March 22, 2022 • 49 mins
Titicut Follies is a documentary made famous by its banning. But why was it banned? And what was it even about? Listen in to learn all you need to know about this infamous doc.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
and there's Chuck and this is stuff you should know.
Just us today. Jerry's on vacation and that's cool. Yeah,
(00:22):
Like Jerry's in the Disney World. Kind of went right
after me. She's in in the d I said, hey, Jerry.
In the south bathroom of Frontier Land, above the toilet,
I've left. I've taped a gun. Go shoot Mo Green,
Go shoot Mo Green in the restaurant booth. No, Moe
(00:43):
Green got it in the on the massage tape. Oh
that's right. The police commissioner or the police chief. He yea,
he was. He was tangential to the hit with the bathroom.
I don't remember who was trying to hit po I
goofed that up. Hey, shout out to Uh, No, we're
(01:03):
not done sorting this up. Okay, go ahead, name all
the hits in the Godfather. Uh. Shout out to our
pal and friend of the show, Kevin Pollock, because that
made me think of the great, great show that is
one of my favorite shows called Better Things from the
wonderful talented Pamela ad Lawn. They're entering their final season,
(01:26):
and I watched the first episode the other night and Pollock,
who plays her brother on the show, had a great
line that I knew was improved where he's he was
getting in his car and I can't remember what they
were talking about, and he said right in the eye
like Mo Green. And I texted immediately and I was like,
right in the eye like Mo Green. I was like,
that was yours and he went, oh yeah, he said
that was improv It was very fun. It's always fun
(01:49):
to be able to watch a TV show and texture
pal that's on that TV show. Yeah, he's got he's
got the best parts. He just pops up and all
the best stuff. You know. Yeah, he's in Mazel He's uh,
I think. And I've talked to Polock about this and
he's like, yeah, I agree. I think he could star
in a really great indie film. I just think he's
(02:10):
a really great actor, and uh, he's great at comedy,
but I think he's, on top of that, just a
really really great actor. Didn't you star in that Project
green Light film? I don't know. Did he would pretty
I'm pretty sure I think the first season, Oh boy,
I don't remember those movies. I know that, uh Shyla
Both that was where he got his start, is that right?
(02:30):
Was he in one of those the Battle of Shaker
Heights or something. I think that might have been the
one that Polock was. Was he in that movie? But
I mean a really good movie. And I'm not sure
the Project green Light movie. It was a cool show though,
I dug it. Yeah, yeah, I had brought that back
in the iPhone filmmaking age. Yeah, it's a little surprising
who would be who would bring it back though? Now
(02:53):
Ben and Mack and bringing back I mean they that's
who did it the first time, right, sure? But I
mean are they still relevant? Aren't there too? Like younger version?
I don't know who the new been in mad Are?
How about um Whiz Khalifa and Charlemagne the God? Sure there? Yeah? Alright, great? Anyway,
(03:15):
Kep Box a great actor and a good dude. Yeah,
I agreed, And um, probably somebody I would guess who've
seen the movie that we're going to talk about today.
I would be really surprised if he hasn't seen it,
just because I feel like if you're into movies, if
you're a movie maker, if you are if you consider
yourself a cinema file if you want to get punched
in the stomach. Um, you've probably seen Titty Cut Folies, right, Yeah,
(03:40):
I mean this is one that I saw in film
class in college. Um, it is one that you there's
about a fifty fifty chance that you will see this
if you've seen it in film class in the college.
People like Casey, our colleague, Casey Pegram, no doubt is
a Frederick Wiseman fan. I'm surely if I texted him
he'd like, oh, sure Wiseman. Yeah. Although I found Titticut
(04:01):
Follies was not one of his great at work. That
sounds like Casey, God bless Casey all time greatest movie
crush guest. But um, yeah, fred Fred Weiseman, uh made
this film. He was a law professor in his thirties
in the sixties and made this documentary film about a
um a mental institution, specifically one for the criminally insane.
(04:26):
It's what they called it. And it was a very
you know, it was a movie that gained a lot
of reputation as like the most disturbing film you've ever seen,
and it's been banned in this many places and and
that kind of thing. But when you kind of peel
it back, it's just a very straight up, sort of
cinema verite documentary about a institution that needed to get
(04:47):
their act together right. And that was kind of Wiseman's
told jam. Like he's made forty eight films. I think
he just turned ninety two couple of months ago, amazing,
and starting in nineteen sixty six, he made about a
film a year, and he has his own style, Like
you said, cinema verity, you, which I feel like we
should probably kind of just go ahead and explain, don't you. Yeah,
(05:11):
go ahead, go ahead, film guy. Uh, well, cinema verite.
I mean, what's the direct translation, direct cinema. Yeah, direct cinema.
And it's the idea that you kind of set a
camera up and let it let life happen in front
of it for whatever your subject is. You don't you
don't do interviews, you don't do talking head shots, you don't,
(05:33):
um you it's really just uh. One good example is
that documentary and that, of course now I can't think
of it um in the seventies about the American family
that ran on PBS that was so groundbreaking, where they
just set up a camera and followed this family and
if you're thinking it sounds a lot like reality TV,
I think and it's pure ast form. Reality TV can
(05:56):
be this, but it really turned into something else entirely. Yeah. Yeah,
it's just so deeply manipulated by producers behind the scenes
who tell them to do this or that or whatever. Um,
cinema verites would would not would not want to do that.
They they just shoot and hope hope also that people
act like themselves. It's another thing and one thing Frederick Wiseman,
(06:19):
the guy who made Titty Cut Follies, UM, said like
he believed that people basically acted like themselves when the
camera was around, because people are in general lousy actors
and they're behaving like you would expect them to behave.
So they're probably acting like they would without the cameras,
especially in a cinema veryte kind of set up, because
(06:40):
it's it's intrusive there's a camera there, but it's not
nearly as intrusive as like a camera on like some
rig that's flying around, like there's lighting people and gappers
and craft services table that's calling your name. Um, it's
it's just much less intrusive than that. It's minimally intrusive
as far as filmmaking goes. And that's the point of it,
because they want to document reality without leading the viewer
(07:05):
as much as possible. From what I understand, Yeah, that's
exactly it. And I love cinema verite documentaries, especially UM.
And I also like sort of quasi cinema verite where
there's a lot of like I don't mind interviews being
put in there, um, as long as there's a lot
of just sort of watching life happen. It's really amazingly engrossing.
(07:28):
There were these two filmmakers that I think inspired uh
Weisseman Um, Richard Leacock and Robert Drew, who in the
early I think in the fifties and early nineteen sixties
were kind of dabbling in cinema verite documentaries. And they
made one in particular called Mooney Versus Foul, which is
(07:49):
about a high school football championship and Mooney and Fowl
or the two coaches. And I watched the trailer for
that today. I guess his I'm guessing it's his daughter
that put this up on VIN, you know, along with
some other like interviews with her dad, Drew's daughter that
it's really engrossing just to watch, and especially because all
you see if you're a modern person in two and
(08:13):
you're like, what was life like in the nineteen fifties?
You don't get that from I love Lucy and Dick
Van Dyke, Like, those are great shows, but to be
able to just sit in and take a peek at
these high school football coaches and these people the community
in the stands and these players, like, it's just so
engrossing to me. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I
really like it. Yeah, no, totally, but um yeah, I
(08:37):
feel like, even even if it isn't your cup of tea,
you would, like you said, be engrossed by. I don't
think there's any way to just be like, no, I
don't know, some people probably find it dull that I'm
sure there are, but it's it's just it is engrossing.
I don't think there's any other way to universally describe it. Yeah,
and Drew, I sent you that one little interview snippet.
I don't know if you saw it, but he sort
(08:58):
of was talking about being a new form of journalism
where he talked about you know, it's like a you know,
they're like, well, what is this though, And he's like, well,
it's like a play without a playwright, or a movie
without actors, or journalism without opinions. And I was like, oh, well,
that's interesting to say in the nineteen fifties, yeah, all
the way back then. Yeah, but it's um he they
(09:20):
saw it as uh Lee lack, and I think Drew
saw it more as a form of journalism. And I
feel like that's what documentaries used to be, and that's
changed a lot, sometimes for the better. It can be
all things, I guess, but it seems like documentaries used
to be way more journalism and less uh a big
time entertainment. Yeah, what do you think about how do
you feel about recreations and documentaries. I think it can
(09:44):
be cool if you have a good, uh, like a
new spin on it, kind of like when The Kids
Stays in the Picture came out, the documentary about the
producer what's his face, Robert? Yeah, exactly, full cool. They
did those recreations through animation and this really cool style
of animation that like it was really engaging and awesome,
(10:06):
and like, recrease can be really cool if you do
it right, I think, yeah, or really bad if it's
like some dumb cop show on TV. Oh yeah, like um,
but those are kind of fun too, Yeah, you mean
like the one Headline News shows a hundred episodes today.
Forensic Files. I haven't seen it, but if it's the
recrease I'm thinking of where it's like, you know, they
(10:28):
recreated murder on like you to shoot us. Yes, that's
exactly right, you're thinking of forensic files. But still if
you watch enough of it, it will really like your
whole life will turn dark. Be careful with files, everybody.
So should we go back and talk about Bridgewater State Hospital. Yeah,
because it's the place where Frederick Wiseman showed up with
(10:48):
his camera um with permission, as we'll see um. And
by the time he got there in nineteen I think
he shot in nineteen sixty five, maybe sixty six us Okay,
when he got there, it had been around for over
a hundred years. It didn't start out as a state hospital.
