August 5, 2025 • 39 mins
Our summer tradition at Here’s the Thing continues, as staff members choose their favorite conversations from the archives for our Summer Staff Pick series.This week in our Summer Staff Pick series, we revisit Alec’s interview with Judith Vecchione, Emmy- and Peabody-winning producer of the landmark PBS series Vietnam: A Television History, which premiered 40 years ago. Vecchione discusses the immense responsibility of telling the story of the Vietnam War through a 13-part documentary, the behind-the-scenes process of crafting such a comprehensive project, and how the experience shaped her decades-long career at WGBH. She also speaks with Alec about her work on Eyes on the Prize, the stories that drive her, and how she’s mentoring the next generation of documentary storytellers.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. It's summer, and that means
it's time for our tradition that Here's the Thing where
the staff share their favorite episodes from our archives in
our Summer Staff Picks series. My pick is Judith Vecchioni enjoy.
(00:24):
In the nineteen sixties, which was a convulsive period in
American history, one major story seemed to play on and
on with no end in sight, the War in Vietnam.
When that war officially ended in nineteen seventy five, journalists, artists,
and public broadcasting began to conduct the autopsy. The result
(00:48):
produced films like nineteen seventy eight's Coming Home, nineteen seventy
nine Apocalypse Now, and a PBS series first broadcast in
nineteen eighty three via KNAM, a television history. Over the
course of thirteen hours, the program dug deep into the background,
cost and toll taken on the principal figures involved in
(01:12):
the war.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Thirty years after the first American died in Vietnam, the
last Americans were leaving, waiting on the US embassy roof
to be flown to safety. The long war was ending
in the defeat of the South Vietnamese state that America
had supported for two decades. What kind of peace finally
was at hand? What would be the meaning of peace?
Speaker 1 (01:38):
My guest today is Judith VECCHIONI, an Emmy and Peabody
winning producer of that series. Vecchione has worked in documentary
programming with Boston based PBS station WGBH since the seventies
and has been an executive producer there for twenty three years.
Her career has encompassed programs like Frontline and American Experience,
(02:04):
documentary films like Blood, Sugar Rising, and the Peabody winning
doc series Eyes on the Prize. I wanted to know
what Veccione's upbringing was like and how her home environment
influenced her career path.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
I grew up in a politically very aware household. My
father read the newspaper from cover to cover, The New
York Times cover to cover every day, and we talked
about what was going on, and so the big issues
of the day's civil rights the Vietnam War were live
topics in my family. My parents worked with civil rights
(02:40):
organizations making sure our community was not dismantling the housing
discrimination in our suburban community. What area was this in
south shore of Long Island?
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Where what time? I'm from Massapequa, I'm from Merrick, So
you were in the south shore of the island. Was
your dad? Was you a writer?
Speaker 3 (03:02):
He should have been, but he did not end up
doing that. He should have been, he should have been
an academic. Actually, I think the politics of the day
for people who were very progressive made that hard. And
my mother was a teacher, was a high school math
teacher who I had for math actually, and luckily it's
a subject where you get the answers right, you get
(03:24):
them wrong, and so there's no favoriteism. Nobody ever got
worried about whether mom was being nice to me, and
half the class called her mom anyway.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
So when you leave, you go off to Yale, and
as you head off to New Haven, was there a plan?
Was there something you wanted to study? And what was that?
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Well, the first thing is that I'm in the first
class of women at Yale, the first matriculating class, So
I don't know that I knew what I was going
to study at that time. I was interested in languages.
I was interested in history, and I ended up being
a linguist major, which probably wasn't the most useful thing
to study. But it's such a rich environment. You know,
(04:08):
in these big universities you get great education. I'm not
sure I took full advantage of it. It was the
middle of the Vietnam War. There was a lot going on,
and Yale was very unprepared for us, for the women.
How so, well they fifty years later, this is like
(04:28):
five years ago, they invited the first women back. So
that's my class, plus the two transferred classes. And they
admitted that they just did it in a hurry to
beat Princeton to co education. And I felt a lot
better once they said, yea, we really didn't think about
anything except well, we'll paint some bathrooms for you or something.
(04:50):
But there were no you have to think about when
you arrive in an environment like that a university, you
expect the upper class people to gui you, to help you.
You expect the teachers to know where to draw. They
didn't know what did. Nobody knew what to do. All
the upper class women were as new as we were.
It was a real pioneering experience.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Is sixty nine.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
We arrived in sixty nine and that.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Class were you as incoming freshmen and people who had
transferred who were upper class people as well, right transfer
as well.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
So graduating classes of seventy three, minds seventy two and
seventy one. But they came from you know, Vassar, and
from NYU and wherever. They didn't know Yale, They didn't
know the professors. Nobody could say to you those key
things of don't take this class, take that one. You
know this, If you got a choice of teaching assistants,
(05:45):
go with this one. It was, as I say, a
tremendously rich environment. There was more than enough for anybody.
But I know that the later classes had it easier
than we did.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
When you leave Yale with a linguistic stigre, what's the
plan then? Was you you had never no filmmaking? Had
you done a minor in film? No?
Speaker 3 (06:06):
By that point I did have a plan though, Okay,
which is my last semester. I got out in seven
semesters instead of eight semesters, in part because I always
had siblings in school. It was in college, so it
was it was expensive for my family, even with scholarships
and things. And my last semester I discovered I had
(06:29):
extra credits that nobody had mentioned to me and I
could take something fun instead of all my major classes.
And I said, I think I'll take this class in video.
What the heck in the Art and architecture building. And
it got there and they had cameras the size of refrigerators, right,
giant cameras. It was two inch videotape that you were
(06:51):
recording on basically couldn't edit. And we took pictures of
each other that that first day, you know, videos of
each other. And I had two enormous light bulb moments,
light bulbul over the head moments where I said I
need to do this, this is what I should be doing.
I had been doing radio, rock and roll, news radio,
(07:12):
that sort of thing at WYBC, the GBH community station.
I covered the panther trials and then the riots around
that because wre were those in new Haven. New Haven
had a black panther trial. Yeah, there was an event
and they came and then there was a trial after
that event on May Day. There was an event, But.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
What about it? Did you have the light bulb moment?
Meaning when you're there. We used to have a joke
we did a TV show where the guy in the
period was period at television and he's drunk or he's
halluciny or something, and he turns to the producers into
producer and says, why are those people pointing those ovens
at me? Meaning the cameras? They were so gigantic? But
(07:52):
what instide when you're inside that environment? Because you go
on to go ahead and have this obviously amazing career.
What was the light bulb moment? What was attractive?
Speaker 3 (08:01):
I think it was telling stories that were real and
that mattered to people, that these were important things that
were happening around us, and there were ways of telling
those stories that had impact and that were creatively satisfying.
I mean I had done art before, painting and so forth,
and it just it fed those same brain cells for me,
(08:25):
that idea and it had impact. It had reasons, so
reasons to do it that were not just entertainment or
selling toothpaste, which is why, of course I went for
public television, not to commercial television.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
So that was the beachhead was public television and SOLF.
