Best Of: Life in the Mojave Desert / Director of ‘The Uprising’

0:00This is Ira Glass. On this American life, we tell stories about when things change. Like for this guy David, whose entire life took a sharp, unexpected, and very unpleasant term. And it did take me a while to realize it's basically because the monkey pressed the button. That's right, because the monkey pressed the button. Sprising stories every week, wherever you get your podcasts. From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley in Los Angeles. Today, two storytellers take on tales of resistance and rebellion. Author Claire Vay Watkins, Liz in the Mojave Desert, just like the protagonist in her new novel, in an area being developed by an energy company wreaking havoc on the environment. The locals protest, but the novel explores whether they actually have the power to defeat a corporate project already underway. The director Paul Greengrass' new film, The Up Rising, examines what happens when people

1:01reach their breaking point. It takes us to 1381 when the peasants of England revolted against the king. Greengrass first noticed the parallels to today during the pandemic. Also, film critic Justin Chang reviews the new drama, Philippa Pignana. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This week on the Ampere Politics Podcast, the Republican midterm convention was basically a two-night mega-info commercial. He is told voters, I want you to pretend please that I'm on the ballot just come out and vote and show up for it. We break down President Trump's midterm strategy, including that $5,000 promise. This week on the Ampere Politics Podcast. Hey, what's your problem? No, seriously, are your grocery bills too high? Are you spending too much time on your phone? Are you searching for a new job? Are you trying to figure out how to set boundaries with your family? Whatever's on your mind, life kit has you covered, with three episodes every week on health,

2:04money, mental health, and so much more. Listen to the Life Kit Podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's me, Peter Seggel. Host of Weight Weight Don't Tell Me. It's leaf-peeping season. So why not peep our weekly news quiz while you're at it? We got comedians, celebrities, and games to help laugh about the week's news and you can listen while you're spicing your pumpkins, whatever people do. Listen every week to Weight Weight Don't Tell Me in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tonya Mosley. Terry has our first interview. Like the main character in her new novel, Claire Vey Watkins lives in the Mojave Desert near Death Valley. So like in the novel, the desert around her is being developed by an energy company for solar energy. Solar may sound like clean energy, great, but solar on this grand scale is wreaking havoc on the desert ecosystem. Like many frontier territories, the desert attracts misfits, loners, drifters, and as Watkins

3:09puts it, weirdos. In the new novel, each of those types is represented in a small community of people protesting the, quote, green energy gold rush. But really, what can they do? What power do they have to defeat a corporate project already underway? Is protest futile, delusional, self-serving? There's a lot of questions this novel raises. Like how can a mother decide to live in the desert when her ex-husband and child have moved across the country for a better job and better schools? How has Rose, the new novel's protagonist, been shaped by having had a mother, father, and stepfather, who were each addicted to alcohol or drugs? Twelve step programs have always been part of her life as a witness or participant. Watkins' new novel is titled Yellow Pine. That's also the name of the Solar Desert project in the book. Her previous novel, I love you, but I've chosen darkness, is her most autobiographical book, and quotes from the memoir, My Life with Charles Manson, by her father Paul Watkins.

4:11The cover describes Paul Watkins as Manson's number two man. His role was procuring teenage girls recruiting them to join the Manson family, Claire with six when her father died of cancer. In reviewing her new novel, former Washington Post's book critic Ron Charles wrote, Among the Swelling Collection of Books confronting our imperiled planet, Claire V. Watkins' fiction remains defiantly alive. Her stories and novels are rooted in the American West, that awesome expanse of dunes and deserts that uninformed observers would call empty. Where life is adapted to the damning conditions of heat and drought, Watkins finds characters burned away to their elemental anxieties and desires. Claire V. Watkins, welcome to Fresh Air. Thanks, dear. Happy to be here. Happy to have you. So can you describe the part of the desert that you live in and what the environment is like? Sure.

