Remembering actor Robert Duvall & filmmaker Frederick Wiseman

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This is Fresh Air. I'm David Beancooly.

Robert DeVal, the Oscar-winning actor whose roles in both blockbuster movies and

small independent films were equally powerful and memorable,

died Sunday. He was 95 years old.

Born in San Diego in 1931, DeVal studied acting in New York City

alongside such other future stars as Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, and James Conn.

DeVal was performing at Long Island's Gateway Playhouse

when screenwriter Horton Foot saw him and recommended him for a part in the movie Foot

was adapting. The movie was to kill a mockingbird,

and Robert DeVal was indeed casting his first screen role

as the silent but haunting Boo Radley.

DeVal was 31 years old, but never stopped working afterward in film and TV.

His last two credits were in 2022, six decades later.

DeVal's contributions to film were constant and indelible.

The characters he played were passionate, intense, and often combative.

Tom Hagen, the consigliary and the godfather, earned DeVal his first Oscar nomination.

The role of the Napalm Loving Lieutenant Colonel in Apocalypse Now, earned him his second.

Eventually, DeVal won a Best Actor Academy Award for playing a country singer in tender mercies.

But whether or not his role's garnered nominations or awards,

they certainly made their mark with audiences.

He played the uptight Dr. Frank Burns in Robert Altman's original movie version of Mash.

The ruthless TV executive in Patty Chaefsky's network, a cynical sports writer in the natural

opposite Robert Redford, and the abusive father in the great Santini.

On television, DeVal played Gus McCray, the charming Texas Marshall in the CBS miniseries Lonesome Dove.

In the 60s and early 70s, he clocked a lot of episodic TV, including episodes of the Twilight

Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Outer Limits, and even The Wild Wild West and Modsgod.

Today, we're going to remember Robert DuVal with two conversations, one with Terry Gross,

the other with Dave Davies. Terry Gross spoke with Robert DuVal in 1996.

So your father was in the military in the Navy, I believe?

Yes, he was. He was an admiral.

Well, he retired as a rear admiral. His active rank was capped and he went to the

Naval Academy when he was 16 years old and graduated the class of 1924. He came off a farm in Virginia

and went to one of those one-room country schools down in the woods and then

graduated. He went to high school when he was 11 and he went to the Naval, waited a year

and went to the Naval Academy when he was 16. So it was all, he was a career naval officer.

He was 39 during the war, the youngest captain in the Navy. He was in destroyers and so forth,

but he was a career naval officer. I bet your father didn't want anyone to think that he was

the character in the great Santini. Well, he is not well kind of it. Actually, my father was a lot

quieter than that. So that character was a little more boisterous. And there was some,

let me put it this way, in the book The Great Santini, it said there's an imperceptible passing

of the mantle of the husband to the wife, of the wife to the husband when the husband comes off

of duty and is at home for a while when he takes over the family. There was no transference in my

family. My mother ran it at all times. Oh, really? Yeah, she did. Robert DeValle is my guest. It's

interesting, you know, the Cutfather films are such like operatic movies with, you know, people

playing gangsters who are given to grand displays of emotion and violence and you're the one in the

movie, the legal advisor, his job is to advise to be discreet, to tone everything down. So in a way,

you're playing a very opposite type of personality than all the other personalities in the film.

Yeah, well, it was a pretty interesting character in that he was an adopted son plus

this legal advisor. So therefore as an actor and as the character, you really can't cross the line.

It's your kind of an outsider, but yet you're not an outsider. I really enjoyed the part.

I mean, those first two Godfathers, that's about as good as you can get filmmaking wise, I think.

I agree. Francis was at top form, although as you say, maybe a touch they romanticized the

organized crime to a point, but it was such a good filmmaking. You can excuse that.

Do you have any favorite scenes in the Godfather films? Well, there were a lot of my light, you know,

I mean, the one with Michael Gazo and Godfather, the two where I have to tell him he has to,

slid his wrists, that scene, and the scene where I had to tell Brando that Sonny died and Godfather

one that was nice. And the other scenes I liked a lot too, but those those kind of come to mind

very quickly. My wife is crying upstairs. I hear cars coming to the house.

I think you should tell your dad what everyone sings to know. I didn't tell him all my anything.

And I was about to come up and wake you just now, I'll tell you.

What's your name to the drink first?