That's where you started.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Absolutely. I started at GBH and I stayed there for
almost my entire career. I mean I left once or twice,
but came back because public media is where you do documentaries.
I mean, now there's HBO, but HBO does what five
ten documentaries a year. They're wonderful, but that's not what
(09:07):
they really do, whereas Frontline does forty a year, and
American Experience does another you know, ten or fifteen. I
don't know what they do. Inv POV is still on
independent lens. Through GBH. I've worked with the POV people,
I've worked with the Independent lens people, so those are
(09:28):
the independent filmmakers, which is where I am now mostly focused.
But I've also worked with Frontline, Nova, American Experience and
all the background ones, and that brings in an enormous
cadre of incredibly talented people that you get to learn from.
I can't tell you the number of people who I've gone, Oh, Now,
(09:50):
I understand why we do these things this way. And
I also have a I'm old enough that my career
spans from film to digital. So when we start, Vietnam
was shot on film, My fire film was shot on film,
and that's way later, so you're kind of in the
midst of really smart, dedicated people.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Now when you arrive at GBH, the CPB is formed
in sixty seven and before you have a government centralized
funding mechanism for public broadcasting and in this case obviously
a public TV. I'm wondering if they were off on
their own doing their own thing and raising the money.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
I don't think so. I think the system was formulated
after the Carnegie Commission report that they said, we need
to have MINO.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
We need to have a federally supported system that could
be independent and could be therefore able to cover topics
that commercial stations needing to fill a bottom line and
pay stockholders and so forth that they couldn't do.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So when you show up at GBH, maybe everything is
concretizing at the same time and congealing at the same time.
What was the terrain, like, you're a woman, Yes, you
have a degree from Yale, so that's a good thing.
Did you get in there and roll up your sieves
and start working or were you making coffee for a
year or what happened?
Speaker 3 (11:18):
At first? I was a part time vacation replacement secretary
and I worked in the design department, which, as I remember,
it was pretty self contained and had a photographer and
a photography studio. And this is pre digital. There's not
(11:40):
even three quarter inch tapes, so you know, it's mostly
serving news and local very labor intensive, very labor intensive,
and I didn't have a lot to do except observe,
learn and watch the Watergate hearings. It's a good summer
to be employed there. And then I worked for the
finance department. And then I saw some people. I continued
(12:04):
to do these fill in replacement stuff and I saw
these people in the cafeteria waving their fingers about and
I looked at them and I said, what are you doing?
And they said, we're learning sign language because we're going
to start the first captioning for the deaf and we
need to know how to speak to our deaf employees.
(12:26):
And I said, languages, linguistics. I'm interested in this. And
they said, well, you know, we meet when we can.
And I said, you know, i'm a secretary in the
finance department or something. They'll let me take lunch at
three if that's when you do it. They don't care
when I take lunch. And I went in and I
learned to sign, not fluently, but enough. And when they
(12:49):
had trouble recruiting someone for a deaf person, they intended
to have a certain number of people one of whom
was deaf doing this job, and it took them along
than anticipated to get the first deaf person to pay
attention because it was it was untried captioning. So they
hired me as the non deaf replacement for the deaf people,
(13:10):
and that was again an excellent learning process. It was
writing because you were writing, you were taking the ABC
Evening news and writing it into caption language and putting
it in computers. Early computers again, the size of refrigerators
extremely slow, and when things went wrong and the machines
(13:32):
broke down, we had a sign language interpreter who'd show
up in the little corner of the screen and do it.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
And between when you start these beginnings at GBH and
when you become part of your first project that you're
on the crew, you're helping to write, you're helping to
pro do whatever your contribution. I'm assuming you didn't direct
right out of the gate, right, so you get what's
the first filmed project? Or I guess so it's all
filmed back then, what's the first filmed project you work on?
Speaker 3 (14:01):
What year was that I went over to Nova from captioning,
and I would say we be like seventy six that.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
I went I think three years and you were Nova
doing what.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
I was a production assistant, mostly doing post, so learning
how you mix in film and how you taking care
of bringing in narrators.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
And contracting it together.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
So forth you putting it together started producing promos a
very good learning experience. If you've got to tell people
why they should watch this film on wolves in thirty seconds,
what are you going to put up there? I had
very good mentors there, some of whom came over from
the BBC because they had been doing the Horizon Science series,
(14:47):
which was an inspiration for Nova. Nova was the first
big national project that GBH did, and it was clear
at that point that the person who was running national
Productions was interested in expanding the national series the documentary series,
and so Nova and then World, which was the predecessor
(15:09):
to Frontline, and then American Experience all came in under
that five or ten year period.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
So you're doing post and it seems like, and I
don't want to be too polite or whatever, but it
seems like, did you feel that everywhere you when people
saw that you had it in terms of the capacity
to do this work Because the business relies on mentoring
the business relies on someone who's in a more powerful
position than you are, turning to you and going, let's go.
(15:39):
You're going to come with us. We're going to go
on the shoot together. Right, what's the first film you make?
You go and shoot?
Speaker 3 (15:46):
I was a PA at Nova in post production and
they would occasionally need somebody to go out in a
field on a production for them. And there was a
film that was done on very early genetic engineering, and
I became the PA on that one, and I traveled
with the two producers. This was, you know, back in
(16:07):
the day when crews were bigger. You had generally a
producer and associate producer and a production assistant, plus your
three person camera sound team going out. Nowadays it would
be maybe two people with the equipment that we have
and the ability to do things remotely. So that was
one of the early ones, the genetic engineering film.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Were most of the people involved in that project and
the early projects you became a part of after that,
was it mostly men?
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Mostly? Yes, mostly, But actually on that film there were
co producers and it was a man and a woman,
and the woman actually eventually became Nova's executive producer, Paula Apsel,
but GPH, I thought was always pretty friendly to women.
There weren't as many women at the very top levels
(16:58):
for a while. Now there are, and in fact GBH
now has its first woman CEO as of last year.
And I would say it's more women than men in
production at GBH. I'm not sure that's true across the
system for public broadcasting, and it's certainly I don't think
I'm not part of the larger commercial world. It's not true.
(17:20):
It's certainly true in the independent world that it doesn't
matter whether you're not really being downgraded.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yes or No is the first film you make? Correct?
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Yeah, that might have been. And that's for World, the
predecessor for Frontline. And I did that one in Canada
and I'm the producer. I'm not the director on that.
The director is Michael Rubo.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
What was the topic of Yes or No? What was
it about?
Speaker 3 (17:47):
This was in the period when Quebec was looking to
secede from Canada. Yes, and Michael Rubau knew this impersonator
an impressionist named Jean Quie Moreau and Janui did impressions
of Ronie Levex, the premiere of Quebec, who was the
great driver for secession and Jeanquie Moreo was so well
(18:13):
known in French Canada. This is not an experience I
had had before. You'd walk through the streets of Montreal
or wherever, and little girls would faint in front of you.
