WEBVTT - Documentary Filmmaker John Scheinfeld: From John Lennon to John Coltrane 0:00:02.320 --> 0:00:05.240 This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the 0:00:05.320 --> 0:00:12.160 Thing from iHeart Radio. Making documentary films about fascinating people 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:15.280 and diving deep into their lives and work. That is 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:19.400 the occupation of my guest today, Emmy and Grammy nominated writer, 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:25.440 producer and director John Shinfeld. He's made nearly fifty documentaries 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:28.639 that tell the story behind some of the most famous 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:33.000 names and events in American history, from John Lennon and 0:00:33.040 --> 0:00:37.440 Bob Hope to the Chicago Cubs and Watergate. His most 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:42.240 recent film is Mash, The Comedy That Changed Television, about 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:46.680 the iconic sitcom. Last year, he released the documentary What 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:49.920 the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat and Tears, answering the 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:54.320 question surrounding the political turmoil that engulfed the popular rock 0:00:54.400 --> 0:00:59.160 band in the nineteen seventies. Sinfeld often goes behind the 0:00:59.200 --> 0:01:03.160 curtain of the musical world. He recently told the behind 0:01:03.200 --> 0:01:07.000 the scenes story of Elvis Presley's famous Christmas special in 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:10.479 the film Reinventing Elvis the sixty eight Comeback. 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:15.720 Basically, by nineteen sixty eight, Elvis had become irrelevant. He'd 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:18.560 been replaced in the public consciousness for the most part 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:21.280 by the Beatles, the Stones, the British Invasion, all of that. 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:26.280 He was doing these crappy little movies and as the 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:30.280 sixties progressed, they were selling fewer tickets, he was not 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:33.160 selling as many records, and by sixty eight he didn't 0:01:33.200 --> 0:01:37.520 quite know which direction to go, and his manager came 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:40.960 up with this notion of let's do a Christmas special 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:44.360 for NBC, and his idea was dress him up like 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:48.440 Perry Como in a sweater and sing twenty Christmas songs 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:52.800 and get off the stage. And NBC hired this young 0:01:52.960 --> 0:01:57.440 hotshot producer director named Steve Binder, and Steve said, no, no, no, no, no, no. 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:00.800 What we want you to do is what made you Elvis, 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:05.840 And so they constructed this show in spite of Tom 0:02:05.880 --> 0:02:10.120 Parker that really showcased Elvis's talents and you can see 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:13.000 it on the screen in this special. He is a 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:18.560 superbly talented guy, very charismatic, gorgeous for men and women. 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:19.480 Oh my god. 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:22.800 And the show turned out to be the highest rated 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:26.120 special of nineteen sixty eight and a jump started his career. 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:29.240 Las Vegas came calling, and that really set up the 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:30.240 third act of his life. 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:34.560 You see that a film you made, and early on 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:36.880 the guy saying about the concert, he tells a story 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:39.800 about him not wanting to come out, and then he 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:43.200 walks out there and everything's in position, and he walks 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:47.600 out there in that black outfit, and like everything about 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:50.000 him is like, oh my god, it's Elvis, the Elvis 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:53.160 I loved. Here's the Elvis I love. Whereas I mean 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:56.480 that period I'd forgotten the years. That period was the 0:02:56.520 --> 0:03:00.000 bad movie Elvis period up to sixty eight of the Comeback, 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:03.520 and I am obsessed. I own that concert. But when 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:06.720 you do a film like that, and I'm assuming it's 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:11.080 extraordinarily difficult and therefore maybe tempting to pass on a 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:13.280 film where there's not a lot of extant footage about 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:16.560 the person. There's a mountains of footage of Delvis, you know. 0:03:17.040 --> 0:03:18.880 And when you do a film like that, or any 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:22.799 of your films, how does it begin for you? Where 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:23.480 do you start? 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:25.920 For me, it's always what's the story? 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:26.880 You know. 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:31.000 I'm not a journalist, I'm not an academic. I came 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:34.320 out of the scripted world. I was a studio executive 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:38.160 for a while and then became a writer of pilot 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:40.720 shows and things like that, so I come out of 0:03:41.040 --> 0:03:44.160 a very traditional three actromatic structure. So I'm fascinated by 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:46.800 what's the story. Is there an interesting story here? Is 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:50.520 it compelling? Is there enough depth to it that would 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:53.760 warrant being a feature documentary? So that's the first thing. 