Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. Making documentary films about fascinating people
Speaker 1: and diving deep into their lives and work. That is
Speaker 1: the occupation of my guest today, Emmy and Grammy nominated writer,
Speaker 1: producer and director John Shinfeld. He's made nearly fifty documentaries
Speaker 1: that tell the story behind some of the most famous
Speaker 1: names and events in American history, from John Lennon and
Speaker 1: Bob Hope to the Chicago Cubs and Watergate. His most
Speaker 1: recent film is Mash, The Comedy That Changed Television, about
Speaker 1: the iconic sitcom. Last year, he released the documentary What
Speaker 1: the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat and Tears, answering the
Speaker 1: question surrounding the political turmoil that engulfed the popular rock
Speaker 1: band in the nineteen seventies. Sinfeld often goes behind the
Speaker 1: curtain of the musical world. He recently told the behind
Speaker 1: the scenes story of Elvis Presley's famous Christmas special in
Speaker 1: the film Reinventing Elvis the sixty eight Comeback.
Speaker 2: Basically, by nineteen sixty eight, Elvis had become irrelevant. He'd
Speaker 2: been replaced in the public consciousness for the most part
Speaker 2: by the Beatles, the Stones, the British Invasion, all of that.
Speaker 2: He was doing these crappy little movies and as the
Speaker 2: sixties progressed, they were selling fewer tickets, he was not
Speaker 2: selling as many records, and by sixty eight he didn't
Speaker 2: quite know which direction to go, and his manager came
Speaker 2: up with this notion of let's do a Christmas special
Speaker 2: for NBC, and his idea was dress him up like
Speaker 2: Perry Como in a sweater and sing twenty Christmas songs
Speaker 2: and get off the stage. And NBC hired this young
Speaker 2: hotshot producer director named Steve Binder, and Steve said, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2: What we want you to do is what made you Elvis,
Speaker 2: And so they constructed this show in spite of Tom
Speaker 2: Parker that really showcased Elvis's talents and you can see
Speaker 2: it on the screen in this special. He is a
Speaker 2: superbly talented guy, very charismatic, gorgeous for men and women.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And the show turned out to be the highest rated
Speaker 2: special of nineteen sixty eight and a jump started his career.
Speaker 2: Las Vegas came calling, and that really set up the
Speaker 2: third act of his life.
Speaker 1: You see that a film you made, and early on
Speaker 1: the guy saying about the concert, he tells a story
Speaker 1: about him not wanting to come out, and then he
Speaker 1: walks out there and everything's in position, and he walks
Speaker 1: out there in that black outfit, and like everything about
Speaker 1: him is like, oh my god, it's Elvis, the Elvis
Speaker 1: I loved. Here's the Elvis I love. Whereas I mean
Speaker 1: that period I'd forgotten the years. That period was the
Speaker 1: bad movie Elvis period up to sixty eight of the Comeback,
Speaker 1: and I am obsessed. I own that concert. But when
Speaker 1: you do a film like that, and I'm assuming it's
Speaker 1: extraordinarily difficult and therefore maybe tempting to pass on a
Speaker 1: film where there's not a lot of extant footage about
Speaker 1: the person. There's a mountains of footage of Delvis, you know.
Speaker 1: And when you do a film like that, or any
Speaker 1: of your films, how does it begin for you? Where
Speaker 1: do you start?
Speaker 2: For me, it's always what's the story?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I'm not a journalist, I'm not an academic. I came
Speaker 2: out of the scripted world. I was a studio executive
Speaker 2: for a while and then became a writer of pilot
Speaker 2: shows and things like that, so I come out of
Speaker 2: a very traditional three actromatic structure. So I'm fascinated by
Speaker 2: what's the story. Is there an interesting story here? Is
Speaker 2: it compelling? Is there enough depth to it that would
Speaker 2: warrant being a feature documentary? So that's the first thing.
Speaker 2: Second question always is is there enough audio visual material
Speaker 2: with which to tell the story? Some times there is
Speaker 2: and sometimes there isn't. I did a film a few
Speaker 2: years ago called Chasing Train about the jazz icon John Coltrane,
Speaker 2: and there's very little footage on him, but we managed
Speaker 2: to find a way to tell the story. Same with Blood,
Speaker 2: Sweat and Tears, which we can get into later, and
Speaker 2: other times I did one on John Lennon, and he
Speaker 2: was perhaps the most photographed and filmed man of the
Speaker 2: twentieth century, and there was plenty of film for us
Speaker 2: to you. So if there really was nothing, then I
Speaker 2: get very frustrated and disappointed that I'm not going to
Speaker 2: be able to tell that story and I have to
Speaker 2: move on to something else. But largely it's what's the story?
Speaker 2: And does it nurture my soul? Does it inspire me,
Speaker 2: does it intrigue me? Does it make me laugh? If
Speaker 2: I have that kind of a response to something. Then
Speaker 2: I know this is a project I want to take on.
Speaker 1: Well, I always find like I'll be on YouTube. Let's
Speaker 1: say Oscar Peterson is in a concert in Copenhagen, and
Speaker 1: I'll go, well, you got a clip of this, and
Speaker 1: you're showing a clip of this. What's the clip from?
Speaker 1: How can I go buy the concert that Oscar Peterson
Speaker 1: is in? They'll be there and there are numerous examples.
Speaker 1: There are abundant examples of shows like that or where
Speaker 1: there's a clip and I'll go, my god, I want
Speaker 1: to see Miles Davis said, Carnie, you know whatever it is,
Speaker 1: And they don't offer you that information on the thing.
Speaker 1: And I'm such a junkie for documentaries of any kind.
