June 27, 2025 • 50 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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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, and welcome to the Summer Movie Playlist. Chuck
here introducing today's show, which is I think maybe the
last one in the series on Teddy Cut Folly. So
this is not I guess we're ending on sort of
a down note because this isn't some fun talk about
a fun movie. It's some pretty serious talk about a
pretty sad documentary. But it's a remarkable film in its
(00:24):
own way and has its place in film history. So
we thought it was a pretty good episode. We hope
you enjoyed it all over again. Welcome to Stuff you
should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
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.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Yeah, Jerry's in the Disney World. Ye kind of went
right after me.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
She's in the in the d.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I said, hey, Jerry, and the South bathroom of Frontierland,
above the toilet I've left. I've taped a gun. Go
shoot Mo Green, Go shoot Mo Green in the restaurant booth.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Wow, no, Mo Green got it in the on the
massage tape.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Oh that's right.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Police Commissioner or the police chief.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can't believe he.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Was tangential to the hit with the bathroom. I don't
remember who was trying to hit.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
That's right. I goofed that up. Hey, shout out to uh.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Wait, no, we're not done sorting this out.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Okay, go ahead, name all the hits in the Godfather.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
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 Adlin. They are
entering their final season and I watched the first episode
the other night and Pollock, who plays her brother on
(02:06):
the show, had a great line that I knew was
improved where he was getting in his car and I
can't remember what they were talking about, and he said
right in the eye like Mae Green. And I texted
him 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 nice.
It was very fun, and it's always fun to be
able to watch a TV show and text your pal
(02:26):
that's on that TV.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Show, right, Yeah, he's got the best parts. He just
pops up in all the best stuff. You know.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah, he's in masl He's I think, And I've talked
to Pollock 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 a really great actor and he's
great at comedy. But I think he's, on top of that,
just a really really great actor.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Didn't he star in that Project green Light film? I
don't know, did he which pretty I'm pretty sure I
think the first season?
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Oh boy, I don't remember those movies. I know that
Shila Both that was where he got his start.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Was he in one of those the Battle of Shaker
Heights or something?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I think that might have been the one that Pollock was.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Was he in that? I think of that movie? But
I mean a really good movie. I'm not sure the
Project green Light moves, but it was a cool show though,
I dug it.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, yeah, Surrily hadn't brought that back in the iPhone
filmmaking age.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, it's a little surprising who would be who would
bring it back? Though?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Now Ben and ma could bring him back. I mean
they that's who did it.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
The first time, right, sure, But I mean are they
still relevant? Aren't there two? Like younger versions of the.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
New and Math better? I don't know who the new
Ben and Matt are.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
How about whiz Khalifah.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
And Charlomagne the God?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Sure there? You all right?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Great anyway? Keppa Bok's a great actor and a good dude.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah, I agreed, And probably somebody I would guess who's
seen the movie that we're going to talk about today.
I would be really surprised if he has it, just
because I feel like, if you are 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, you've probably seen Titty Cut Follies, right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Mean this is one that I saw in film class
in college. It is one that you there's about a
fifty to fifty chance that you will see this if
you've seen it in film class in a college. People
like Casey, our colleague Casey Pegram, no doubt. As a
Frederick Weisman fan, I'm surely if I texted him me,
but oh sure, Weisman. Yes, Although I found Tittcut Follies
(04:36):
was not one of his greatest works.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah, that sounds like Casey.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
God Bless Casey all time greatest movie crush guests. But yeah,
Fred Weisman made this film. He was a law professor
in his thirties in the sixties and made this documentary
film about a mental institution, specifically one for the criminally insane,
(05:00):
that's what they called it. Yeah, 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.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
But when you kind of.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Peel it back, it's just a very straight up, sort
of cinema verite documentary about a institution that needed to
get their act together.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Right, And that was kind of Wiseman told jam like,
he's made forty eight films. I think he just turned
ninety two a couple months ago, amazing, and starting in
nineteen sixty six, he made about a film a year. Yeah,
and he has his own style, like you said, cinema verite,
which I feel like we should probably kind of just
go ahead and explain, don't you sure, Yeah, go ahead,
(05:46):
go ahead, film guy.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
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 you it's really just uh.