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:58.240 Second question always is is there enough audio visual material 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:00.720 with which to tell the story? Some times there is 0:04:00.760 --> 0:04:03.560 and sometimes there isn't. I did a film a few 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:07.840 years ago called Chasing Train about the jazz icon John Coltrane, 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:12.000 and there's very little footage on him, but we managed 0:04:12.040 --> 0:04:14.360 to find a way to tell the story. Same with Blood, 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:16.560 Sweat and Tears, which we can get into later, and 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:19.640 other times I did one on John Lennon, and he 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:22.800 was perhaps the most photographed and filmed man of the 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:25.400 twentieth century, and there was plenty of film for us 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:28.560 to you. So if there really was nothing, then I 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:31.279 get very frustrated and disappointed that I'm not going to 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:32.839 be able to tell that story and I have to 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:36.120 move on to something else. But largely it's what's the story? 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:38.800 And does it nurture my soul? Does it inspire me, 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:42.040 does it intrigue me? Does it make me laugh? If 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:44.240 I have that kind of a response to something. Then 0:04:44.320 --> 0:04:46.560 I know this is a project I want to take on. 0:04:47.160 --> 0:04:49.880 Well, I always find like I'll be on YouTube. Let's 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:53.159 say Oscar Peterson is in a concert in Copenhagen, and 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:55.719 I'll go, well, you got a clip of this, and 0:04:55.760 --> 0:04:58.120 you're showing a clip of this. What's the clip from? 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:01.320 How can I go buy the concert that Oscar Peterson 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:04.200 is in? They'll be there and there are numerous examples. 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:08.240 There are abundant examples of shows like that or where 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:10.240 there's a clip and I'll go, my god, I want 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:12.600 to see Miles Davis said, Carnie, you know whatever it is, 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:16.200 And they don't offer you that information on the thing. 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:20.080 And I'm such a junkie for documentaries of any kind. 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:22.200 One of the things I love most about my job 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:25.920 is the detective work of trying to track down this 0:05:26.000 --> 0:05:30.239 audio visual material. And we cast a very wide net 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:33.240 around the world to find the most rare, the most unusual, 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:36.560 or the most pertinent material to help tell our story. 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:40.600 And you find things sometimes under people's beds, in their closets, 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:43.600 in some archive in Eastern Europe, you know wherever, it 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:45.600 might be, in the trunk of their car, trunk of 0:05:45.640 --> 0:05:47.960 their cars out there. You just never know sometimes when 0:05:48.000 --> 0:05:50.640 you're going to find something. I'll share a story nowt 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:54.279 about Bloodswoot and Tears. I had lunch with Bobby Colombie, 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:56.680 who is the co founder and the band leader of 0:05:56.720 --> 0:05:59.520 Bloodwitton Tears, and he had seen my Coltrane film and 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:00.839 he said, so, I want to take you to lunch 0:06:00.839 --> 0:06:03.400 and tell you a story. So we sit down for 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:07.000 lunch and I literally asked him what the hell happened 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:09.560 to Blood Sweat and Tears. Here was you were one 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:12.320 of the hottest bands going and then you weren't. 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:13.240 What happened? 0:06:13.240 --> 0:06:14.680 He said, that's the story I'm going to tell you, 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:16.359 and he starts to tell me this story at lunch. 0:06:16.640 --> 0:06:20.760 He only knows maybe half of what really happened. We 0:06:20.920 --> 0:06:23.440 dug up a lot of information of what was happening 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.039 behind the scenes. But in the middle of lunch, alec 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:29.200 He says to me, so, we were in eastern Europe 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:30.960 and this film crew was with us. And wait, wait, wait, wait, 0:06:31.000 --> 0:06:33.800 wait a second, there was a film crew with you. Yeah, yeah, 0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:36.480 we took a documentary film crew with us. It's like, well, 0:06:36.480 --> 0:06:39.440 where's that film? He said, I don't know, and that 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:41.720 became the treasure hunt on this one. Where is that 0:06:41.800 --> 0:06:44.680 film now? It was embargoed by the State Department. Correct, 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:46.520 that's correct. That's what we learned at the end of 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:49.440 the day. But what we did learn early on was 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:52.840 they had shot sixty five hours of material with which 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:56.599 they intended to make a feature documentary to be distributed 0:06:56.600 --> 0:07:00.400 in theaters back in nineteen seventy seventy one, and they 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:03.279 edited together a two and a half hour version which 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:05.600 they had to show to the State Department. That screening 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:10.920 did not go well. Somehow that two hour feature documentary 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:15.040 was transformed into a one hour for television that never 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:18.480 got shown. And so we're on the trail of this stuff, 0:07:18.480 --> 0:07:21.880 and we are checking every archive that we can think of. 