 On today's program, Academy Award nominee Daniel Raim on his latest documentary about Hollywood royalty entitled Harold and Lillian. And then, the history of Greenpeace with Jerry Rothwell, director of the new documentary, How to Change the World. The New York City Documentary Festival is here and we're talking documentaries. This is the David Feldman Radio Network. Welcome to the broadcast. I'm David Feldman, DavidFeldmanShow.com. Please, friend of me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter and do all your Amazon shopping via the David Feldman Show website. Plissers to my show are well aware that we're constantly interviewing the world's top documentarians and today's show really drives that home. First up, Daniel Raim was nominated recently for an Academy Award for his documentary on the making of Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest. The documentary was entitled The Man on Lincoln's Nose. Well now, Daniel Raim is teamed up with Danny DeVito to direct a documentary entitled Harold and Lillian, which tells the story of one of Hollywood's unsung golden couples responsible for the look and texture of cinema's all time classic works. Then we talk with Jerry Rothwell, director of How to Change the World, which Newsweek calls the best film of 2015. How to Change the World tells the turbulent story of Greenpeace and how some of its biggest enemies came from within. Hey, we interviewed Barry Crimmons last month. He's the subject of a new documentary directed by Bobcat Goldthwaite entitled Call Me Lucky and you should see that documentary. It's streaming on Netflix now. Go to DavidFellmenschow.com. You can find my interview with the brilliant Barry Crimmons. The New Yorker calls Barry Crimmons a cornerstone of the truth teller comedy tradition. David Itzkoff from The New York Times calls Barry Crimmons an unsparing comedian and a passionate political advocate. The Boston Globe says like a mixture of Tom Paine and Mark Twain, Barry Crimmons mixes politics and humor with savage results. And Billy Bragg says Barry Crimmons uses his sharp sense of irony as a political weapon. Great news if you live in New York City. Barry Crimmons, star of Bob Goldthwaite's credit-claimed 2015 Sundance Award-winning documentary, Call Me Lucky. Barry Crimmons will be at the creek and the cave in Long Island City, New York November 21st through November 25th. For more information, go to BarryCrimons.com. It's only $5. You can see the great Barry Crimmons for only $5 at the creek and the cave in Long Island City, New York. For more information, go to BarryCrimons.com or call 718-706-8783. Barry Crimmons November 21st through November 25th at the creek and the cave in Long Island City, call 718-706-8783. It's only $5 to see the star of Call Me Lucky, Barry Crimmons working on his new special. He's taping the special and he's working it out at the creek and the cave. You can see him for only $5 and I think I'm opening. Alex, right? I'm opening for Mr. Crimmons. It's November 21st through the 25th and I think on two of those nights, I have the honor, the distinct privilege of opening for Mr. Crimmons. Creek and the Cave, Long Island City, it's only $5. If you don't live in New York City, but you know somebody who lives in New York City, buy them a gift for $5. Get them tickets to see Barry Crimmons, the no hero tour at the creek and the cave November 21st through November 25th. Hey, we did our live show last week with Jackie the Jokeman and Esther Koo at QED. Listen to it. It's a great episode. A lot of you showed up. A lot of you signed up for our guest list. I met a lot of you and I just wanted to thank all our listeners in Astoria Queens for coming out. I love meeting our listeners. I really do. It's an honor to meet you people. And it really is because we started this podcast six years ago. We've done close to a thousand episodes and it's morphed into what it is right now and it's going to keep morphing and I cannot thank the people who listen to this show and who have supported it over the years, many of whom live in France. And you know, I've been getting a lot of emails over the weekend telling me that we have to wage war on radical Islam. And I just would prefer if you didn't send me emails telling me that the Koran is a violent text. I don't want to hear from you that Islam is a violent religion, especially now. The curative radical Islam is commerce. It's opportunity. It's also the same curative radical Christianity we see in America. If there were more opportunity for young men, they wouldn't turn to suicide belts or guns. And if you tackle the concentration of wealth in this world and let it trickle down to everybody, including people of color and Muslims, radical Islam will not seem so appetizing to the downtrodden as it does right now. So don't send me those emails, please. I'm not interested in having you cherry pick the Koran to find to illustrate examples of how Islam is a violent religion. It's no more violent than my religion. So what I do is I turn to people who are much smarter than I am. And by that I mean the New York Times, which is my Talmud. The person you should always turn to is the economist Paul Krugman, who's right on everything. He's a Nobel Prize winning economist. Pretty Sanders is pretty brilliant, by the way. But subscribe to the New York Times. It's worth it. Get the New York Times and read it every day and make sure to read Paul Krugman. This is what he wrote. This is from his column, Fearing Fear Itself, and it bears listening to. He writes, like millions of people I've been obsessively following the news from Paris, putting aside other things to focus on the horror. It's the natural human reaction. But let's be clear, it's also the reaction the terrorists want. And that's something not everyone seems to understand. Krugman goes on to write, take, for example, Jeb Bush's declaration that this is an organized attempt to destroy Western civilization. No, it isn't. It's an organized attempt to so panic, which isn't at all the same thing. And remarks like that, which blur that distinction, and make terrorists seem more powerful than they are, just help the jihadists cause. Krugman goes on to write, so what was Friday's attack about? Killing random people in restaurants and at concerts is a strategy that reflects its perpetrator's fundamental weakness. It isn't going to establish a caliphate in Paris. What it can do, however, is inspire fear, which is why we call it terrorism, and shouldn't dignify it with the name of war. This is from Paul Krugman's column in The New York Times, entitled Fearing Fear