5:11I live in the Eastern Mojave Desert about halfway between Las Vegas and Death Valley in a little town called Tacopa, where I grew up. It's not for everybody. It's about 100 people. That will be the understatement of the interview. Yeah, it's for about 100 people. And it's really beautiful, just like staggeringly, gorgeous landscape and scenery, huge, huge mountain ranges. There's a little river that goes through town, the Amargo Sir River. It's mostly underground, a subterranean river, but it surfaces in these hot springs, and there's just this explosion of life around the river. So where you described it's also around where you grew up, and it's also where the main character of your new novel lived. So now I want you to describe how it's being developed. Yeah, so the vast majority of land in this part of the country is public land.

6:17So it's owned by, in theory, all of us, but it's administered by the federal government. And it has been sort of in the crosshairs, I would say, of what boosters like to call the green energy gold rush. So it's extremely sunny. It's a good place for solar development in theory for that reason. It's also kind of being besieged by other types of energy development, like geothermal and mining. I mean, mining has been happening out there for a really long time, although the scale is getting bigger and bigger. The aquifer has been pretty dramatically depleted, and there's not a lot of water in this area to begin with in the best of times. So the natural resources are really being pushed to the brink in a pretty dramatic way. And there's been a long, long history of environmental injustice, yellow pine, and where I live

7:18is not far from the Nevada test site, where the federal government detonated almost a thousand nuclear bombs until 1992 when I was about in the third grade. So it's a place that's been treated like a wasteland for a really long time, and that story has been very cooperative and convenient for extraction and exploitation of the natural resources. So I was worried that while I'm really convinced that we need to decarbonize the economy and the need for renewable energy is obvious. To me, I was really concerned that there would be some really serious sacrifices being made that didn't seem right to me or fair, and that I don't think will actually help us transition off of fossil fuels. So in the novel, there's this small group of protesters who want to stop this development of the desert. The novel really does ask the question, like, what's the point?

8:20They're not going to win. There aren't a lot of people around to watch. There's not a lot of media around to report it. They're in the desert. So what are your thoughts about that? Well, yeah. I think at one point they say, you know, it's not a blockade because we're not delusional, but they are still very principled. You know, they can tell that this is wrong. And so it, I think, is a matter of morality. Taking action, even though you don't have a real grounded expectation of being successful, I think there's still value in the action to watch and witness and be able to say that you saw what was there. I mean, that's what drove me out to Yellow Pine was that I wanted to be able to say that I saw it before it was gone. And I guess I kind of just feel like if you only engage in an action that your certain is going to be successful, that's pretty cowardly, really.

9:22You know, I mean, we want to be strategic and effective as activists, but there's no guarantee in any of this stuff. And that doesn't mean it's not still a worthwhile way to spend your life. You grew up near where there were a lot of atom bomb tests and also near where there's a big disposal site for nuclear waste. Yes. So how aware of that were you when you were growing up? I was painfully aware of it. I don't remember a time when I ever didn't know about Yucca Mountain, that nuclear repository that you're referring to. I mean, and that's another win, you know, there's a lot of very gnarly waste going into that mountain today, but not nuclear waste because of people stood up and said, no, you know. So yeah, my parents were involved in activism against nuclear testing and against Yucca Mountain and against water projects.

10:22And I remember feeling really hurt by it as a kid, feeling like so they think that's okay to do to me. Like I'm just a kid, you know. It made me feel like we were expendable people or that we didn't matter. I mean, that's the story usually of this type of exploitation is like there's no one there. Anyway, it's an empty place, you know, and that it's already dead. And that's a really confusing thing to be told when you're a lively kid who, you know, I understood that was wrong and I didn't deserve it and I, no, no one does. And yeah, I had a sense of clarity about it that I don't really think has gone away. Were you able to hear the blast go off like did you know when it was happening and were you warned by the government when it was happening?

11:22So by the time I came along, the detonations were underground. They were happening in a subterranean way, which was ostensibly better because it wouldn't be, you know, releasing directly into the atmosphere. Exactly. Yeah, but the problem is, of course, that that's where the water is there is underground. Oh, right. Yeah. So no, I didn't hear them or see them. My mom had as a kid, she would go up on the roof of her trailer. She told me stories about going up there and they would put like sunglasses on to be safe. You know, we're listening to Terry's interview with author Claire Vey Watkins. Her new novel is called Yellow Pine. More of their conversation after a short break. I'm Tonya Mosley and this is Fresh Air Weekend. Under your life, kid, our team answers your listener questions with time tested advice from past episodes. But we don't always agree. Opposite. No, that's not what we thought. What if he's the one? Oh, my God. What? Listen to the latest juicy episode of Dear Life Kit on the Life Kit podcast in the NPR app