Speaker 2: One of the things I love most about my job
Speaker 2: is the detective work of trying to track down this
Speaker 2: audio visual material. And we cast a very wide net
Speaker 2: around the world to find the most rare, the most unusual,
Speaker 2: or the most pertinent material to help tell our story.
Speaker 2: And you find things sometimes under people's beds, in their closets,
Speaker 2: in some archive in Eastern Europe, you know wherever, it
Speaker 2: might be, in the trunk of their car, trunk of
Speaker 2: their cars out there. You just never know sometimes when
Speaker 2: you're going to find something. I'll share a story nowt
Speaker 2: about Bloodswoot and Tears. I had lunch with Bobby Colombie,
Speaker 2: who is the co founder and the band leader of
Speaker 2: Bloodwitton Tears, and he had seen my Coltrane film and
Speaker 2: he said, so, I want to take you to lunch
Speaker 2: and tell you a story. So we sit down for
Speaker 2: lunch and I literally asked him what the hell happened
Speaker 2: to Blood Sweat and Tears. Here was you were one
Speaker 2: of the hottest bands going and then you weren't.
Speaker 1: What happened?
Speaker 2: He said, that's the story I'm going to tell you,
Speaker 2: and he starts to tell me this story at lunch.
Speaker 2: He only knows maybe half of what really happened. We
Speaker 2: dug up a lot of information of what was happening
Speaker 2: behind the scenes. But in the middle of lunch, alec
Speaker 2: He says to me, so, we were in eastern Europe
Speaker 2: and this film crew was with us. And wait, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 2: wait a second, there was a film crew with you. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: we took a documentary film crew with us. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: where's that film? He said, I don't know, and that
Speaker 2: became the treasure hunt on this one. Where is that
Speaker 2: film now? It was embargoed by the State Department. Correct,
Speaker 2: that's correct. That's what we learned at the end of
Speaker 2: the day. But what we did learn early on was
Speaker 2: they had shot sixty five hours of material with which
Speaker 2: they intended to make a feature documentary to be distributed
Speaker 2: in theaters back in nineteen seventy seventy one, and they
Speaker 2: edited together a two and a half hour version which
Speaker 2: they had to show to the State Department. That screening
Speaker 2: did not go well. Somehow that two hour feature documentary
Speaker 2: was transformed into a one hour for television that never
Speaker 2: got shown. And so we're on the trail of this stuff,
Speaker 2: and we are checking every archive that we can think of.
Speaker 2: We also checked every independent storage facility here in Los
Speaker 2: Angeles where a producer might have stored their material, and nothing, nothing.
Speaker 1: Nothing.
Speaker 2: Finally, one day a woman who runs a vault in
Speaker 2: Hollywood who we had contacted some months before, and she said, oh,
Speaker 2: we have nothing. It was during COVID and she was
Speaker 2: going through some old fashioned loose leaf binders and found
Speaker 2: a vague reference to blood, sweat and tears. She went
Speaker 2: into the vault and in a far corner in a
Speaker 2: pile of stuff marked for destruction. Was the one hour,
Speaker 2: sixty minute version of this project that never got released
Speaker 2: on what format? Ye It was on sixty millimeter film
Speaker 2: with optical sound on the side. And so in our
Speaker 2: film What the Hell Happened to Bloodswood and Tears, all
Speaker 2: the footage you see from that tour came from that
Speaker 2: one hour version. The sixty five hours of raw material
Speaker 2: totally disappeared, and we believe the State Department took it
Speaker 2: back and at some point destroyed it, not for I
Speaker 2: think nefarious reasons. I think it was more it was
Speaker 2: taking up a lot of space.
Speaker 1: Nixon boy, he just hated those real rock bands. He
Speaker 1: hated that rock and roll music.
Speaker 2: He was not a rock and roll fan in the least.
Speaker 2: That's what's so interesting about this story is that it's
Speaker 2: a rock band and suddenly there are memos about this
Speaker 2: rock band on Henry Kissinger's desk and Richard Nixon's desk,
Speaker 2: and they're actually responding to them and dealing with it.
Speaker 2: And I just found that absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 1: But now that we're on that subject, your film is
Speaker 1: about what happened to them, meaning they go over there
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken. If I remember in the film
Speaker 1: which I saw just recently, on some typically traditional cultural
Speaker 1: exchange by the State Department, correct, that's right, which had
Speaker 1: been mostly a classic arts like dance and ballet and
Speaker 1: symphony and things like that.
Speaker 2: And jazz, so Louis Armstrong, Jessey Gillespie, those sorts of
Speaker 2: artists had also gone over on these cultural exchange programs.
Speaker 2: And then what happened, well thereby hangs the tale. And
Speaker 2: what we learned is the State Department came to Blood
Speaker 2: Sweat and Tears and said, we want you to represent
Speaker 2: America and go to these Eastern European countries that we
Speaker 2: are trying to establish relationships with and perform. And that
Speaker 2: seems fairly straightforward, right, but it was never ever that simple.
Speaker 2: What we learned is the lead singer for Blood Sweat
Speaker 2: and Tears, David Clayton Thomas, was having some immigration problems
Speaker 2: and he was going to be deported. So imagine now
Speaker 2: you're in the hottest band going and you can't record
Speaker 2: with your singer and you can't tour with your singer
Speaker 2: in the United States because he's been deported. So the
Speaker 2: band is now faced this and now the State Department
Speaker 2: shows up and, in a word that we've heard a
Speaker 2: lot in the last few years, there was a quid
Speaker 2: pro quo, and the quid pro quo was, if you
Speaker 2: do this tour for us, we will make David's immigration
Speaker 2: problems go away. And that is in fact what happened.