Itself. He goes on, the point is not to minimize the horror, it is instead to emphasize that the biggest danger terrorism poses to our society comes not from the direct harm inflicted, but from the wrong-headed responses it can inspire. And it's crucial to realize that there are multiple ways the response can go wrong. Finally, terrorism is just one of many dangers in the world, and shouldn't be allowed to divert our attention from other issues. Sorry, conservatives, when President Obama describes climate change as the greatest threat we face, he's exactly right. Terrorism can't and won't destroy our civilization, but global warming could and might. He concludes, again, the goal of terrorists is to inspire terror because that's all they're capable of, and the most important thing our societies can do in response is to refuse to give in to fear. That's Paul Krugman, New York Times. If everybody read Paul Krugman, the world would be a better place. My thoughts are with everybody in Paris today, as they always are. Listeners to this show know we keep an eye on France all the time. Anyway, New York Times, Paul Krugman, read it. Let's lighten things up. My conversation with Academy Award nominee Daniel Rehm on his latest documentary, Harold and Lillian. You're listening to the David Feldman radio program, You Sad Pathetic Hump. Oh, Jin Chong Ling, Long Team Tongue? Oh, are you freaking kidding me? In the middle of finals. Jerry D Petro, Chevrolet at the corner of two streets in Redlands, sales service restroom. And now with the latest in Southland traffic, we take you up to the Pacific copter in our eye in the sky, Sweet Peterson. He served our country in Vietnam, Sweet Peterson. That's me. You're eye in the sky. Sweet, how's it looking out there? Well, thanks, Janie. Burbank is looking pretty hairy right now with the three-car accident jamming Barham Boulevard at the 101. But that's not nearly as hairy as my former best friend Ted's forearm as he wraps it around the shoulders of my beautiful ex-wife, May Ling. And he signs the things clearing up in the near future. I'll tell you one thing that's clearing up right now. The fact that May Ling was going behind my back. The only question is for how long, how long did my best friend Ted and my wife, my jewel of the Orient betray me? Looks like she's taking it to Macelle's on Kawanga. That was our place, Janie. It was the first place I took her for dinner when we were still just just two people who met on a mail order bride catalog. And now, now she's gupping down someone else's cannoli while I watch. I'm gonna have the pie to take me in closer so I can dump this box of industrial tax on them. How do you like that now, Ted? How do you like that, Ted? Just like the man, huh? Sweet, any tips to help people avoid this wreck? You can't avoid a rick you idiot. It doesn't matter how many times you tell her you love her or how many necklaces you buy her. Please, May Ling, take me back, my adorable little paper lantern. And Ted? Ted? I hope you choke on a garlic nut you bastard. Also, the Northbound 170 is experiencing a little looky-loo delay here. Janie? He served our country in Vietnam, sweet Peterson. That's me. You're right in the sky. Daniel Reim is a documentarian. His film The Man on Lincoln's Nose was recently nominated for an Academy Award. His latest film is Harold and Lillian, A Hollywood Love Story. Considered by many to be the film industry's golden couple, Harold and Lillian worked with Alfred Hitchcock, Mel Brooks, and Francis Ford Coppola. On films like The Ten Commandments, The Birds, and The Graduate's Name Just A Few, Harold is considered the film industry's greatest storyboard artist. His wife Lillian worked as a researcher on hundreds of films. Daniel Reim joins us in Los Angeles. Daniel, you have tackled a subject that many would consider inside baseball deep into filmmaking. What is a storyboard artist? Well, that's a great question. One way to talk about what a storyboard artist is, oftentimes you hear that Alfred Hitchcock. First of all, thank you very much for having me on your show. So moving on. So oftentimes you hear that Alfred Hitchcock, you know, pre-visualized his films before he ever rolled the camera. And he would surround himself with a great team of visualizers. And on that team, in addition to Robert Burks, his cinematographer, was oftentimes production designer Robert Boyle or production designer Henry Bumstead. And on that same team was also a storyboard artist. And one of his most famous collaborators is Harold Michelson, who did pre-visualized storyboards The Birds and Marnie. And what a storyboard artist does in collaboration, in this case with Alfred Hitchcock, is he creates frames of cinema. He draws the ideas, the visuals that Hitchcock has in his mind. And it's not only a frame that depicts what Hitchcock has in his mind, but it also tells us what lens the camera will likely be using, at what height the camera is, what it sees, has all the information that we need to see what comes before that image, what comes after that image, how it works in continuity with the story, with the rest of the film. Some of these films are incredibly visual. I mean, we're talking about when you think of The Birds or Rosemary's Baby, Plansky, these are full metal jacket. These are movies that are truly visual. So was Harold a painter? Well, Harold and Lillian were referred to by one of our subjects, interview subjects, as Hollywood's secret weapon. And in that sense, they, so yeah, he has a background in illustration, but he had an incredible visual mind. He would, I mean, in working with Hitchcock, he would be oftentimes storyboarding the story long before a script was written. And that's how Hitchcock liked to work. I mean, you oftentimes hear that, you know, cinema is a visual medium, we're telling the story visually. Hitchcock was definitely for using the image to tell a story over dialogue. That was very important to him. And other directors, I mean, Steven Spielberg today, if you look at Bridge of Spies, right, that's a very visual film. And while I'm not familiar with, you know, who was on his team in terms of a storyboard artist, you can be pretty sure that Spielberg spent a considerable amount of time previsualizing that the way the camera is going to move. Are you looking at a graphic novel? I mean, exactly. Yeah, it's like a comic book. But instead, exactly. It's like a graphic novel. It's like a comic book. However, a comic book artist wouldn't would not necessarily make a very good cinema storyboard artist because it's a different language. I were to look at Cecil