Yeah.

Now you've had the drink.

They shot Sonny on the causeway. He's dead.

They worked with Francis Ford Coppola again on Apocalypse now.

Right. Right.

And in Apocalypse now, you were a Colonel Kilgore famous for the line.

I fell out of the smell of Napalm in the morning. He's at the one.

That smells like victory, yeah. Yeah, that was a wonderful line. People come up to me and

quote it to me as and say it like it's such an in thing between just me and them.

And like it's like they're the only ones that ever thought of it.

But that happens with everybody the same way.

Did you get the script and say, well, first of all, was that line in the script?

Or is that something that you know?

Yeah, no, that was in there. I think the part was offered to somebody else and they turned it down.

And I said to Francis, I know that the part's written for a bigger guy,

real tall, big guy rug. But you know, I'll just say once I think maybe I could do the part and

I put in my my plea and he gave it to me. So it was enjoyable. It was a lovely part.

And I enjoyed playing it very much.

I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.

You know what time we had a hill, Bob?

For 12 hours, when it was all over, I walked up.

We didn't find one of them, not one stinking body.

Smell, you know, that gasoline smell, all hell.

Smell like victory.

So when you saw the line in the film, I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.

Did you say to yourself, a classic line?

People will be repeating this bad thing.

No, I didn't think of that. I didn't think that I didn't think of it that way.

I wasn't sure, you know, sometimes you're not so aware of that.

Although you like lines like that.

Did you do a lot of different line readings on that?

I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.

The one that was most predominant.

There was Jimmy Keen, a friend of mine who played a small part in that from Buffalo.

I made him call him Mr. DeVal for a year because that was a relationship in the movie.

But we're all on a first name basis.

But he's saying, how do you do this? He was watching me.

And he did great imitation. We're always doing imitation.

So the final dress rehearsal before we filmed like, we're always doing brando imitation.

So I said, I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.

I paused and I said, smells like victory.

My brando, and he couldn't believe that would do that.

So then he began doing brando imitation.

So then when brando won at $100,000 to do six lines of the censured stuff,

for the censored version of the TV version of the Godfather,

and they wouldn't pay him.

They got Jimmy Keen from Buffalo for $200 to do brando.

Of course.

Yeah.

So those imitation started in the Philippines and Jimmy got,

because of those imitation blossomed into the guy that would do the censored version for brando.

Hey, they could have saved a lot of trouble with brando and apocalypse now, I guess.

I suppose. Yeah.

Well, Jimmy was the guy that was there that told me all these wild stories after I left.

See, I did the second half of my part first and then six months later came back into the first half.

It was strange the way I had to go do another job because they got so bogged down with

weather and with different actors and approaches and so forth.

It took a long time to complete that film.

It must have been really different working with Coppola on the Godfather movies

and working with them on apocalypse now.

Yeah. Well, you see, I had worked with Francis in the rain people as I had said.

And that was in the late six months.

Kind of a moody guy and I didn't quite get a handle on Francis.

But then I gained a tremendous amount of respect for him because on Godfather one,

we started out saying, okay, Francis again, he's not saying much.

A little moody, you know, the way he sees it, he's a real.

He never comes, I want to write books on what they call the Russians are great because everybody

protects everybody by saying the Russians are great.

Francis, one of the only guys that comes out of the cutting room with a long face and maybe

that's why he's so good in that he doesn't, he's always thrilled, you know.

But I gained a lot of respect for him because in Godfather one, physically,

they had an understudy director following him around in case he failed to fire him and take over.

And he worked under that pressure, I don't know how you would do that with a guy physically

like over your shoulder in case we, and I think the first AD was the best friend of that would be

hopeful director. That was, that's quite a lousy thing to do to a director and I,

and I gained a lot of respect for Francis for working under that pressure.

When you were young, Brando was one of your heroes, right?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, he was quite a phenom, I mean, there were others too, but he,

and then you grow away from somebody's influence and find your own way.

So what was it like to work with him when he was much older? He'd physically changed.

It wasn't, I think, a particularly good period for him.

Well, no, the Godfather, he was very young.

In Godfather, yeah. Right, right, right.

And when I first worked with him in the, well, apocalypse, yeah, I didn't really,

I wasn't really there when he worked. Right.

I worked with him first in the chase way back and you know, the first day called me into his

dressing room when we talked about the part. I was like, oh, my wife is going to be great.