Speaker 2: So they blackmailed them. Isn't it interesting where they put
Speaker 2: this pressure on them to get them to go, we
Speaker 2: want you to represent American pop culture, and then when
Speaker 2: it's over there like, well, we don't want you to
Speaker 2: represent American pop culture. Actually, And I remember, I think
Speaker 2: you said in the film that their debut album which
Speaker 2: I devoured that album when I was young. Clayton Thomas
Speaker 2: is one of the most legendary vocalists I've ever heard
Speaker 2: in my life. I mean, that's a guy that could
Speaker 2: have sang on Broadway for the rest of his life.
Speaker 2: I mean, he had the greatest voice.
Speaker 1: But I think you mentioned in the film that their
Speaker 1: record was number one and beat out Abby Road.
Speaker 2: Correct, they won the Grammy for Best Album of the
Speaker 2: Year over the Beatles Abbey Road.
Speaker 1: What does that tell you?
Speaker 2: It's the strangest thing.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. We tried to get David Clayton Thomas on
Speaker 1: the show. You interviewed him directly, correctly, we did.
Speaker 2: He lives in Toronto, and that was sort of a
Speaker 2: casualty of COVID for a long time because the border
Speaker 2: was closed. We couldn't get up there to interview him,
Speaker 2: and he couldn't come down here to be interviewed. And
Speaker 2: then suddenly, in early twenty twenty one, there was a
Speaker 2: three week window where the border actually opened, so we
Speaker 2: flew up there as fast as we could and we
Speaker 2: sat down with David, and as you saw in the
Speaker 2: film and perhaps your podcast audience will as well, he
Speaker 2: was quite confessional. He was quite candid and open about
Speaker 2: what was going on with him at that time and
Speaker 2: how he felt about the band having to do this
Speaker 2: to save him.
Speaker 1: If you will director John Scheinfeld, if you enjoy in
Speaker 1: depth conversations about the craft of documentary filmmaking, check out
Speaker 1: my episode with director Rory Kennedy.
Speaker 3: I love Boeing and what Boeing stood for in this country,
Speaker 3: and we really celebrate that in the film because it's
Speaker 3: been an extraordinary company for decades. You know, it helped
Speaker 3: us get out of World War Two, it helped get
Speaker 3: us to the Moon with my uncle Jack, and for
Speaker 3: many decades, Boeing did one thing, which was to say,
Speaker 3: we're going to prioritize excellence and safety. And the McDonald
Speaker 3: douglas people were put in charge, and they had a
Speaker 3: very different business model, which was very Wall Street focused.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Rory Kennedy, go
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break. John
Speaker 1: Shinfeld shares his experience working with Yoko Ono on his
Speaker 1: film The US Versus John Lennon. I'm Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you're listening to Here's the Thing document Henry. Filmmaker John
Speaker 1: Scheinfeld sometimes finds himself producing more than one film on
Speaker 1: the same subject, as he did with Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams,
Speaker 1: and the late actor Peter Sellers.
Speaker 2: I have the best job. I get to go interesting
Speaker 2: places and talk to interesting people about interesting things. I
Speaker 2: can't imagine for me a better job. And I of
Speaker 2: course had seen Peter Sellers. I'd seen the Pink Panther
Speaker 2: films and seen some of his other things, and I
Speaker 2: just thought he was hysterical, and so a chance to
Speaker 2: tell his story was interesting. But my approach to a
Speaker 2: lot of these films is not to do a straight
Speaker 2: on and he was born in a log cabin in Westchester,
Speaker 2: and you know, I'm always looking to tell an unknown
Speaker 2: story about somebody who's well known and to come into
Speaker 2: it that way, and so Sellers. In fact, that film
Speaker 2: was called The Unknown Peter Sellers. And while we did
Speaker 2: have some excerpts from his well known films, we did
Speaker 2: a lot of work to dig up clips from things
Speaker 2: that were not as well known. That helps show the
Speaker 2: evolution of his talent. So that was kind of interesting.
Speaker 2: Film came out, was very well received, and Columbia Pictures
Speaker 2: came to me and said, we're doing a Blu Ray
Speaker 2: release of Doctor Strangelove, and we want to have some
Speaker 2: bonus material on the Blu Ray and we want to
Speaker 2: tell the story of Peter Sellers and Doctor Strangelove.
Speaker 1: Can you do that? Th Oh, that'd be great.
Speaker 2: So we took some of the interviews that I did
Speaker 2: for the previous one and then did a lot of
Speaker 2: new interviews with people that had worked with Stanley Kubrick
Speaker 2: and put the story together. So as long as I
Speaker 2: can find that interesting way in that hasn't been done
Speaker 2: you know, ten times before, I'm very.
Speaker 1: Happy This is very similar to one man shows in
Speaker 1: the Broadway theater. Ideally, you pick someone who people know
Speaker 1: but they don't really know. And I've worked on a
Speaker 1: couple of one man shows with that ben someone you
Speaker 1: know about you under no circumstances. Do you really know them? Now?
Speaker 1: This is something that I get wrong. And then as
Speaker 1: I look at this list and I think, well, here's
Speaker 1: somebody who I found so intriguing, and maybe I worked
Speaker 1: with them and I love them to death and I
Speaker 1: love them all my life, and they might not have
Speaker 1: been the easiest subject for you to deal with. I
Speaker 1: worked with Jonathan Winters, and what was that like? Did
Speaker 1: you get to interview him? You sat down with him, We.
