The Exchanges

Q Where did you, where did you raise money from? How did you, I mean, because you were so young, you had no national name. No one knew who you were.

A And everywhere I went, you know, people like the Brooklyn Museum would say, if there's a film going to be made on the Brooklyn Bridge, we're going to make it. Like, goodbye. And I said, no. And so the best story of the money, it was like 500 bucks or 2500 bucks or a thousand bucks. I once went to a second or third floor walk up on Montague Street In Brooklyn, downtown Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, and met with, um, the, the Democratic boss of, uh, Brooklyn, who died in jail, I believe, or at least went to jail, and he gave me an envelope with a thousand dollars in it from the Kings County Democratic Club, and he said, no film is going to be made on my bridge that doesn't have my name on it.

AI assessment note: “he gave me an envelope with a thousand dollars in it from the Kings County Democratic Club”

Q But you were broke, you were broke, right? You didn't.

A Broke, but I, but here's the, here was the Faustian bargain. I was sitting there with all these reels, We had, like, 75, 80 reels shot. Six, each one of the reels is 400 feet, 12 minutes about, a little bit less than 12 minutes, and I realized that I was gonna put, if I took, said yes to that job, I'd put it on top of the refrigerator, and I would wake up, and I would be 45 years old, and I will have not have finished the film, and I just said, I can't do that, and that's when we went up, Amy and I went up and, uh, found, uh, went looking for a house around Walpole. New Hampshire. And then we, we ended up, Amy went back and found the house that we're, we eventually lived in.

AI assessment note: “Broke, but I, but here's the, here was the Faustian bargain.”

Q But how do you, how do you maintain the quality of what you do, and your, your demands at it, that the quality is so high, but also be willing to sometimes, because I, I mean, I think we all, all leaders deal with this, right? Deal with, with the, the pushback sometimes of like, hey, just let it go, or Make some compromises.

A Yeah, well, I think we all do that, and I think we're, we're learning, and I, I think one of the places where I learned is to try to hear that weak voice that says that shot's not working, you know, and, and, and, you know, even though you loved it the last time, it may not be great this time, and I think PBS is the real answer to your question. There's no other place where any of these films could have been made. You know, I could go out to a, uh, you know, a Streaming service or to a premium cable channel and say, hey, I'm making a film on Vietnam, and with my track record, they'd say, how much do you need? And I would say, we need thirty million dollars, which is what it costs to make our Vietnam series over 10 and a half years. And they'd say, no problem. And they could write it in one check, not the, you know, the 25 that I took to get. But they wouldn't give me 10 and a half years. And PBS does. And so that allows us to incubate This constant desire to get it right, to always improve, and after a while, it's self-fulfilling for everybody.

AI assessment note: “PBS is the real answer to your question. There's no other place”

Q Where, where is she? Where, where is the plaque?

A She's in, um, a cemetery outside of Ann Arbor, um, where she was buried. We couldn't remove her. I then made myself go back every single year with my then young older daughters, and they got to know her. So that when my oldest daughter, Sarah, had her first child, and it was a girl, she named her Lila, which was my mother's name. And that name, We never said it. We still, Rick and I to this day, still say mommy, but, um, you know, it was draped in black crepe, and now that name just, you know, I say it every day. But, you know, this April, she'll be gone 57 years. That is way too long to be without a mom, but, you know, the half-life of grief is endless, but you do, you do make some progress, and so I think in my own personal life, that was a hugely important move, and I'm just sorry that Amy had to bear So much of the unexplored and the unexamined. And, but yet, we're very, very good friends now, and are, are good, good, good nanas and, and granddaddy.

AI assessment note: “She's in, um, a cemetery outside of Ann Arbor, um, where she was buried.”

Q his sons and their success, and, and that may have been related to the medication he was on. Um, but you can't help but imagine that ultimately he was really happy for, For, for what his kids accomplished, you and your brother is also an accomplished filmmaker. How about your mom? What do you, I mean, can you imagine what she would have thought of you and your brother today?

A Yeah, that's the hardest one of all. Yeah, I think, you know, I don't know what I believe about what's beyond what I can see, but I have to know, you know, I was asked, let me turn that around and just say I was asked by a sociologist in the early mid-nineties, What my mom's, after a three hour interview, what my mom's greatest gift to me was. And I instantaneously said to them, dying. And then I burst into tears. Because of course, Guy did not mean that I wanted her to die. But everything that I am has come out of that tragedy. And so, in some ways, she gave me everything. Not just life, but in her absence, what I've been able to do. My, my late father-in-law said it best. You know, he said, You wake the dead. You know, you make Jackie Robinson and, and Louis Armstrong and Abraham Lincoln come alive. Who do you think you really want to wake up? That's, that's, you know, this is her, her great gift, so I have to believe that somewhere she knows, and, and with my daughter Sarah naming her firstborn Lila, and having that such a vibrant part of our lives, it just, it Goes on, she looks a little bit like her, you know, I've sent her a picture of my mom, you know, my, my daughter never met her grandmother, let alone, you know, my granddaughter meeting her great-grandmother, and so Lila has on her, you know, in her bedroom, a portrait of her namesake, and I sort of feel like she's Yo…

AI assessment note: “I have to believe that somewhere she knows, and, and with my daughter Sarah”

Q When you, when you were filming those images, right, at the archives with the cameras, mounting them on the rigs and moving them the way that we now know what they look like, Did you think it was gonna have an impact? Did you think it was gonna become this thing? Were you, or was it just something you were kind of playing around with and trying?

A So, um, If you're shooting hoops at the garage, do you sort of imagine where you're going to be? You kind of do, that you're hoping to go play on a team someplace. But you just, you do it because you think this is the right thing, and you actually, if you spend too much time thinking that it would become what it did become or didn't become, you're lost. You just have to, at some point, have some faith that I've chosen this particular thing. I'm going to shoot a hundred baskets tonight and see if I can add it in before... Mom calls me in, right? Whatever it might be, who, whosoever it is, in some ways you will this to work. You, you have to believe something will work in order for it to work, and particularly things that hadn't quite been done. I mean, Perry Miller Odato, a woman, a producer, made a wonderful film on Gertrude Stein in the early, mid-seventies called When This You See, Remember Me, and she had actors reading. She filmed the actors reading, and sometimes she'd cut away To still photograph of Paris, and I went, wait a second. In my mind, I went, wait, why even show the actors at all? Just keep them off camera all the time. They can service things. So, you know, you're always standing on the shoulders of somebody else's stuff. And if you think too much about what it is you're doing, you don't do it. You can't ride that bicycle. Hey, mom and dad, watch me. I got a cr…

AI assessment note: “if you spend too much time thinking that it would become what it did become”