12:28or wherever you get your podcasts. You've got a lot of ways to get news and a lot of podcasts in your feed that take a long time to get to the point here and now anytime gets to the heart of the day's big story, all in about 20 minutes every afternoon. Get smarter and expand your world fast. Listen to here and now anytime on the NPR app or wherever you listen to podcasts. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tonya Mosley. Let's get back to Terry's interview with author Claire Vey Watkins. Her new novel is called Yellow Pine. So in each of your last two novels, the main character decides to live far away from her young daughter in the new novel. The couple has been living in Nevada, but they've been growing apart. They divorce. The husband gets a job in Philly, close to his parents and a sister and they agree it would be best for the daughter to go to preschool there in Philly.

13:31But Rose stays out west, moves to the desert and works on a fundraising job with an environmental group. She's kind of relieved to be away from her ex because they've been drifting so far apart, but it's painful to be away from her daughter. In your previous novel, I love you, but I've chosen darkness. The main character goes to the desert where she grew up and decides to stay and leave her husband and their young daughter behind if they don't want to stay in the desert. What got you thinking about what it means to live far away from your young child? Well I live far away from my own young daughter for most of the time. She's with me on breaks and on summer vacation. So that's a sacrifice that I've chosen to make. I think it's for her good. I think it's for the greater good, the good of the family system.

14:32I think it got me thinking about right sacrifice and wrong sacrifice. Parents have to sacrifice for their kids. And I also notice that when there's too much sacrifice, it can get pretty dark. We get into territory of like martering ourselves or not living our lives in the name of our kids. It's so much pressure for a kid to have to bear. They didn't ask for that. They didn't ask to be born. I've just interested in the process of a parent letting go and in the case of in the book, trusting that the other parent is trustworthy and it's got it. And I'm really lucky that that's my situation. So your previous novel, I love you but I've chosen darkness, starts with this postpartum questionnaire. And it's a multiple choice questionnaire. I want to read some of the questions.

15:33One, since my baby was born, I've been able to laugh and see the funny side of things. A, as much as I ever did, B, not quite as much now, C, not so much now, D, not at all. Two, I have looked forward with enjoyment to things. A, as much as I ever did, B, not quite as much now, C, not so much now, D, not at all. And so on. And so Rose comes up with answers in essay form to all of these like ABCD, multiple choice answers. She counters it with her own real answers. So did you have to take a survey like that? I did, question here. Yeah. That was the first piece of writing that I did that became that book. I love you, but I've chosen darkness. When my daughter was born, I took this questionnaire and I found the language just very confusing and baffling and funny, accidentally funny, unintentionally funny, I thought. So yeah, then I thought, well, this should be an essay test.

16:33And then I started writing these little essays in response to the questionnaire. My doctor's definitely described me as having postpartum depression and I, you know, I followed their advice accordingly, but I don't really think that's exactly what was happening. I think I was having a kind of an existential crisis. I think it was like a spiritual confrontation with myself. Something had this child and doing something really like heroic. A lot of the other stuff that I was doing in my life sort of suddenly seemed really meaningless. Can you say more about what this was about, this existential crisis? I was a really ambitious young person and I was striving a lot to do everything in the right way and in the right order. Like I was a straight-A student. I did really well in school. It helped me get out of my kind of crazy family scene.

17:38And I was kind of in a survival mode, I think, looking back on it, you know, using like my education and eventually in my profession, like as a university professor, to get safe and even using intimate relationships as a way of getting safe. And then all of that was kind of culminated in having this child. And I think I was telling myself a type of, I don't know, almost like a messianic story where like once I arrive at this place and I'm middle class and I have a husband and a child, all will be good. And it wasn't. I was still myself and I still had like deeper stuff that I needed to confront that couldn't, you know, solution wasn't outside in like external validation or money or prizes or prestigious jobs. It had to like come within. So when she was born, that was really the beginning of me starting to like dig in deep

18:40with myself. And I think the way Mary Oliver phrases it is like live your one precious life. I want to ask you about your father because he joined the Charles Manson family. And for people who don't know Charles Manson, why don't you describe Manson? Most people would probably describe him as the leader of a cult, a cult of young hippies who were as Joan Didian says participating in the paranoia of their times and eventually spectacularly so culminated in these murders in Los Angeles in 1969. And my dad was a teenager. For him in the beginning, the family was all about music and sex and drugs and he'd come from a pretty gnarly household and I think your father. Yeah. And Manson too. Not incidentally. Yeah.