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:26.320 We also checked every independent storage facility here in Los 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:30.480 Angeles where a producer might have stored their material, and nothing, nothing. 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:30.800 Nothing. 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:34.200 Finally, one day a woman who runs a vault in 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:37.440 Hollywood who we had contacted some months before, and she said, oh, 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:40.960 we have nothing. It was during COVID and she was 0:07:41.000 --> 0:07:44.000 going through some old fashioned loose leaf binders and found 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:47.280 a vague reference to blood, sweat and tears. She went 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:50.120 into the vault and in a far corner in a 0:07:50.160 --> 0:07:55.559 pile of stuff marked for destruction. Was the one hour, 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:59.239 sixty minute version of this project that never got released 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:02.000 on what format? Ye It was on sixty millimeter film 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:05.520 with optical sound on the side. And so in our 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:08.200 film What the Hell Happened to Bloodswood and Tears, all 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:10.720 the footage you see from that tour came from that 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:14.240 one hour version. The sixty five hours of raw material 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:18.160 totally disappeared, and we believe the State Department took it 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:21.560 back and at some point destroyed it, not for I 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:24.320 think nefarious reasons. I think it was more it was 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:25.480 taking up a lot of space. 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:28.880 Nixon boy, he just hated those real rock bands. He 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:30.239 hated that rock and roll music. 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:32.680 He was not a rock and roll fan in the least. 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:36.120 That's what's so interesting about this story is that it's 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:38.920 a rock band and suddenly there are memos about this 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:42.240 rock band on Henry Kissinger's desk and Richard Nixon's desk, 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:44.800 and they're actually responding to them and dealing with it. 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:48.000 And I just found that absolutely fascinating. 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:51.160 But now that we're on that subject, your film is 0:08:51.160 --> 0:08:54.120 about what happened to them, meaning they go over there 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:55.640 if I'm not mistaken. If I remember in the film 0:08:55.679 --> 0:08:59.600 which I saw just recently, on some typically traditional cultural 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:03.480 exchange by the State Department, correct, that's right, which had 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:06.400 been mostly a classic arts like dance and ballet and 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:07.640 symphony and things like that. 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:10.800 And jazz, so Louis Armstrong, Jessey Gillespie, those sorts of 0:09:10.880 --> 0:09:13.640 artists had also gone over on these cultural exchange programs. 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:17.880 And then what happened, well thereby hangs the tale. And 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:22.440 what we learned is the State Department came to Blood 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.040 Sweat and Tears and said, we want you to represent 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:28.800 America and go to these Eastern European countries that we 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:33.400 are trying to establish relationships with and perform. And that 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:39.120 seems fairly straightforward, right, but it was never ever that simple. 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:43.480 What we learned is the lead singer for Blood Sweat 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:46.640 and Tears, David Clayton Thomas, was having some immigration problems 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.560 and he was going to be deported. So imagine now 0:09:50.000 --> 0:09:54.360 you're in the hottest band going and you can't record 0:09:54.360 --> 0:09:56.360 with your singer and you can't tour with your singer 0:09:56.360 --> 0:09:58.840 in the United States because he's been deported. So the 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:01.880 band is now faced this and now the State Department 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:05.079 shows up and, in a word that we've heard a 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:07.480 lot in the last few years, there was a quid 0:10:07.520 --> 0:10:10.880 pro quo, and the quid pro quo was, if you 0:10:11.000 --> 0:10:14.320 do this tour for us, we will make David's immigration 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:17.880 problems go away. And that is in fact what happened. 