Speaker 2: Spent time with him. I love Jonathan. I have to
Speaker 2: tell you. What we wanted to do was not just
Speaker 2: tell the story of his career in his life, but
Speaker 2: to get a sense of, yes, who he was as
Speaker 2: a person. So we decided we were going to follow
Speaker 2: him around Santa Barbara, where he lived. He took us
Speaker 2: into a travel agency, he took us into the bank
Speaker 2: as he was making a deposit. We went to the
Speaker 2: gas station when he was getting his car filled up,
Speaker 2: and he would talk to people around just it was
Speaker 2: totally ad libbed and all of that. What was interesting
Speaker 2: about Jonathan was he knows the reputation that he had
Speaker 2: and he said, all right, so what kind of a
Speaker 2: film do you want to make? And I said to him,
Speaker 2: what kind of a film do you want.
Speaker 1: Made about you?
Speaker 2: And it was like whoa No one had ever asked
Speaker 2: him that question. He was mostly just hired and he
Speaker 2: would do what he.
Speaker 1: Was asked to do.
Speaker 2: And he said, well, I would like to kind of play.
Speaker 2: I'd like to play, and so we allowed him to
Speaker 2: play at these places and then with us in his
Speaker 2: sit down interviews. He could just kind of go wherever
Speaker 2: he wanted and then we stitched the show together from that.
Speaker 2: But I thought he was great, terrific guy.
Speaker 1: I did a film with him. We did the not
Speaker 1: that successful version of The Shadow that I did with
Speaker 1: Marty Begman was the producer. And I'm up in a
Speaker 1: cabin with my sister and my mother back in the
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen ninety three and Marty calls me and says,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Winters wants to talk to you, and I go
Speaker 1: what he goes, Yeah, we're not signing him, and he
Speaker 1: said he wants to talk to you, and he says,
Speaker 1: what I want to know is why you want me
Speaker 1: in this movie? Why do you want me? And I go, well,
Speaker 1: because I think you're this legendary comic talent. I worship you.
Speaker 1: You're as funny as hell, and you're one of the
Speaker 1: greatest actors I've ever seen a comic actor. And so
Speaker 1: originally he's like, wow, all right, well thanks for calling
Speaker 1: me and welcome back to you, and he agreed to
Speaker 1: do the movie. We do the movie.
Speaker 2: Did you have fun with him?
Speaker 1: He was amazing. He was kind and he was sweet,
Speaker 1: and he knew we loved him. I mean, you've got
Speaker 1: other guys on here, none of which I met, but like,
Speaker 1: for example, I love Andy Williams. I love Andy Williams.
Speaker 1: What was that experience like with somebody who's as velvety
Speaker 1: and silky as he is.
Speaker 2: Andy was a sweetheart. I did three shows for PBS
Speaker 2: with him over the years, and he was an interesting guy,
Speaker 2: alec in that everything he did had to be first class.
Speaker 2: He wouldn't cheap out on anything, he wouldn't take the
Speaker 2: easy way. Everything had to be just right. And I
Speaker 2: love that about him. And so I got to spend
Speaker 2: a lot of time with him as we were picking
Speaker 2: the clips for the show, and then with the interviews
Speaker 2: that we did. Smart guy, very self deprecating and a
Speaker 2: gorgeous voice. Just a gorgeous voice. Oh god, Okay, go
Speaker 2: back to Nathan just for one second. You were talking
Speaker 2: about how funny he could be. There's a great clip
Speaker 2: in our piece that it's called the Stick, and it's
Speaker 2: a clip from a Jack Parr show. And Jonathan comes
Speaker 2: out and Jack Parr gives him a broomstick that's been
Speaker 2: cut in half, so it's just the wooden part, and
Speaker 2: he hands it to Jonathan and he says, go. Jonathan
Speaker 2: does seven and a half minutes with the stick, and
Speaker 2: he's different characters in different countries, doing different things, each
Speaker 2: one of them more hysterical than the one before it.
Speaker 2: And that's who he is. He was like an overgrown child, really,
Speaker 2: but as you say, very sweet and very kind.
Speaker 1: So when you do a film like Us Versus John Lennon,
Speaker 1: that's eighteen years ago and then it is, of course
Speaker 1: dead twenty six years by then. Was there a lot
Speaker 1: of rights issues with Yoko Oner or the Beatles estate?
Speaker 1: Were there any issues with getting the rights to Lennon's story.
Speaker 2: Not really, you know, Alec, My philosophy has always been,
Speaker 2: if you're a straight shooter. I'm from the Midwest, I'm
Speaker 2: not from New York, I'm not from Los Angeles. I'm
Speaker 2: a straight shooter from the middle of the country. If
Speaker 2: you're honest and straightforward with people and saying here's the
Speaker 2: film we're going to make, here's what we're going to do.
Speaker 2: I don't think you experienced many problems and we didn't hear.
Speaker 2: But we had to go and pitch to Yoko and
Speaker 2: we said, here's the film we want to make, and
Speaker 2: it's about the political John Lennon, not the personal John Lennon.
Speaker 2: And she loved that idea. But she gave us her
Speaker 2: blessing but not her participation. And that's a key challenge
Speaker 2: that we had because she's been blasted so much by
Speaker 2: the media and been ill treated by many films and documentaries,
Speaker 2: and I think she wanted to sort of keep us
Speaker 2: at arm's length until she could see that we were
Speaker 2: delivering what we said we were going to. So we
Speaker 2: had a two and a half hour rough cut, obscenely long,
Speaker 2: with lots of Hole's film clip here, photograph here, because
Speaker 2: she has this amazing archive that I knew we needed
Speaker 2: access to, and we weren't getting it at first. So
Speaker 2: I felt, all right, let's show her this rough cut
Speaker 2: and hopefully that'll open the door for us. So we
Speaker 2: go to the Dakota and we're ushered into her apartment,
Speaker 2: which is this beautiful apartment. Everything's white. Everything's white, and
Speaker 2: you have to take your shoes off when you come in.