Oh my god, it's Janquie Moreau. He's so well known,
he's so wonderful. And Jean Gui decided he would take
his show to Toronto to see if it would play there.
(18:36):
So it was about the difference between French and English
Canada told through this story of Shuanghi's journey.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
I've got to get a copy of that. That sounds amazing,
documentary producer Judith ACCIONI. If you enjoy conversations with brilliant
documentary filmmakers, be sure to check out my episode with
director and producer Rory Kennedy.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
I love Boeing and what Boeing stood for in this country,
and we really celebrate that in the film because it's
been an extraordinary company for decades. You know, it helped
us get out of World War two, it helped get
us to the moon with my uncle Jack, and for
many decades, Boeing did one thing, which was to say
we're going to prioritize excellence and safety, and the McDonald
(19:26):
douglas people were put in charge, and they had a
very different business model, which was very Wall Street focused.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
To hear more of my conversation with Rory Kennedy, go
to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Judith
Vecchioni shares the weight of responsibility she felt bringing the
series Vietnam A Television History to the American public. I'm
(20:00):
Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Documentary producer Judith Veccioni can spend years behind the scenes
making a series before it sees the light of day.
Vietnam A Television History was no exception. It was an
incredible undertaking, with its thirteen episodes being produced over six years.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
I think it was two years of fundraising and four
years of production. Yeah, and it was in part it
took so long because we were making up a format
for America. Nobody had ever done this kind of large,
multi part series right where the stories fed to each other.
You could watch them separately, but if you really want
(20:46):
to understand it, you watched all of them roughly the
order that they were presented. So we were inventing that,
and one of the reasons we had a British producer,
Martin Smith. Martin Smith came because he had worked at
World at War and that was the only really big
linked series that had been done before that. So he
(21:06):
came over and was one of our producers and was
tremendously helpful in talking about how do you divide up
stories that are happening virtually simultaneously, how do you pick
away to do that, and things that we did for
Vietnam I brought with me when we went to Eyes
on the prize not to jump too far ahead, and
(21:28):
other people used for other linked series. An example is school.
At the beginning of each of these projects, we sat
down all the production staff and went to school together.
We had lecturers, We watched films, we discussed the stories.
We talked about what's a source and what's not a source.
It was a combination of film school and journalism, and
(21:52):
it meant that what we did was as unimpeachable as
we could possibly make it. And for Vietnam that was
since we were working within the decade of the Fall
of Saigon.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Vietnama television history. I saw that in its original production,
how do you feel and this goes throughout your career.
Eventually we get to Eyes on the Prize. I mean
you do two back to back. I mean you climb
with your compatriots, You climb big mountains that set the
tone for public television for decades to come. I mean,
(22:30):
we're gonna get into Eyes of the Prize in a minute.
But for me, when I watched Vietnama television history, I go,
this is it, this is what happened for you? Did
you sense did you realize at the time, because you
seem like such an incredibly bright and thoughtful person that
you're sitting there going, you know, I'm carving history in
(22:50):
stone here? Did you feel that sense of responsibility when
you were doing this show?
Speaker 3 (22:54):
We did, and we didn't know how people would react.
I know that every single person we called up to
interview to bring on board, whether they were American or
Vietnamese or whatever they were, every single person said, which
side were you on? That was their first question. They
wanted to know. Were we going to say it was
(23:16):
American imperialism? Where were we going to say America was
saving democracy? Where were going to Where were we going
to be? And we we said and I think we
worked very, very hard. It's not just fair but balanced
to say there are multiple sides to this story. There's
(23:37):
the South Vietnamese, there's the North Vietnamese, there's the Viet
Min viet Cong, there's the Yes, there's multiple and so
what we want to be doing is over and over
again showcasing the complexity of the history with as much
as possible, and it had to be very strong. Back up,
(23:59):
I'll tell you a story that we in the story
of d NBN Foo, we had a story of North
Vietnamese heroism, the legends they told about how hard that
victory was for them. We also had in that section
a story of heroism from the South Vietnamese and how
(24:22):
they marched into the battles singing the French national anthem
because they didn't have their own anthem yet. It was
too young a country. That kind of balancing, that constant balancing,
and the research to find and verify these was enormous.
I had a French speaking production assistant to make sure
(24:44):
that we were hitting the right records, not just the
American records, but the French records for my French based films.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Now I'm assuming that you know you might have worked
on other things, but Vietnam a television history and it's
a original release was in eighty three, and you're working
on Eyes on the Prize after that. In your career
at this point, are you commissioned, are you assigned? Or
do you pitch? How does Judith vic Joni get on board?
You know one of the most seminal public television productions in.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
History, Well, Vietnam. I pitched myself to be part of it,
as I said to you an associate producer, I'll do that.
And then as I'd worked on the first I worked
on episodes three and twelve as an associate producer and
it became clear that I should do the first two programs,
and so they just said you want to do them,
(25:37):
and I said, yes, I will. For Eyes, it was
Henry Hampton's series. Henry Hampton was the visionary behind Eyes
on the Prize and he had been trying for years
and years to get funding. He tried several times, got started,
had to stop, and when he finally really got it
(25:59):
together to do it, he came and looked around the
Vietnam cadre to say, I need someone who has this
experience of making linked films, and I know he talked
to some of my colleagues and he said to me,
do you want this? And I said, exactly what I
had said about Vietnam. Yes, this is my story. I
want to be part of it. So I left GBH
(26:22):
to do Ice On the Prize was an independent production,
and I said to my boss at the time, can
I have a leave of absence? It'll be probably two years,
three years, I don't know, and he said, we don't
give long leaves of absence. I said, then I have.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
To leave and who produce? And who produced that? Because
I'm assuming that, like I mean, in our podcast world,
there's a number of places to go and you know,
look for funding. GBH itself be easy where IRA is
and so forth. But I'm assuming that at this point
in the eighties GBH is like the mothership for this
kind of producing or were there other stations that were
(26:58):
doing more of this kind of production as well?
Speaker 3 (27:01):
I think GBH was doing most of it. Other stations
like WNT were doing some. They did the Adams Chronicles.
What was that called the which was a fictionalization of
John and Abigail Adams, but a long piece. But the
documentaries were from GBH, but Henry Hampton, who was black
(27:21):
Side's founder and president, really wanted to do it independently.
It was a black owned company. He wanted to staff
it and run it, and he himself had been at SELMA,
so it was a very very important story to him
to tell.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
And he got the money from where do you think.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
The NH and CPB money but directly, and we were
running out of money all the way through it, and
at a certain point he got some company money from
I think Lotus Incorporated came in and gave him and
that was how he made payroll that week. We were
not going to make payroll the independent world. I always say,
(28:01):
do you think you're the poorest of the poor when
you work for public television and then you go independent
for public television and you really know what poverty is.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Documentary producer Judith Vecchioni. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell
a friend and be sure to follow here's the thing
on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
When we come back, Judith Vecchioni shares her advice for
the next class of documentary filmmakers. I'm Alec Baldwin and
(28:46):
you're listening to here's the thing. In the nineteen eighties,
there were multiple high profile resignations from the board of
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or CPB, which funds PBS.