0:10:18.400 --> 0:10:21.920 So they blackmailed them. Isn't it interesting where they put 0:10:21.960 --> 0:10:24.679 this pressure on them to get them to go, we 0:10:24.720 --> 0:10:28.240 want you to represent American pop culture, and then when 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:30.560 it's over there like, well, we don't want you to 0:10:30.600 --> 0:10:34.520 represent American pop culture. Actually, And I remember, I think 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:37.720 you said in the film that their debut album which 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:40.520 I devoured that album when I was young. Clayton Thomas 0:10:40.600 --> 0:10:43.080 is one of the most legendary vocalists I've ever heard 0:10:43.080 --> 0:10:44.480 in my life. I mean, that's a guy that could 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:46.800 have sang on Broadway for the rest of his life. 0:10:46.800 --> 0:10:48.320 I mean, he had the greatest voice. 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:51.680 But I think you mentioned in the film that their 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:54.040 record was number one and beat out Abby Road. 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:57.800 Correct, they won the Grammy for Best Album of the 0:10:57.880 --> 0:10:59.480 Year over the Beatles Abbey Road. 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:00.720 What does that tell you? 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:01.880 It's the strangest thing. 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:04.200 That's amazing. We tried to get David Clayton Thomas on 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:07.360 the show. You interviewed him directly, correctly, we did. 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:10.280 He lives in Toronto, and that was sort of a 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:13.400 casualty of COVID for a long time because the border 0:11:13.480 --> 0:11:16.160 was closed. We couldn't get up there to interview him, 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:18.960 and he couldn't come down here to be interviewed. And 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:22.680 then suddenly, in early twenty twenty one, there was a 0:11:22.840 --> 0:11:25.839 three week window where the border actually opened, so we 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:27.840 flew up there as fast as we could and we 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:30.560 sat down with David, and as you saw in the 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:33.880 film and perhaps your podcast audience will as well, he 0:11:33.960 --> 0:11:38.120 was quite confessional. He was quite candid and open about 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:40.560 what was going on with him at that time and 0:11:40.800 --> 0:11:44.200 how he felt about the band having to do this 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:45.640 to save him. 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:53.280 If you will director John Scheinfeld, if you enjoy in 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:57.720 depth conversations about the craft of documentary filmmaking, check out 0:11:57.720 --> 0:11:59.920 my episode with director Rory Kennedy. 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:03.400 I love Boeing and what Boeing stood for in this country, 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:06.400 and we really celebrate that in the film because it's 0:12:06.440 --> 0:12:10.480 been an extraordinary company for decades. You know, it helped 0:12:10.559 --> 0:12:12.319 us get out of World War Two, it helped get 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:14.840 us to the Moon with my uncle Jack, and for 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:18.440 many decades, Boeing did one thing, which was to say, 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:22.960 we're going to prioritize excellence and safety. And the McDonald 0:12:23.000 --> 0:12:26.240 douglas people were put in charge, and they had a 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:30.200 very different business model, which was very Wall Street focused. 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:36.079 To hear more of my conversation with Rory Kennedy, go 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:40.080 to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break. John 0:12:40.120 --> 0:12:44.280 Shinfeld shares his experience working with Yoko Ono on his 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:57.200 film The US Versus John Lennon. I'm Alec Baldwin and 0:12:57.240 --> 0:13:01.120 you're listening to Here's the Thing document Henry. Filmmaker John 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:05.880 Scheinfeld sometimes finds himself producing more than one film on 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:09.800 the same subject, as he did with Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:11.800 and the late actor Peter Sellers. 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:15.200 I have the best job. I get to go interesting 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:18.160 places and talk to interesting people about interesting things. I 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:21.560 can't imagine for me a better job. And I of 0:13:21.600 --> 0:13:24.120 course had seen Peter Sellers. I'd seen the Pink Panther 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:28.200 films and seen some of his other things, and I 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:31.120 just thought he was hysterical, and so a chance to 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:34.560 tell his story was interesting. But my approach to a 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:36.640 lot of these films is not to do a straight 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:39.239 on and he was born in a log cabin in Westchester, 0:13:39.360 --> 0:13:42.320 and you know, I'm always looking to tell an unknown 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:47.000 story about somebody who's well known and to come into 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:49.679 it that way, and so Sellers. In fact, that film 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:53.040 was called The Unknown Peter Sellers. And while we did 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:56.800 have some excerpts from his well known films, we did 0:13:56.840 --> 0:13:59.280 a lot of work to dig up clips from things 0:13:59.280 --> 0:14:01.640 that were not as well known. That helps show the 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:04.480 evolution of his talent. So that was kind of interesting. 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:08.320 Film came out, was very well received, and Columbia Pictures 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:11.160 came to me and said, we're doing a Blu Ray 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:14.880 release of Doctor Strangelove, and we want to have some 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:18.040 bonus material on the Blu Ray and we want to 0:14:18.040 --> 0:14:20.720 tell the story of Peter Sellers and Doctor Strangelove. 