It started out as a poor house in alms House,
(11:10):
I think, all the way back in eighteen fifty four. Yeah,
and it's interesting when you read these it's disturbing. But
when you read these old timey classifications in medicine or
especially in mental health where someone be you know, the
description of someone that might be put there might just
be bad, Like that's one of the descriptions, Like that'd
(11:33):
be that beyond par with UM, like labeling them alcoholic
or schizophrenia or something like that. Yeah. But you know,
if you were if you had an alcohol problem, or
you had legitimate you know, mental health issues, or if
you were pregnant maybe or blind, or you had syphilis,
(11:54):
you might have been put in this poorhouse into so
UM in Massachusett by the way, Yeah, I don't know
if we said that or not. UM. So that's how
it started out. And then over time they started adding criminals, uh,
and focus more on criminals and the mentally ill. And
then by the time eighteen rolled around, it became the
(12:15):
State Asylum for insane criminals at the State Workhouse at Bridgewater,
and then eventually um it became known as Bridgewater State Hospital,
I think by nineteen o nine. And then very crucially
here UM it was handed over from the State Board
of Charity because remember it started out as a poorhouse,
(12:37):
over to the Massachusetts Bureau of Prison. So for all
intensive purposes at least berea bureaucratically speaking, it is a
is a place where the criminally insane, how they were
termed in the twentieth century is are held. Yeah, and
there were some bad criminals in there. I mean there
were murderers, There were people who were convicted of cannon balls,
(13:00):
um uh, of rape of children or just generally of rape.
So there were some bad dudes in there for sure.
But then they were also and this was sort of
one of the saddest things about sort of that time
in this country. Those people were right alongside other people
who either committed a very minor crime or maybe didn't
(13:23):
commit a crime at all, and they were just quote
unquote being held there temporarily, but that could stretch on
into years. Yeah, there's still something today called civil commitment,
and it's basically that you were being held not because
of a crimer, because of a minor crime, and you
maybe you have even served your sentence, but you're being
held because you had been deemed mentally unfit to return
(13:45):
to society, even though maybe you didn't even start out
like in a mental hospital, maybe you started out in jail,
and then you're just a troublemaker. They considered you a
troublemaker in jail, and you got sent to the hospital.
At that point, your sentence was just it just went away.
It was you were there until a doctor decided you
should be let out. And the problem was getting the
(14:07):
attention of a doctor long enough to say, oh, actually
you're you're fine, to let you out was really difficult
to do. And so it was a really desperate place,
especially for people who didn't feel like they should be there,
belong there, because after a while it seemed to exert
its influence on your mind and your outlook, and it
would it would bend you to to reflect it so
(14:32):
that you kind of needed to be there after a while,
even if you didn't start out that way. Yeah. I mean,
anyone who's ever seen one floor of the Cuckoos nests
is kind of exactly that happens in the plot. Like
people got worse at these places. Uh. And you mentioned
the medical actual medical attention. Uh. President of the Massachusetts
Bar Association at the time, Paul Timborello, and uh, big
(14:56):
thanks to Livia for digging this up and putting us
together for us. But he told the Harvard Crimson back
then that of the six and fifty men held at
the hospital at the time, actual medical staff were able
to see less than half of them one time a
year for about twenty minutes. Right, So other than that,
you're like, well, then who was it. If it wasn't
medical staff, it was like prison guards basically, yes. And
(15:20):
even then when you did get that twenty minutes, you
were confronted by a person or group of people who
were going on the premise that everything you said came
out of your mouth where was loony and not based
in reality or fact. No matter how well you put
your case or stated your case or complained, like any
show of emotion would just prove to them that you
(15:43):
were meant to be in there for another year until
they could hopefully see you again and reevaluate you. Yeah,
there was this one example Olivia found of jeez, it's
hard to believe. Uh. Matteo uh Calacoci was arrested in
at my daughter's age, almost seven years old for stealing
seven bucks from a grocery store, which is pretty good
(16:04):
taken by the day. Uh. And he was found incompetent
to stand trial and then sent to uh kind of
sent all around over the years to different institutions. After
he tried to escape in nineteen thirty five, was eventually
landed at Bridgewater, and this is another one of those
archaic terms, was charged with bad habits uh and resisting
(16:26):
authority and uh. This seven year old eventually ended up
here later in life, but stayed there for twenty eight
years uh and released in nineteen sixty three. So that's
just just one example of how like sort of a
small petty crime, but if you maybe have an attitude
or your troublemaker as a kid, and you bounce around
from place to place, you just might wind up here
(16:48):
with no one advocating for you. Uh. Kind of this
all made me think of like what families were doing.
But I guess at the time some families were kind
of like maybe convinced themselves they were off there, or
they didn't want to deal with the trouble, or there
were no family I don't know, yeah, or their family
was poor and had no influence over anybody so they
(17:09):
couldn't do anything about it. Very sad. Yeah, I say
we take a break and we'll come back with Wiseman
in his tenure while he was at Bridgewater. So Fredrick
(17:45):
Wiseman had an interesting origin story as a filmmaker. He
was um, he went to law school, at Yale supposedly
to get out of the Korean War draft, but then
when he graduated, he still ended up getting drafted any way,
and he was in there for almost two years kind
of after the war. But yeah, yeah, um, but I
(18:05):
still I'll bet he was not happy about being drafted
either way. Um, so he uh he went he I
guess went to Korea for a couple of years. And
then after the army he and his wife, um, uh
what is her name, bat Shaw? Great name, Yeah, she
she was a law professor as well. Um. They went
to Paris, lived for a couple of years, and then
(18:26):
decided they need to move back, so they moved back
to the Boston area. But while there, Um, Fredrick Wiseman
got into filmmaking. He started just shooting stuff with a
little eight millimeter camera about the time that cinema verite
was being developed in France. That's right. So, like he said,
he came back from France, Uh started teaching law at
(18:49):
b U and uh sort of had that filmmaking bug still.
So he bought the rights to a book, a novel
called The Cool World about poverty and Harlem, and he
hired a woman named Shirley Clark Clark sorry to direct it.
And it was very small and I don't think it
was much of a big film at all. But it
was a very small sort of indie film at the time,
(19:11):
which is to say it was probably not seen much. Um.
But Wiseman was like, hey, like, if if Shirley Clark
can do this thing, I can do this thing. And
I don't like law school. I don't like teaching law. Uh.
And one of the things he did because he didn't
love teaching law was take his class on a lot
of field trips, I guess, just to mix things up.
(19:32):
And they used to go to Bridgewater, and after a
few visits, he was like, wait a minute, I think
everything kind of came together. My love, his love of filmmaking,
his cinema verite kind of becoming popular, and his interest
in that, and then his interest disinterest in law and
interest in Bridgewater. So he had this idea to make
this film there. Yeah. So, as we'll see later, this
(19:53):
is kind of crucial. He he got permission to show up,
he said many times and later interviews, Bridge Warters nother
kind of play. She just kind of parachute in at night.
Do all your filming and then creep away at dawn
with all of your footage. Um, Like, he had to
get extensive permission from sounds that before though, yeah, from
we've done that before too, and grocery stores, remember, um
(20:16):
so uh. He got permission from the Lieutenant Governor, he
got permission from the Department of Corrections head, he got
permission of the Superintendent of Bridgewater. They all knew he
was there, and they would have figured out eventually anyway,
because he spent twenty nine days filming in Bridgewater and
he would just do his his his cinema veritas style
(20:37):
where he would just walk around and just film stuff,
film whatever. He could, just film film film. And I
saw something where he said that for his for his documentaries,
he films anything from like seventy five hours at a
minimum chuck to two hundred and fifty hours, and then
he goes through it all and edits all the stuff
he likes, and then after like month eight of editing,
(20:59):
Hill start piecing it together into like an arc a
story arc wow, which boiled down in this case to
eighty three minutes of of a movie. And the name
Titticut Follies comes from I think Titticut was a Native
American name. I would guess somewhere in the region. I
didn't really pink for the Bridgewater area. That's what they
called it, okay, Uh, and the follies were that, you know.
(21:22):
The film opens up with a musical performance by the
um I guess there were inmates, uh, with a song
strike up the band where all they're all dressed the
same and you can see you can see quite a
few clips on YouTube. But um, as Olivia points out,
like Wiseman has always been really guarded with how his
films are exhibited, and so I don't think you can
(21:45):
just like go YouTube this thing up and watch the
whole thing still, even I did last night on YouTube. Yeah, okay,
not on YouTube vimeo. Oh interesting, all right, I wonder
if that's like some sort of pirated upload. It was.
It's too it was a VHS copied put on line,
so I'm thinking, yeah, it was pirated. Did you watch
it all? Yeah? I did. I watched I've never seen
(22:07):
it before. I was familiar with it. The title. I
had not a lot of idea of what it was about,
but it was what do you think, certainly striking? It
was really something like I had ups and downs and
highs and lows, and I think I it was everything
Wiseman wanted me to feel about it. It was pretty great. Yeah,
I mean it is great. It's even the eight three minutes.
(22:28):
It's tough to sit through the whole thing because I
think by its nature, cinema verite can be taxing. Yeah,
even while engrossing, it can be pretty taxing. That's the
best way to put it. Um. But it's also obviously
in this case, it's not about high school football championship.
It's it's literally watching these people. Um. I mean, I
(22:48):
guess we should just talk about some of the scenes maybe, Yeah,
And a lot of the people are going to go
back and be like, just so this was great. Stare
with us everybody. Yeah, I mean, hey, you're a cinephile.
It's right in the face, but you know, the stomach
face has way too hostile stomachs a little bit of
friendliness left in it, you know, yeah, like Whodini style. Yeah,
(23:11):
that'll do. Uh well. One of the scenes that Livia
picked out that certainly stands out in my mind too,
and I think you can actually find parts of this
one on YouTube is a guard. I guess was he
dry shaving him. It looked like dry shaving or was
it a wet shave? Um. No, they put like shaving
cream on him and everything, and everybody seems to characterize
(23:33):
it as like really rough, like forceful, kind of almost
like he's being tortured with the shave. It was fast.
It was fast, Yeah, I didn't. It didn't look like
it hurt the patient, so it didn't. And it didn't
seem like the guy was trying to torture him. It
just seemed like he was being very quick and efficient.