It was a time of public disputes and allegations of
politicization attributed to the Reagan administration's multiple appointees. I wanted
(29:09):
to know if Veccione had any awareness of the tumult
happening at the top of the CPB.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
I did not, and I think that's a testimony to
the firewall between content and fundraising that I wasn't doing
the fundraising at that point as a producer, as a
senior producer, I wasn't doing any of that. Henry did it,
Henry Ampton, for Eyes and for Vietnam, Richard Ellison had
(29:37):
done it. I wasn't a part of it. It was there,
It was certainly an issue, but it wasn't something I saw,
and GBH was very clear about we have to keep
a firewall going or else we're commercial station. Then you know,
we're just responding to different masters. I'm not saying it
wasn't true. I'm just saying I wasn't at that level.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
So I worked very heavily in the nineth on campaign
finance reform Arizona main events where we raise money for
the Legal Defense Fund for those laws. And I worked
with a group of people who we solemnly believe, I mean,
without an ounce of hesitation, thought that the campaign finance
reform was the lynchpin of all the problems in this country,
(30:18):
you know, spending a speech, money a speech, and campaigns.
And we came up with all the cliches you here now,
which is will have money as speech and the person
with the most money speaks loudest. And I believe that
every single person in the United States Congress Democratic Republican,
and they might as well wear decals on them and
stickers on them like they're NASCAR race car drivers above
who's promoting them and owning them. You can't run for
(30:41):
office unless you get the money. Most of the people
who win, overwhelmingly, the overwhelming majority win who have the
most money. Campaign finance reform was really just the biggest problem.
So we go see Burt Newborn, He's from the Brennan Center,
the think Teket NYU Law School in Bert Newborn said,
when Brown versus the Board of Education comes he says,
(31:03):
they didn't wake up that morning and they had some
new information. He said, they knew the country was ready,
They knew the country was read, that the country needed this.
We had to go in this direction order for the
country to remain healthy and eyes on the prize comes
and it's a huge success, huge one of the most
(31:23):
successful documentaries that I can recall. And did you feel
the same thing, which was that it was timing that
people were just ready to start to really do the
deep dive into the civil rights movement.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
That and also the commitment to strong journalism made the
stories really forceful. I remember a screening that we had.
We would have screenings of rough cuts with not just
ourselves the team, but with larger groups. And I remember,
you know this that when you're watching one of your
(31:55):
films with a group, you don't watch the film, you
watch the people watching. And I remember the hairs rising
on the back of my neck and saying, we got it,
we have this. This was the Emmett Till story in
episode one, it's are we speaking to the audience? Are
we driving new understanding? I am a firm believer that
(32:20):
journalists need to not enter into political discussions. I know
some journalists who don't vote because they don't believe they
can do that and still remain impartial. I'm not that
far alone, but I am very very careful about expressing
(32:41):
my let me admit, quite strong feelings, because I don't
see how I can be effective in my.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Job now with the time we have left. Of course,
your career spans many years, and now there are far
more women working in the documentary film world, and I'm wondering,
do you do any teaching? Are you do you teach?
Speaker 3 (33:04):
I do a lot of mentoring. I don't teach, but
I do a lot of mentoring. For twelve years I
ran a project for PBS nationally called the Producer's Workshop
at WGBH, where for a week we would bring in
promising associate producers and local producers and run them through
(33:26):
a very tough boot camp, like ten twelve hour days
about how do you bring your projects up to the
national level. And we looked very much for women, for
people of color, for people from rural areas to bring
in new voices for public media. A lot of those
people have gone on and made wonderful, wonderful films, So
(33:51):
that's been a very important part of my job, and
I'm now working as senior editorial advisor for World Channel, which,
if viewers don't know, is part of the ps ecosystem.
The way PVS Kids is a part of it. This
is documentaries, short form and long form, digital and broadcast
(34:15):
and bringing in new voices to the system. So we
have a series called America Refrained, where the stories are
you haven't heard this that tells you something about the
town of Orangeburg, the town of Chicago, the farming communities
(34:35):
of wherever. We also have a series called Local USA,
which looks at really hyperlocal stories being told by the
people within them. So that new voices is an important
part of what I'm doing now.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Now, two quick things. I watched the diabetes blood Sugar
Rising and I have type two. I went back and
forth and had pre diabetes for a long time. When
I see this, and obviously there's no comparison in terms
of content with the Vietnam thing. But what was the reason?
Was this an assignment? Why did you do the diabetes Though?
Speaker 3 (35:12):
I'm fascinated by stories that are at the edges of society.
They are very very important to the communities that face
these issues, but not necessarily to everyone. And I realized
that diabetes is a national emergency. If we hadn't just
had COVID, we would be calling diabetes a pandemic that
(35:34):
there were. It was a moment when things were starting
to shift. The first continuous glucose monitors were coming in,
the first real fights over the cost of insulin. We're
gearing up, and that's just born fruit. You know, a
week before we're talking with the cap on insulin costs.
(35:54):
So it just seemed to me to be an important
story that wasn't being told and that we needed to
get out there. I have it in my family too.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Right, And some people have talked about, you know, putting
warnings on candy. You know that, you know, whatever that
might be. But like, excessive consumption of this product can
lead to certain health issues. I don't know what the
you know, what the answer to that is, but I
do realize it's like when you live inside the minefield
of diabetes, when you live inside the minefield of blood
(36:25):
sugar issues everywhere you go, you just can't believe it.
I mean, I mean, I might have seen a beautiful
woman years ago, when I was younger, I might have
said to myself, my God, look how beautiful that woman is.
Now I hold up a drink in my hand in
a deli and go, my god, this says eighty eight
grams of sugar in it. You know, the sugar content
(36:46):
of food has taken over my life. Last question, your
advice to newcomers, your advice to people who are coming.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
In, Well, this is a little bit like yours and
a little bit different. When I book to young makers
who come to me with a brilliant idea, I say,
this is a brilliant idea, It probably shouldn't be your
first film. It should be your second film. Make something
(37:15):
first that you can learn and make mistakes on, and
then make the one that really matters.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
To you interesting.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
I also say to people, don't reinvent the wheel if
you can work for someone. I worked for people like
David Fanning who started Frontline, and I worked for Paula Apsel,
who ran Frontline. These are people who I learned from
by watching, by making my mistakes in front of them
(37:42):
instead of in front of an audience and letting them
say to me. I have an absolute memory of David
saying to me at one point, if you moved that
scene from here to there, what would happen, and I said,
oh my god, it open up so many possibilities if
I just I keep the scene, but I just move
(38:05):
it a little later in the film. And he had
that kind of knowledge that I could accumulate and not
have to make my mistakes and put the film out rolling.