B. DeMille's 10 Commandments, which Harold worked on. Yeah. Would there be a storyboard somewhere, a shot by shot storyboard where you where you're looking at the angles, the camera angles? Exactly. For two years, Harold and his collaborator, Bill Major, created thousands of sketches while the while the film was in development. And those sketches were then handpicked, like the DeMille picked the images that he liked and took them with him to Egypt, where he shot most of the film. And it's like incredible. You can see literally side by side, which our film shows how accurate and how close the finished product looks to Harold's board. So here's a guy who's sitting alone in a room, oftentimes with a pencil and a ruler and a sheet of paper. And each sheet of paper, let's say, have three, you know, cinema scope rectangles, and then he'll fill each frame with an image. And he'll have the script next to him. And let's say on his right will be the screenplay. And on his left will be research material provided by his wife, Lillian. That research material would give him an accurate, authentic understanding of what that period looked like that he's about to depict on paper. What movie did he make with Francis Ford Coppola? Because I'm currently in... I'm in a club. Great example of a period film that Lillian also worked on. Okay, so is there somewhere like a coffee table book, not published, but if I wanted to... could I see a storyboard version of the Cotton Club that would pretty much be a shot-by-shot replica of the film? Well, there's... to answer that, there's a couple things. One is that if you really are fascinated by storyboards, there's a new book that came out called, I think, Movie Storyboard, something like that. You can also go to the Margaret Herrick Academy Library on Wilshire Boulevard in here in Los Angeles and see the real storyboards from Hitchcock's films, from the Ten Commandments, possibly the Cotton Club. And you can, you know, you have to request long in advance, you know, a visit and they give you these white gloves and you look at the physical originals. Why aren't these being published? You know, I watched The Godfather over and over again. Is it safe to assume that every shot in The Godfather was storyboarded? I don't think Harold worked on that. No, he didn't work on that. I'm not so sure. And again, I think it's really important to point out that how collaborative an art form filmmaking is in that, you know, on the graduate, you know, Harold devised one of the most iconic shots in film history in the preliminary pre-visualization process of storyboarding. You know, he, as he said in one of the interviews, you know, my goal was not to just show two people talking, but to make these images, you know, cinematic in a way that shot of Ben kind of framed against Miss Robinson's leg is just something he thought of while he was creating storyboards. And Robert Sertes, the cameraman, this is not an unusual, but this is, this hearkens back to the studio era of filmmaking and studio period of filmmaking, and Robert Sertes, the cinematographer on The Graduate had such a great relationship with Harold that he loved his storyboards and he framed every shot according to Harold's boards. And that it's a very collaborative process because then on The Godfather, you have Gordon Willis who's lighting these scenes, right? And the lighting is, you know, so evocative. And who knows if that's in the storyboards. And then you have the acting, and then you have the directing, and then the editing, and the music, and all that comes together. And it's a very collaborative medium. But what I want to talk about in this film is to present two very little known parts of the filmmaking process. And even film students, I was at the AFI Conservatory, and you know, you ask yourself, you know, what is this language of cinema? You know, how do what is cinema literacy? What is visual literacy? And I hope this film addresses maybe for the first time in a documentary that question. How many movies use storyboards? Depends on the director. Harold worked on the fly as a storyboard artist, but Kronerberg is, I think, really outspoken about his taste for storyboarding. He really wants in his filmmaking style, he wants to go against that Hitchcock approach. And he wants to organically, I guess, I'm not sort of paraphrase, but he wants to decide, you know, the day of where he wants to place his camera. You know, and then someone like Christopher Nolan, still definitely not only does he still use storyboards, but his storyboard artist, Gabriel Hardman, who's featured in our film, uses a pencil and a pen and charcoal and ink, and not computers. So a lot of directors love to storyboard Martin Scorsese loves to storyboard all of his films, oftentimes himself. So it's definitely a collaborative process. Yeah, I guess a well storyboarded film is one you look at over and over again, because you can't see it all. Each shot is a postcard that you just have to study. You also were nominated for an Academy Award for the Man on Lincoln's Nose, a documentary about North by Northwest. Yeah, it's so the that's the first in my series of three films about the behind the scenes masters, as you mentioned, the people that probably most people don't know about. And that's about production designer Robert Boyle, who designed North by Northwest. We'll get to that in a second. Tell me about Lillian. Great. So Lillian is the other star of the Harold and Lillian Hollywood love story. And talking about her is her legacy in film is that she was considered the dean of motion picture research. And she worked on hundreds of films as a researcher providing the art directors, the production designers, the directors and screenwriters a very accurate look into the world that they're depicting. It might be anything from like fiddle on the roof, where she's talking to old Jewish ladies and burping in like on a bus on a bus stop bench and Fairfax Boulevard, or she has connections with drug lords working on Scarface and helping helping the this, you know, the production create a very accurate image of what a drug lab could look like. How did Harold and Lillian meet Harold and Lillian met in Miami in 1947. She was Harold's kid sister's best friend. And he was just came home from the war. He was a World War Two bombardier. And they eloped to Hollywood, I think, within two years. They eloped to Hollywood. And I would assume he had artistic aspirations. At the time, he absolutely had artistic aspirations to be an illustrator. In fact, at the time he wanted to be a magazine illustrator. You know, for him for