We're going to be like brother, very important. He never spoke to me again for eight weeks.

I couldn't, I wouldn't quite use to that lifestyle or somebody not speaking to you at the

beginning of a day, but that's the way he is, I guess. But no, I was, I was respectful and admired

him and enjoyed working with him and as I say in the apocalypse now that he came into the jungle

with his baby blue and say, he's driving down the jungle. You know, after I had left and then

when I came back, he'd finished, you know. So tell me, when you were young and getting

started in acting, what were your expectations? What did you think would come of your career?

Well, you know, maybe I was innocent and maybe innocence, not the same as naive.

Maybe it is. I always felt that somehow I would fit in. I went to New York feeling I would be a

stage actor. I didn't think a lot about movies. I thought about them, but I wasn't sure.

I just figured I was going to work. I didn't know how, but I figured it would happen.

And when I got one of the worst reviews anybody could ever get, I went back to Virginia for a while

and then I came back again. My friend Ullogross part, then we had done a view from the bridge and

we did it again off Broadway and it was a wonderful production with John Void, Dusty Hoffman,

assistant stage manager, Susan Nonsbach, Ray B. Erie. You know, it was a wonderful production.

That helped launch my, get it more into film and TV, you know.

So if you don't mind my asking, what did that terrible review say about you?

I'm going to tell you exactly what it said.

A history of memories. It said, Shaw has invented some impossible young men in his plays,

but never won so revolting as a romantic young interest in this one.

And the character is made even less palatable by Robert Duval,

whose spine tends toward a figure S, whose diction is flannel coated,

and whose sympering expressions are moronic. Now that's a pretty bad review.

Yeah. And the other paper likened me to a little rachi, so I had to get off the bus.

Liberacci? Yeah, I had to get off the bus. I was physically ill.

What was the connection to Liberacci?

I don't know. Maybe I played him a little of feet or I don't know what it was.

It was a guy from the active studio. I don't know. He had his lying down doing sense memory

before we were doing George Bernard Shaw. I said we should be telling jokes not lying on the floor

for sense memory. It was the whole approach was wrong. It was a disaster, but you know,

at least it was an experience at least. Well, Robert Duval, I want to thank you so much

for talking with us. Well, thank you. I enjoyed it. Robert Duval, speaking to Terry Gross in 1996.

In 2010, Robert Duval visited Fresh Air again, this time to be interviewed by Dave Davies,

who asked about his immersive acting technique. You know, I read a fair amount about you,

and people talk about your ability to completely disappear into a character that you,

I forget which director said it's almost eerie that Robert Duval becomes that character.

And then I've also read you say, no, it's work. I mean, you prepare and you

you bring some of yourself to it. You never leave yourself. You don't transform. And at that moment,

if you do you're in trouble. Okay. Yeah, you do. It's like play acting. Kids play house, right?

And here we play houses growing up. So we get paid good money to play house. So it's a game,

really. It's a game of, you know, it's a game. I mean, you can become the character, but it's

really you turning yourself in a certain way as if you become the character. But you cannot

lose sight of who and what you are. You have one set of emotions, one psyche, one,

one soul, and you can't, you don't become another thing. It's all those things turned

to what seems to be something different. You did so many memorable supporting roles earlier

in your career in the 70s. In fact, I read in a piece of the New York Times that one problem you

had was audiences didn't always recognize you from one movie to the next because you disappeared

so effectively into those roles. One of them, of course, was the consiglier Tom Hagen in the

Godfather roles. Right. Did you realize that these were going to be such iconic films as you

were making them? Absolutely. I mean, well, I mean, a third of the way through, I said, Godfather

One, I said, this is going to be pretty important. And I can remember when the film was finished and we

had had an opening night party, I think it was at the St. Regis Hotel. And there was a wonderful buzz

and a wonderful feeling about around the whole film of Godfather One. And I remember, I won't

mention names, a well-known film director came up and said, you boys did a wonderful job in this

movie. I want to congratulate you. He said, I don't know about the movie. He said, but this guy

never made a movie that good ever. I won't mention names. Okay. So anyway, but there was always that

feeling that, wow, and then Godfather Two, it went in. Well, Godfather Two, we didn't have Jimmy

Con on the set, so it wasn't as much fun. Well, then, of course, there was apocalypse now.