So don't reinvent the wheel, learn from the people around you,
and go forward.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
My thanks to Judith Vecchione. This episode was recorded at
CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo,
Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hoven. Our engineer is Frank Imperial.
Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. It's summer, and that means
it's time for our tradition that Here's the Thing where
the staff share their favorite episodes from our archives in
our Summer Staff Picks series. My pick is Judith Vecchioni enjoy.
(00:24):
In the nineteen sixties, which was a convulsive period in
American history, one major story seemed to play on and
on with no end in sight, the War in Vietnam.
When that war officially ended in nineteen seventy five, journalists, artists,
and public broadcasting began to conduct the autopsy. The result
(00:48):
produced films like nineteen seventy eight's Coming Home, nineteen seventy
nine Apocalypse Now, and a PBS series first broadcast in
nineteen eighty three via KNAM, a television history. Over the
course of thirteen hours, the program dug deep into the background,
cost and toll taken on the principal figures involved in
(01:12):
the war.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Thirty years after the first American died in Vietnam, the
last Americans were leaving, waiting on the US embassy roof
to be flown to safety. The long war was ending
in the defeat of the South Vietnamese state that America
had supported for two decades. What kind of peace finally
was at hand? What would be the meaning of peace?
Speaker 1 (01:38):
My guest today is Judith VECCHIONI, an Emmy and Peabody
winning producer of that series. Vecchione has worked in documentary
programming with Boston based PBS station WGBH since the seventies
and has been an executive producer there for twenty three years.
Her career has encompassed programs like Frontline and American Experience,
(02:04):
documentary films like Blood, Sugar Rising, and the Peabody winning
doc series Eyes on the Prize. I wanted to know
what Veccione's upbringing was like and how her home environment
influenced her career path.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
I grew up in a politically very aware household. My
father read the newspaper from cover to cover, The New
York Times cover to cover every day, and we talked
about what was going on, and so the big issues
of the day's civil rights the Vietnam War were live
topics in my family. My parents worked with civil rights
(02:40):
organizations making sure our community was not dismantling the housing
discrimination in our suburban community. What area was this in
south shore of Long Island?
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Where what time? I'm from Massapequa, I'm from Merrick, So
you were in the south shore of the island. Was
your dad? Was you a writer?
Speaker 3 (03:02):
He should have been, but he did not end up
doing that. He should have been, he should have been
an academic. Actually, I think the politics of the day
for people who were very progressive made that hard. And
my mother was a teacher, was a high school math
teacher who I had for math actually, and luckily it's
a subject where you get the answers right, you get
(03:24):
them wrong, and so there's no favoriteism. Nobody ever got
worried about whether mom was being nice to me, and
half the class called her mom anyway.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
So when you leave, you go off to Yale, and
as you head off to New Haven, was there a plan?
Was there something you wanted to study? And what was that?
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Well, the first thing is that I'm in the first
class of women at Yale, the first matriculating class, So
I don't know that I knew what I was going
to study at that time. I was interested in languages.
I was interested in history, and I ended up being
a linguist major, which probably wasn't the most useful thing
to study. But it's such a rich environment. You know,
(04:08):
in these big universities you get great education. I'm not
sure I took full advantage of it. It was the
middle of the Vietnam War. There was a lot going on,
and Yale was very unprepared for us, for the women.
How so, well they fifty years later, this is like
(04:28):
five years ago, they invited the first women back. So
that's my class, plus the two transferred classes. And they
admitted that they just did it in a hurry to
beat Princeton to co education. And I felt a lot
better once they said, yea, we really didn't think about
anything except well, we'll paint some bathrooms for you or something.
(04:50):
But there were no you have to think about when
you arrive in an environment like that a university, you
expect the upper class people to gui you, to help you.
You expect the teachers to know where to draw. They
didn't know what did. Nobody knew what to do. All
the upper class women were as new as we were.
It was a real pioneering experience.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Is sixty nine.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
We arrived in sixty nine and that.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Class were you as incoming freshmen and people who had
transferred who were upper class people as well, right transfer
as well.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
So graduating classes of seventy three, minds seventy two and
seventy one. But they came from you know, Vassar, and
from NYU and wherever. They didn't know Yale, They didn't
know the professors. Nobody could say to you those key
things of don't take this class, take that one. You
know this, If you got a choice of teaching assistants,
(05:45):
go with this one. It was, as I say, a
tremendously rich environment. There was more than enough for anybody.
But I know that the later classes had it easier
than we did.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
When you leave Yale with a linguistic stigre, what's the
plan then? Was you you had never no filmmaking? Had
you done a minor in film? No?
Speaker 3 (06:06):
By that point I did have a plan though, Okay,
which is my last semester. I got out in seven
semesters instead of eight semesters, in part because I always
had siblings in school. It was in college, so it
was it was expensive for my family, even with scholarships
and things. And my last semester I discovered I had
(06:29):
extra credits that nobody had mentioned to me and I
could take something fun instead of all my major classes.
And I said, I think I'll take this class in video.
What the heck in the Art and architecture building. And
it got there and they had cameras the size of refrigerators, right,
giant cameras. It was two inch videotape that you were
(06:51):
recording on basically couldn't edit. And we took pictures of
each other that that first day, you know, videos of
each other. And I had two enormous light bulb moments,
light bulbul over the head moments where I said I
need to do this, this is what I should be doing.
I had been doing radio, rock and roll, news radio,
(07:12):
that sort of thing at WYBC, the GBH community station.
I covered the panther trials and then the riots around
that because wre were those in new Haven. New Haven
had a black panther trial. Yeah, there was an event
and they came and then there was a trial after
that event on May Day. There was an event, But.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
What about it? Did you have the light bulb moment?
Meaning when you're there. We used to have a joke
we did a TV show where the guy in the
period was period at television and he's drunk or he's
halluciny or something, and he turns to the producers into
producer and says, why are those people pointing those ovens
at me? Meaning the cameras? They were so gigantic? But
(07:52):
what instide when you're inside that environment? Because you go
on to go ahead and have this obviously amazing career.
What was the light bulb moment? What was attractive?
Speaker 3 (08:01):
I think it was telling stories that were real and
that mattered to people, that these were important things that
were happening around us, and there were ways of telling
those stories that had impact and that were creatively satisfying.
I mean I had done art before, painting and so forth,
and it just it fed those same brain cells for me,
(08:25):
that idea and it had impact. It had reasons, so
reasons to do it that were not just entertainment or
selling toothpaste, which is why, of course I went for
public television, not to commercial television.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
So that was the beachhead was public television and SOLF.
That's where you started.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Absolutely. I started at GBH and I stayed there for
almost my entire career. I mean I left once or twice,
but came back because public media is where you do documentaries.