19:41So yeah, Manson was a lot older than most of them. A lot of them were young women. A lot of them had been like given to Manson as children. So it was a really exploitative scene. It sounds like what I would say to people if they're not familiar with him, he became this like boogie man. Joan Didian described it the day of the Manson murders as the day the 60s ended. And it became this fable, this allegory about how like the countercultural impulse was dangerous and could only lead to murder and mayhem. And it scared a lot of people off of the kind of thing that the hippies were up to and they gave their enemies a lot of ammunition. Well, Manson used the whole like free love, sex drugs and rock and roll kind of thing to totally exploit women, young girls, teenagers who just come to California who'd maybe run

20:45away from home, who had no direction. And so your father became his procure. He was the one who found the teenage girls and brought them into the Manson cult. And I think it's fair to call it a cult. And I should say your father was not involved with the murders. He wasn't even in town. Yeah, he was out in Death Valley. So that's kind of where the mythic presence of the desert in our family, it was almost as if the desert saved him from being involved. And Manson was the one who first sent him out to the desert to find a hole for them to wait out, help their sculptor in. Do you know how your father ended up being Manson's procure of teenage girls? Well the way my mom told it was because he was very good looking and he was young. He was young enough to enroll. He enrolled in Pacific Palisades High School briefly to meet women. It sounds like in my dad's book he writes about, and it's a tricky thing because it's a

21:47co-written book. I don't know how much of this is actually him and he's not around for me to ask, you know. But he writes about it as being just like a wonderful time for a kid who's like come of age and a really violent, repressive, like 1950s abusive scary house. Your father turned against Manson, one of the main witnesses who testified against Manson. Do you know how he decided to do that? When he wanted to leave the family at first Manson said, okay, that's fine, then he changed his mind. They were in like a power struggle for a while and they were out in Death Valley at the ranches. And eventually there was a night that he describes in his book where he opened the door of the cabin where he was staying with a couple other people who had also defected from the group. And Manson was like squatting there with a knife between his teeth. And so he thought he would be killed and he walked that night across Death Valley,

22:52basically probably around like 50 miles or so. But he fled for his life and then went to the police, went to the Injou County sheriffs and I think he was trying his best to get safe. He had heard about the murders but that point people had been kind of like gossiping or eluding to them. I think he was just like getting a very, very hard reality check and realizing that this was not the like loving paternal guru that he thought he had. What did your mother know about his involvement with the Manson family when they met and fell in love? You know my grandma met my dad first the night before. He was a bartender and she had gone out to the bar. I think she told my mom something like there's a really cute bartender out there. He was in some cult but he's really cute and you should go and like chat him up and my

23:54mom did that. And my understanding is they talked about it right away. I think everybody in town pretty much knew. But you're okay with it. Yeah, I think she understood that people make mistakes and can be lost. I mean she definitely like made her share of mistakes. I think some of this was that eventually they got involved in like 12 step recovery. You know where you part of the medicine from recovering from addiction is to be honest. So I think they had a pretty profound philosophical and spiritual tradition that was helping them navigate the complexities of what I mean, there's just being a human. I want to ask you about solitude. As you write there's a difference between solitude and being lonely. What do you like about solitude? And will you always comfortable being by yourself? Yeah, I started surfing recently so I'm like I got a lot of surfing metaphors going

24:58on. You really got to kind of try to like stay in the pocket of not becoming isolated or too lonely or mis-entropic, which is a risk for me feeling like other people are bad. Like I'm a levelant force that I want to avoid. I don't like it when I get into that way of thinking. Ideally solitude helps me be with others, but I have to be able to retreat from them. I also, you know, most of the people I do is in reading and in books. I have to remember that those aren't real people either, you know, as real as they can seem. Do you feel that one of the downsides of being with other people is comparing yourself to other people, fearing you're coming up short or feeling like you're competing with them in some way? Yeah, that's a real hazard. I mean, comparison I think is especially for an artist, I think it's pretty much useless.