And with Copa again, right, right. And your portrayal of Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore,

initially the characters called Colonel Carnage, no kidding. But they had to water it down a little

bit. That was a little bit too much. A little too obvious. Yeah. Just tell us a little bit about you

getting into the head of somebody who would love that gasoline smell and bodies burned so badly

you couldn't find him. Yeah, well, you just have to just go and do it. I was in the army as a

draftee. And I used to, they didn't know I'd ever play a guy like that. But I mean, out of curiosity,

I used to just watch some of the special service officers and the way they behaved, the way they

stood. And when I got over there, they had the character as Carnage and they changed it to Kilgore,

and they had him in a cowboy hat and boots. And some of the Marines and so forth, the more hard

core military said, well, this didn't go on. Well, it did go on because I understood that the head,

the head general of the of the air cavalry used to deer hunt on his own along the Cambodia border

on Friday nights. And his helicopter was shot down and he was killed. These guys did crazy things.

He was deer hunting from the helicopter? Yeah, from the helicopter. And I was told that by

by a gentleman who had served, you know, with the air cavalry. I mean, I guess guys, you know,

you have to have hobbies to break up the monotony. So like, you know, people have hobbies. I suppose

he'd been in wartime, you know. Your character's hobby here was surfing. Yes. Was that in the script?

Did you, did you come out? Yeah, that, no, that was all those things were in the script. Yeah, very

much so. Well, I want to talk about tender mercies, the 1983 film for which you won the Oscar for

Best Actor. Yes. In this one, you were a Max Ledge, right? A once popular country singer whose

career had dissolved in alcoholism finds himself in a little Texas highway motel where the

where the widow who runs it kind of takes care of him and he puts his life back together.

Yes. And I thought we'd listen to a clip here and this is late in the film where you have as

Max Ledge have heard that your daughter has died in a car accident. A daughter you had just

reconciled with after many years apart. And in the scene, you're hoeing in the vegetable garden

and your wife who's played by Tess Harper comes up and asks if you're okay and here is how you respond.

I was almost killed once in the car accident. I was drunk and I ran outside the road and I turned

over four times and it took me out of that car for dead but I lived. And I prayed last night to know why

I lived and she died but I got no answer to my prayers. I still don't know why she died and I lived.

I don't know the answer to nothing but a blessing thing.

I don't know why I wondered after this part of Texas drunk and you took me in and pitted me and

helped me to straighten out, married me. Why did that happen? Is there a reason that happened?

In sunny day, they died in the war.

My daughter killed her automobile accident. Why?

You see, I don't trust happens. I never did. I never did.

And that's our guest, Robert DuVolf of the 1983 film, Tender Mercies.

You know, as I hear that again, it's such a powerful moment and this man feeling such pain,

it's so intense, never raises his voice. Talk a little bit about him and this character.

Yeah, well, this scene in particular, I remember that. I said, look, I would rather not loop this.

Let's get the sound right because you're outside. So they put trucks around to

and we didn't have to loop it. But when you say loop it, you mean like providing an ambient kind of

sound. No, well, you add your voice to your voice to make it clear at the end in post-production.

Oh, I see. You dub it, so to speak. And I didn't want to do that. And they home back with a

camera and didn't come in close-ups because sometimes close-ups, it spells it out too literally.

And they left the camera rolling in a kind of work for me.

Robert DuVolf speaking to Dave Davies in 2010. The Oscar-winning actor died Sunday at age 95.

After a break, we'll continue their conversation and we'll also remember documentary filmmaker

Frederick Weisman who died Monday at age 96. I'm David being coolly and this is Freshee.

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wherever books are sold. This is fresh air. I'm TV critic David being coolly. And as TV critic,

I'm thrilled that this portion of Dave Davies' interview with Robert Duval, who died Sunday at age 95,

is devoted to the 1989 CBS Western miniseries Lonesome Dove. Based on the Larry McMurtry novel,

Lonesome Dove was and remains one of the best miniseries ever made. And though Duval didn't win

the Emmy Award for which he was nominated that year, his performance was one of the best he ever

gave in television or film. He plays Augustus Gus McCray, who, like his best friend Captain Woodrow

Call, is a former Texas Ranger. Woodrow is played by Tommy Lee Jones and the two men are very

different. Duval's Gus loves life and shows his emotions. Woodrow doesn't. In this scene from

Lonesome Dove, Woodrow comes upon Gus, who's weeping over a lost love. Their conversation turns

to prostitutes, and to one with whom Woodrow apparently has fathered his son.