I mean, now there's HBO, but HBO does what five
ten documentaries a year. They're wonderful, but that's not what
(09:07):
they really do, whereas Frontline does forty a year, and
American Experience does another you know, ten or fifteen. I
don't know what they do. Inv POV is still on
independent lens. Through GBH. I've worked with the POV people,
I've worked with the Independent lens people, so those are
(09:28):
the independent filmmakers, which is where I am now mostly focused.
But I've also worked with Frontline, Nova, American Experience and
all the background ones, and that brings in an enormous
cadre of incredibly talented people that you get to learn from.
I can't tell you the number of people who I've gone, Oh, Now,
(09:50):
I understand why we do these things this way. And
I also have a I'm old enough that my career
spans from film to digital. So when we start, Vietnam
was shot on film, My fire film was shot on film,
and that's way later, so you're kind of in the
midst of really smart, dedicated people.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Now when you arrive at GBH, the CPB is formed
in sixty seven and before you have a government centralized
funding mechanism for public broadcasting and in this case obviously
a public TV. I'm wondering if they were off on
their own doing their own thing and raising the money.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
I don't think so. I think the system was formulated
after the Carnegie Commission report that they said, we need
to have MINO.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
We need to have a federally supported system that could
be independent and could be therefore able to cover topics
that commercial stations needing to fill a bottom line and
pay stockholders and so forth that they couldn't do.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So when you show up at GBH, maybe everything is
concretizing at the same time and congealing at the same time.
What was the terrain, like, you're a woman, Yes, you
have a degree from Yale, so that's a good thing.
Did you get in there and roll up your sieves
and start working or were you making coffee for a
year or what happened?
Speaker 3 (11:18):
At first? I was a part time vacation replacement secretary
and I worked in the design department, which, as I remember,
it was pretty self contained and had a photographer and
a photography studio. And this is pre digital. There's not
(11:40):
even three quarter inch tapes, so you know, it's mostly
serving news and local very labor intensive, very labor intensive,
and I didn't have a lot to do except observe,
learn and watch the Watergate hearings. It's a good summer
to be employed there. And then I worked for the
finance department. And then I saw some people. I continued
(12:04):
to do these fill in replacement stuff and I saw
these people in the cafeteria waving their fingers about and
I looked at them and I said, what are you doing?
And they said, we're learning sign language because we're going
to start the first captioning for the deaf and we
need to know how to speak to our deaf employees.
(12:26):
And I said, languages, linguistics. I'm interested in this. And
they said, well, you know, we meet when we can.
And I said, you know, i'm a secretary in the
finance department or something. They'll let me take lunch at
three if that's when you do it. They don't care
when I take lunch. And I went in and I
learned to sign, not fluently, but enough. And when they
(12:49):
had trouble recruiting someone for a deaf person, they intended
to have a certain number of people one of whom
was deaf doing this job, and it took them along
than anticipated to get the first deaf person to pay
attention because it was it was untried captioning. So they
hired me as the non deaf replacement for the deaf people,
(13:10):
and that was again an excellent learning process. It was
writing because you were writing, you were taking the ABC
Evening news and writing it into caption language and putting
it in computers. Early computers again, the size of refrigerators
extremely slow, and when things went wrong and the machines
(13:32):
broke down, we had a sign language interpreter who'd show
up in the little corner of the screen and do it.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
And between when you start these beginnings at GBH and
when you become part of your first project that you're
on the crew, you're helping to write, you're helping to
pro do whatever your contribution. I'm assuming you didn't direct
right out of the gate, right, so you get what's
the first filmed project? Or I guess so it's all
filmed back then, what's the first filmed project you work on?
Speaker 3 (14:01):
What year was that I went over to Nova from captioning,
and I would say we be like seventy six that.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
I went I think three years and you were Nova
doing what.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
I was a production assistant, mostly doing post, so learning
how you mix in film and how you taking care
of bringing in narrators.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
And contracting it together.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
So forth you putting it together started producing promos a
very good learning experience. If you've got to tell people
why they should watch this film on wolves in thirty seconds,
what are you going to put up there? I had
very good mentors there, some of whom came over from
the BBC because they had been doing the Horizon Science series,
(14:47):
which was an inspiration for Nova. Nova was the first
big national project that GBH did, and it was clear
at that point that the person who was running national
Productions was interested in expanding the national series the documentary series,
and so Nova and then World, which was the predecessor
(15:09):
to Frontline, and then American Experience all came in under
that five or ten year period.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
So you're doing post and it seems like, and I
don't want to be too polite or whatever, but it
seems like, did you feel that everywhere you when people
saw that you had it in terms of the capacity
to do this work Because the business relies on mentoring
the business relies on someone who's in a more powerful
position than you are, turning to you and going, let's go.
(15:39):
You're going to come with us. We're going to go
on the shoot together. Right, what's the first film you make?
You go and shoot?
Speaker 3 (15:46):
I was a PA at Nova in post production and
they would occasionally need somebody to go out in a
field on a production for them. And there was a
film that was done on very early genetic engineering, and
I became the PA on that one, and I traveled
with the two producers. This was, you know, back in
(16:07):
the day when crews were bigger. You had generally a
producer and associate producer and a production assistant, plus your
three person camera sound team going out. Nowadays it would
be maybe two people with the equipment that we have
and the ability to do things remotely. So that was
one of the early ones, the genetic engineering film.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Were most of the people involved in that project and
the early projects you became a part of after that,
was it mostly men?
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Mostly? Yes, mostly, But actually on that film there were
co producers and it was a man and a woman,
and the woman actually eventually became Nova's executive producer, Paula Apsel,
but GPH, I thought was always pretty friendly to women.
There weren't as many women at the very top levels
(16:58):
for a while. Now there are, and in fact GBH
now has its first woman CEO as of last year.
And I would say it's more women than men in
production at GBH. I'm not sure that's true across the
system for public broadcasting, and it's certainly I don't think
I'm not part of the larger commercial world. It's not true.
(17:20):
It's certainly true in the independent world that it doesn't
matter whether you're not really being downgraded.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yes or No is the first film you make? Correct?
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Yeah, that might have been. And that's for World, the
predecessor for Frontline. And I did that one in Canada
and I'm the producer. I'm not the director on that.
The director is Michael Rubo.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
What was the topic of Yes or No? What was
it about?
Speaker 3 (17:47):
This was in the period when Quebec was looking to
secede from Canada. Yes, and Michael Rubau knew this impersonator
an impressionist named Jean Quie Moreau and Janui did impressions
of Ronie Levex, the premiere of Quebec, who was the
great driver for secession and Jeanquie Moreo was so well
(18:13):
known in French Canada. This is not an experience I
had had before. You'd walk through the streets of Montreal
or wherever, and little girls would faint in front of you.
Oh my god, it's Janquie Moreau. He's so well known,
he's so wonderful. And Jean Gui decided he would take
his show to Toronto to see if it would play there.