26:02I try not to do it at all. I've had times in my life where I have kind of been on a comparison as a drug I'm trying to kick. Because I'm me, you know, I'm me. I really, for some reason, for me, it's Zadie Smith. I want to be like, why am I not doing what Zadie Smith is doing? And it's like, well, you're a Claire, babe. Zadie's going to Zadie and George Saunders going to George Saunders. And you just do Claire. You know, that's enough. I feel, I feel best when I can inhabit that and let everybody else just do their own thing too. It's been great to talk with you. Thank you so much. Likewise, Terry. Thanks for having me. Terry Gross speaking with Claire V. Watkins. Her new novel is Yellow Pine. The new drama, Philip Iana, follows a teenage girl who's just started working at an upscale

27:06resort in Manila. It's the first feature from Filipino writer director Raphael Manuel. And it won a special jewelry prize at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. It's now playing in select theaters and our film critic Justin Chang has this review. The few weeks or so that stretch between late August and early September. Are generally thought of as the doldrums of the movie release calendar. The summer blockbusters have come and mostly gone. And the fall Oscar contenders have yet to drop. Yet there are always new films worth seeking out, usually flying just under the radar. You might not have heard of the terrific new movie, Philip Iana, which premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. It's in theaters now and it marks the arrival of a remarkable talent. A Filipino writer and director named Raphael Manuel. In a way, Philip Iana is an ideal thing to watch in a nice cool theater at the end of a brutally

28:08hot summer. It's been a while since a movie so powerfully captured the sweltering heat of the season or established such a vivid sense of place from its opening moments. It begins on a tour bus, making its way through the crowded streets of Manila, where a local guy tries to teach the board looking passengers a few words into Gollum. Manila is in the midst of a drought. Early on, Manuel shows us weary residents lining up for water

29:13rations and then cuts to a shot of sprinklers irrigating an enormous golf course. That's a bluntly effective bit of commentary. We have arrived, along with that bus full of tourists, at an upscale resort, a lush green oasis of luxury in one of the most densely populated cities in the world. For the rest of its 100 or so minutes, Philip Iana will never leave the resort. It's a realistic, yet satirical portrait of life inside a hermetically sealed bubble. Our guide is a 17-year-old girl named Isabel, played by the intensely watchful Joribel Agoto. Isabel has just started working at the driving range as a T-girl, whose job is to tee up balls for golfers, one after another. It's a tedious, ridiculous task, one of many that keep the resort in operation. Some workers are forced to spend hours waiting in the ponds, fishing out errant golf balls.

30:15It's mostly through Isabel's sharp eyes that the movie's class critique comes into focus. We follow her as she wanders this carefully manufactured paradise, which is dotted with non-native trees that have been trucked in from afar and meticulously planted. Isabel has a rebellious streak, and she can't help breaking the rules and sampling the resort's amenities, whether she's dipping a finger in a guest's strawberry cake, taking a shower in a spa, or simply basking in a few minutes of air-conditioned bliss. Manuel also introduces us to another key character, a significantly more privileged young woman named Clara, played by Carmen Castellanos. Clara, who lives in New York, is visiting the resort with her uncle, who wants her to move back to the Philippines and help him run his golf equipment business. Her uncle insists it's her duty to support her country and fight what he calls brain drain, the flight of young Filipinos seeking better opportunities abroad.

31:19But Clara is reluctant, probably because like Isabel, she can see that people are being exploited and marginalized in the name of development and progress. Filipiniana has just a few spare dribbles of plot. From time to time we hear ominous whispers of a young girl who's gone missing on the golf course. Isabel is given a seemingly simple task, to return a stray golf club to the president of the resort that becomes a kind of quest, with a few disturbing and even devastating revelations along the way. But what distinguishes Manuel's filmmaking is how much of the story he conveys visually, through texture and atmosphere, framing and blocking. He shows us the resort from a seemingly infinite number of angles, shooting in long takes and seldom moving the camera. But the filmmaking never feels static. Every shot of Filipiniana positively turns with life. Early on, Manuel unleashes a playfully choreographed sequence worthy of the great French director Jacques