We were good friends. I don't know about friends. I'm sure you was a good customer, though.

Well, the two can't overlap, you know. You're the one that didn't know about overlapping with

hoarsering. You know what hurt her most? You wouldn't call her by name. You never would say

Maggie. That's what hurt her most. I don't know what it amounted to if it had. It wouldn't

have made her happy. What are you talking about? She's a hoar. Well, hoars got hearts Woodrow,

and Maggie's was the most tender I ever saw. Well, why didn't you marry her then? She didn't love

me. She loved you. You shouldn't have seen how she sat in that saloon every day,

watching the door after you put coming around. I reckon the man has got more to do than to

sat in a saloon that I wore. Like what? Go down the river every night and clean his gun.

Maggie needed you. You let her down. You know it too, don't you? No. I don't know anything of the

dang con. That's why you won't claim that boy is your own, because he's a reminder. See,

a living reminder that you failed somebody, and you ain't never going to be up to it in that.

Now are you? Like I said, Maggie was just a hoar. Well, I got Woodrow. At least you find

it called her by name. I guess that shows some improvement. Now, don't it?

And that's my guest, Robert, devolved with Tommy Lee Jones in the series Lonesome Dove.

You know, you guys are both you mount and ride horses as you're having that conversation.

You're both horsemen, right? Yes, sir. Back then I was really

I rode everything back then, jumping horses, English saddle, western saddle,

yet, especially to get ready for the part. Yeah. Did you know Tommy Lee Jones had you worked with

him before? No, I met Tommy Lee when we were going to do that. I went to his ranch down there in

San Sabah. We talked. We heard it cattle in Argentine polo, saddles we went out, and I got to know

him. I haven't seen him too much since because he lives way down there. And it was a good

experience working with him and all the women. It was a wonderful experience. Wonderful.

My ex-wife who lives there in Philadelphia, Gail, she was the one who told me to read this book.

She liked it better than Dostoevsky. A great, great novel and that make sure that they gave me the

part of Augustus, not the other part, which they were going to give me the other part, but we

talked and arranged it so that I could play Augustus, you know. So if she's listening to the show,

I want to thank her for that. And Augustus fits you better. Why? I don't know, just,

you know, because I played those more covered guys before, but you know, this was a more

but muted guy, but with the more outgoing guy Augustus and suited a certain side of my

personality, maybe it's much or more than the other part really. James Garner was, they offered

him into part. I said to my agent, he handled us both. If you can get him to switch parts,

I'll be in this and I don't want to play the other part so that he called back a few hours later

and said, well, James Garner can't be on a horse for 16 weeks. I said, okay, now go after that

part and he didn't. So he got me that part. So I really, really loved it. I really did.

My favorite probably. Yeah. This is a film about a cattle drive and I don't know if you used

stuntmen at all. I mean, I guess you and Tommy Lee did not, right? Well, only the only kind of

use a stuntman when I had to ride down among the buffalo, which was a little hairy, but I did

most all my own riding. And my horse got a little iffy so they put me on a ranch horse. A local

ranch horse was which were good and more and more sound, so to speak, and well broke. But then

that was working great until the pistols went off and then this horse started bucking and I stayed

on for about four or five seconds and then I bailed or he helped me bail and the cowboys were laughing.

I was like, give me a 75 when I ride it when they were whole laughing and I said to the director,

you know, get a cut away me on the ground getting back on. So they were able to use it when the horse

actually bucked and I came off. So they really used it. But, you know, I did all my own riding. I

took the horse to the ground when I used to had to slid his throat and use him as a shield and the

stuntman, Rudy Euglin told me showed me how to do that. So I was glad that I could do my own riding,

you know, it's because it was, you know, that's because they were only horses and no cars way back.

Yeah, you know, that really was one of many moments that I remember from that series. You're

being chased by a bunch of guys. Right. But seven or eight guys, you're not going to outrun them.