And he does like cut him at the edge of
(23:54):
one of his mouth, one of the edges of the
corner of his mouth. Sorry. Um, so he's eating a
little bit, but he he doesn't seem like he doesn't
seem in distressed at all while he's shaving him. At
the very least, he's not in distress because of the shaving, right,
But then what happened, Well, there are these at least
two guards, right, and this is made by the way
(24:16):
his named Jim. He's probably the most famous character in
the in the movie or patient. I should say, he's
not character. Um, he has uh, he's very it's easy
to get a rise out of Jim as hard as
Jim tries to not let you get a rise out
of him. If you press his buttons, he's gonna like, yeah,
he's gonna get mad. He's gonna try to contain himself.
(24:38):
And there were a couple of guards that were guarding
Jim while he was being like like washed and shaved
and all that stuff, who just spent the entire scene
trying to get a rise out of him by saying like,
why is your room so dirty? Jim? Are you Is
your room gonna be clean tomorrow? Jim, you gotta keep
your room clean. Jim just ceaselessly and incessantly, and we
(24:59):
see eventually when they take him back to his room,
it's totally empty. There's a window, there's nothing in the room,
and in fact, Jim has kept naked in his room,
so there's no way for Jim for Jim's room to
be dirty, and also for no way for Jim to
keep his room clean. These guards, you realize, we're just
trying to get a rise out of Jim, and they
(25:19):
do over and over again, and it's really hard and
sad to watch Jim like like just get upset. He's
trying so hard to just not let these guys get
to him because he knows what they're doing. He's fully
aware of what they're doing, and he just can't help himself.
Probably like five different times he he reacts and then
tries to regain his composure again. Yeah, it's almost as
(25:41):
if they're trying to drive him mad. Yeah, and they're
also doing I saw somebody describe it as they're they're
goading him with the kind of like board desensitization or
de sensitivity of somebody who does this like every day
and know exactly what he's gonna do and there's no
fun in it anymore. But they just kind of do
it to amuse themselves as much as they can from it,
(26:03):
which is even worse, you know, because there's torturing this
poor guy mentally. Yeah, and we should point out to that.
You know, Wiseman showed scenes like this, but it wasn't um,
it wasn't like a indictment on the people who work there,
because he did also show some parts where there was
some care taken. Um. I mean, what was your like,
(26:27):
I haven't seen the whole thing since college, so what
was your net net on that? Um? So I think
the thing that I got from it was that Wiseman
treats everybody as human and equal in that he's not
expressing like empathy necessarily, he's not trying to even get
(26:48):
you to to empathize or sympathize. He's not trying to
get you to form an opinion. He's just showing you
what he found. And if he is trying to get
you to form an opinion, it's so obtuse that it's
tough to put your finger on. In retrospect, maybe maybe
you respond exactly the way he wanted you too, but
he's not very rarely does he like hammer you with it.
(27:10):
So I feel like he just treats everybody the same.
Like there's a guy, there's a patient who talks about
all of the children he's raped, and he he knows
that it's bad, he knows that it's like that that
like what he's doing is wrong and he can't help himself. Um,
but there's like Wiseman makes no effort to make this
(27:32):
man seem despicable or evil or anything like that. He
might as well be talking about like a car he's
thinking about buying for for how Wiseman portrays it, and
so like if he's treating that guy equal. He's definitely
treating like the guards and the clinical staff and everybody equally.
But I think more than that, he just turns the
camera on and lets them behave as they're going to behave.
(27:53):
He lets them present themselves to you, rather than him
trying to manipulate it so that you see what Wiseman
wants you to see. Yeah, I mean that's the purest
form of cinema verity, which you know, it's interesting how
conditioned we are to even hearing uh an ominous musical
score during a scene where a guy might talk about
(28:14):
crimes like that. Um, and when all that's stripped away
like it's it can be like more unsettling, I think
than hearing that creepy score. It reminds me and this
is certainly not the same thing, but um. We went
to a Cleveland Indians baseball game one time when Emily's
family still lived in Ohio, and it was this throwback
game where they didn't do any modern things at all,
(28:40):
and you don't really think about that. You're like, when
was a baseball game? What do they do? Like? All
they had was the organ player and the announcer going,
you know, all up to back number five so and
so so and so awesome done. You didn't play a
song when they came up that the batter picked out.
They didn't have the the home depot hammer and nail
(29:00):
and shovel chase each other around the field between endings
in a race. They didn't. You know, there's you don't
realize when you go to a pro sports game of
all the extra boy, especially in an NBA game, all
the extra stuff that's there until it's gone. And it
was really really weird. I liked it. Our family was like,
(29:21):
I'm bored, uh, And I was like, I think this
is kind of cool. They at least oh yeah, I
mean they sold the stuff and it wasn't throwback prices,
of course, but it was. It's weird when you're so
conditioned though, kind of like with film, just to background
noise and just sort of the things that we hear
in movies, lighting or or a camera move or you know,
(29:44):
cinema verite is all about sort of locking that camera
down or hand holding it. Sometimes when all that artifice
is gone, it can have a reverse effect that all
the artifice has, like you're using it for. Yeah, and
I think in addition to is added to kind of
manipulate you emotionally or unconsciously. Um, there's also a lot
(30:05):
that's removed, a lot of reality that's removed, like like
the background noise. If they put background noise in, it's
fully artists. It's not the actual background noise that was
there when they were filming. That's not what Wiseman does.
This film is replete with disturbing background noise, like televisions
that are on that you can't see other people's conversations
(30:26):
that you can't make out what they're saying. The lighting
he uses is only the lighting at Bridgewater. He doesn't
use any of his own light. It's all whatever it's
called available light. And Yeah, when you when you just
kind of watch it, you're like, this is just like
looking in on real life, which makes what you're seeing
all the more disturbing because in addition to to almost
(30:49):
being there, you almost feel guilty, especially if you have
half a conscience of witnessing the stuff that you're seeing,
because you're seeing some of these people, like like Jim
when he's taking back to his cell after those guards
got a rise out of him while he was being shaved.
He's naked, fully naked, stomping around basically throwing a tantrum, trying.
(31:12):
You can tell he's trying to calm himself down. This
is how he's like getting out his his anger, and
Wiseman just sits there in films the whole thing, and
you're forced to watch as the viewer. You're I saw
somebody put it. It's basically like you're the one standing
in the doorway. Even after the guards have left, you're
still standing there watching this man in one of the
(31:32):
probably one of the several worst points of his his
recent life. UM, just gawking at him, basically, and it's
it's that's the hard part of it for sure. Yeah.
Or you know, at the other end of the spectrum, Uh,
there's a scene with a guy named Vladimir, and this
guy is very lucid and he's speaking very clearly about UM.
(31:56):
You know, I think my my deteriorated since I've been here.
I think all this noise that you're hearing, all these
TVs that are always turned on full blast, it's sort
of driving me crazy. And I would like to go
back to prison where I actually could work out in
the gym and I could take classes and this medication
that they're giving me is making me worse, Like I
(32:17):
feel that it's harming me. And uh, when he's you know,
when the guards take him out of the room, then
there there's a scene of the clinicians like discussing things,
and it's sort of like it sounds like we need
to up his medication, uh, and his tranquilizers because he's paranoid. Um.
So when you see something like that, it's sort of
(32:37):
the other end of the spectrum from Jim equally disturbing.
But part of the beauty of this and the rawness
of this film is like, these people are all into
here together. Yeah, he's never lost on you. His is
a particularly sad case. Yeah, because you can tell, like
you no, he's he's with it. This guy's he knows
what he's saying. He's not trying to manipulate. He's pleading
his case in a logical way. He's trying so hard
(33:00):
not to get worked up. How would you not get
worked up when you're when you're pleading your case to
be released from a mental institution from somebody who's just
taking you, as you know, nuts, So why should you
be listened to? There's even um one of the one
of the medical staff at that meeting. After he leaves
the room and they're discussing him. Um, she says, uh,
(33:22):
what did she say? She's like, if you take his
basic premise as as true, then everything he says from
that is totally logical. But of course his basic premise
is total hogwash or whatever. She says something like that.
I'm paraphrasing. So it's like that guy never had a chance.
He just wasted his breath. He just like they were
(33:43):
they were never going to listen to him, and um,
it's yeah, yeah, what was he not supposed to be there?
He was supposed to be there one day? Well yeah,
but every time he came up for parole he would
plead his case, they would deny it. And then finally
in the end he was like, you know, it doesn't
matter what I say in here, you're not gonna let
(34:05):
me out anyway. That's about Morgan Freeman. But that sound
a little more like Boss Hog on tranquilizers. What yeah,
that was Boss hogs edated. Oh man, let's hear again. No,
I can't maybe try can edit that. I can have
a new mom. Morgan Freeman again, one of the great voices.
(34:25):
But yeah, he basically says, you know, um institutionalize, You're
not You're gonna let me out no matter what I say.
And of course that's when they let him out because
it's a dramatic film and uh with a great, wonderful
happy ending, not like to the cut follies. No. One
other thing that I think we should point out to
for people who haven't seen the movie, Like we know
Vladimir's name and Jim's name just because it comes up
(34:49):
like in discussion, like they're calling him Jim or somebody
addresses Vladimir's Vladimir. There's no Chiron at the bottom of
the screen says Vladimir or Jim. There's no no one
explaining how Jim got here or what Vladimir did. There's
no nothing, nothing is explained. It's just here's a scene.
(35:09):
Here's another scene. Here's another scene. Here's another scene. Nothing
necessarily leads into anything else. There's one part that see
that Wiseman says he regrets because it was so he
calls it ham fisted. Where there's it's really hard to watch.
The main doctor, the main clinician, who's a recurring character
whose name we have no idea who it is, at
(35:31):
least if you just watch the movie. Um, he force
feeds a patient who stopped eating and through with a
naso gastric tube stuff down his nose all the way
into his stomach. And this guy is just stoically taking this,
like he's decided he is not going to eat. They
even give him a choice, so like, you can drink
the super you're gonna we're gonna force feed you. And
(35:52):
he's like, you're gonna have to force feed, but I
don't even think he says anything. So there's a there's
a force feeding scene. You watch an emaciated man who's
starving himself force fed, and um. He intercut that part
with uh, scenes from the man's preparation for burial to
kind of show like, you know, he didn't make it,
(36:14):
he was successful in ending his own life through starvation. Um.