Speaker 2: And we go into the kitchen and there's a fifty
Speaker 2: two inch TV up on the wall. Her attorney is there,
Speaker 2: who's a great guy, and we're waiting for her, and
Speaker 2: then she comes in. She's a small woman, she's four
Speaker 2: to ten. She comes in with a pad and a
Speaker 2: pencil and says, doesn't say hello, doesn't say good morning,
Speaker 2: doesn't say you know, would you.
Speaker 1: Like some tea? It's like, let's go.
Speaker 2: So we put in the DVD and you've been in
Speaker 2: screenings like this, and all the way through Alex she's
Speaker 2: taking notes all the way through. It's like, but da
Speaker 2: da da da, And my heart is like dropping down
Speaker 2: to the floor because I'm convinced she hates it. And
Speaker 2: we're in big trouble here. Way through. No no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: Finally the two and a half hours is over, and
Speaker 2: there's dead silence, and she looks at me and like
Speaker 2: a little girl, claps her hands as if in applause,
Speaker 2: and says, then what she said a moment for you.
Speaker 2: Oh my heart is now back up into my chest.
Speaker 2: But she said then what she said publicly at Toronto
Speaker 2: when we premiered the film there, she said, of all
Speaker 2: the films made about John, this is the one he
Speaker 2: would have loved. So we didn't have any rights issues
Speaker 2: once she gave us the blessing, we got access to
Speaker 2: whatever we needed in terms of rights, But it was
Speaker 2: that archive that I wanted. After that screening, I don't
Speaker 2: think a day or two would go by where either
Speaker 2: she wouldn't call me or one of her assistants would concern, oh,
Speaker 2: you've got to see this. You have to see this.
Speaker 2: We're sending you this piece of film. We're sending you this.
Speaker 2: Suddenly the damn has broken, the water was pouring out,
Speaker 2: and you'll see in that the US versus John Lennon.
Speaker 2: We got access to a lot of rare and never
Speaker 2: before seen footage that was in their archive. But each
Speaker 2: each film that I do has a different challenge has
Speaker 2: a different landscape that has to be navigated.
Speaker 1: What was the hardest one for you to do?
Speaker 2: Ooh, that's a great question. The toughest one was Coltrane
Speaker 2: Chasing Train only because there was so little on him
Speaker 2: and how to do that. The rights were somewhat complicated
Speaker 2: because his catalog is controlled by three of the largest
Speaker 2: music companies in the world. There's Universal, Warner and Concord.
Speaker 2: We had to bring them all together so that we
Speaker 2: could feature music from throughout his life. And sometimes, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know this better than most is there are people
Speaker 2: in our business who are very nice, and there are
Speaker 2: people in our business who are not so nice, and
Speaker 2: every so often you bump into those. Sometimes it's a
Speaker 2: right situation. People who don't trust people, Oh, they don't
Speaker 2: trust people. When I have them come on this podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm a great filmmaker like you. But when I have
Speaker 2: people come on this podcast, I mean it's sometimes I
Speaker 2: say to them, my show was about appreciation. I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna have to get anybody. We shared that in common, alec.
Speaker 2: I celebrate these people. It's because they're worthy of celebration.
Speaker 2: And that doesn't mean that there aren't some negative aspects
Speaker 2: of their life or some darker spots.
Speaker 1: Where you know, I always write it off to fear. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I write it off to fear. They're just uptight people
Speaker 1: as by their nature. It isn't just with me, it's
Speaker 1: with everybody, you know.
Speaker 2: I did a film some years ago on Harry Nilsen
Speaker 2: called who is Harry Nilsen? Why is everybody talking about him?
Speaker 2: Harry's a very complicated guy, lots of darkness, lots of
Speaker 2: bad behavior. We could have done the TMZ version of
Speaker 2: that story, we could have done the National Inquirer version.
Speaker 1: Of that story.
Speaker 2: But it was a celebration of a great talent who
Speaker 2: happened to have a dark side that he and everyone
Speaker 2: else acknowledged. And I think that's what made the film
Speaker 2: work so well, is that you felt you were really
Speaker 2: to know this guy. It wasn't a whitewash, it wasn't
Speaker 2: a sanitized version of his life. Here's something Yoko had
Speaker 2: said to me, and Harry's widow had said to me,
Speaker 2: same things.
Speaker 1: She said.
Speaker 2: Look, I know what John was, says Yoko, and Una
Speaker 2: Nielsen says, I know what Harry was. Just don't make
Speaker 2: stuff up, tell the truth. I'll be happy and that's
Speaker 2: what I try to do. And they were good friends
Speaker 2: Nilson and Lennon.
Speaker 1: Oh very much so.
Speaker 2: They hung out right up to the time John was murdered.
Speaker 1: Well, one thing I remarked on to the producers here
Speaker 1: with me was that it's interesting how the Beatles reached
Speaker 1: the height that they reached because they became movie stars.
Speaker 1: That was one contributing factor. The great songwriting, the great performing,
Speaker 1: the need that audience has had in the wake of
Speaker 1: Kennedy's death to have some light and some joy and fun.
Speaker 1: And when you watch Hard Day's Night, which is considered
Speaker 1: a classic film, they're the Marx brothers, and they all
Speaker 1: had distinct personalities like the Marx Brothers, very much so.
Speaker 2: And that's I think what distinguish them, as you're saying,
Speaker 2: from any other band that was around. And they were
Speaker 2: extremely talented in so many ways. I sit around with
Speaker 2: friends all the time and we're talking about music, and
Speaker 2: what I often will say is the thing about the
Speaker 2: Beatles that distinguished them from almost any other band is
Speaker 2: that each album is different than the one that preceded it.
Speaker 2: They are trying new things, they are pushing the envolve,
Speaker 2: they are expanding the horizons. They didn't care to repeat themselves,
Speaker 2: and so each one is an experiment if you will.