You quickly dismount, cut your horses throat, drop him so that he forms a shield and you fight

these guys. It's amazing. Yeah, Rudy and those guys showed me how to drop him because he was a

falling horse by training. Robert Duval speaking to Dave Davies in 2010. More after a break, this is

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This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to Dave Davies and his 2010 interview with actor and director

Robert Duval. He died Monday at the age of 95. You wrote and directed the film The Apostle

in 1997, a story of a financial decoder. The thing that gets forgotten but that's so hard to pull

off. This is the story of a Pentecostal preacher that you play. A flawed man who faces a crisis in

his life when his wife finds another man and he is ousted from the church that he's the preacher.

Tell us where this came from. What was your experience with Pentecostal Christians?

I was doing an off Broadway play called The Dees Nice of BB Fence to make a wonderful play by

William Hartwell Snyder that just was terrific. I played a guy from Hughes, Arkansas, so I was

flying back from California to New York and I got off the plane in Memphis and I said let me

go to Hughes just to see what it's like. Not that you have to do that to be an actor but I decided.

So I went back and there was no place to stay. The highway guys built in the highway from Louisiana

to let me bunk in with them. I walked down the street at night to share of gay me dirty looks.

It was strange but there was a little white clapboard church I went into and I'd never been to

something like there was a woman preaching. A woman preaching a Pentecostal preacher and I

said I've never seen anything like this even in my own country. I want to put this on film someday.

So it took me many many many years to get it off the ground and finally I did when my wife

came up I finally got to go ahead to do it and I did resume my research that I did all over

America and she said Bobby you think will ever go to any white churches because I love the black

preachers they're like surrogate fathers for their community and it was a it was a great great

experience. Right right and of course this isn't just about Pentecostal culture it's about a

truly fascinating character I mean your guy yes I pitched it together for many many many stories.

Yeah yeah I think it's a tribute to the film that I watch this again over the weekend and I

still can't tell whether I like this guy or not. Oh I like him okay because let me put it this way

what he did by killing a guy just out of the moment is not half as bad one Iota as bad as

King David who wrote the Psalms who sent a man off to die by design so he could be with that guy's

wife that's what David did but my guy just did it so my guy was this bad as some people you know

I mean these guys a lot of them start out and some of them end up charlatans on TV but I think

even if he had his moves and he's whatever at the core of his being he really believed in what he

believed in I think so it was a labor of love but you know something I mean I heard Billy Graham

liked it and I got a wonderful letter from Marlon Brando he liked it respected it so I got it

from the secular and the religious. I was going to ask you how evangelicals reacted to it yeah

they liked it. Well some didn't like it I think but but you know I mean I talk with Pat Robertson

we just thought it was right on the money just was terrific you know and most people you know

I get letters from people my father was a Pentecostal patient my uncle was and you got it exactly

right so I feel you know right and there's always somebody you know like people some people

didn't like the Godfather come on you know great great movie so. Well Robert DeVal has been

fun thanks so much for speaking with us. Well thank you for a wonderful interview a wonderful job

thank you. Robert DeVal recorded in 2010 he died Sunday at age 95. Here he is singing a song from

the film Crazy Heart. Nobody here will ever find me I'll always be around just like the songs

I'll leave behind me I'm gonna live forever now your fathers and your mothers be good to one

another please try to raise your children right don't let the doctors take them don't make them

feel forsaken just lead them safely to the light and when this old world has blown us under

and all the stars fall from the sky just remember someone really loves you we'll live together forever

both you and I I'm gonna live forever I'm gonna cross that river I'm gonna live forever now

coming up we remember documentary filmmaker Friedrich Weissman this is Fresh Air

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money on prescriptions go to goodrx.com slash fresh this is fresh air Friedrich Weissman the

documentary filmmaker whose approach was to choose a subject and capture it at great revealing

length died Monday at age 96 a law school graduate who was studying at the sore bone when he picked up

a movie camera wiseman became excited by the possibilities of the new less cumbersome recording

equipment to capture sound and images from actual settings and events his first documentary was

1967's titty-cut follies filmed inside a Massachusetts institution for the criminally insane

he edited the vast amount of footage into a harrowing story told without narration or any

talking heads just capturing the action and the people and letting the drama and morals reveal

themselves. New York Times film critic A.O. Scott once wrote Walt Whitman wrote that the United

States themselves are essentially the greatest poem and in a Whitmanian temper I would argue that

Friedrich Weissman is the greatest American poet some of Weissman's films were the length of