And then also I think what Wiseman was trying to
get across was that he was, you know, he's really
being cared for. He's given like a decent burial and
like I think eight that he has eight pall bearers
from the institution and he's like treated very well compared
especially to this this force feeding through a tube down
(36:35):
his nose. Um, and Wiseman thought that was a little
ham fisted. That is, that is the most cinematic part
of the entire movie. Nothing else is anywhere remotely like that.
It's all just scene, scene, scenes and scene, and like
no explanation of who these people are, what they are
trying to say. All right, should we take a break? Yeah, alright,
(36:56):
we'll take our second break, can be back right after this,
(37:24):
so before we talk about the sort of court cases
in the whether or not this film could be banned
or exhibited. Um, it's interesting you talk about like it's
just scene scene, scene scene, But um, on the flip
side of that, it is like a such a carefully
curated edit from all those hundreds of hours of footage
(37:45):
down to eighty three minutes. And that's one of the
things that Weisseman sort of talked about was he didn't
apparently he didn't, I don't know if he came around,
but he didn't even like the term cinema verite because
he felt it sounded too much like you were shooting
stuff and putting it in front of people. And he said,
I am manipulating people. But it's through the edit. Um,
(38:07):
so while you may not think that, I mean, I
guess he was a master at it, because you probably
shouldn't feel manipulated. But he's still putting together that that
careful edit. You know, it's interesting he is a master
at it, and it's pretty remarkable. This was his first
film and he was that masterful at it. So um
I said earlier that it was crucial that he had
(38:27):
gotten permission to film, and not only from you know,
the Lieutenant Governor and the Superintendent of Bridgewater, but also
from everyone he shot. He got either written permission from
them or verbal permission audio visual I guess, on camera
them giving him permission to use them in his film.
(38:47):
So he was covered up in in permission. And don't
forget he was a law professor to Um. And when
the movie first came out, when he finished, he showed
it to the Superintendent of Bridgewater and to the Lieutenant Governor.
They both apparently liked it, according to Wiseman, But it
wasn't until the Um the movie came out into wider
(39:08):
release at the very beginning I think New York Film
Festival or something like that, and people started responding by saying,
like this is barbaric this treatment at Bridgewater. What's wrong
with the state of Massachusetts that they suddenly turned on
the film and Wiseman had on his hands. Uh what
would come to become a banned film. Yeah. So one
(39:30):
of the central players here is Elliott Richardson, who was
that lieutenant governor you referenced at the time, had loftier
political aspiration, so when it came time to run for
an office higher than that, tried to suppress this film,
thinking it would you know, count against him, and it
became sort of like Livy calls it a political tool,
(39:52):
that's exactly what it became. And what in Uh, Richardson
would end up accusing Wiseman of double crossing this eight Uh.
And it all sort of hinged on the idea, not like, oh,
you showed these awful things, but it hinged on the
idea of permissions in privacy was sort of the legal
framework of it, because the argument was, sure, you might
(40:12):
have gotten the permission from these men, but um, they
are in no state to give real permission. And so
there were a series of court cases over the years
it sort of debated this like for many many years. Um,
in sixty eight, it was a judge spirit court judge
named Harry Callis who found that it breached privacy. And uh,
(40:34):
this was interesting though, because like I get that as
a legal basis for argument, but this judge said he
he kind of attacked the filmmaking process and said it's
just a hodgepodge of sequences with no narrative and said
each viewers left to his own devices as to what's
being portrayed and and in what context. And in the meantime,
Wiseman's over there going to a day like that's what
(40:56):
cinema verite is. But um, I thought that was like
this judge just said you should destroy that should like
ordered it to be destroyed. Yeah. He also called it
a nightmare of ghoulish obscenities and so the negative has
to be burnt. Yeah, And of course Wiseman was like, well,
I'm not burning my negative. I'm going to fight this
(41:16):
an appeal it. That case, by the way, was the
first one in Massachusetts history where a court affirmed that
a right to privacy exists, like it had never been
affirmed in a court case, and it was established in
that case. So it was it was. It was not
caught and dried though, because Wiseman has First Amendment right
to freedom of expression. So it became freedom of expression
(41:38):
versus freedom of privacy or right to privacy, I should say,
and um, it's the I think the A c. L
you got involved and they formed they submitted an amicus
brief that basically said, we think that this film has value,
but to a very limited number of people, specifically lawyers, judges,
(42:01):
law students, medical students, um, psychiatrists, people in those fields
should be able to see this, and that is about it.
And so that kind of became the ruling shortly after
that initial you need to burn the negatives on appeal,
that's what they came up with. Yeah, and so for
a number of years after that, for those reasons, Um,
(42:22):
it was shown in like film class, it was shown
in medical schools. It was shown, um in the library. Yeah,
it was shown in libraries. That was a great place
to see something like this, or in Uh, different institutions
would show this and say this is what not to do,
like you can't do stuff like this. Uh. There was
(42:43):
a belief and this was sort of through the seventies
and then in the eighties some attorneys got involved that
said there were some suicides at Bridgewater in the mid
to late eighties, there were some class action lawsuits that
followed by patients where the attorneys they could draw direct
line basically between a patient dying by suicide and the
(43:07):
fact that this film wasn't shown, like it should be
allowed to be shown for these reasons. Yeah, Like had
it been shown, there would have been a public outcry
for more reforms, and that wouldn't have led you know,
those reforms might have prevented those suicides and at Bridgewater
and so Wiseman said that he never gave up on
the film being released to a wider audience, and he
(43:28):
he saw that that was a good time to bring
this up again and it actually worked out. Um he
he got he got a judge to basically say like, okay,
this is Yes, you should be able to show this,
but we need to blur the faces of the men
out and Wiseman said that's impossible. This is film, it's
not video. And then also work with me here man, right,
(43:49):
he said, Also, it'll artistically ruin my my um my film,
which you remember when we did that one guerrilla filming
in the supermarket, we ended up having to go, I
can blur every single thing in the supermarket audio show
for us. I kind of screwed it up a little bit.
I could see where he's coming from, right, And so
he appealed again, and finally they said, you know what,
(44:11):
not a single um inmate at Bridgewater, and none of
their families has ever filed a formal objection to this
film being shown, So how about this just show it.
It's unbanned officially by the early nineties, right, that was
a ninety one with the Judge Andrew gil Meyer of
the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. And then after that it
(44:32):
was still because Wiseman is, like I said earlier, very
picky about how his films are exhibited, and so it
wasn't like it was just everywhere. I think PBS aired
it in ninety three in full. Uh, you could always
buy the DVD from him, from his website or if
there was a film festival or a film class. Like
I said, when I saw it was in college film
(44:54):
class from a VHS tape that the professor owned. Uh,
probably bought it from Wiseman Um. And that's sort of
how it lived its life. I mean, it's it's interesting
that this like this still is a relevant topic and
a relevant film and you know, is being talked about today,
like I think he even tried to or I think
(45:18):
he's successfully finally got it on a streaming service called
Canopy with a K, which is also kind of through
the library system, which is awesome. Yeah, you can watch
it for free if you sign up for a Canopy
account with your library card number. Um, you can go
watch I think all of Wiseman's films all forty eight um,
which is pretty great. But there's there seems to have
(45:39):
been um, some direct effects of the film on Bridgewater,
but still from what from what it sounds like, there's
still a long way to go with Bridgewater too. Yeah.
I think they made a lot of strides and then
they found even as recently as this year, uh that
um they were using what they call chemical restraints basically
(45:59):
just opening people up more than they said they were doing.
So this is ongoing there. And then Weisman, like you said,
made forty eight films and they had names like hospital
or high school, and it's just sort of that very
bare bones cinema verity look at a single topic that's
uh sort of been his bread and butter. I think
(46:20):
it's a really cool thing. Yeah, it is really cool.
He's just fascinated with institutions, although he even says he
has no idea how they work, and I think he's
even said he's not quite sure he understands his film himself,
which is pretty awesome to say. Yeah, and the Poorer
Films is named after his wife, who passed away a
couple of years ago at the age of ninety. And he's,
like you said, still going strong. Yeah. Is what's his
(46:42):
latest one? Um City Hall? Yeah about Boston City Hall. Yeah,
it came out in pretty cool. Well, if you want
to know more about Tiddy Cut Follies, you should probably
go watch it, but be warned it is really rough,
even though it is great in the term of a
cinema file would use it. How about that a cinephile
(47:04):
I always had an extra syllable, So that, of course
means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call
this follow up on the effective altruism. One of our
favorite things is when we talk about a topic and
someone from that topic gets in touch and as a listener. Uh,
and that's what happened in this case with Grace Adams. Hey, guys,
(47:26):
we are so excited that you covered effective altruism and
you did so wonderfully. Uh and Grace is with giving
what we can, giving what we can. Would love to
give your listeners a free book on effective altruism viewing
if you include this link in the show notes, which
we don't have but we'll just say here, people can
opt to have a free book sent to them, including
(47:46):
the precipice by Toby Ord anywhere in the world. We
love sending out books and things is a great way
for people to engage more with the ideas. Wishing all
the best from a big personal fan, Grace Adams and
how I should have made this into a bit LEA
should have do that real quick, al right, so you
just talk to people while I do that. Okay, Well,
everybody actually could edit this together. But Toby Ord wrote
(48:09):
in and said the same thing too. But he also
said us well wishes and said we did we did
a good job on the effective Altruism episode, which I
thought was pretty good because I like to think we're
fairly fair handed with it. We weren't two over the
top subjective, don't you think I think so? Although we
did get one email from someone it's like kind of
acted like we didn't point out in any of the
(48:31):
downsides which I disagree with. I disagree with that too,
But anyway, how's that Bitley, come and chuck. Okay, my friend,
I am done. I have the bit lee. Uh. If
you go to bit b I T dot L y
slash s y s K give, you can get your
free book. Yes, pretty great free books on effective altruism
(48:53):
and free books by Toby Ord on existential risks, which
I mean, come on. Uh. If you want to get
in touch with us, like Grace from GiveWell did uh,
we would love to hear from you. You can send
us an email whether you want to give away free
books or not. It's okay, you don't have to uh
send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
(49:17):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
and there's Chuck and this is stuff you should know.