(06:10):
One good example is that documentary and that, of course
now I can't think of it 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 purest form reality
TV can be this, but it really turned into something
(06:33):
else entirely.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, it's just so deeply manipulated by producers behind the
scenes who tell them to do this or that or whatever. Yeah,
cinema verites would would not would not want to do that.
They just shoot and hope hope also that people act
like themselves. It's another thing. And yeah, one thing. Frederick Wiseman,
the guy who made Titty Cut Follies, said like he
(06:57):
believed that people basically acted like themselves when the camera
was around, because people are in general lousy actors.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Yeah, we cant to that.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
They're behaving like you would expect them to behave, so
they're probably acting like they would without the cameras, but
especially in a cinema verite kind of setup, because 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, or like there's lighting people and gaffers
and a craft services table that's calling your name, but
(07:29):
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
as much as possible.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
From what I understand, Yeah, that's exactly it.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
And I love cinema verite documentaries especially, 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
as long as there's a lot of just sort of
watching life happen. It's really amazingly engrossing. There were these
two filmmakers that I think inspired Weissman, Richard Leecock, and
(08:09):
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 Fowl, which is about a high school football
championship and Mooney and Fowl are the two coaches, and
I watched the trailer for that today. I guess I'm
(08:31):
guessing it's his daughter that put this up on vimeo,
along with some other 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 twenty
twenty two and you're like, what was life like in
the nineteen fifties, you don't get that from I love
(08:51):
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 the
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.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, no, totally, but yeah, I feel like, even even
if it isn't your cup of tea. You would, like
you said, be engrossed by it. I don't think there's
any way to just be like I don't know, some
people would probably find it dull. There, 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.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, and Drew, I sent you that one little interview snip,
and I don't know if you saw it, but he
sort of was talking about being a new form of journalism. Yeah,
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 playwriter, a movie without actors,
or journalism without opinions. And I was like, oh, well,
(09:49):
that's interesting to say in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Yeah, all the way back then.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, but it's they saw it as leelock, 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 a
big time entertainment.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Yeah, what do you think about How do you feel
about recreations and documentaries?
Speaker 1 (10:17):
I think it can be cool if you have a good, uh,
like a new spin on it, kind of like when
the kid Stays in the picture came out the documentary
about the producer.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
What's his face.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Robert Evans, Yeah, Robert Godfather, Yes, exactly, full circle. They
did those recreations through animation and this really cool style
of animation that was really engaging and awesome, 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.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Oh yeah, like, but those are kind of fun too. Yeah,
you mean like the one Headline News shows it one
hundred episodes a day, Forensic Files.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
I haven't seen it, but it's the recrease I'm thinking
of where it's like, you know, they recreated murder on
like yet.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Five hundred dollars to shoot this.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yes, that's exactly right. Yeah, you're thinking of Forensic Files.
But still, if you watch enough of it, it'll really
like your whole life will turn dark. Yeah, I would
be careful with Fransic Files.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Everybody, So should we go back and talk about Bridgewater
State Hospital.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, because this is the place where Frederick Wiseman showed
up with his camera with permission, as we'll see. And
by the time he got there in nineteen I think
he shot in nineteen sixty five, maybe nineteen sixty six, yeah,
sixty six, Okay, when he got there, it had been
around for over one hundred years. It didn't start out
(11:39):
as a state hospital. It started out as a poor house,
an almshouse, I think, all the way back in eighteen
fifty four.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
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.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Like that's one of the descriptions.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Right, Like that'd be on par with like labeling them
alcoholic or schizophrenia or something like that.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
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, you might have been put in
this poorhouse in eighteen fifty four.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
So in Massachusetts, by the way.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Yeah, I don't know if we said that or not. Yeah,
So that's how it started out. And then over time
they started adding criminals and focused more on criminals and
the mentally ill, and then by the time eighteen ninety
five rolled around, it became the State Asylum for Insane
Criminals at the State Workhouse at Bridgewater, and then eventually
(12:58):
it became known as Bridgewater State Hospital, I think by
nineteen oh nine, and then very crucially here it was
handed over from the State Board of Charity, because remember
it started out as a poorhouse over to the Massachusetts
Beerau of Prison. So, for all intents and purposes, at
least bureaucratically speaking, is a place where the criminally insane,
(13:22):
how they were termed in the twentieth century as are held.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, and there were some bad criminals in there. I mean,
there were murderers, There were people who were convicted of cannibalism,
of rape of children, or just generally of rape. So
there were some bad dudes in there, for sure. But
then there were also and this was sort of one
(13:48):
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 commit
a crime at all, and they were just quite unquote