TV miniseries and many were shown on PBS his films included Central Park juvenile court high school

and hospital which though made in 1970 has scenes of operating room intensity and patient care

humanity to rival anything on the pit here's a nurse calling a pair of colleagues to try to find

a bed for a young boy she's willing to claim he has an illness any illness if that'll help her

conversation isn't staged it's just captured what what I want is a bed well for really nothing

I mean there's no disease but I need a bed and I was hoping you'd actually wait could think

something yeah I could get one back a bed for a little boy doesn't have any place to go I'll

give him anything you want what do you want to have Terry Gross spoke to Friedrich Weissman in 1986

what have most of your films been about institutions why have they been about institutions

well because after I made Titicate follows which is a film about a prison for the criminally insane

um we're in the course of making that I realized what you could do for a prison for the criminally

insane you could do for other places namely make a film about them and it seemed to me that this

was relatively unexplored territory in film terms because not all but many documentary films up to

that point would pick one charming person a prize fighter a movie producer a movie star or somebody

with an eccentric personality and make them the focus of the film and I thought it'd be more

interesting to try and do a series of films where the place was the star and where the film would be

an impressionistic and perhaps novelistic account of what the place was like with and not following

anyone individual do you have a point of view about the place when you go in and start shooting

yeah I always have a point of view but invariably that point of view changes as a consequence of

learning something because most of the time my point of view is is based on very little knowledge or

experience or I certainly frequently is the case the most extreme example I can give you to illustrate

that is my attitude say about the police before I made law and order because the film was shot in

the fall of 1968 in Kansas City and it was shot right after the democratic convention and the

police riots on the streets of Chicago so that it was the trendy view at that time not only because

of what happened in Chicago but elsewhere that the police were all pigs well you're right around

on the police cars for approximately 15 seconds and you realize that the figure is in no way

restricted to the police because you see what people do to each other that make it necessary to

have police in the first place which is not any is not to excuse police brutality when it does

exist but what it is to do is not isolated from other forms of human brutality which make it

necessary to have police to respond to and protect other people from was the most simplistic way

of looking at things that there are good guys and bad guys on both sides of the fence

do you find that a lot when you go into a place that there aren't obvious good guys and bad guys

and that good and bad is a lot more ambiguous yeah well I mean ambiguity and ambivalence rules

the day because you know I mean just like in our own experience or the way we act ourselves

I sometimes wonder why people or why the people at the top of an institution institution would

let you film them because sometimes the people really don't end up looking very good and

you never know how you're going to come off if there's someone with a camera and a microphone

recording everything that you do well as someone as the fellow one said beauties in the eye of a

holder and I've made I've now made 18 films in this style and I've only in three of those situations

have the people giving me permission not like the film and each of those situations they've only

turned against the film not when they first saw it because when they first saw it they liked it

but only when they didn't like the way they they or some of the people in the film were

characterized in reviews which were those three primate high school and dedicated fathers

and those are the most controversial ones that you did too well I mean they're controversial

or because in part at least because the people that were in them originally liked them and then

subsequently were put on the defensive by what was written about the films not by their initial

response you became a filmmaker when you were in your 30s your first career was as a lawyer it's

always a hard decision I think for anybody who's already started one career to to change into another

especially into one as financially risky as as documentary filmmaking what did you want to enter

into that well I didn't like being a lawyer I taught law and I just simply didn't like it

and I was bored and I guess I reached the witching age of 30 and figured I better do something

I liked and I had been fiddling around making eight millimeter movies for a long time and I was

interested in and what do you like about documentary movies you didn't want to go to Hollywood

and she Hollywood feature films no well I'm interested in feature film but not the kind that

gets turned out by the studios but it just seems to me there was a whole great interesting world

out there that hadn't been explored in film terms I mean and and with all the documentary movies

that have been made by everybody that makes documentary movies America is still a relatively

unexplored country from the point of view of documentary film and one of the things it's

exciting about is the fact if you're lucky and hang around long enough you're going to stumble

across situations that are funnier more dramatic more tragic sadder than almost anything except

really great works of literature and it's not you that have invented them you just been lucky enough

to be a witness to them and be able to record them on film and include them in a film but

it's an opportunity I mean in one sense it's novelistic in another sense it's a form of natural

history there were many when you were starting in the mid 60s or so a documentary filmmaking had