32:25Tatee, in which the resort workers perfectly synchronized movements, setting a table, stacking chairs, and cleaning a pool, are brilliantly set to music. It's a rich dose of comic fantasy that serves to underscore the situation's grim reality. Filipiniana is an impeccable piece of world-building that genuinely challenges us to imagine a better world. Justin Chang is a film critic at The New Yorker. He reviewed the new film, Filipiniana. Coming up, we hear from award-winning director Paul Greengrass. His new film, The Up Rising, tells the story of the peasants revolt of 1381. I'm Tonya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. How do products end up on Big Box Shows? Well, we have Planet Money, a pitch, the Planet Money, board game. I'm trying not to think how much of a big deal it is and how much work has gone into. It's really big. Is it helpful if I remind you how big it is?

33:26It's sort of the whole thing. We go inside the minds of the people who decide what goes on store shows. Listen to Planet Money on the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the latest code switch, 25 years after 9-11, Americans have gotten real used to being watched by the government, from doorbell cameras to AI-powered license plate readers. If you put anyone under a microscope or any community under a microscope, you're going to find reasons to harass people or to ticket them or to arrest them. Listen to code switch in the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tonya Mosley. Director Paul Greengrass makes films about the choices ordinary people make when they're trapped inside forces they cannot control. He's taken us to the streets of Dairy as British soldiers opened fire on civil rights marchers in bloody Sunday, aboard a hijacked plane on September 11th and United 93, and onto a cargo ship seized by Somali pirates and Captain Phillips.

34:29His new film The Uprising takes on a story familiar to generations of English school children. The peasants revolt of 1381. In the film, the play cut the population in half, making workers more valuable than ever, but the ruling class is determined to keep them in their place. When the government imposes a brutal tax to finance its wars, tens of thousands march on London. Andrew Garfield stars as an unnamed farmer called the Plowman. He's buried his wife and children and his deep in debt on land that no longer produces a crop. As the revolt gathers around him, his private grief becomes political rage. And in this scene, the radical priest John Ball, played by Jamie Bell, offers the Plowman a new way to understand his suffering. Death might feel as long ago. No, he has not left you. It is his plan. The plan. Why would God have a plan to cause us such a pain?

35:34In a sickness versus punishment for the crimes of the rich? Why are we suffer also? To show us the truth. And fill us with rage. Surrender to it. I'll never say you should. I saw the uprising earlier this summer. And since then, just weeks before the September 10th release, the film has taken on a surprising new frame, the rise of Robin Hood. Paul Greengrass, welcome back to Fresh Air. Oh, very nice to be here again. So Paul, I am very curious about this connection between the peasants revolt and the story that we know of Robin Hood. Tell me about it. Well, the film is about the peasants revolt, which is one of the greatest rebellions in English history in 1381 in the middle of the medieval world. And it's from that period that the legend of Robin Hood emerged. And the two are connected because both of them speak to a bitterly divided

36:40world between the rich and the poor. And one of the things that occurred, you know, Robin Hood was really just a moniker for an outlaw prior to 1381. But after the peasants revolt, that was when the ballads and the legend of Robin Hood got going and became wildly popular in medieval England because it spoke to people's desires for a better world, a fairer world against, you know, the rapacious rich. And so in the story of this simple farmer, he eventually becomes an outlaw and he becomes an outlaw at the time when the Robin Hood legend was getting going. And it got going because of the world that the peasants revolt took place in. This is a story that you grew up learning as a schoolboy. It came back up for you, though, during the pandemic. Correct. Take me to that place where you're thinking about this story coming back up for you. Well, I've been thinking for a while about doing a sort of story rooted in

37:46English history and about sort of resistance and a sort of freedom fighter type film. And so when the pandemic came and we were all locked down, it just became natural. What I wanted was to do a story about an ordinary person, or ordinary farmer, caught up in tumultuous events, events that would feel, I think, although it's set in the medieval world, would feel very familiar to an audience today because I think in many ways when you think of the turbulence in our world today, it is driven by these great inequalities and the rage that people feel about elites and all those things that wherever you are on the political spectrum, I think we recognize that that's what's going on in your country and mine and Europe and beyond, and it just seemed to me this story really spoke to that. You know, I was really struck by the fact that I mean, we lost more than a million people to COVID in this country. And these characters in this film are living that same reality.