Speaker 2: You know, Stones are a great rock and roll band,
Speaker 2: but their record sounded a lot alike for the last
Speaker 2: fifty years, you know. So that's what I think made
Speaker 2: the Beatles so special, and we were able to capture
Speaker 2: some of that in the US versus John Lennon, And
Speaker 2: it wasn't really about the Beatles, but we had great
Speaker 2: cooperation also from Apple in terms of getting the stuff
Speaker 2: that we needed. And so again I think if you're
Speaker 2: a nice person and your motives are pure, and you
Speaker 2: do what you say you will, I think you're going
Speaker 2: to do okay. And so so you asked a really
Speaker 2: interesting question about the hardest one. Each one has had
Speaker 2: his hard moments, but largely all of them have been
Speaker 2: really great positive experiences for me. I've not walked away
Speaker 2: from any one of the forty seven documentaries I've done
Speaker 2: and said, WHOA, I hated doing that one.
Speaker 1: Now when you do someone who I remember this for
Speaker 1: some reason because I'm such a fan of his. In
Speaker 1: Nick Tosh's book If I'm Not Mistaken, Dean Martin stands
Speaker 1: there with somebody and he puts on a bing Crosby
Speaker 1: album and now Elvis is emerging. He puts on Elvis's album,
Speaker 1: he goes, aren't we really doing the same thing? Isn't
Speaker 1: it really like just an updated form of crooning? Being's
Speaker 1: a crooner, I'm a crooner. Elvis is a crooner. And
Speaker 1: I thought found that was fascinating. Crosby died like on
Speaker 1: a golf course in Scotland, right, he was golfing over
Speaker 1: there and he dropped out of a heart attack. So
Speaker 1: what happens when you do the film about him and
Speaker 1: there's extant footage? But are there family members you wrangle
Speaker 1: and like when you work on somebody who's been dead
Speaker 1: a while.
Speaker 2: Right, the question is they're not there to speak for themselves.
Speaker 2: You really have two options. One is to find their
Speaker 2: close friends, colleagues and family members who can speak for
Speaker 2: them and give you a window into their character and
Speaker 2: personality and experiences. Or what you can do is what
Speaker 2: I did in Chasing Train is where there were no
Speaker 2: interviews with him on film or video. He had only
Speaker 2: done a couple of radio interviews and the sound wasn't
Speaker 2: good enough for me to use. But I wanted him
Speaker 2: to have a presence in the film and he had
Speaker 2: died in nineteen sixty seven, so I got the idea
Speaker 2: of going to He did a lot of print interviews
Speaker 2: for newspapers magazines, and so I picked words that he
Speaker 2: spoke in those interviews that gave us a window into him.
Speaker 2: And because I'm somewhat fearless, I said, Okay, now I
Speaker 2: have these, I want a movie star to read them.
Speaker 2: So I put together a list and I went to
Speaker 2: a casting director friend of mine and I said, will
Speaker 2: you help me get one of these people to be
Speaker 2: the voice of John Coltrane. She said, oh, I love
Speaker 2: your films, of course, so tell me your first choice
Speaker 2: and give me an email and that I can send
Speaker 2: on to them as to what you're looking for them
Speaker 2: to do. And I'll get into this anyway. Long story short,
Speaker 2: We got Denzel Washington to speak the words of John Coltrane.
Speaker 2: So what that enabled us to do. Coltrane was not
Speaker 2: there to speak for himself, but we had someone as
Speaker 2: talented as Denzel to bring those words to life and
Speaker 2: in a small way, bring Coultrane to life.
Speaker 1: Documentary filmmaker John Seinfeld. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell
Speaker 1: a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: When we come back, John Seinfeld shares the one movie
Speaker 1: he wasn't willing to make. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing. After making documentary films for
Speaker 1: three decades, it seems like there isn't a topic director
Speaker 1: John Seinfeld hasn't covered. I wanted to know if there
Speaker 1: was ever a film he wished to make but never
Speaker 1: got the opportunity.
Speaker 2: There are people I've tried to go after and they
Speaker 2: just weren't interested. Phil Collins I went after for a while,
Speaker 2: couldn't get that. I'm going after another one. Now I'm
Speaker 2: not sure that that's going to work. You know. The
Speaker 2: interesting thing is, and you've been around this business so long,
Speaker 2: you get a reputation and that can be good. So
Speaker 2: I have a reputation for doing good work. But you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not on everybody's list, and I'm not on everybody's lips.
Speaker 1: I kind of like.
Speaker 2: Being in my own little world, flying under the radar,
Speaker 2: doing what I do and having a great time doing it.
Speaker 2: And one of my failings is I'm not a great
Speaker 2: self promoter. There are documentarians out there whose names, you know,
Speaker 2: everybody knows them, everybody hears them, because they're great at that.
Speaker 2: They may not be the greatest filmmakers in the world,
Speaker 2: but they are really good at that. And so I
Speaker 2: do find people will come to me from time to time,
Speaker 2: but a lot of the time I have to generate
Speaker 2: my own ideas and persuade them that I am the
Speaker 2: right person to do it. So I wish it would
Speaker 2: be one of those things where the phone is ringing
Speaker 2: all the time, Hey, we got this, we got this,
Speaker 2: we got this. And there's the other thing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Many years ago, I was offered a Whitney Houston project
Speaker 2: and it was like, you know, I kind of founded
Speaker 2: my agent, I kind of founded the studio that wanted
Speaker 2: to do it because I said no, and they were like, well,
Speaker 2: but we're this and it's Whitney. I said, you know,
Speaker 2: we're not going to be able to tell the real story.