(18:36):
So it was about the difference between French and English
Canada told through this story of Shuanghi's journey.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
I've got to get a copy of that. That sounds amazing,
documentary producer Judith ACCIONI. If you enjoy conversations with brilliant
documentary filmmakers, be sure to check out my episode with
director and producer Rory Kennedy.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
I love Boeing and what Boeing stood for in this country,
and we really celebrate that in the film because it's
been an extraordinary company for decades. You know, it helped
us get out of World War two, it helped get
us to the moon with my uncle Jack, and for
many decades, Boeing did one thing, which was to say
we're going to prioritize excellence and safety, and the McDonald
(19:26):
douglas people were put in charge, and they had a
very different business model, which was very Wall Street focused.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
To hear more of my conversation with Rory Kennedy, go
to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Judith
Vecchioni shares the weight of responsibility she felt bringing the
series Vietnam A Television History to the American public. I'm
(20:00):
Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Documentary producer Judith Veccioni can spend years behind the scenes
making a series before it sees the light of day.
Vietnam A Television History was no exception. It was an
incredible undertaking, with its thirteen episodes being produced over six years.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
I think it was two years of fundraising and four
years of production. Yeah, and it was in part it
took so long because we were making up a format
for America. Nobody had ever done this kind of large,
multi part series right where the stories fed to each other.
You could watch them separately, but if you really want
(20:46):
to understand it, you watched all of them roughly the
order that they were presented. So we were inventing that,
and one of the reasons we had a British producer,
Martin Smith. Martin Smith came because he had worked at
World at War and that was the only really big
linked series that had been done before that. So he
(21:06):
came over and was one of our producers and was
tremendously helpful in talking about how do you divide up
stories that are happening virtually simultaneously, how do you pick
away to do that, and things that we did for
Vietnam I brought with me when we went to Eyes
on the prize not to jump too far ahead, and
(21:28):
other people used for other linked series. An example is school.
At the beginning of each of these projects, we sat
down all the production staff and went to school together.
We had lecturers, We watched films, we discussed the stories.
We talked about what's a source and what's not a source.
It was a combination of film school and journalism, and
(21:52):
it meant that what we did was as unimpeachable as
we could possibly make it. And for Vietnam that was
since we were working within the decade of the Fall
of Saigon.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Vietnama television history. I saw that in its original production,
how do you feel and this goes throughout your career.
Eventually we get to Eyes on the Prize. I mean
you do two back to back. I mean you climb
with your compatriots, You climb big mountains that set the
tone for public television for decades to come. I mean,
(22:30):
we're gonna get into Eyes of the Prize in a minute.
But for me, when I watched Vietnama television history, I go,
this is it, this is what happened for you? Did
you sense did you realize at the time, because you
seem like such an incredibly bright and thoughtful person that
you're sitting there going, you know, I'm carving history in
(22:50):
stone here? Did you feel that sense of responsibility when
you were doing this show?
Speaker 3 (22:54):
We did, and we didn't know how people would react.
I know that every single person we called up to
interview to bring on board, whether they were American or
Vietnamese or whatever they were, every single person said, which
side were you on? That was their first question. They
wanted to know. Were we going to say it was
(23:16):
American imperialism? Where were we going to say America was
saving democracy? Where were going to Where were we going
to be? And we we said and I think we
worked very, very hard. It's not just fair but balanced
to say there are multiple sides to this story. There's
(23:37):
the South Vietnamese, there's the North Vietnamese, there's the Viet
Min viet Cong, there's the Yes, there's multiple and so
what we want to be doing is over and over
again showcasing the complexity of the history with as much
as possible, and it had to be very strong. Back up,
(23:59):
I'll tell you a story that we in the story
of d NBN Foo, we had a story of North
Vietnamese heroism, the legends they told about how hard that
victory was for them. We also had in that section
a story of heroism from the South Vietnamese and how
(24:22):
they marched into the battles singing the French national anthem
because they didn't have their own anthem yet. It was
too young a country. That kind of balancing, that constant balancing,
and the research to find and verify these was enormous.
I had a French speaking production assistant to make sure
(24:44):
that we were hitting the right records, not just the
American records, but the French records for my French based films.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Now I'm assuming that you know you might have worked
on other things, but Vietnam a television history and it's
a original release was in eighty three, and you're working
on Eyes on the Prize after that. In your career
at this point, are you commissioned, are you assigned? Or
do you pitch? How does Judith vic Joni get on board?
You know one of the most seminal public television productions in.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
History, Well, Vietnam. I pitched myself to be part of it,
as I said to you an associate producer, I'll do that.
And then as I'd worked on the first I worked
on episodes three and twelve as an associate producer and
it became clear that I should do the first two programs,
and so they just said you want to do them,
(25:37):
and I said, yes, I will. For Eyes, it was
Henry Hampton's series. Henry Hampton was the visionary behind Eyes
on the Prize and he had been trying for years
and years to get funding. He tried several times, got started,
had to stop, and when he finally really got it
(25:59):
together to do it, he came and looked around the
Vietnam cadre to say, I need someone who has this
experience of making linked films, and I know he talked
to some of my colleagues and he said to me,
do you want this? And I said, exactly what I
had said about Vietnam. Yes, this is my story. I
want to be part of it. So I left GBH
(26:22):
to do Ice On the Prize was an independent production,
and I said to my boss at the time, can
I have a leave of absence? It'll be probably two years,
three years, I don't know, and he said, we don't
give long leaves of absence. I said, then I have.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
To leave and who produce? And who produced that? Because
I'm assuming that, like I mean, in our podcast world,
there's a number of places to go and you know,
look for funding. GBH itself be easy where IRA is
and so forth. But I'm assuming that at this point
in the eighties GBH is like the mothership for this
kind of producing or were there other stations that were
(26:58):
doing more of this kind of production as well?
Speaker 3 (27:01):
I think GBH was doing most of it. Other stations
like WNT were doing some. They did the Adams Chronicles.
What was that called the which was a fictionalization of
John and Abigail Adams, but a long piece. But the
documentaries were from GBH, but Henry Hampton, who was black
(27:21):
Side's founder and president, really wanted to do it independently.
It was a black owned company. He wanted to staff
it and run it, and he himself had been at SELMA,
so it was a very very important story to him
to tell.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
And he got the money from where do you think.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
The NH and CPB money but directly, and we were
running out of money all the way through it, and
at a certain point he got some company money from
I think Lotus Incorporated came in and gave him and
that was how he made payroll that week. We were
not going to make payroll the independent world. I always say,
(28:01):
do you think you're the poorest of the poor when
you work for public television and then you go independent
for public television and you really know what poverty is.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Documentary producer Judith Vecchioni. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell
a friend and be sure to follow here's the thing
on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
When we come back, Judith Vecchioni shares her advice for
the next class of documentary filmmakers. I'm Alec Baldwin and
(28:46):
you're listening to here's the thing. In the nineteen eighties,
there were multiple high profile resignations from the board of
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or CPB, which funds PBS.
