play in the
Speaker 1: usual studio executive game start calling everybody and say, Christine's in?
Speaker 1: Are you in? No? I didn't do that. I sent
Speaker 1: the alleys of the book, and I texted people like
Speaker 1: Alan Alda and Whoopee and Meryl Streep and and I
Speaker 1: would say, never went to an agent. I never went
Speaker 1: to a manager. I just went direct, and absolutely everybody
Speaker 1: pretty much said yes. Meryl Street wrote me a letter.
Speaker 1: I don't even know that. Well, she said, um, you
Speaker 1: wrote a great book. I want to read this story.
Speaker 1: Tell me where and when? Well, I mean, I went
Speaker 1: running up and down the halls of HBOC. But then
Speaker 1: I thought it's a joke. Somebody sent it and that
Speaker 1: was just you know. But sure enough when I called,
Speaker 1: we made an appointment. She came in. It was pouring,
Speaker 1: no entourage. Read the story. It was about my mother.
Speaker 1: When she said my mother's voice, I heard my mother.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that, your childhood and how you grew up.
Speaker 1: We were a movie. No. I wasn't allowed to watch television, No, no, no.
Speaker 1: My mother was a communist. She had gone to school
Speaker 1: with Ethel Rosenberg, and so when Ethel Rosenberg was assassinated
Speaker 1: or whatever the word is, in the electric chair, I
Speaker 1: thought any minute they were coming to take my mother.
Speaker 1: My best friend was Billy and his father was the
Speaker 1: editor of the Daily Worker. And I came home one day,
Speaker 1: Second Avenue in sixth Street. My father was a postman
Speaker 1: on the lower side. Yeah, I'm a poor girl. See
Speaker 1: that's why I wrote the book. Because everybody thought I
Speaker 1: went to Barnard. I went to Yale, I went to
Speaker 1: performing arts. Ritzie, titsy, titsy TITSI doorman. You claud your
Speaker 1: way to the top. You're the Jewish Eve Harrington. Wow. No,
Speaker 1: I was very good. I didn't call my way. I
Speaker 1: was fucking good. And I'm still good. I'm really smart,
Speaker 1: and I'm smart about what people might watch, and I'm
Speaker 1: smart about self criticism. And I'm happy to be wrong
Speaker 1: as long as i'm right. So how did you end
Speaker 1: up in this business? What did your father do for
Speaker 1: a living? My thought it was a postman in a bookie?
Speaker 1: How did you end up in this business with? No?
Speaker 1: Because you went you went to drama school. No, but
Speaker 1: I made you in directing it. Yeah, because I knew
Speaker 1: I was not a good actress. I thought that I
Speaker 1: would and I was a terrible to answer. I thought
Speaker 1: that I would have been good at storytelling and knowing
Speaker 1: when it was wrong and when it was right. I
Speaker 1: had a great teacher at Yale who we also had
Speaker 1: to take acting classes, and she said to me, you
Speaker 1: had the perfect director because you're always watching. And I thought,
Speaker 1: that's true. I'm always I'm always looking in, I'm always watching.
Speaker 1: Taxicab Confessions, which we did, was an example of a
Speaker 1: show that came from observations like I found that when
Speaker 1: I was in a taxi, I knew I'd never see
Speaker 1: that person again. I could tell them things I wouldn't
Speaker 1: tell anybody else. I thought, if I'm doing this, other
Speaker 1: people can be doing this. Why don't we do Taxicab
Speaker 1: Confessions and take the car out at five and go
Speaker 1: through the night. And then we did it. And they
Speaker 1: were great stories, great secret stories that people tell, and
Speaker 1: then we would ask them to sign a release and
Speaker 1: met very often they didn't. Some of the best stories
Speaker 1: are hidden in the lock and key. Now here's the
Speaker 1: last thing I want to say to you. He went
Speaker 1: to Barnard and you went to Yale, and you've had
Speaker 1: this great career and you've won all these awards and
Speaker 1: your name is synonymous with the highest level of documentary filmmaking.
Speaker 1: Them the last you deliver my memorial service, I'm available.
Speaker 1: You have to get paid now. I appreciate your career,
Speaker 1: that's why you're here. Okay, But last, but not least,
Speaker 1: there's something about you. There's this woman thing about you.
Speaker 1: You go when you make this effort in the the
Speaker 1: beautification and the kind of corrections and all this other stuff,
Speaker 1: and you look phenomenal, by the way, But I just
Speaker 1: want to say, there's a thing about you. You know,
Speaker 1: you bathe in this world of the stark and the reel.
Speaker 1: But there's a part of me that I think you
Speaker 1: want to be in love again. I see you in
Speaker 1: a bathrobe on a terrace in Paris and you're just
Speaker 1: having the longest kiss in the world. Is that what
Speaker 1: you want? Is you do you want to fall already
Speaker 1: that I don't really want to be in a bathrobe
Speaker 1: on a terrorist and it's too good to get out
Speaker 1: my second you don't know you don't want to be
Speaker 1: in love again and have a passion, no romance, No
Speaker 1: you don't. I want to make the best documentary in
Speaker 1: the world. That's it. That's it, that's it, that's all
Speaker 1: I want. I just offered romance. You would rather that
Speaker 1: I want to make a document wins a prize. We're
Speaker 1: going to stop right there, because that's why you're the greatest.
Speaker 1: I don't want that to make I want Alexander's docu
Speaker 1: to win awards. I wanted to make people know about
Speaker 1: the beginning of the founding fathers and the dream of
Speaker 1: the country. That's what I want to do. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not square and stupid and idealistic more than anything,
Speaker 1: more than anything, what do I want? What do you
Speaker 1: want us to make great movies? Yeah? I think that's true.
Speaker 1: It makes me almost want to cry when you say that,
Speaker 1: because isn't that sad? No, and I should want something
Speaker 1: else or a piece of something. I don't want anything.
Speaker 1: I don't even go I don't even like. I mean,
Speaker 1: they ask anyone, I don't want anything. You're clear, I'm
Speaker 1: very clear. What's the best thing in this life that
Speaker 1: as we get older than to be clear? I said
Speaker 1: when I looked at my wife and as people say
Speaker 1: to me, what do you want to go? I want
Speaker 1: to have kids, and I want to have a family.
Speaker 1: And I'm fifty nine years old and I have three kids,
Speaker 1: three and older than you. Who gives a funk about
Speaker 1: how old you want? If a flower pot falls on
Speaker 1: your head and your twelve, it's over anyway. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's today, it's now, it's this moment, and
Speaker 1: it's the doc you you make. Fair enough, the work
Speaker 1: is all Sheila Nevans wants to be remembered for. Asked
Speaker 1: what she'd like carved on her tombstone, she responded, quote,
Speaker 1: she should have gone on forever. I'm Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you're listening to here's the thing ewo