Speaker 2: They're looking for a sanitized version of her life and
Speaker 2: I just wasn't interested in doing that. So I have
Speaker 2: turned down some things as well, but again I kind
Speaker 2: of keep coming back to what's the story. If I
Speaker 2: find something I really like, then I'm out there trying
Speaker 2: to find the best way to get it financed and
Speaker 2: get it made.
Speaker 1: So some of these things you're commissioned, I would imagine
Speaker 1: American Masters and things like that, and other ones you
Speaker 1: pitch and you birth them.
Speaker 2: Correct, that's right, American Masters. We pitched Bob Hope for
Speaker 2: that and they love that idea. And a producer that
Speaker 2: I had worked with before had pitched Elvis to Paramount
Speaker 2: Plus and they bought it. But they bought my vision
Speaker 2: of it because the producer didn't quite know what it was,
Speaker 2: so I had to come up with what it was.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so sometimes people come to me. Sometimes I'm
Speaker 2: out there, you know, being Willy Lohman trying to my
Speaker 2: best or Glengarry Glenn Ross to use an Alec Baldwin
Speaker 2: environment where you're having to sell and go out there
Speaker 2: and do the best you can, and this is a
Speaker 2: particularly challenging time to do that. The business has been
Speaker 2: changing dramatically.
Speaker 1: Well, I wanted to ask you about that. You know,
Speaker 1: there used to be no market for really for documentary films,
Speaker 1: not compared to now, and now there's a huge market
Speaker 1: for documentary films and it's just crazy. What are the
Speaker 1: changes you've seen during your career.
Speaker 2: As you describe, I think there was a time where,
Speaker 2: you know, the first documentary I ever saw was in
Speaker 2: high school and it was about the mating of the
Speaker 2: teats fly in the South Pacific. Couldn't have been a
Speaker 2: more boring documentary. But as time has gone along, particularly
Speaker 2: the last twenty years, you have seen an explosion. It's
Speaker 2: kind of been said that it's the golden age of documentaries,
Speaker 2: and I think that's really true. The audience has embraced
Speaker 2: these as the same kind of If it's great storytelling,
Speaker 2: it can be as good as any scripted property. But
Speaker 2: what's changing now is the streaming has changed the entire landscape.
Speaker 2: There are more buyers buying documentaries, but they are paying
Speaker 2: less for them. And now with the streaming business really
Speaker 2: being questioned that so many of the platforms are not
Speaker 2: making money, they are cutting back on the number of
Speaker 2: projects they're buying and the money that they are paying
Speaker 2: for them. So we have to be very creative about
Speaker 2: getting our documentary He's made. So you can go to
Speaker 2: a platform and I call it the kneepad tour, where
Speaker 2: you get down on your knees and beg for money.
Speaker 2: Here's my story, so you can do that. But also
Speaker 2: what has become something that I've made good use of
Speaker 2: in the last ten years or so is independent financing,
Speaker 2: where you go to someone a high net worth individual
Speaker 2: who has the same passion for the subject that I do,
Speaker 2: and they'll say, Okay, we're going to fund this documentary.
Speaker 2: Then we'll worry about selling it later. And so I've
Speaker 2: done a number of those. Blutzwat and Tears was one
Speaker 2: of those films where we were funded entirely upfront, great budget,
Speaker 2: and then armed with a finished film, we can then
Speaker 2: say all right, here it is buy it or don't
Speaker 2: buy it. And you know what that's like because you
Speaker 2: have your own production company. But sometimes to try to
Speaker 2: persuade one of these young buyers what it is that
Speaker 2: you're so passionate about can be a real challenge and
Speaker 2: sometimes they just don't understand it. I had a meet
Speaker 2: and greet with one of the platforms last year and so,
Speaker 2: so what are you doing and I'm in and some
Speaker 2: of the things that I was interested in, and they said, oh, well, John,
Speaker 2: you have to realize we are a millennial channel. History
Speaker 2: for us is the nineties. It was like whoa you know,
Speaker 2: so those are some of the challenges we have as
Speaker 2: well the obstacles we have to overcome.
Speaker 1: At the Hampton Film Festival that I am on the
Speaker 1: board of and David NuGen is the artistic director, and
Speaker 1: we take advantage for the last several years, I think
Speaker 1: it's fourteen or fifteen years now, of the captive audience
Speaker 1: out there for the summer and we have a summer
Speaker 1: documentary program. We always tried to do some varied programming,
Speaker 1: you know, a biopic, a topical one, and then last
Speaker 1: we tried to do something that was really cinematically more magical,
Speaker 1: and one of my favorites is Bombay Beach by Almahrel.
Speaker 1: But let me ask you this, what do you think
Speaker 1: about the strike and the way things are with the
Speaker 1: streamers now.
Speaker 2: I'm a proud member of the Writer's Guild, proud member
Speaker 2: of the Director's Guild. I have my concerns about strikes.
Speaker 2: I think this last strike was interesting from the Writer's
Speaker 2: Guild standpoint in that almost every point they were striking
Speaker 2: for had to do with scripted material, did not impact
Speaker 2: documentaries in any significant way. And the business is changing
Speaker 2: so much. To stand up for yourselves is very admirable
Speaker 2: to try to get higher fees, all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: That's all great, but there's a reality to the business.
Speaker 2: The business is shrinking, and you may get more money
Speaker 2: and you may get bigger fees. You may have more
Speaker 2: writers in a room, but they may be making less
Speaker 2: and there may be not as many opportunities for younger writers.