Just us today. Jerry's on vacation and that's cool. Yeah,
(00:22):
Like Jerry's in the Disney World. Kind of went right
after me. She's in in the d I said, hey, Jerry.
In the south bathroom of Frontier Land, above the toilet,
I've left. I've taped a gun. Go shoot Mo Green,
Go shoot Mo Green in the restaurant booth. No, Moe
(00:43):
Green got it in the on the massage tape. Oh
that's right. The police commissioner or the police chief. He yea,
he was. He was tangential to the hit with the bathroom.
I don't remember who was trying to hit po I
goofed that up. Hey, shout out to Uh, No, we're
(01:03):
not done sorting this up. Okay, go ahead, name all
the hits in the Godfather. Uh. Shout out to our
pal and friend of the show, Kevin Pollock, because that
made me think of the great, great show that is
one of my favorite shows called Better Things from the
wonderful talented Pamela ad Lawn. They're entering their final season,
(01:26):
and I watched the first episode the other night and Pollock,
who plays her brother on the show, had a great
line that I knew was improved where he's he was
getting in his car and I can't remember what they
were talking about, and he said right in the eye
like Mo Green. And I texted immediately and I was like,
right in the eye like Mo Green. I was like,
that was yours and he went, oh yeah, he said
that was improv It was very fun. It's always fun
(01:49):
to be able to watch a TV show and texture
pal that's on that TV show. Yeah, he's got he's
got the best parts. He just pops up and all
the best stuff. You know. Yeah, he's in Mazel He's uh,
I think. And I've talked to Polock about this and
he's like, yeah, I agree. I think he could star
in a really great indie film. I just think he's
(02:10):
a really great actor, and uh, he's great at comedy,
but I think he's, on top of that, just a
really really great actor. Didn't you star in that Project
green Light film? I don't know. Did he would pretty
I'm pretty sure I think the first season, Oh boy,
I don't remember those movies. I know that, uh Shyla
Both that was where he got his start, is that right?
(02:30):
Was he in one of those the Battle of Shaker
Heights or something. I think that might have been the
one that Polock was. Was he in that movie? But
I mean a really good movie. And I'm not sure
the Project green Light movie. It was a cool show though,
I dug it. Yeah, yeah, I had brought that back
in the iPhone filmmaking age. Yeah, it's a little surprising
who would be who would bring it back though? Now
(02:53):
Ben and Mack and bringing back I mean they that's
who did it the first time, right, sure? But I
mean are they still relevant? Aren't there too? Like younger version?
I don't know who the new been in mad Are?
How about um Whiz Khalifa and Charlemagne the God? Sure there? Yeah? Alright, great? Anyway,
(03:15):
Kep Box a great actor and a good dude. Yeah,
I agreed, And um, probably somebody I would guess who've
seen the movie that we're going to talk about today.
I would be really surprised if he hasn't seen it,
just because I feel like if you're into movies, if
you're a movie maker, if you are if you consider
yourself a cinema file if you want to get punched
in the stomach. Um, you've probably seen Titty Cut Folies, right, Yeah,
(03:40):
I mean this is one that I saw in film
class in college. Um, it is one that you there's
about a fifty fifty chance that you will see this
if you've seen it in film class in the college.
People like Casey, our colleague, Casey Pegram, no doubt is
a Frederick Wiseman fan. I'm surely if I texted him
he'd like, oh, sure Wiseman. Yeah. Although I found Titticut
(04:01):
Follies was not one of his great at work. That
sounds like Casey, God bless Casey all time greatest movie
crush guest. But um, yeah, fred Fred Weiseman, uh made
this film. He was a law professor in his thirties
in the sixties and made this documentary film about a
um a mental institution, specifically one for the criminally insane.
(04:26):
It's what they called it. And it was a very
you know, it was a movie that gained a lot
of reputation as like the most disturbing film you've ever seen,
and it's been banned in this many places and and
that kind of thing. But when you kind of peel
it back, it's just a very straight up, sort of
cinema verite documentary about a institution that needed to get
(04:47):
their act together right. And that was kind of Wiseman's
told jam. Like he's made forty eight films. I think
he just turned ninety two couple of months ago, amazing,
and starting in nineteen sixty six, he made about a
film a year, and he has his own style, Like
you said, cinema verity, you, which I feel like we
should probably kind of just go ahead and explain, don't you. Yeah,
(05:11):
go ahead, go ahead, film guy. Uh, well, cinema verite.
I mean, what's the direct translation, direct cinema. Yeah, direct cinema.
And it's the idea that you kind of set a
camera up and let it let life happen in front
of it for whatever your subject is. You don't you
don't do interviews, you don't do talking head shots, you don't,
(05:33):
um you it's really just uh. One good example is
that documentary and that, of course now I can't think
of it um in the seventies about the American family
that ran on PBS that was so groundbreaking, where they
just set up a camera and followed this family and
if you're thinking it sounds a lot like reality TV,
I think and it's pure ast form. Reality TV can
(05:56):
be this, but it really turned into something else entirely. Yeah. Yeah,
it's just so deeply manipulated by producers behind the scenes
who tell them to do this or that or whatever. Um,
cinema verites would would not would not want to do that.
They they just shoot and hope hope also that people
act like themselves. It's another thing and one thing Frederick Wiseman,
(06:19):
the guy who made Titty Cut Follies, UM, said like
he believed that people basically acted like themselves when the
camera was around, because people are in general lousy actors
and they're behaving like you would expect them to behave.
So they're probably acting like they would without the cameras,
especially in a cinema veryte kind of set up, because
(06:40):
it's it's intrusive there's a camera there, but it's not
nearly as intrusive as like a camera on like some
rig that's flying around, like there's lighting people and gappers
and craft services table that's calling your name. Um, it's
it's just much less intrusive than that. It's minimally intrusive
as far as filmmaking goes. And that's the point of it,
because they want to document reality without leading the viewer
(07:05):
as much as possible. From what I understand, Yeah, that's
exactly it. And I love cinema verite documentaries, especially UM.
And I also like sort of quasi cinema verite where
there's a lot of like I don't mind interviews being
put in there, um, as long as there's a lot
of just sort of watching life happen. It's really amazingly engrossing.
(07:28):
There were these two filmmakers that I think inspired uh
Weisseman Um, Richard Leacock and Robert Drew, who in the
early I think in the fifties and early nineteen sixties
were kind of dabbling in cinema verite documentaries. And they
made one in particular called Mooney Versus Foul, which is
(07:49):
about a high school football championship and Mooney and Fowl
or the two coaches. And I watched the trailer for
that today. I guess his I'm guessing it's his daughter
that put this up on VIN, you know, along with
some other like interviews with her dad, Drew's daughter that
it's really engrossing just to watch, and especially because all
you see if you're a modern person in two and
(08:13):
you're like, what was life like in the nineteen fifties?
You don't get that from I love Lucy and Dick
Van Dyke, Like, those are great shows, but to be
able to just sit in and take a peek at
these high school football coaches and these people the community
in the stands and these players, like, it's just so
engrossing to me. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I
really like it. Yeah, no, totally, but um yeah, I
(08:37):
feel like, even even if it isn't your cup of tea,
you would, like you said, be engrossed by. I don't
think there's any way to just be like, no, I
don't know, some people probably find it dull that I'm
sure there are, but it's it's just it is engrossing.
I don't think there's any other way to universally describe it. Yeah,
and Drew, I sent you that one little interview snippet.
I don't know if you saw it, but he sort
(08:58):
of was talking about being a new form of journalism
where he talked about you know, it's like a you know,
they're like, well, what is this though, And he's like, well,
it's like a play without a playwright, or a movie
without actors, or journalism without opinions. And I was like, oh, well,
that's interesting to say in the nineteen fifties, yeah, all
the way back then. Yeah, but it's um he they
(09:20):
saw it as uh Lee lack, and I think Drew
saw it more as a form of journalism. And I
feel like that's what documentaries used to be, and that's
changed a lot, sometimes for the better. It can be
all things, I guess, but it seems like documentaries used
to be way more journalism and less uh a big
time entertainment. Yeah, what do you think about how do
you feel about recreations and documentaries. I think it can
(09:44):
be cool if you have a good, uh, like a
new spin on it, kind of like when The Kids
Stays in the Picture came out, the documentary about the
producer what's his face, Robert? Yeah, exactly, full cool. They
did those recreations through animation and this really cool style
of animation that like it was really engaging and awesome,
(10:06):
and like, recrease can be really cool if you do
it right, I think, yeah, or really bad if it's
like some dumb cop show on TV. Oh yeah, like um,
but those are kind of fun too, Yeah, you mean
like the one Headline News shows a hundred episodes today.
Forensic Files. I haven't seen it, but if it's the
recrease I'm thinking of where it's like, you know, they
(10:28):
recreated murder on like you to shoot us. Yes, that's
exactly right, you're thinking of forensic files. But still if
you watch enough of it, it will really like your
whole life will turn dark. Be careful with files, everybody.
So should we go back and talk about Bridgewater State Hospital. Yeah,
because it's the place where Frederick Wiseman showed up with
(10:48):
his camera um with permission, as we'll see um. And
by the time he got there in nineteen I think
he shot in nineteen sixty five, maybe sixty six us Okay,
when he got there, it had been around for over
a hundred years. It didn't start out as a state hospital.