being held there temporarily, but that could stretch on into years.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Yeah, there's still something today called civil commitment, and it's
basically that you were being held not because of a
crime or because of a minor crime, and you maybe
you've even served your sentence, but you're being held because
you had been deemed mentally unfit to return to society,
even though maybe you didn't even start out like in
(14:24):
a mental hospital. Maybe you started out in jail and
then you're just a trouble maker. 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
attention of a doctor long enough to say, oh, actually
(14:45):
you're you're fine, yeah, and 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 bend you to reflect it so that you kind
(15:07):
of needed to be there after a while, even if
you didn't start out that way.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, I mean, anyone who's ever seen One Floor with
the Cuckoo's Nest is kind of exactly that happens in
the plot. Like people got worse at these places, right,
And you mentioned the medical actual medical attention. President of
the Massachusetts Bar Association at the time, Paul Tamborello, and
a big thanks to Livia for digging this up and
(15:32):
putting us together for us. But he told the Harvard
Crimson back then that of the six hundred 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. So other
than that, you're like, well, then who was it. If
it wasn't medical staff, it was like prison guards basically.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
And 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 was looney, right, 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
(16:17):
you were meant to be in there for another year
until they could hopefully see you again and reevaluate you.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yeah, there was this one example Olivia found of jeez,
it's hard to believe. Matteo Kalakochi was arrested in nineteen
twenty seven, at my daughter's age, almost seven years old,
for stealing seven bucks from a grocery store, which is
pretty good take in nineteen twenty seven, by the way,
and he was found incompetent to stay in trial and
(16:45):
then sent to 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
was another one of those archaic terms. Was charged with
bad habits and resisting authority, and this seven year old
eventually ended up here later in life, but stayed there
(17:07):
for twenty eight years and released in nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
So that's just just.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
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 with no one advocating
for you. 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
(17:33):
they were better off there, or they didn't want to
deal with the trouble, or there were no family I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Yeah, or all the family was poor and had no
influence over anybody, so they couldn't do anything about it.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Very sad. So we take a break, Yeah, I say, we.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Take a break and we'll come back with Wiseman and
his tenuere while he was at Bridgewater. So Frederick Wiseman
(18:19):
had an interesting origin story as a filmmaker. He was
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 anyway, and he was
in there for almost.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Two years kind of after the war.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
But yeah, yeah, but I still I'll bet he was
not happy about being drafted either way. Sure, so he
he went he I guess went to Korea for a
couple of years, and then after the army he and
his wife what is her name.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Is Zora Batshaw?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Great name yeah, she was a law professor as well.
They went to Paris, lived for a couple of years,
and then decided they need to move back, so they
moved back to like the Boston area. But while there
Frederi 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.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
So, like you said, he came back from France, started
teaching law at BU and 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 a very small I
(19:40):
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, which is to say it was probably
not seen much. But Wiseman was like, hey, like, 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.
One of the things he did, because he didn't love
(20:02):
teaching law was take his class on a lot of
field trips, I guess just to mixings up, 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. His love of filmmaking, his cinema veritae
kind of becoming popular, and his interest in that, and
then his interest disinterest in law and interest in Bridgewater.
(20:23):
So he had this idea to make this film there.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Yeah. So, as we'll see later, this is kind of crucial.
He got permission to show up. He's said many times
in later interviews, Bridgewater is no the kind of place
you just kind of parachute in at night, do all
your filming and then creep away at dawn with all
of your footage. Like he had to get extensive permission from.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Sounds like he's done that before though, which is kind
of cool.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Yeah, we've done that before too, in grocery stores.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Remember, Oh, that's right.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
So 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 cinema veritas style where he would
(21:11):
just walk around and just film stuff, film whatever. He could,
just film film film. And I saw something where he
said that his for his documentaries, he films anything from
like seventy five hours in a minimum chuck Wow, 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, he'll start piecing
(21:34):
it together into like an arc A story arc.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Wow, which boiled down in this case to eighty three
minutes of a movie. Yeah, and the name Tittcut Follies
comes from I think Titticut was a Native American name.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
I would guess somewhere in the region. I didn't really pick.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
For the Bridgewater area. That's what they called it, Okay.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
And the follies were that, you know, the film opens
up with a musical performance by the I guess there
were inmates with the song struck 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
as Livia points out, like Weiseman has always been really
guarded with how his films are exhibited, and so I
(22:19):
don't think you can just like go YouTube this thing
up and watch the whole thing still, even.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
I did last night.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Oh on YouTube?