Speaker 2: I did a guest lecture at UCLA last week and
Speaker 2: I was talking to some students and I did say
Speaker 2: I felt happy that there's more career light behind me
Speaker 2: than ahead of me in our business, because I'm not
Speaker 2: quite sure what the business is going to be in
Speaker 2: ten or fifteen. And I think sometimes with strikes, you're
Speaker 2: kind of dealing with the same model that's been going
Speaker 2: on for fifty or sixty years and not necessarily recognizing
Speaker 2: the changes in the business and perhaps how creatively to
Speaker 2: get what you want in a different way. Streaming, to
Speaker 2: me is super exciting, I said to you on our
Speaker 2: first conversation. We've been binging thirty Rock, my wife and
Speaker 2: I and that's one of the great things about streaming
Speaker 2: is you can sit there and watch the history of
Speaker 2: a whole show and it's right there for you, and
Speaker 2: that's a wonderful wonderful thing. And they have great movies
Speaker 2: and great documentaries, all of that, but in cutting back
Speaker 2: and in terms of purchasing less content or more homogeneous content,
Speaker 2: meaning just celebrities, just big names, as opposed to more thoughtful,
Speaker 2: smart things.
Speaker 1: It's a contracting business.
Speaker 2: It is, very much.
Speaker 1: And what you have.
Speaker 2: What you have then is sometimes people like me will turn,
Speaker 2: We'll go on to a particular platform and there's just
Speaker 2: not that much to see. And so when they talk
Speaker 2: about people drifting away and unsubscribing, that's why, because there's
Speaker 2: not enough really interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: Now, who's somebody you've been you'd love to do. Who's
Speaker 1: somebody you haven't done that you'd love to do.
Speaker 2: I have two of those I would dearly love to do.
Speaker 2: Paul McCartney is one. Won't happen. He has a documentary
Speaker 2: filmmaker in the family, but he's got a fascinating story.
Speaker 2: I would dearly love to do that one, you know,
Speaker 2: And I would love to do Rod Stewart. Rod Stewart
Speaker 2: has an absolutely fascinating story of a man who has
Speaker 2: reinvented himself in every decade and yet somehow, unmistakably is
Speaker 2: still Rod Stewart. You know you've seen people, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm sure, who try something new, try to reinvent themselves
Speaker 2: to go with the current trend, and it's like, that's
Speaker 2: not even you. Why are you doing that? He has
Speaker 2: this remarkable ability to do that. So that's something I'd
Speaker 2: be interested in doing. And I have two stories now
Speaker 2: I'm taking out that I really were trying to find
Speaker 2: the money for now. I have not really talked to
Speaker 2: anybody about this, but because you asked, I'd be happy
Speaker 2: to mention them. One is here we are. The hottest
Speaker 2: topic in the world right now is the Middle East.
Speaker 2: Peace in the Middle East, And I've got a story
Speaker 2: I want to tell everybody thinks peace is an impossible dream.
Speaker 2: Yet I have a story of a guy who did it.
Speaker 2: He brought Arabs and Israelis together in a very creative way,
Speaker 2: hammered out a piece agreement that lasted for seventeen years.
Speaker 2: He got the Nobel Peace Prize for doing it, and
Speaker 2: the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaker 2: And it's a aspirational film about if you think something
Speaker 2: can't be done, look at how this guy did it.
Speaker 2: Maybe there's some knowledge in it for how we can
Speaker 2: approach it today. And that man's name was Ralph Bunch,
Speaker 2: fascinating guy American diplomat working for the United Nations.
Speaker 1: It's funny you say the ones you want and they
Speaker 1: reflect a really personal opinion you have or a taste
Speaker 1: you have. And I'm the same way. I always think
Speaker 1: to myself, if I could do somebody who hadn't been done.
Speaker 1: And I only say this because I've never seen an intelligent,
Speaker 1: full length interview done of Mick Jagger. Jagger has avoided
Speaker 1: any serious dialogue about it. And here he is, still,
Speaker 1: you know, going at it. That're going on tour again,
Speaker 1: and Jagger has got all the agum moor energy than
Speaker 1: I do. And he's like, you know, eighty or whatever
Speaker 1: he is now. No one's really gotten to him. No
Speaker 1: one sat him down and talked about musicianship. And in
Speaker 1: the arcs he's seen in society and even the lofty
Speaker 1: perch he's on and he's a rich man and he's
Speaker 1: a superstar around the world. He opens his mouth and
Speaker 1: you know who he is within one note. So the
Speaker 1: new film is Whatever Happened to Blood, Sweat and Tears,
Speaker 1: And that's streaming where.
Speaker 2: It is available now for purchase or rent on all
Speaker 2: digital platforms.
Speaker 1: I would love people to see this because it was amazing.
Speaker 1: It was amazing, You're so nice story. It's so freakish
Speaker 1: and so fantastic it.
Speaker 2: Is, and it's so strange. And the other thing that
Speaker 2: struck me while I was making and we were sitting
Speaker 2: in the editing room, and there's so many striking parallels
Speaker 2: to what's going on in the world today. The extent
Speaker 2: to which the country is polarized between left and right,
Speaker 2: red and blue, the authoritarian regimes that are out there
Speaker 2: in the world, and what the band members experience when
Speaker 2: they went into those communist dictatorships. There are people today
Speaker 2: in our country who praise Putin and praise dictators and
Speaker 2: what these guys learned when they went over there was
Speaker 2: it is no walk in the park to live under
Speaker 2: a country's ruled by those kinds of people. And there
Speaker 2: are lessons to be learned from the past. And I
Speaker 2: so love this and I'm proud of this film for
Speaker 2: not only the entertainment value, but also the message that
Speaker 2: we have.
Speaker 1: My thanks to John Seinfeld. This episode was produced by
Speaker 1: Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hobin. Our engineer is
Speaker 1: Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingwich. Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing is recorded at CDM Studios in New York City.
Speaker 1: I'm a mc baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to
Speaker 1: you by iHeart Radio
Speaker 3: Four