It started out as a poor house in alms House,
(11:10):
I think, all the way back in eighteen fifty four. Yeah,
and it's interesting when you read these it's disturbing. But
when you read these old timey classifications in medicine or
especially in mental health where someone be you know, the
description of someone that might be put there might just
be bad, Like that's one of the descriptions, Like that'd
(11:33):
be that beyond par with UM, like labeling them alcoholic
or schizophrenia or something like that. Yeah. But you know,
if you were if you had an alcohol problem, or
you had legitimate you know, mental health issues, or if
you were pregnant maybe or blind, or you had syphilis,
(11:54):
you might have been put in this poorhouse into so
UM in Massachusett by the way, Yeah, I don't know
if we said that or not. UM. So that's how
it started out. And then over time they started adding criminals, uh,
and focus more on criminals and the mentally ill. And
then by the time eighteen rolled around, it became the
(12:15):
State Asylum for insane criminals at the State Workhouse at Bridgewater,
and then eventually um it became known as Bridgewater State Hospital,
I think by nineteen o nine. And then very crucially
here UM it was handed over from the State Board
of Charity because remember it started out as a poorhouse,
(12:37):
over to the Massachusetts Bureau of Prison. So for all
intensive purposes at least berea bureaucratically speaking, it is a
is a place where the criminally insane, how they were
termed in the twentieth century is are held. Yeah, and
there were some bad criminals in there. I mean there
were murderers, There were people who were convicted of cannon balls,
(13:00):
um uh, of rape of children or just generally of rape.
So there were some bad dudes in there for sure.
But then they were also and this was sort of
one of the saddest things about sort of that time
in this country. Those people were right alongside other people
who either committed a very minor crime or maybe didn't
(13:23):
commit a crime at all, and they were just quote
unquote being held there temporarily, but that could stretch on
into years. Yeah, there's still something today called civil commitment,
and it's basically that you were being held not because
of a crimer, because of a minor crime, and you
maybe you have even served your sentence, but you're being
held because you had been deemed mentally unfit to return
(13:45):
to society, even though maybe you didn't even start out
like in a mental hospital, maybe you started out in jail,
and then you're just a troublemaker. They considered you a
troublemaker in jail, and you got sent to the hospital.
At that point, your sentence was just it just went away.
It was you were there until a doctor decided you
should be let out. And the problem was getting the
(14:07):
attention of a doctor long enough to say, oh, actually
you're you're fine, to let you out was really difficult
to do. And so it was a really desperate place,
especially for people who didn't feel like they should be there,
belong there, because after a while it seemed to exert
its influence on your mind and your outlook, and it
would it would bend you to to reflect it so
(14:32):
that you kind of needed to be there after a while,
even if you didn't start out that way. Yeah. I mean,
anyone who's ever seen one floor of the Cuckoos nests
is kind of exactly that happens in the plot. Like
people got worse at these places. Uh. And you mentioned
the medical actual medical attention. Uh. President of the Massachusetts
Bar Association at the time, Paul Timborello, and uh, big
(14:56):
thanks to Livia for digging this up and putting us
together for us. But he told the Harvard Crimson back
then that of the six and fifty men held at
the hospital at the time, actual medical staff were able
to see less than half of them one time a
year for about twenty minutes. Right, So other than that,
you're like, well, then who was it. If it wasn't
medical staff, it was like prison guards basically, yes. And
(15:20):
even then when you did get that twenty minutes, you
were confronted by a person or group of people who
were going on the premise that everything you said came
out of your mouth where was loony and not based
in reality or fact. No matter how well you put
your case or stated your case or complained, like any
show of emotion would just prove to them that you
(15:43):
were meant to be in there for another year until
they could hopefully see you again and reevaluate you. Yeah,
there was this one example Olivia found of jeez, it's
hard to believe. Uh. Matteo uh Calacoci was arrested in
at my daughter's age, almost seven years old for stealing
seven bucks from a grocery store, which is pretty good
(16:04):
taken by the day. Uh. And he was found incompetent
to stand trial and then sent to uh kind of
sent all around over the years to different institutions. After
he tried to escape in nineteen thirty five, was eventually
landed at Bridgewater, and this is another one of those
archaic terms, was charged with bad habits uh and resisting
(16:26):
authority and uh. This seven year old eventually ended up
here later in life, but stayed there for twenty eight
years uh and released in nineteen sixty three. So that's
just just one example of how like sort of a
small petty crime, but if you maybe have an attitude
or your troublemaker as a kid, and you bounce around
from place to place, you just might wind up here
(16:48):
with no one advocating for you. Uh. Kind of this
all made me think of like what families were doing.
But I guess at the time some families were kind
of like maybe convinced themselves they were off there, or
they didn't want to deal with the trouble, or there
were no family I don't know, yeah, or their family
was poor and had no influence over anybody so they
(17:09):
couldn't do anything about it. Very sad. Yeah, I say
we take a break and we'll come back with Wiseman
in his tenure while he was at Bridgewater. So Fredrick
(17:45):
Wiseman had an interesting origin story as a filmmaker. He
was um, he went to law school, at Yale supposedly
to get out of the Korean War draft, but then
when he graduated, he still ended up getting drafted any way,
and he was in there for almost two years kind
of after the war. But yeah, yeah, um, but I
(18:05):
still I'll bet he was not happy about being drafted
either way. Um, so he uh he went he I
guess went to Korea for a couple of years. And
then after the army he and his wife, um, uh
what is her name, bat Shaw? Great name, Yeah, she
she was a law professor as well. Um. They went
to Paris, lived for a couple of years, and then
(18:26):
decided they need to move back, so they moved back
to the Boston area. But while there, Um, Fredrick Wiseman
got into filmmaking. He started just shooting stuff with a
little eight millimeter camera about the time that cinema verite
was being developed in France. That's right. So, like he said,
he came back from France, Uh started teaching law at
(18:49):
b U and uh sort of had that filmmaking bug still.
So he bought the rights to a book, a novel
called The Cool World about poverty and Harlem, and he
hired a woman named Shirley Clark Clark sorry to direct it.
And it was very small and I don't think it
was much of a big film at all. But it
was a very small sort of indie film at the time,
(19:11):
which is to say it was probably not seen much. Um.
But Wiseman was like, hey, like, if if Shirley Clark
can do this thing, I can do this thing. And
I don't like law school. I don't like teaching law. Uh.
And one of the things he did because he didn't
love teaching law was take his class on a lot
of field trips, I guess, just to mix things up.
(19:32):
And they used to go to Bridgewater, and after a
few visits, he was like, wait a minute, I think
everything kind of came together. My love, his love of filmmaking,
his cinema verite kind of becoming popular, and his interest
in that, and then his interest disinterest in law and
interest in Bridgewater. So he had this idea to make
this film there. Yeah. So, as we'll see later, this
(19:53):
is kind of crucial. He he got permission to show up,
he said many times and later interviews, Bridge Warters nother
kind of play. She just kind of parachute in at night.
Do all your filming and then creep away at dawn
with all of your footage. Um, Like, he had to
get extensive permission from sounds that before though, yeah, from
we've done that before too, and grocery stores, remember, um
(20:16):
so uh. He got permission from the Lieutenant Governor, he
got permission from the Department of Corrections head, he got
permission of the Superintendent of Bridgewater. They all knew he
was there, and they would have figured out eventually anyway,
because he spent twenty nine days filming in Bridgewater and
he would just do his his his cinema veritas style
(20:37):
where he would just walk around and just film stuff,
film whatever. He could, just film film film. And I
saw something where he said that for his for his documentaries,
he films anything from like seventy five hours at a
minimum chuck to two hundred and fifty hours, and then
he goes through it all and edits all the stuff
he likes, and then after like month eight of editing,
(20:59):
Hill start piecing it together into like an arc a
story arc wow, which boiled down in this case to
eighty three minutes of of a movie. And the name
Titticut Follies comes from I think Titticut was a Native
American name. I would guess somewhere in the region. I
didn't really pink for the Bridgewater area. That's what they
called it, okay, Uh, and the follies were that, you know.
(21:22):
The film opens up with a musical performance by the
um I guess there were inmates, uh, with a song
strike up the band where all they're all dressed the
same and you can see you can see quite a
few clips on YouTube. But um, as Olivia points out,
like Wiseman has always been really guarded with how his
films are exhibited, and so I don't think you can
(21:45):
just like go YouTube this thing up and watch the
whole thing still, even I did last night on YouTube. Yeah, okay,
not on YouTube vimeo. Oh interesting, all right, I wonder
if that's like some sort of pirated upload. It was.
It's too it was a VHS copied put on line,
so I'm thinking, yeah, it was pirated. Did you watch
it all? Yeah? I did. I watched I've never seen
(22:07):
it before. I was familiar with it. The title. I
had not a lot of idea of what it was about,
but it was what do you think, certainly striking? It
was really something like I had ups and downs and
highs and lows, and I think I it was everything
Wiseman wanted me to feel about it. It was pretty great. Yeah,
I mean it is great. It's even the eight three minutes.
(22:28):
It's tough to sit through the whole thing because I
think by its nature, cinema verite can be taxing. Yeah,
even while engrossing, it can be pretty taxing. That's the
best way to put it. Um. But it's also obviously
in this case, it's not about high school football championship.
It's it's literally watching these people. Um. I mean, I
(22:48):
guess we should just talk about some of the scenes maybe, Yeah,
And a lot of the people are going to go
back and be like, just so this was great. Stare
with us everybody. Yeah, I mean, hey, you're a cinephile.
It's right in the face, but you know, the stomach
face has way too hostile stomachs a little bit of
friendliness left in it, you know, yeah, like Whodini style. Yeah,
(23:11):
that'll do. Uh well. One of the scenes that Livia
picked out that certainly stands out in my mind too,
and I think you can actually find parts of this
one on YouTube is a guard. I guess was he
dry shaving him. It looked like dry shaving or was
it a wet shave? Um. No, they put like shaving
cream on him and everything, and everybody seems to characterize
(23:33):
it as like really rough, like forceful, kind of almost
like he's being tortured with the shave. It was fast.
It was fast, Yeah, I didn't. It didn't look like
it hurt the patient, so it didn't. And it didn't
seem like the guy was trying to torture him. It
just seemed like he was being very quick and efficient.
And he does like cut him at the edge of
(23:54):
one of his mouth, one of the edges of the
corner of his mouth. Sorry. Um, so he's eating a
little bit, but he he doesn't seem like he doesn't
seem in distressed at all while he's shaving him. At
the very least, he's not in distress because of the shaving, right,
But then what happened, Well, there are these at least
two guards, right, and this is made by the way
(24:16):
his named Jim. He's probably the most famous character in
the in the movie or patient. I should say, he's
not character. Um, he has uh, he's very it's easy
to get a rise out of Jim as hard as
Jim tries to not let you get a rise out
of him. If you press his buttons, he's gonna like, yeah,
he's gonna get mad. He's gonna try to contain himself.