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, okay, on YouTube. No, it was on vimeo.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Oh interesting, all right, I wonder if that's like some
sort of pirated upload.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
It was. It's it's a it was a VHS copied
put online. So I'm thinking, yeah, it was pirated.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Did you watch it all?
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah? I did. I watched I'd never seen it before.
I was familiar with it the title. I had not
a lot of idea of what it was about, but yeah,
it was. But do you think certainly striking? It was
really something like I had ups and downs and highs
and lows, and I think it was everything Wiseman wanted
me to feel about it. It was pretty great.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, I mean it is great. It's even the eighty
three minutes. 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.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
That's the best way to put it.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
But it's also obviously in this case, it's not about
high school football.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Championship.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
It's it's literally watching these people. I mean, I guess
we should just talk about some of the scenes.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Maybe, Yeah, And a lot of the people are going
to go back and be like justa this is great
or bear with us everybody.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Yeah, I mean, hey, you're a cinophile, that's right, punch
me in the face.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
But no, the stomach, okay, says way too hostile stomachs. Yeah,
a little bit of friendliness left in it.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
You know, Yeah, like Houdini style, that'll do well.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
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 It looked
like dry shaving or was it a wet shave.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
No, they put like shaving cream on him and everything.
Oh okay, And everybody seems to characterize it as like
really rough, like forceful, kind of almost like he's being
tortured with the shave.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
It was fast, It was fast, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
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 one of his mouth,
one of the edges of a corner of his mouth. Sorry, Right,
so he's bleeding a little bit, but it doesn't seem
like he doesn't seem in distressed at all while he's
(24:38):
shaving him at the very least, he's not in distress because.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Of the shaving, right, But then what happened.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Well, there are these at least two guards, right, and
this ismate. By the way, his name Jim. He's probably
the most famous character in the in the movie. Yeah,
or patient, I should say, he's not a character he has.
It's easy to get a rise out of Jim, as
hard as Jim tries to not let you get a
(25:06):
rise out of him. If you press his buttons, he's
gonna like, yeah, he's gonna get mad. He's going to
try to contain himself. And there are a couple of
guards that were guarding Jim while he was being 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?
Or is your room going to be clean tomorrow. Jim,
(25:28):
you got to keep your room clean. Jim just ceaselessly
and incessantly, and we 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 is
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,
(25:51):
you realize, were just trying to get a rise out
of Jim, and they do over and over again, and
it's really hard and sad to watch Jim like just
get up saying 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
(26:11):
he reacts and then tries to regain his composure again.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Yeah, it's almost as that they're trying to drive him mad.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yeah, and they're also doing I saw somebody describe it
as they're they're goading him with the kind of like
bored desensitization or desensitivity 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, which is even worse, you know, because
(26:39):
they're torturing this poor guy mentally.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, and we should point out too that, you know,
Weisman showed scenes like this, but it wasn't It wasn't
like a one indictment on the people who work there,
because he did also show some parts where there was
some caretaken. I mean, what was your like, I haven't
seen the whole thing since college, so what was your
(27:05):
net net on that?
Speaker 2 (27:07):
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 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 right. And if he
(27:30):
is trying to get you to form an opinion, it's
so abuse that it's tough to put your finger on.