Harold, Hollywood was something so remote that the idea of working in a movie studio was just like, you know, another world. And suddenly one day, his drawings fell into the hands of some people at Columbia. And they invited him in for an interview. And the rest is history. His drawings of what? I think his art school drawings, really, he had just graduated from an art school. And he had some examples of his art. He was technically he's a very proficient illustrator in that, you know, that style of the day. I think that the the folks at the Columbia Studios Art Department saw a great draftsman. And at the time, I think Hollywood was producing, you know, hundreds of films, studio. He had steady work. He had steady work for decades on the lot. It was tough. It was tough. As he tells us in the film, studios used to trade people like baseball teams do. But when he got within five years, he was hired by Cecil B. DeMille, the storyboard, the Ten Commandments. And I think that put Harold on the map. But do you work steadily in Hollywood? Or does everybody below the line, above the line, struggle for work? It's a struggle. For everybody. For everybody. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It is a struggle. Did he live well? They lived okay. They lived okay. They did well. I mean, in terms of modestly, they lived modestly, for sure. You know, and part of the film is we explore what it looks like to have a family while you're working behind the scenes. Working behind the scenes. But I like to think there was a time in Hollywood when you could get a steady paycheck that everybody wasn't a free agent, but he was worried about his next job just like we are today. Exactly. Was there ever a time in Hollywood where somebody who did storyboards just could draw a steady paycheck and not worry about the next job when the old studio system. Right. When you get to the level of production designer, when you're, you know, universal studio production designer, in-house production designer, when you get to that level, you're pretty safe in that standpoint. There's security there, no question. So what was his title then? Well, he started off as a junior illustrator, worked his way up to a storyboard artist, continuity artist. And by the, you know, by the 60s, he was an art director. He was an art director. Art director. And then he was productive. And he was nominated for an Academy Award for being the production designer on Star Trek, The Motion Pictures. So Harold Michelson, the man who started his career as storyboarding, creating images for Cecil B. DeMille, basically visualized Robert Wise's version of Star Trek, which was the first film, yeah. When we're looking at the credits at the end of the movie, the storyboard artist credit would be what? Today, a storyboard artist credit would be a storyboard. I think it would just be story, hmm, storyboards by, I think we have to, I can, we can, we need to double check. I do know that the conversation about this with Gabriel Hardman, who has storyboarded the last, I don't know, three, four Christopher Nolan films, he's definitely credited, but back at the time, Harold was working up until maybe the late 70s and early 80s. The storyboard artist had no credit. And yeah. Why? I'm not entirely sure. Same with the researcher. It's kind of incredible. Actually, well, you know, today credits last like six minutes long. You know, back then credits were like maybe two minutes. I don't know. I mean, that's, maybe you just had the department heads in the studio era filmmaking. You had the department heads. Maybe like associate costume designer. Maybe, you know, you can get a couple of credits in there. Was it ever a union job? Yes. That's right. It wasn't. That's right. It wasn't recognized by the as a union title at that time. Is it now? It is now. That's right. All storyboard artists are credited along with the, you know, alongside the art director's guild. And how many storyboard artists were there out of film? Maybe no more than two or three, oftentimes only one. For example, the graduate, Harold was hired handpicked by Mike Nichols. And he was the only storyboard artist. Yeah. It's usually one. Star Wars will have like nine storyboard artists working simultaneously. Do the studios throw all this stuff out? I would think when you're making a film like the apartment, which is visually stunning. Yeah. No question. Does anybody have the foresight to look at the storyboard and say, you know, one day somebody's going to want these or do they just throw everything out? That's a great question. They threw a lot of it out. My understanding is a majority of the art was thrown out. And fortunately, some production designers had the foresight to and Harold himself had the foresight to hold on to some of the originals and definitely photocopies. Did Lillian work on all the films that Harold worked on or did they work separately? How how many times did they work together on a film? I meant my understanding is that Lillian from the 60s, early 60s, starting with West Side Story onwards, all the way through his late life work with Danny DeVito was without a doubt, working on all of his films, as well as probably hundreds more. And how was their marriage? And that's maybe one of the secrets of their success, the successful marriage in that they were in addition to having a life together. They had a partnership, a very creative collaborative partnership. And I think that definitely kept their their their relationship that's part of what makes their relationship special. And they raised a family, they had an autistic child. That's right. What were her aspirations? Had she been born in a different time? What would she have been? That's a good question to have to ask her. But I think she, you know, maybe she would have been a writer, I think. But that's again, that's something you'd have to ask her. I know that from an early age, she loved books. She loved books and surrounded herself, ultimately. She bought a research library in 1969. The studios were folding and she purchased on their life insurance together with Harold, the Samuel Goldwyn Research Library. And operated that library by herself for 40 years. What do you mean a library? A research library containing like a million periodicals and hundreds, I'm sorry, thousands of books that were like reference books or the reference books so every studio from the early days of the studio system had a research library. RKO, Universal Paramount Warners, they all had a fabulous research library that was considered the hub of the artistic kind of the nerve system of the studio. It's where the