(24:38):
And there were a couple of guards that were guarding
Jim while he was being like like washed and shaved
and all that stuff, who just spent the entire scene
trying to get a rise out of him by saying like,
why is your room so dirty? Jim? Are you Is
your room gonna be clean tomorrow? Jim, you gotta keep
your room clean. Jim just ceaselessly and incessantly, and we
(24:59):
see eventually when they take him back to his room,
it's totally empty. There's a window, there's nothing in the room,
and in fact, Jim has kept naked in his room,
so there's no way for Jim for Jim's room to
be dirty, and also for no way for Jim to
keep his room clean. These guards, you realize, we're just
trying to get a rise out of Jim, and they
(25:19):
do over and over again, and it's really hard and
sad to watch Jim like like just get upset. He's
trying so hard to just not let these guys get
to him because he knows what they're doing. He's fully
aware of what they're doing, and he just can't help himself.
Probably like five different times he he reacts and then
tries to regain his composure again. Yeah, it's almost as
(25:41):
if they're trying to drive him mad. Yeah, and they're
also doing I saw somebody describe it as they're they're
goading him with the kind of like board desensitization or
de sensitivity of somebody who does this like every day
and know exactly what he's gonna do and there's no
fun in it anymore. But they just kind of do
it to amuse themselves as much as they can from it,
(26:03):
which is even worse, you know, because there's torturing this
poor guy mentally. Yeah, and we should point out to that.
You know, Wiseman showed scenes like this, but it wasn't um,
it wasn't like a indictment on the people who work there,
because he did also show some parts where there was
some care taken. Um. I mean, what was your like,
(26:27):
I haven't seen the whole thing since college, so what
was your net net on that? Um? So I think
the thing that I got from it was that Wiseman
treats everybody as human and equal in that he's not
expressing like empathy necessarily, he's not trying to even get
(26:48):
you to to empathize or sympathize. He's not trying to
get you to form an opinion. He's just showing you
what he found. And if he is trying to get
you to form an opinion, it's so obtuse that it's
tough to put your finger on. In retrospect, maybe maybe
you respond exactly the way he wanted you too, but
he's not very rarely does he like hammer you with it.
(27:10):
So I feel like he just treats everybody the same.
Like there's a guy, there's a patient who talks about
all of the children he's raped, and he he knows
that it's bad, he knows that it's like that that
like what he's doing is wrong and he can't help himself. Um,
but there's like Wiseman makes no effort to make this
(27:32):
man seem despicable or evil or anything like that. He
might as well be talking about like a car he's
thinking about buying for for how Wiseman portrays it, and
so like if he's treating that guy equal. He's definitely
treating like the guards and the clinical staff and everybody equally.
But I think more than that, he just turns the
camera on and lets them behave as they're going to behave.
(27:53):
He lets them present themselves to you, rather than him
trying to manipulate it so that you see what Wiseman
wants you to see. Yeah, I mean that's the purest
form of cinema verity, which you know, it's interesting how
conditioned we are to even hearing uh an ominous musical
score during a scene where a guy might talk about
(28:14):
crimes like that. Um, and when all that's stripped away
like it's it can be like more unsettling, I think
than hearing that creepy score. It reminds me and this
is certainly not the same thing, but um. We went
to a Cleveland Indians baseball game one time when Emily's
family still lived in Ohio, and it was this throwback
game where they didn't do any modern things at all,
(28:40):
and you don't really think about that. You're like, when
was a baseball game? What do they do? Like? All
they had was the organ player and the announcer going,
you know, all up to back number five so and
so so and so awesome done. You didn't play a
song when they came up that the batter picked out.
They didn't have the the home depot hammer and nail
(29:00):
and shovel chase each other around the field between endings
in a race. They didn't. You know, there's you don't
realize when you go to a pro sports game of
all the extra boy, especially in an NBA game, all
the extra stuff that's there until it's gone. And it
was really really weird. I liked it. Our family was like,
(29:21):
I'm bored, uh, And I was like, I think this
is kind of cool. They at least oh yeah, I
mean they sold the stuff and it wasn't throwback prices,
of course, but it was. It's weird when you're so
conditioned though, kind of like with film, just to background
noise and just sort of the things that we hear
in movies, lighting or or a camera move or you know,
(29:44):
cinema verite is all about sort of locking that camera
down or hand holding it. Sometimes when all that artifice
is gone, it can have a reverse effect that all
the artifice has, like you're using it for. Yeah, and
I think in addition to is added to kind of
manipulate you emotionally or unconsciously. Um, there's also a lot
(30:05):
that's removed, a lot of reality that's removed, like like
the background noise. If they put background noise in, it's
fully artists. It's not the actual background noise that was
there when they were filming. That's not what Wiseman does.
This film is replete with disturbing background noise, like televisions
that are on that you can't see other people's conversations
(30:26):
that you can't make out what they're saying. The lighting
he uses is only the lighting at Bridgewater. He doesn't
use any of his own light. It's all whatever it's
called available light. And Yeah, when you when you just
kind of watch it, you're like, this is just like
looking in on real life, which makes what you're seeing
all the more disturbing because in addition to to almost
(30:49):
being there, you almost feel guilty, especially if you have
half a conscience of witnessing the stuff that you're seeing,
because you're seeing some of these people, like like Jim
when he's taking back to his cell after those guards
got a rise out of him while he was being shaved.
He's naked, fully naked, stomping around basically throwing a tantrum, trying.
(31:12):
You can tell he's trying to calm himself down. This
is how he's like getting out his his anger, and
Wiseman just sits there in films the whole thing, and
you're forced to watch as the viewer. You're I saw
somebody put it. It's basically like you're the one standing
in the doorway. Even after the guards have left, you're
still standing there watching this man in one of the
(31:32):
probably one of the several worst points of his his
recent life. UM, just gawking at him, basically, and it's
it's that's the hard part of it for sure. Yeah.
Or you know, at the other end of the spectrum, Uh,
there's a scene with a guy named Vladimir, and this
guy is very lucid and he's speaking very clearly about UM.
(31:56):
You know, I think my my deteriorated since I've been here.
I think all this noise that you're hearing, all these
TVs that are always turned on full blast, it's sort
of driving me crazy. And I would like to go
back to prison where I actually could work out in
the gym and I could take classes and this medication
that they're giving me is making me worse, Like I
(32:17):
feel that it's harming me. And uh, when he's you know,
when the guards take him out of the room, then
there there's a scene of the clinicians like discussing things,
and it's sort of like it sounds like we need
to up his medication, uh, and his tranquilizers because he's paranoid. Um.
So when you see something like that, it's sort of
(32:37):
the other end of the spectrum from Jim equally disturbing.
But part of the beauty of this and the rawness
of this film is like, these people are all into
here together. Yeah, he's never lost on you. His is
a particularly sad case. Yeah, because you can tell, like
you no, he's he's with it. This guy's he knows
what he's saying. He's not trying to manipulate. He's pleading
his case in a logical way. He's trying so hard
(33:00):
not to get worked up. How would you not get
worked up when you're when you're pleading your case to
be released from a mental institution from somebody who's just
taking you, as you know, nuts, So why should you
be listened to? There's even um one of the one
of the medical staff at that meeting. After he leaves
the room and they're discussing him. Um, she says, uh,
(33:22):
what did she say? She's like, if you take his
basic premise as as true, then everything he says from
that is totally logical. But of course his basic premise
is total hogwash or whatever. She says something like that.
I'm paraphrasing. So it's like that guy never had a chance.
He just wasted his breath. He just like they were
(33:43):
they were never going to listen to him, and um,
it's yeah, yeah, what was he not supposed to be there?
He was supposed to be there one day? Well yeah,
but every time he came up for parole he would
plead his case, they would deny it. And then finally
in the end he was like, you know, it doesn't
matter what I say in here, you're not gonna let
(34:05):
me out anyway. That's about Morgan Freeman. But that sound
a little more like Boss Hog on tranquilizers. What yeah,
that was Boss hogs edated. Oh man, let's hear again. No,
I can't maybe try can edit that. I can have
a new mom. Morgan Freeman again, one of the great voices.
(34:25):
But yeah, he basically says, you know, um institutionalize, You're
not You're gonna let me out no matter what I say.
And of course that's when they let him out because
it's a dramatic film and uh with a great, wonderful
happy ending, not like to the cut follies. No. One
other thing that I think we should point out to
for people who haven't seen the movie, Like we know
Vladimir's name and Jim's name just because it comes up
(34:49):
like in discussion, like they're calling him Jim or somebody
addresses Vladimir's Vladimir. There's no Chiron at the bottom of
the screen says Vladimir or Jim. There's no no one
explaining how Jim got here or what Vladimir did. There's
no nothing, nothing is explained. It's just here's a scene.
(35:09):
Here's another scene. Here's another scene. Here's another scene. Nothing
necessarily leads into anything else. There's one part that see
that Wiseman says he regrets because it was so he
calls it ham fisted. Where there's it's really hard to watch.
The main doctor, the main clinician, who's a recurring character
whose name we have no idea who it is, at
(35:31):
least if you just watch the movie. Um, he force
feeds a patient who stopped eating and through with a
naso gastric tube stuff down his nose all the way
into his stomach. And this guy is just stoically taking this,
like he's decided he is not going to eat. They
even give him a choice, so like, you can drink
the super you're gonna we're gonna force feed you. And
(35:52):
he's like, you're gonna have to force feed, but I
don't even think he says anything. So there's a there's
a force feeding scene. You watch an emaciated man who's
starving himself force fed, and um. He intercut that part
with uh, scenes from the man's preparation for burial to
kind of show like, you know, he didn't make it,
(36:14):
he was successful in ending his own life through starvation. Um.