In retrospect, maybe maybe you respond exactly the way he
wanted you to, but he's not very rarely does he
like hammer you with it. 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,
(27:53):
and he knows that it's bad. He knows that it's
like that, like what he's doing is wrong and he
can't help himself. But there's like Wiseman makes no effort
to make this man seem despicable or evil or anything
like that. He might as well be talking about like
a car he's thinking about buying. Yeah, for how Wiseman
(28:16):
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. He lets them present themselves to you,
rather than him trying to manipulate it so that you
see what Wiseman wants you to see.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah, I mean that's the purest form of cinema veritae,
which you know, it's interesting how conditioned we are to
even hearing an ominous musical score during a scene where
a guy might talk about crimes like that, and when
all that's stripped away like it's it can be like
more unsettling, I think than hearing that creepy score totally.
(28:58):
It reminds me then this is certainly not the same thing.
But 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, and you don't really think about that.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
You're like, when was a baseball game? What do they do? Like?
Speaker 1 (29:17):
All they had was the organ player and the announcer going,
you know now after bad.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Number five so and toe so and to awesome, yeah done.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
You didn't play a song when they came up that
the batter picked out. They didn't have the home depot
hammer and nail and shovel chase each other around the
field between innings and 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 an NBA game, sure,
all the extra stuff that's there until it's gone. And
(29:51):
it was really really weird. I liked it. Her family
was like, I'm bored, and I was like, I think.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
This is kind of cool the shortag jacks at least.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
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 a camera move
or you know, cinema verite is all about sort of
just locking that camera down or handholding it. Sometimes when
(30:24):
all that artifice is gone, it can have a reverse
effect that all the artifice has, like you're using it for.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, And I think in addition to what is added
to kind of manipulate you emotionally or unconsciously, there's also
a lot 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. Yeah, that's not what
Wiseman does. This film is replete with disturbing background noise,
(30:56):
like televisions that are on that you can't see other people,
both conversations 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 just
kind of watch it, you're like, this is just like
looking in on real life, which makes what you're seeing
(31:19):
all the more disturbing because, in addition to almost 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 Jim when he's taken
back to his cell after those guards got a rise
out of him while he was being shaved. He's naked,
(31:40):
fully naked, stomping around basically throwing a tantrum, trying. You
can tell he's trying to calm himself down. This is
how he's like getting out his anger, and Wiseman just
sits there and 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.
(32:01):
Even after the guards have left, you're still standing there
watching this man in one of the probably one of
the several worst points of his recent life. Just gawking
at him basically, and it's it's that's the hard part
of it for sure.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Yeah, Or you know, at the other end of the spectrum,
there's a scene with a guy named Vladimir, and this
guy is very lucid and he's speaking very clearly about
you know, I think, my, my, I've 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,
(32:40):
it's sort of driving me crazy. And I would like
to go back to prison where I actually could work
out in a gym and I could take classes. And
this medication that they're giving me is making me worse,
Like I feel that it's harming me. And when he's
you know, when the guards take him out of the room,
then there there's a scene of the the clinicians like
(33:01):
discussing things, and it's sort of like, sounds like we
need to up his medication right and his tranquilizers because
he's paranoid. So when you see something like that, it's
sort of 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 in the here together.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
Yeah, he's never lost on you.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
His is a particularly sad case. Yeah, because you can tell, like, no,
he's with it. This guys, 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 not to get
worked up. How would you not get worked up when
when you're pleading your case to be released from a
mental institution from somebody who's just taking you, as you know, nuts,
(33:45):
So why should you be listened to. There's even one
of the medical staff at that meeting. After he leaves
the room and they're discussing him, she says, what did
she say? She's like, if you take his basic premise
is true, then everything he says from that is totally logical.
(34:06):
But of course his basic premise is total hogwash or whatever.
She says something right, I'm paraphrasing, just so it's like
that guy never had a chance. He just wasted his breath.
He just like they they were never going to listen
to him, And it's like red and yeah, yeah, well
was he not supposed to be there? He was supposed
to be there one.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Well, yeah, but every time he came up for parole
he would plead his case, they would deny it.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
And then finally in the end.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
He was like, you know, it doesn't matter what I
say in here, You're not gonna let me out anyway.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
That's my Morgan Freeman.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
But that sounds a little more like boss Hog on Tranquilizers.