writers and designers and directors would oftentimes spend most of their time just pulling out reference books and being inspired by through the research they did. And where did she house all this stuff? That's the film that takes us on that journey because there's not much money, if any money, being a researcher. So she was blessed to have different studios host her in her library over the course of a few years. So for 10 years, she was at the American Film Institute. Then she moved her library to Zoetrope, where Zoetrope Studios, where Coppola had his studio briefly followed that with a few years at Paramount Studios. And then close to 15 years at DreamWorks Animation. Did his art suffer because of Hollywood? We always hear about people who move to Hollywood and think, well, I'll dip my toe into it just so I can make some money, but I'll still write the great American novel. Did Harold... I think on the contrary, I think his art blossomed. Like he, his art blossomed. And by art, I mean his cinematic storytelling, visualizing genius. Was he satisfied, uncredited most of the time? People didn't know. I think they were so humble, Harold and Lillian. It's part of what makes them special. They weren't looking for credit. They weren't looking for glory. I think that the directors and the producers that knew them personally, they were so looked up to and desired. They were a Hollywood secret weapon, as our subject said. Everybody wanted them, but nobody talked about them. So it's like, there wasn't very little publicity, but hopefully this film can change that a little bit. The Man on Lincoln's Nose is about the production designer for North by Northwest. Right. And the birds. And the birds. Yeah. What is your third film going to be about? Well, that's so that the series is... The Man on Lincoln's Nose, the second one was Something's Gonna Live, which profiles also Conrad Hall, Haskell Wexler, Henry Bumstead, Harold Michelson, and Robert Boyle, and Albert Nozaki. So those six filmmakers behind the scene filmmakers. And so the third and final documentary in this series is Harold Lillian. Right. Haskell West. Haskell is one of the great cinematographers. Correct. And he lives in Montecito. How's he doing? He's just fine. I saw him recently. It was really, he's great. He's still working, still making films, still pounding the pavement with his video camera and telling stories and making a difference. You seem to be focused on the visual nature of film. Why is that? Why is that? I think that what drew me first and foremost, I think I'm fascinated. No question. I am fascinated by how films are made. But I'm also an important part of this was also telling the story of these people that I loved and passing on to the next generation of young filmmakers, artists, designers and storytellers. The story of their great legacy. Are you a teacher? I'm a teacher. Yes, I work as a documentary filmmaker, but I also present the films to schools at schools and have discussions with students about the visual literacy and the filmmaking process. So I love to teach in that sense. No question. Great. Daniel Reim is a documentarian. His film, The Man on Lincoln's Nose, was recently nominated for an Academy Award. His latest film is Harold and Lillian, a Hollywood love story. It's playing at a festival near you and then you can probably watch it on what, HBO or the Sundance Channel, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon. We will announce shortly all the platforms. But please do visit our website, HaroldandLillian.com, follow us on Facebook and keep up to date where the film is screening. Great. Daniel, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. On a very special two-hour months, Eddie has his work cut out for him to make everybody thankful on Thanksgiving. Hey kids, gather around, would you? I invited Candy to spend Thanksgiving with us. And as you know, I'm planning to marry her. Dad, why is she here? You'll pipe down, Eddie. Candy has something to say to all of you. Candy, go ahead, hun. Look, kids, I know it's been very difficult for you since you lost your mom. And I know I could never take a place. And I would never even try to. I just want you to know that your father means a world to me. And I'll do everything I can to make him happy. I know it's hard to accept somebody you don't know living in your own house where your mother lived. But if we can just try to get to know each other, I think we can be friends. You might even decide that you'll like me. Let's take it one day at a time. Does that sound like a plan? Kids, come on, what do you say? She seems kind of nice for a whore. Yeah, it'd be good to have a whore, mom. Yeah, mom whore. That's more like it. Now let's go and have Thanksgiving dinner together, like a family. Um, Candy, would you mind putting out your cigarette? Are you serious? Forget it, Ed. I can't do this. Goodbye. Candy. On a very special two-hour months, Eddie brings his work home with him. And her name is Candy. Coming up my conversation with the director of How to Change the World. But first, don't forget to friend me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, do all your Amazon shopping via the David Feldman show. We got a small percentage earlier in the show. I read a little of Paul Krugman from Today's New York Times. Do me a favor, subscribe to The New York Times. The more informed you are, the better the show gets. Just read Paul Krugman in The New York Times. Speaking of great minds like Paul Krugman, Barry Crimmins, who you heard on the show last month, he's the star of Bobcat Gulf, where he's critically acclaimed 2015 Sundance award-winning documentary, Call Me Lucky. Barry Crimmins, The No Hero Tour is coming. November 21st through the 25th, to the creek in the cave in Long Island City, New York. And it's only $5. November 21st through the 25th, you can see Barry Crimmins working out his new special, The Creek in the Cave in Long Island City. Only $5. I may even be opening for Mr. Crimmins. But you should come anyway. BarryCrimmins.com. Go to BarryCrimmins.com for more information. To buy tickets, call 718-706-8783. Call 718-706-8783. The Creek in the Cave November 21st through November 25th, it's only $5 to see the brilliant Barry Crimmins. The New Yorker calls him a cornerstone of the truth teller comedy tradition. Come out and see, I promise you, come see Barry Crimmins. If you don't think he is one of the greatest stand-ups who's ever done it, I'll give you your $5 back. I promise you. Call 718-706-8783. Come out to the creek in the cave. If you know somebody who lives in New York City and you