And then also I think what Wiseman was trying to
get across was that he was, you know, he's really
being cared for. He's given like a decent burial and
like I think eight that he has eight pall bearers
from the institution and he's like treated very well compared
especially to this this force feeding through a tube down
(36:35):
his nose. Um, and Wiseman thought that was a little
ham fisted. That is, that is the most cinematic part
of the entire movie. Nothing else is anywhere remotely like that.
It's all just scene, scene, scenes and scene, and like
no explanation of who these people are, what they are
trying to say. All right, should we take a break? Yeah, alright,
(36:56):
we'll take our second break, can be back right after this,
(37:24):
so before we talk about the sort of court cases
in the whether or not this film could be banned
or exhibited. Um, it's interesting you talk about like it's
just scene scene, scene scene, But um, on the flip
side of that, it is like a such a carefully
curated edit from all those hundreds of hours of footage
(37:45):
down to eighty three minutes. And that's one of the
things that Weisseman sort of talked about was he didn't
apparently he didn't, I don't know if he came around,
but he didn't even like the term cinema verite because
he felt it sounded too much like you were shooting
stuff and putting it in front of people. And he said,
I am manipulating people. But it's through the edit. Um,
(38:07):
so while you may not think that, I mean, I
guess he was a master at it, because you probably
shouldn't feel manipulated. But he's still putting together that that
careful edit. You know, it's interesting he is a master
at it, and it's pretty remarkable. This was his first
film and he was that masterful at it. So um
I said earlier that it was crucial that he had
(38:27):
gotten permission to film, and not only from you know,
the Lieutenant Governor and the Superintendent of Bridgewater, but also
from everyone he shot. He got either written permission from
them or verbal permission audio visual I guess, on camera
them giving him permission to use them in his film.
(38:47):
So he was covered up in in permission. And don't
forget he was a law professor to Um. And when
the movie first came out, when he finished, he showed
it to the Superintendent of Bridgewater and to the Lieutenant Governor.
They both apparently liked it, according to Wiseman, But it
wasn't until the Um the movie came out into wider
(39:08):
release at the very beginning I think New York Film
Festival or something like that, and people started responding by saying,
like this is barbaric this treatment at Bridgewater. What's wrong
with the state of Massachusetts that they suddenly turned on
the film and Wiseman had on his hands. Uh what
would come to become a banned film. Yeah. So one
(39:30):
of the central players here is Elliott Richardson, who was
that lieutenant governor you referenced at the time, had loftier
political aspiration, so when it came time to run for
an office higher than that, tried to suppress this film,
thinking it would you know, count against him, and it
became sort of like Livy calls it a political tool,
(39:52):
that's exactly what it became. And what in Uh, Richardson
would end up accusing Wiseman of double crossing this eight Uh.
And it all sort of hinged on the idea, not like, oh,
you showed these awful things, but it hinged on the
idea of permissions in privacy was sort of the legal
framework of it, because the argument was, sure, you might
(40:12):
have gotten the permission from these men, but um, they
are in no state to give real permission. And so
there were a series of court cases over the years
it sort of debated this like for many many years. Um,
in sixty eight, it was a judge spirit court judge
named Harry Callis who found that it breached privacy. And uh,
(40:34):
this was interesting though, because like I get that as
a legal basis for argument, but this judge said he
he kind of attacked the filmmaking process and said it's
just a hodgepodge of sequences with no narrative and said
each viewers left to his own devices as to what's
being portrayed and and in what context. And in the meantime,
Wiseman's over there going to a day like that's what
(40:56):
cinema verite is. But um, I thought that was like
this judge just said you should destroy that should like
ordered it to be destroyed. Yeah. He also called it
a nightmare of ghoulish obscenities and so the negative has
to be burnt. Yeah, And of course Wiseman was like, well,
I'm not burning my negative. I'm going to fight this
(41:16):
an appeal it. That case, by the way, was the
first one in Massachusetts history where a court affirmed that
a right to privacy exists, like it had never been
affirmed in a court case, and it was established in
that case. So it was it was. It was not
caught and dried though, because Wiseman has First Amendment right
to freedom of expression. So it became freedom of expression
(41:38):
versus freedom of privacy or right to privacy, I should say,
and um, it's the I think the A c. L
you got involved and they formed they submitted an amicus
brief that basically said, we think that this film has value,
but to a very limited number of people, specifically lawyers, judges,
(42:01):
law students, medical students, um, psychiatrists, people in those fields
should be able to see this, and that is about it.
And so that kind of became the ruling shortly after
that initial you need to burn the negatives on appeal,
that's what they came up with. Yeah, and so for
a number of years after that, for those reasons, Um,
(42:22):
it was shown in like film class, it was shown
in medical schools. It was shown, um in the library. Yeah,
it was shown in libraries. That was a great place
to see something like this, or in Uh, different institutions
would show this and say this is what not to do,
like you can't do stuff like this. Uh. There was
(42:43):
a belief and this was sort of through the seventies
and then in the eighties some attorneys got involved that
said there were some suicides at Bridgewater in the mid
to late eighties, there were some class action lawsuits that
followed by patients where the attorneys they could draw direct
line basically between a patient dying by suicide and the
(43:07):
fact that this film wasn't shown, like it should be
allowed to be shown for these reasons. Yeah, Like had
it been shown, there would have been a public outcry
for more reforms, and that wouldn't have led you know,
those reforms might have prevented those suicides and at Bridgewater
and so Wiseman said that he never gave up on
the film being released to a wider audience, and he
(43:28):
he saw that that was a good time to bring
this up again and it actually worked out. Um he
he got he got a judge to basically say like, okay,
this is Yes, you should be able to show this,
but we need to blur the faces of the men
out and Wiseman said that's impossible. This is film, it's
not video. And then also work with me here man, right,
(43:49):
he said, Also, it'll artistically ruin my my um my film,
which you remember when we did that one guerrilla filming
in the supermarket, we ended up having to go, I
can blur every single thing in the supermarket audio show
for us. I kind of screwed it up a little bit.
I could see where he's coming from, right, And so
he appealed again, and finally they said, you know what,
(44:11):
not a single um inmate at Bridgewater, and none of
their families has ever filed a formal objection to this
film being shown, So how about this just show it.
It's unbanned officially by the early nineties, right, that was
a ninety one with the Judge Andrew gil Meyer of
the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. And then after that it
(44:32):
was still because Wiseman is, like I said earlier, very
picky about how his films are exhibited, and so it
wasn't like it was just everywhere. I think PBS aired
it in ninety three in full. Uh, you could always
buy the DVD from him, from his website or if
there was a film festival or a film class. Like
I said, when I saw it was in college film
(44:54):
class from a VHS tape that the professor owned. Uh,
probably bought it from Wiseman Um. And that's sort of
how it lived its life. I mean, it's it's interesting
that this like this still is a relevant topic and
a relevant film and you know, is being talked about today,
like I think he even tried to or I think
(45:18):
he's successfully finally got it on a streaming service called
Canopy with a K, which is also kind of through
the library system, which is awesome. Yeah, you can watch
it for free if you sign up for a Canopy
account with your library card number. Um, you can go
watch I think all of Wiseman's films all forty eight um,
which is pretty great. But there's there seems to have
(45:39):
been um, some direct effects of the film on Bridgewater,
but still from what from what it sounds like, there's
still a long way to go with Bridgewater too. Yeah.
I think they made a lot of strides and then
they found even as recently as this year, uh that
um they were using what they call chemical restraints basically
(45:59):
just opening people up more than they said they were doing.
So this is ongoing there. And then Weisman, like you said,
made forty eight films and they had names like hospital
or high school, and it's just sort of that very
bare bones cinema verity look at a single topic that's
uh sort of been his bread and butter. I think
(46:20):
it's a really cool thing. Yeah, it is really cool.
He's just fascinated with institutions, although he even says he
has no idea how they work, and I think he's
even said he's not quite sure he understands his film himself,
which is pretty awesome to say. Yeah, and the Poorer
Films is named after his wife, who passed away a
couple of years ago at the age of ninety. And he's,
like you said, still going strong. Yeah. Is what's his
(46:42):
latest one? Um City Hall? Yeah about Boston City Hall. Yeah,
it came out in pretty cool. Well, if you want
to know more about Tiddy Cut Follies, you should probably
go watch it, but be warned it is really rough,
even though it is great in the term of a
cinema file would use it. How about that a cinephile
(47:04):
I always had an extra syllable, So that, of course
means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call
this follow up on the effective altruism. One of our
favorite things is when we talk about a topic and
someone from that topic gets in touch and as a listener. Uh,
and that's what happened in this case with Grace Adams. Hey, guys,
(47:26):
we are so excited that you covered effective altruism and
you did so wonderfully. Uh and Grace is with giving
what we can, giving what we can. Would love to
give your listeners a free book on effective altruism viewing
if you include this link in the show notes, which
we don't have but we'll just say here, people can
opt to have a free book sent to them, including
(47:46):
the precipice by Toby Ord anywhere in the world. We
love sending out books and things is a great way
for people to engage more with the ideas. Wishing all
the best from a big personal fan, Grace Adams and
how I should have made this into a bit LEA
should have do that real quick, al right, so you
just talk to people while I do that. Okay, Well,
everybody actually could edit this together. But Toby Ord wrote
(48:09):
in and said the same thing too. But he also
said us well wishes and said we did we did
a good job on the effective Altruism episode, which I
thought was pretty good because I like to think we're
fairly fair handed with it. We weren't two over the
top subjective, don't you think I think so? Although we
did get one email from someone it's like kind of
acted like we didn't point out in any of the
(48:31):
downsides which I disagree with. I disagree with that too,
But anyway, how's that Bitley, come and chuck. Okay, my friend,
I am done. I have the bit lee. Uh. If
you go to bit b I T dot L y
slash s y s K give, you can get your
free book. Yes, pretty great free books on effective altruism
(48:53):
and free books by Toby Ord on existential risks, which
I mean, come on. Uh. If you want to get
in touch with us, like Grace from GiveWell did uh,
we would love to hear from you. You can send
us an email whether you want to give away free
books or not. It's okay, you don't have to uh
send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
(49:17):
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