It was a time of public disputes and allegations of
politicization attributed to the Reagan administration's multiple appointees. I wanted
(29:09):
to know if Veccione had any awareness of the tumult
happening at the top of the CPB.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
I did not, and I think that's a testimony to
the firewall between content and fundraising that I wasn't doing
the fundraising at that point as a producer, as a
senior producer, I wasn't doing any of that. Henry did it,
Henry Ampton, for Eyes and for Vietnam, Richard Ellison had
(29:37):
done it. I wasn't a part of it. It was there,
It was certainly an issue, but it wasn't something I saw,
and GBH was very clear about we have to keep
a firewall going or else we're commercial station. Then you know,
we're just responding to different masters. I'm not saying it
wasn't true. I'm just saying I wasn't at that level.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
So I worked very heavily in the nineth on campaign
finance reform Arizona main events where we raise money for
the Legal Defense Fund for those laws. And I worked
with a group of people who we solemnly believe, I mean,
without an ounce of hesitation, thought that the campaign finance
reform was the lynchpin of all the problems in this country,
(30:18):
you know, spending a speech, money a speech, and campaigns.
And we came up with all the cliches you here now,
which is will have money as speech and the person
with the most money speaks loudest. And I believe that
every single person in the United States Congress Democratic Republican,
and they might as well wear decals on them and
stickers on them like they're NASCAR race car drivers above
who's promoting them and owning them. You can't run for
(30:41):
office unless you get the money. Most of the people
who win, overwhelmingly, the overwhelming majority win who have the
most money. Campaign finance reform was really just the biggest problem.
So we go see Burt Newborn, He's from the Brennan Center,
the think Teket NYU Law School in Bert Newborn said,
when Brown versus the Board of Education comes he says,
(31:03):
they didn't wake up that morning and they had some
new information. He said, they knew the country was ready,
They knew the country was read, that the country needed this.
We had to go in this direction order for the
country to remain healthy and eyes on the prize comes
and it's a huge success, huge one of the most
(31:23):
successful documentaries that I can recall. And did you feel
the same thing, which was that it was timing that
people were just ready to start to really do the
deep dive into the civil rights movement.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
That and also the commitment to strong journalism made the
stories really forceful. I remember a screening that we had.
We would have screenings of rough cuts with not just
ourselves the team, but with larger groups. And I remember,
you know this that when you're watching one of your
(31:55):
films with a group, you don't watch the film, you
watch the people watching. And I remember the hairs rising
on the back of my neck and saying, we got it,
we have this. This was the Emmett Till story in
episode one, it's are we speaking to the audience? Are
we driving new understanding? I am a firm believer that
(32:20):
journalists need to not enter into political discussions. I know
some journalists who don't vote because they don't believe they
can do that and still remain impartial. I'm not that
far alone, but I am very very careful about expressing
(32:41):
my let me admit, quite strong feelings, because I don't
see how I can be effective in my.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Job now with the time we have left. Of course,
your career spans many years, and now there are far
more women working in the documentary film world, and I'm wondering,
do you do any teaching? Are you do you teach?
Speaker 3 (33:04):
I do a lot of mentoring. I don't teach, but
I do a lot of mentoring. For twelve years I
ran a project for PBS nationally called the Producer's Workshop
at WGBH, where for a week we would bring in
promising associate producers and local producers and run them through
(33:26):
a very tough boot camp, like ten twelve hour days
about how do you bring your projects up to the
national level. And we looked very much for women, for
people of color, for people from rural areas to bring
in new voices for public media. A lot of those
people have gone on and made wonderful, wonderful films, So
(33:51):
that's been a very important part of my job, and
I'm now working as senior editorial advisor for World Channel, which,
if viewers don't know, is part of the ps ecosystem.
The way PVS Kids is a part of it. This
is documentaries, short form and long form, digital and broadcast
(34:15):
and bringing in new voices to the system. So we
have a series called America Refrained, where the stories are
you haven't heard this that tells you something about the
town of Orangeburg, the town of Chicago, the farming communities
(34:35):
of wherever. We also have a series called Local USA,
which looks at really hyperlocal stories being told by the
people within them. So that new voices is an important
part of what I'm doing now.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Now, two quick things. I watched the diabetes blood Sugar
Rising and I have type two. I went back and
forth and had pre diabetes for a long time. When
I see this, and obviously there's no comparison in terms
of content with the Vietnam thing. But what was the reason?
Was this an assignment? Why did you do the diabetes Though?
Speaker 3 (35:12):
I'm fascinated by stories that are at the edges of society.
They are very very important to the communities that face
these issues, but not necessarily to everyone. And I realized
that diabetes is a national emergency. If we hadn't just
had COVID, we would be calling diabetes a pandemic that
(35:34):
there were. It was a moment when things were starting
to shift. The first continuous glucose monitors were coming in,
the first real fights over the cost of insulin. We're
gearing up, and that's just born fruit. You know, a
week before we're talking with the cap on insulin costs.
(35:54):
So it just seemed to me to be an important
story that wasn't being told and that we needed to
get out there. I have it in my family too.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Right, And some people have talked about, you know, putting
warnings on candy. You know that, you know, whatever that
might be. But like, excessive consumption of this product can
lead to certain health issues. I don't know what the
you know, what the answer to that is, but I
do realize it's like when you live inside the minefield
of diabetes, when you live inside the minefield of blood
(36:25):
sugar issues everywhere you go, you just can't believe it.
I mean, I mean, I might have seen a beautiful
woman years ago, when I was younger, I might have
said to myself, my God, look how beautiful that woman is.
Now I hold up a drink in my hand in
a deli and go, my god, this says eighty eight
grams of sugar in it. You know, the sugar content
(36:46):
of food has taken over my life. Last question, your
advice to newcomers, your advice to people who are coming.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
In, Well, this is a little bit like yours and
a little bit different. When I book to young makers
who come to me with a brilliant idea, I say,
this is a brilliant idea, It probably shouldn't be your
first film. It should be your second film. Make something
(37:15):
first that you can learn and make mistakes on, and
then make the one that really matters.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
To you interesting.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
I also say to people, don't reinvent the wheel if
you can work for someone. I worked for people like
David Fanning who started Frontline, and I worked for Paula Apsel,
who ran Frontline. These are people who I learned from
by watching, by making my mistakes in front of them
(37:42):
instead of in front of an audience and letting them
say to me. I have an absolute memory of David
saying to me at one point, if you moved that
scene from here to there, what would happen, and I said,
oh my god, it open up so many possibilities if
I just I keep the scene, but I just move
(38:05):
it a little later in the film. And he had
that kind of knowledge that I could accumulate and not
have to make my mistakes and put the film out rolling.
So don't reinvent the wheel, learn from the people around you,
and go forward.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
My thanks to Judith Vecchione. This episode was recorded at
CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo,
Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hoven. Our engineer is Frank Imperial.
Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
Host
Alec Baldwin
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