want to give them a gift, go to BarryCrimmins.com and buy a couple of tickets for $5 and then send them as gifts to your friends who live in New York City. The Creek in the Cave, it's a great place to see comedy. It's in Long Island City, New York. Call 718-706-8783. Barry Crimmins November 21st through the 25th at the creek in the cave. Call 718-706-8783. For more information you can call 718-706-8783. And now my conversation with Jerry Rothwell, the director of How to Change the World. The environmental group Greenpeace has been controversial since its founding in the early 1970s. Called a terrorist organization by some, even former members questioned its tactics and its effectiveness. How to Change the World is a new documentary about Greenpeace. Newsweek calls it the best documentary of 2015. Joining us from Brighton, England is the director of How to Change the World, Jerry Rothwell. Jerry, this movie covers the founding of Greenpeace, which comes to us from Canada, much like the Occupy movement. Why was Greenpeace founded? The film is about this kind of handful of people in Vancouver on the British Columbia coast, and the sort of first 10 years of Greenpeace, so the 70s. I guess it sort of came about partly because Vancouver was a very kind of special place at that time, you know, had people avoiding the Vietnam draft from the U.S. heading into it. It had kind of a big hippie movement, much like other towns on the West Coast. And it also had a kind of a peace movement that began to protest against American nuclear testing that was happening in off Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. And the very first expedition that Greenpeace undertook was to take an old fishing boat up the coast to try and park it in a nuclear test zone in 1971. And really on the back of that campaign, Greenpeace was founded. There's a similarity between Greenpeace and the Occupy movement. The Occupy movement came out of a magazine, a visual magazine from, I believe, Vancouver called Adbusters. Is that correct? Yeah, possibly, yeah, yeah. And it was all about visual statements. Greenpeace was about something called the mindbomb, also visual statements. Yeah, I mean, the first president of Greenpeace was actually kind of a comic book artist and journalist called Bob Hunter. And he really came up with this concept of the mindbomb. He was very kind of prescient about the way media was changing at the time and the way in which you could shoot a piece of film and within 24 hours kind of network it on the news across the world. And the news was very image hungry. And he realized that, yeah, sort of campaigning movements needed to look at how they could use these kind of images to change people's ideas about the world. And he called these mindbombs. What role did Marshall McLuhan play in this, if any? Yeah, I mean, they all kind of, a lot of those early founders sort of saw themselves in a way as disciples of Marshall McLuhan. I think some of them have been actually taught by him. But that idea... He was a Canadian, right? Absolutely, yeah, he was. And the idea that globalized television was really changing our sense of the world. McLuhan had this idea of the global village that suddenly concerns in Vancouver could affect people in China or wherever. Suddenly the new communications technology was really changing the ways in which kind of human beings existed. I don't want to compare them to the Yippies because the Yippies were lighthearted, although they knew the importance of spectacle. Were the early years of Greenpeace more about spectacle than substance? I think they were about both. I mean, they did have kind of strong ties to the Yippies. Hunter's job was the sort of counterculture columnist for the Vancouver Sun. He had a four times weekly column where his job was basically to report on anything kind of alternative from the hippie movement, whether it was magic mushrooms or Jerry Rubin of the Yippies visiting Vancouver or he interviewed Alan Ginsburg. So they were very tied into that hippie movement and to the kind of humor of it as well. A lot of early Greenpeace did take a lot from that sort of the kind of humorous process. Can you delineate the difference between the hippies and the Yippies? Jerry Rubin and Abby Hoffman were the Yippies. They were different from the hippies and Abby Hoffman had to leave America because of the Rockefeller drug laws, changed his name to Jerry Freed, moved to Canada and became an environmentalist. Actually under an assumed name received an award from Governor Kerry of New York for his work saving the St. Lawrence Seaway. So the Yippies understood spectacle and Greenpeace understood spectacle. What were they accomplishing? I mean, what they sort of pioneered was this kind of form of campaigning that combined sort of acts of really great bravery and courage, you know, putting yourself in between a wailing boat and a whale, you know, on a tiny sort of zodiac inflatable. But most importantly, getting an image of that, you know, so that immediately this kind of David and Goliath struggle was on the kind of front pages of newspapers around the world. And I think they realized that, you know, capturing the world's attention, you know, in the age of globalized media, you know, capturing people's attention was the first step really to changing things. And they became, you know, in the late 70s and very sophisticated around how they combined that kind of image, that kind of visual spectacle with behind the scenes lobbying, you know, for the ultimately what led to the moratorium on wailing, which I think Greenpeace played a big part in achieving was a process of, you know, negotiating with different countries in the International Wailing Commission. But it was led by the fact that, you know, the world to become aware of what was happening out in the Pacific to Wales through that first kind of image that the Greenpeace captured of themselves being shot over into into a whale. Who was Bob Hunter? So Hunter was a journalist for Vancouver Sun. He was a kind of, you know, as I said before, you know, his role was to sort of cover the counterculture. And he was very sort of tuned into all of those, all of those kind of movements of the 60s, I suppose. But he was also someone who kind of, you know, loved, loved nature and loved the environment. And I think he, he's a very kind of unusual leader. He was, he was someone who, who kind of hated leaders, but sort of by default became the leader of this early Greenpeace organization and managed to sort of combine people with radically different skills who, you know, as he, as he sort of