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:22.320 Can you do that? Th Oh, that'd be great. 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:25.000 So we took some of the interviews that I did 0:14:25.040 --> 0:14:26.800 for the previous one and then did a lot of 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:29.840 new interviews with people that had worked with Stanley Kubrick 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:32.760 and put the story together. So as long as I 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:35.560 can find that interesting way in that hasn't been done 0:14:35.880 --> 0:14:37.760 you know, ten times before, I'm very. 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:41.840 Happy This is very similar to one man shows in 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:45.800 the Broadway theater. Ideally, you pick someone who people know 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:48.920 but they don't really know. And I've worked on a 0:14:48.960 --> 0:14:52.560 couple of one man shows with that ben someone you 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:57.000 know about you under no circumstances. Do you really know them? Now? 0:14:57.400 --> 0:14:59.640 This is something that I get wrong. And then as 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:01.560 I look at this list and I think, well, here's 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:05.240 somebody who I found so intriguing, and maybe I worked 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:07.240 with them and I love them to death and I 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:09.480 love them all my life, and they might not have 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:11.880 been the easiest subject for you to deal with. I 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:15.400 worked with Jonathan Winters, and what was that like? Did 0:15:15.440 --> 0:15:17.480 you get to interview him? You sat down with him, We. 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:20.120 Spent time with him. I love Jonathan. I have to 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:22.920 tell you. What we wanted to do was not just 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:26.000 tell the story of his career in his life, but 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:27.920 to get a sense of, yes, who he was as 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:29.960 a person. So we decided we were going to follow 0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:34.000 him around Santa Barbara, where he lived. He took us 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:36.960 into a travel agency, he took us into the bank 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:39.360 as he was making a deposit. We went to the 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:41.560 gas station when he was getting his car filled up, 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:44.360 and he would talk to people around just it was 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.960 totally ad libbed and all of that. What was interesting 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:51.640 about Jonathan was he knows the reputation that he had 0:15:52.560 --> 0:15:53.760 and he said, all right, so what kind of a 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:55.840 film do you want to make? And I said to him, 0:15:56.160 --> 0:15:57.520 what kind of a film do you want. 0:15:57.320 --> 0:15:58.000 Made about you? 0:15:58.240 --> 0:16:00.760 And it was like whoa No one had ever asked 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:03.080 him that question. He was mostly just hired and he 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:03.840 would do what he. 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:04.440 Was asked to do. 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:07.120 And he said, well, I would like to kind of play. 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:10.000 I'd like to play, and so we allowed him to 0:16:10.120 --> 0:16:12.840 play at these places and then with us in his 0:16:12.880 --> 0:16:15.840 sit down interviews. He could just kind of go wherever 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:20.120 he wanted and then we stitched the show together from that. 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:22.520 But I thought he was great, terrific guy. 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:26.120 I did a film with him. We did the not 0:16:26.240 --> 0:16:29.200 that successful version of The Shadow that I did with 0:16:29.240 --> 0:16:31.960 Marty Begman was the producer. And I'm up in a 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:35.240 cabin with my sister and my mother back in the 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:38.800 summer of nineteen ninety three and Marty calls me and says, 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:41.440 Jonathan Winters wants to talk to you, and I go 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:43.440 what he goes, Yeah, we're not signing him, and he 0:16:43.440 --> 0:16:45.280 said he wants to talk to you, and he says, 0:16:45.360 --> 0:16:47.560 what I want to know is why you want me 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:50.520 in this movie? Why do you want me? And I go, well, 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:54.080 because I think you're this legendary comic talent. I worship you. 0:16:54.080 --> 0:16:56.680 You're as funny as hell, and you're one of the 0:16:56.720 --> 0:16:59.000 greatest actors I've ever seen a comic actor. And so 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:00.960 originally he's like, wow, all right, well thanks for calling 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:02.840 me and welcome back to you, and he agreed to 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:04.119 do the movie. We do the movie. 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:05.280 Did you have fun with him? 0:17:05.520 --> 0:17:09.800 He was amazing. He was kind and he was sweet, 0:17:09.800 --> 0:17:12.480 and he knew we loved him. I mean, you've got 0:17:12.520 --> 0:17:15.240 other guys on here, none of which I met, but like, 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:18.880 for example, I love Andy Williams. I love Andy Williams. 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:22.840 What was that experience like with somebody who's as velvety 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:24.000 and silky as he is. 