I think just turned the corner there was cinema verite there were a lot of documentary filmmakers

were inventing a whole philosophy and style in in approaching their subjects what were some of the

theories of that period that excited you and what were some of the ones that you rejected and

thought were we're really baloney and I mean I think the whole notion of cinema verite is a

baloney notion I mean it's just to use it I mean it's a French term like that I mean the

the notion that documentary film represents truth rather than one person's view of a matter I mean

or which gets tied in with a whole idea that this such thing is objectivity I mean it's again

strikes me as obvious nonsense but a lot of people cling to that and there's also a certain amount

of pretension among some documentary filmmakers who I think see the real subject of their film

as themselves frequently the documentary filmmaker will be a character in the film or there be

lots of shots of the documentary filmmaker in a mirror just to remind the audience that this

isn't really true but it's it's a movie and the way to demonstrate that is if the audience didn't

know they were watching a movie so I guess I'm part responding to that and it seemed to me what was

interesting was to explore not not to pick one's naval but to see what was out there and that's

quite interesting to say the least none of the movies of yours that I've seen have any narration

in it or any interview with it in a lot of documentary films the filmmaker will be off camera but

will be asking questions to the to the person who is the subject of the movie or the subject of

that scene and the person will then be like discussing what they're doing or discussing their

life or whatever in response to those off camera questions why have you decided to like not

other have narration or interview in your movies well I guess you know it comes down to something

as simple as I don't like to be told what to think and I think when this kind of documentary

technique works or your photograph in recording unstage events it works because or at least in

part because you're placing the audience in the middle of these events and asking them to think

through their own relationship to what they're seeing and hearing so that the editing of the film

and by the editing I mean what the structure of the final film represents my point of view

toward the material and that's the substitute for narration the order in which I present the

sequences and the pacing of the sequences is is the way I express my attitude now that is

related to both traditional storytelling fiction film terms and it's also related to the way

a story gets told in a novel because you don't I mean a novel you really like you don't demand

that the novelist summarizes attitude toward the characters in an introductory chapter I mean

a trollop is a great writer but we sort of laugh now at his side where he tells us I mean he steps

out of the role of the omniscient narrator of the novel and sort of intrudes his own presence

well that what I try to do is express my point of view indirectly through structure

and but leave enough room in the material so that the audience can respond

on the basis of their own values but yet if they want to think about what my attitude is they

can figure it out by saying by thinking about what sequences I've included and the order in which

I've included them. I'm trying to think about your position of not discuss and what your

intentions are with movies or what you finally think of the subject of of your films and I guess

part of me is a little uncomfortable with that because I always feel like your opinion is there

and it's up to us to crack the code. Well I don't think it's so difficult. I don't think it's so I

mean I don't I don't mean the mystery. Then why wouldn't you want to just say it? Well because I

think it trivializes the subject and because I think if I've made the film correctly

it the final film isn't an expression of a complex attitude toward a complex subject

and to the extent that I say well welfare centers run poorly or the administrators are poorly trained

or the clients are all psychological or biological basket cases well that's demeaning. It's

demeaning to both the administrators and demeaning to the clients because the problems of each

of them are are unique, complicated and and manifold so to speak and if the movie just even

begins to suggest that it will have accomplished one of its purposes where

and I think another part of it is that I don't want to set my there's a certain temptation which

I try to resist to set myself and I think it's one that any documentary filmmaker has or any

journalist has or any radio person interviewing on a radio program has to and that is the setting

yourself up as an instant expert on a subject about which you may not know all that much but

where sometimes the occasion may demand that you assert yourself with an authority that your

your information or your background on the subject doesn't warrant so that I'm very hesitant about

say generalizing about police or the health service delivery systems or welfare or whatever

because to the extent that I understand it what my understanding is is in the film to the extent

that I don't understand it or the film has failed will be readily apparent to someone who has a

greater understanding about it than I do. Okay I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

Well I enjoyed it. Thank you. Frederick Wiseman recorded in 1986. The documentary filmmaker whose

films included Titicut Follies, Hospital and Central Park died Monday. He was 96 years old.

More than 20 years after winning an Oscar for almost famous Kate Hudson is nominated again

for playing a Milwaukee hairdresser turned Neil Diamond tribute performer in Song Song Blue.

On Monday's show she discusses how she prepared and why it's taken so long to start making music.

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