pulled back from the, you know, the organization, you know, fell out, fell out with each other big time. And I think because they no longer had that sort of glue that Hunter was, you know, Hunter was a, I don't know, he was a very, an interesting kind of leader, sort of, I guess a kind of non-leader, but someone who was visionary as well and could really inspire people to do things. When you say non-leader, you know, the occupy movement again, very similar, doesn't have a leader. Yeah. I mean, I think in some ways that was the seeds of Greenpeace's or let's say the destruction of the Greenpeace that the founders, the founders created. I think, you know, what the film does is tell the story up till about 1979 by which time, you know, the handful of people who founded the organization are falling out with each other. Greenpeace USA is seeing Greenpeace Canada. And really they have to give it up. They have to let go of it and let go of their role as sort of leaders of the organization in order for it to survive. And what happens in the late 70s, early 80s is that Greenpeace becomes, based in Europe, becomes international. This is interesting. This is nature versus human nature, the great struggle. Bob Hunter, is he still alive? No, he died in 2005. When did he officially leave Greenpeace or did he ever? I think he kind of really, I mean, he stopped being the leader in 1977. He kind of really was sort of pulled back by 78-79. I mean, he occasionally got involved over the years beyond that, but really the kind of the toll that that's our period, the toll of trying to get consensus in a group of people with extremely strong ego. And Rex Whaler? Wailer, yeah. Wailer, is he still alive? Yeah. Rex is still alive. I mean, he's kind of the sort of official historian of those years, really. He was a founding member of Greenpeace? Yeah. I mean, what you described, I mean, even that is subject to controversy. You know, Greenpeace was an organization that sort of became what it was over a period of three, four years. And during that period, you know, I guess 20, 30 people could be considered to be the founders. But Rex was certainly kind of there in the very early days. And what was his strength? He came to the group as a photographer and journalist. He'd fled or resisted the draft in Texas. He was a Texan, ended up in Vancouver as a photographer and journalist, and then really became the person that took a lot of those iconic images in the early 70s that people will know. Prime Minister Trudeau's father was the Prime Minister around this time. Was he receptive? He was pretty glamorous and liberal. Was he receptive to Greenpeace? Was it dangerous to found Greenpeace in Canada at the time? Well, in terms of the film, I mean, you know, the film involves 70% of the film is made up of kind of archive footage. And, you know, for a period of time, there was some Trudeau archive in there. During the campaign against American underground testing, you know, this is a kind of big issue for Canada as well about its relationship with Nixon's America. And Trudeau did get involved in a part of the aim was to get Trudeau talking to Nixon, to know, you know, not to great effect, I don't think, because the test went ahead. But was Greenpeace harassed by the Canadian government? That's, I mean, I think Greenpeace has been harassed by various governments. I mean, there was, you know, certainly kind of a attempt to put CIA agents on board, both as they were harassing the Russians, because, you know, it was helpful to know what the Russian, the movement of the Russian whaling fleet was, which seemed to also to be kind of listening into US communications. So there is a lot of, you know, there's a lot of those kinds of shenanigans going on. And of course, when Greenpeace in 76 turned its attention not, you know, away from Soviet whaling or American nuclear tests and towards the Canadian seal hunt, that was very controversial because, you know, suddenly from, from attacking the kind of big imperial powers of the Cold War, they're, they're attacking their own, you know, indigenous Canadians. Yeah. I mean, they were, they were actually, I mean, again, to this story, sort of told in the film, you know, it began as a kind of campaign against the seal hunt. And pretty, pretty soon they realized that they wouldn't actually be able to get out onto the ice unless they brokered some kind of deal with, with local Canadians on the, on the east coast. And eventually they, they kind of shifted the focus of the campaign to be against the big Norwegian boats that were coming in. It was a very delicate line to try it. And again, this is kind of hunter brokering a compromise, which, you know, other members of the team, you know, didn't want. They didn't want it. Is that what split the leadership? Those campaigns were, were quite a big factor in that. And Paul Watson, they were, they were led by Paul Watson. And in the end, you know, two years later, Paul Watson was kind of removed from the board. And really, that was a dispute about tactics, about, about, about sort of, I don't know whether to call it violence or aggression, you know, to what extent you, you, you get in the way of people doing things, you know, doing things that, that damage the environment or to what extent you kind of restrict what you do to sort of political campaign and lobbying. And obviously Paul Watson, you know, then went on and founded C-Shepard, which is a much more sort of directly interventionist organization, kind of ramming Japanese whalers, you know, to this day in the, in the Southern Ocean. And he's critical of Greenpeace. Yeah, I think he called them the Avon ladies of the environmental movement at one point. So he's quite critical. I mean, one of the interesting things about this film actually is that both organizations like the film, I think, because for both, it's like about there. It's, you know, it's like, it's like, you know, if your parents are divorced, you might like a film that's sort of, you know, you kind of like a film about your parents. And I think that in some ways, the film has kind of made both organizations realize their sort of common origins and maybe their common causes as well. Well, when they founded Greenpeace, what did they hope it would become? Or did they even know? I think Hunter, you know, Hunter had this idea, which was a very kind of 60s idea that, you know, Greenpeace was going to change the human understanding of mankind's relationships in nature. You know, I think it was as big as that. And, you know, to some extent, you could say that there was a big shift that Greenpeace