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:28.520 Andy was a sweetheart. I did three shows for PBS 0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:32.480 with him over the years, and he was an interesting guy, 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:36.600 alec in that everything he did had to be first class. 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:39.320 He wouldn't cheap out on anything, he wouldn't take the 0:17:39.359 --> 0:17:42.600 easy way. Everything had to be just right. And I 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:45.760 love that about him. And so I got to spend 0:17:45.800 --> 0:17:47.240 a lot of time with him as we were picking 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:49.760 the clips for the show, and then with the interviews 0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:55.240 that we did. Smart guy, very self deprecating and a 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:59.520 gorgeous voice. Just a gorgeous voice. Oh god, Okay, go 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:01.800 back to Nathan just for one second. You were talking 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:05.040 about how funny he could be. There's a great clip 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:09.160 in our piece that it's called the Stick, and it's 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:13.359 a clip from a Jack Parr show. And Jonathan comes 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:16.400 out and Jack Parr gives him a broomstick that's been 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:20.320 cut in half, so it's just the wooden part, and 0:18:20.359 --> 0:18:24.160 he hands it to Jonathan and he says, go. Jonathan 0:18:24.160 --> 0:18:26.600 does seven and a half minutes with the stick, and 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:30.120 he's different characters in different countries, doing different things, each 0:18:30.160 --> 0:18:32.480 one of them more hysterical than the one before it. 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:36.680 And that's who he is. He was like an overgrown child, really, 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:39.440 but as you say, very sweet and very kind. 0:18:40.200 --> 0:18:43.679 So when you do a film like Us Versus John Lennon, 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:48.040 that's eighteen years ago and then it is, of course 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:51.560 dead twenty six years by then. Was there a lot 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:54.919 of rights issues with Yoko Oner or the Beatles estate? 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:58.520 Were there any issues with getting the rights to Lennon's story. 0:18:59.200 --> 0:19:03.040 Not really, you know, Alec, My philosophy has always been, 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:06.200 if you're a straight shooter. I'm from the Midwest, I'm 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:08.000 not from New York, I'm not from Los Angeles. I'm 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:10.120 a straight shooter from the middle of the country. If 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:12.919 you're honest and straightforward with people and saying here's the 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:14.760 film we're going to make, here's what we're going to do. 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:17.680 I don't think you experienced many problems and we didn't hear. 0:19:17.800 --> 0:19:20.960 But we had to go and pitch to Yoko and 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:23.399 we said, here's the film we want to make, and 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:26.480 it's about the political John Lennon, not the personal John Lennon. 0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:30.400 And she loved that idea. But she gave us her 0:19:30.440 --> 0:19:34.560 blessing but not her participation. And that's a key challenge 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:38.000 that we had because she's been blasted so much by 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:41.920 the media and been ill treated by many films and documentaries, 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:44.800 and I think she wanted to sort of keep us 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:47.320 at arm's length until she could see that we were 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:50.960 delivering what we said we were going to. So we 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:54.000 had a two and a half hour rough cut, obscenely long, 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:57.840 with lots of Hole's film clip here, photograph here, because 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:01.560 she has this amazing archive that I knew we needed 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:05.159 access to, and we weren't getting it at first. So 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:07.800 I felt, all right, let's show her this rough cut 0:20:08.000 --> 0:20:10.879 and hopefully that'll open the door for us. So we 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:14.320 go to the Dakota and we're ushered into her apartment, 0:20:14.320 --> 0:20:18.399 which is this beautiful apartment. Everything's white. Everything's white, and 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:20.439 you have to take your shoes off when you come in. 0:20:20.680 --> 0:20:23.200 And we go into the kitchen and there's a fifty 0:20:23.240 --> 0:20:26.240 two inch TV up on the wall. Her attorney is there, 0:20:26.240 --> 0:20:29.560 who's a great guy, and we're waiting for her, and 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:33.160 then she comes in. She's a small woman, she's four 0:20:33.200 --> 0:20:36.600 to ten. She comes in with a pad and a 0:20:36.640 --> 0:20:40.399 pencil and says, doesn't say hello, doesn't say good morning, 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:41.800 doesn't say you know, would you. 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:43.480 Like some tea? It's like, let's go. 0:20:44.560 --> 0:20:47.960 So we put in the DVD and you've been in 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:50.800 screenings like this, and all the way through Alex she's 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:53.199 taking notes all the way through. It's like, but da 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:55.640 da da da, And my heart is like dropping down 0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:57.720 to the floor because I'm convinced she hates it. And 0:20:57.760 --> 0:21:01.520