38:50It is after losing an unimaginable amount of people to the plague. And one of the things that really struck me is how numb they seem to feel. Yep, and this was the first time that plague came to Europe. It wiped out literally half the population, literally, and the same in Europe. And so in the decades after the plague, people were left, as you say, numb and then this gathering rage at a system that seemingly privileged the rich and the powerful over the weekend, the defenseless. And the economy faltered, government didn't seem to work. And in the end, all it took was a spark. And then suddenly you had this enormous rebellion. Almost overnight, it was extraordinary. And within days, a huge army mob gathering, whatever you want to call them, tens and tens of thousands of people marching on London. And they besieged the city and they got in.

39:52And what followed was it all took place really over five or six days. And that's really the story of the film. The march on London, getting in, the mayhem, the attempts to fashion a new form of society, a fairer future, all those things, the hopes and dreams of any rebellion. That's a kind of classic movie story really and a great adventure. And certainly what I wanted to do was to, you know, not make a dry history lesson. I like my movies to entertain people. Did you write some of the songs in this? I wrote The lyrics in this. The lyrics. Yeah, The lyrics. Was this the first time that you wrote lyrics for someone or? Well, I've done a few, but it's first time in a film. Yeah, it was fun. I mean, Volker, Bertmann wrote a fantastic score. And we just, of course, it's a part of the stories, the story of the rebel march on London. And of course, people would have sang songs for sure. And they would have been probably religious songs,

40:52mixture of hymns, but also sort of simple folk songs. And also protest songs, you know, I mean, if you think of the great movements, you know, I made a film many years ago about bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland, you know, people sang songs on the way down in that march. That's what you do. It's their protest songs and it would have been no different in medieval England. So we wanted to have that feeling running through it because it's part of the hopes and dreams that lead people to march for change. You know, Paul, rewatching United 93, I mean, it really took me back to that day. And I was trying to find the right ways to articulate this to you. It made me feel innocent again. It took me to the place I felt when it happened. And when we didn't really know what this all meant. And I happened to be watching it with my 19 year old daughter. And I looked over at her at a certain

41:55point and she was just sobbing. And I saw too. And it was the first time and a long time that I've cried about September 11th. Well, it remains a great wound. I mean, it was an intense film to make. It was a great privilege to make it, I think, for all of us who took part and the relationships that we made with those families who lost family members on board. It was the most extraordinary thing. In fact, they're about to have a screening at the Gettysburg Film Festival. And I thought I can't be there because I'm here in Los Angeles, but I sent a message. And there's going to be a lot of family members there and there's some actors who took part. And what I said and believed is that those people on board that airplane, as that plane closed as it was on the Capitol building,

43:01with no military aircraft in sight to stop it, it felt a that group of people to meet the moment. And they did. And when we think of the problems and divisions I'm thinking about my country, but I'm sure it's true in your country today, 25 years later. And the difficulties we have and the divisions that's out there and the inability for us to come together as well as we all might as societies. I did think at that moment of those people facing that situation, unimaginable, they did come together. And I think that's inspiring for your country. But for all of us, I think I actually want to play clip from the film in this scene, passengers on the plane are coming to understand that the plane has been hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists and that it is probably not going to land. This is the moment when they realize this. Let's listen. I work.

44:13Hey, this is a suicide mission. We have to do something. We are not going to land this plane. They are not going to take us back to the airport. We're going to die. We're going to die. They're flying this into a building. We can't do something. There's a lot of us. We got to do something. Can you say hello we are? Is there a weapon? Is there something we can use? Go back. You go back. Stewardess. Listen to me. Are you listening? Go back and you get every weapon you can. Get whatever we can use as a weapon. That was from the film United 93 directed by my guest today Paul Greengrass. You went to the families of those on board and you conducted more than 100 interviews before you wrote a word. Yeah. What did they give you that the official record? And their detailed statements could not. I think they gave us two things. One, their