brought out, it brought about in terms of those kinds of things. I think they also saw themselves as as the kind of environmental police force that the UN ought to be, ought to be doing, but wasn't, you know, so they kind of saw themselves in a way as policing things that had already been agreed, say, between governments. But there were, which there was this kind of political inertia about. When you say a police force, you know, the French attacked and sank one of their boats. I mean, when you say police, they were going out on the high seas and blocking whaling ships. This was pretty proactive. From the beginning, they were proactive. So it wasn't just about it wasn't just about the mindbomb. It wasn't just about the image. They were actually flexing what little muscle they had from the beginning. Yeah, I think that's true. But I think also as the 70s went on, in a way, that was the issue that split them, you know, whether it was more important to, you know, save the eight whales in the pod that you were kind of getting in the way of the whalers, or whether it was important to kind of take one photo and rush back to port and get that out into the newspapers. And those are two different approaches. One is, you know, directly trying to stop something. And when did the split make it impossible for the leadership to continue? I think sort of by 1978, you know, the Vancouver group was very split over the direction it should take. And at the same time, you know, the whale campaigns had been so successful that there were different green pieces growing up all around the world that had no administrative sort of management relationship to each other. So, you know, a group could set up in Japan and raise money based on the images of the Canadian campaigns and not have any kind of need to sort of help fund those campaigns. And you could just call yourself Greenpeace in Japan without... Yeah, I mean, Bob had this, had this kind of, you know, let every, let a thousand green pieces bloom notion. And that's another kind of question that in a way is at the heart of Greenpeace in those years is, you know, are they trying to create a movement, or are they trying to create an organization? This is exactly like Occupy. Yeah, and different personalities fall on different sides of that debate. In the end, sometimes, you know, making a film, I began to think this isn't really about politics. This is about the kind of people these are, you know, the people who want stability and who like stuff that's kind of controlled and really want to know where they're going, want a certain kind of organization. The others who want to take risks and kind of make big dramatic statements, one of different kind of organization. Can an organization exist without a strong charismatic leader? How did Greenpeace survive? It's still with us. Is there a strong charismatic leader, or is it still kind of a... I think the structure that came out of those disputes in late, you know, 1979, really, was a very clever structure. It was a kind of federated, you know, a federated organization where each country office can, you know, initiate its own actions, raise its own funds, but it's covered by a sort of blanket agreement with Greenpeace International. And that has all kinds of flaws in it, as probably, you know, if you talk to anyone who works within Greenpeace, they'll have kind of gripes about that structure, but what you can say is that the structure has enabled it to be a pretty successful organization, perhaps the most successful organization surviving from the 1970s, you know, that you can think of. The most successful from the 1970s? Well, I've just thrown that out there. I haven't looked at it a little bit, but I think, you know, it's pretty powerful. It's got, you know, income of 300 million a year, offices in 51 countries. It's still a force. You came across all the archival footage that the early Greenpeace founders had been shooting. Where did you find the footage? And what was the footage? Yes, the Greenpeace was at the point where it had sort of just central, you know, it had asked all its national officers to send any kind of film footage because it was going to store the footage in the Institute of Social History in Amsterdam where they had kind of cold storage for 60 millimeter film, and they'd employed someone to go through and decide what to throw out. And at that point, I happened to be in that archive and was, you know, was seeing these extraordinary images and got talking to the archivist. And I think the kind of the archivist at Greenpeace International was very keen that that footage was used. And so we did a sort of licensing deal with them where we scanned, we made a digital version of that footage and synchronized it up to the two suitcases full of 150 real-to-real tapes of audio. And, you know, in return, we were able to use the footage in our film. Where can we see it in the United States and around the world? It's launched in LA in New York a month ago. It's still in some cinemas around the U.S. Screenings are on the website. How to change the world, movie.com. Great. Yeah, it's still out and about. Jerry Rothwell is the director of How to Change the World, a documentary about the founding of Greenpeace. Newsweek calls it the best documentary of 2015. He joins us from Brighton, England today. Thank you so much for taking time to talk with us. Great. Thanks, David. That's our show. Thank you for listening. Please friend me on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter. Make sure to give us a good review on iTunes. Somehow that helps us move up the charts. A good review. Tell your friends about this show. Go see the documentaries that we talk about on this program. Subscribe to The New York Times. Read Paul Krugman. And November 21st through the 25th, the great legendary comedian Barry Crimmins comes to the creek in the cave in Long Island City. It's only $5 to see Barry Crimmins work out his new special. For more information, go to BarryCrimmins.com or call the creek in the cave. It's 718-706-8783. It's only $5 if you want to get a friend a gift. If you don't live in New York City, but you know somebody who does and you want to buy them a gift, buy them some tickets to go see Barry Crimmins at the creek in the cave November 21st through November 25th. Let's pack it. Let's pack this room. Call 718-706-8783 to see one of the greatest stand-up comics who's ever held a microphone, the legendary Barry Crimmins. Call 718-706-8783. Our executive producer is Alex Brazel from the show Briss Studios in downtown Manhattan. I'm David Feldman. That'll do it for us.