45:17encouragement and support without which we would never have made the film. And then the second thing they gave us was who the people were on the plane. An enabled the group of actors to embody those people. It remains the greatest privilege of my working life to make that film. And I'm forever in their debt. And I think we all are. They're an extraordinary group of men and women of very different opinions about their society and the world. But brought together by that common shared moment of tragedy but also of astonishing courage and achievement. I want to talk a little bit about you and growing up. You grew up in public housing and

46:21is graves. How would you describe it? I was trying to figure out what was it. No, I mean my father was at sea. He was what we would call it. Merchant Mariner. Essentially he was in the the Navy as a young, young man in the Second World War and then he went to the civilian marine fleet. My mother was a teacher. But so I would say I grew up in a seafaring family. That's what I would say. Which is a particular sort of an upbringing because it involves solitary men who are very rarely there because they're at sea and strong women who have to cope on their own, which would be my mother. And that's of course the story of a seafaring family. And for thousands of years that's the paradigm really of a seafaring family I think. How often was he gone and what it was it like when he came back? Well he was away for very long periods of time. Six months, it could be three months,

47:23it could be nine months, one time it was 18 months. And then later on he stopped the long trips and started to join it and we became pilot. That would be a day or two or three and back and you know because he was really guiding the ships in rather than taking the long trips around the world. And how old were you when that shift happened? Because I'd have been about 11 I think, something like 10 or 11. So you know quite an important time and that was that was quite interesting when he came home as it were because my mother and father had to learn to lift together. That was quite entertaining for us children. Right because your mom had the household a lot. She was doing her thing. Yeah. So that was pretty tempestious. Can I repeat something back to you that I've heard you say in an interview you said directors are made by childhood loneliness and domestic conflict and you had both. What is the connection to having that type of life and

48:25being a director? I would say that it is a strange thing to end up making films and I think it is to do with childhood loneliness. I do. I think childhood loneliness and experiences of cinema too. You know I remember as a young boy my grandmother taking me to the movies and those being very very profound experiences you know seeing snow white as a young child. I can still remember that. So I think my sense is that if your home is perhaps more conflicted perhaps and it should be in an ideal world then the movie theatre becomes a place where you can escape. And so I think later if you get to start to pursue the life of a filmmaker you're sort of drawing on those experiences those are the profound sort of emotional wellsprings that drive you to make films and one of the things you're trying to achieve I think is to try and create

49:34cinematically the intensity of the experiences that you have in front of a screen in a movie theatre when you're very very young that that would be my feeling. When did you know this was your direction that you were going to be you were going to tell stories like as I know that you had a career working traveling. I mean I think that when I was a teenager I found life quite difficult I think. You were thrown out of two schools. I was yeah. What did you do? I mean not bad things that I just was not attentive and wasn't really very interested and turned to the bit. I found living inside institutions quite hard you know I was quite rebellious I suppose but when I got a bit older I was very lucky I had an art teacher who was a very wonderful man who really showed me that using my eyes and painting and printmaking and that it was a safe space and it was a place where

50:36I could express myself and that's where I made my first film I was very young I would have known it 16 or 17. Oh what was that film about? It was really a horror film and it was only about 30 seconds long but I've shot it with a friend of mine and I just found myself transported but I wouldn't say I decided then that I'm going to make movies because you who who thinks like that at 16 or 17 and then I went to college and came out and started working in television and originally made documentaries and that really I suppose is the making on me because I kind of traveled a lot and saw a lot of the world and began to understand what the world was about a bit more but I always had a hunger to make movies it would have been a secret desire I think because it would have been a bit preposterous to have said it publicly. And as a documentary filmmaker it was a hard transition to make but I did get there in the end. Paul Greengrass thank you for this conversation. Thank you for having me. Award winning director Paul Greengrass his new film The Uprising is in

51:41theaters now. Fresh Air Weekend was produced this week by Susan Nyakundi. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer this week is Adam Stanishevsky. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorock, Enmari Baldenado, Lauren Crenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Faye Chaliner, Anna Balman and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. With Terry Gross I'm Tanya Mosley. Looking for love? One New York event promises to find you your perfect match using Palantir, though not affiliated with the actual software company. They could sue me. I could lose everything but it would all be worth it. It's at least two people

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