What Yeah, that was boss Hog sedated.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Oh Man's again. No, I can't maybe Jerry can edit that.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
I can't have a do my Morgan Freeman again, one
of the great voices. But yeah, he basically says, you know, institutionalized,
you're you're let me out no matter what I say.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
And of course that's when they let him out, which
is it's.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
A dramatic film and with a great, wonderful, happy ending,
not like titty cut volleys no.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
One. Other thing that I think we should point out
too for people who haven't seen the movie, like we
know Vladimir's name in Jim's name, just because it comes
up 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. Yeah, Jim. There's no no
(35:35):
one explaining how Jim got here or what Vladimir did.
There's no nothing, Nothing is explained. It's just here's a scene,
here's another scene. Here's another scene, here's another scene. Nothing
necessarily leads into anything else. There's one part that scene
that Wiseman says he regrets because it was so he
(35:55):
calls it ham fisted. Where there's it's really hard to watch.
It is the main doctor, the main clinician who's a
recurring character whose name we have no idea who it is,
at least if you just watch the movie. He force
feeds a patient who stopped eating and through with a
naso gastric tube stuffed down his nose all the way
(36:16):
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 he's like, you're gonna have to force feedb I
don't even think he says anything. Yeah, So there's a
there's a force feeding scene. You watch an emaciated man
who's starving himself. Force fed, and he intercut that part
(36:41):
with scenes from the man's preparation for burial right to
kind of show like, you know, he didn't make it,
he was successful in ending his own life through starvation.
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 pallbearers from
(37:02):
the institution and he's like treated very well compared especially
to this this force feeding through a tube down his nose,
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 seen, seen,
scene seen, and like no explanation of who these people are,
(37:25):
what they are trying to say.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
All right, should we take a break, Yeah, all right,
we'll take our second break and be back right after this.
(37:58):
So before we talk about the sort of court cases
and whether or not this film could be banned or exhibited.
It's interesting you talk about like it's just seen, seen,
but on the flip side of that, it is like
a such a carefully curated edit from all those hundreds
(38:19):
of hours of footage down to eighty three minutes. And
that's one of the things that Weisman 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 just shooting stuff and putting it in
front of people. And he said, I am manipulating people,
but it's through the edit. So while you may not
(38:42):
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 careful edit.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
You know, it's interesting he is a master edit and
it's pretty remarkable. This was his first film and he
was that masterful at it.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
So I said that it was crucial that he had
gotten permission to film, not only from 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
(39:19):
to use them in his film. So he was covered
up in permission and no forget he was a law
professor too, 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 movie came
(39:40):
out into wider 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 what would come to become a banned film.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
So one of the central players here is Elliott Richardson,
who was that lieutenant governor you referenced at the time,
had a loftier political aspiration, so when it came time
to run for an office higher than that, tried to
suppress this film, thinking it would count against him, and
it became sort of like Olivia calls it a political tool,
(40:26):
that's exactly what it became. Richardson would end up accusing
Weisman of double crossing the state, 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 have gotten the
(40:47):
permission from these men, but they are in no state
to give real permission.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
And so there were a series of court.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Cases over the years that sort of debated this, like
for many many years. In sixty eight, it was a judge,
spirit court judge named Harry Callous who found that it
breached privacy. And uh, this was interesting though, because like
I get that as a legal basis for argument, but
this judge said he kind of attacked the filmmaking process right,
(41:17):
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 in what context. And
in the meantime, Weisman's over there going to a duh,
Like that's what cinema verite is. But I thought that
was like, like this judge just said you should destroy
that should like ordered it to be destroyed.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Yeah. He also called it a nightmare of ghoulish obscenities
and said the negative has to be burnt.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Very judge, judge yeah, And of.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Course Wiseman was like, well, I'm not burning my negative.
I'm going to fight this and appeal it.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Oh sure.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
That case, by the way, was the first one in
Massachusetts history where court affirmed that a right to privacy exists. Yeah,
it had never been affirmed in a court case, and
it was established in that case. So it was it was.
It was not cut and dry though, because Weisman has
First Amendment right to freedom of expression. So it became
freedom of expression versus freedom of privacy or right to privacy,
(42:15):
I should say, and it the I think the ACLU
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,
(42:36):
law students, medical students, 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.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yeah, And so for a number of years after that,
for those reasons, it was shown in like film class,
it was shown in medical schools, it.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
Was shown in a library.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Yeah, it was shown in libraries that was a great
place to see something like this, or in different institutions
would show this and say this is what not to do,
like you can't do stuff like this. Yeah, there was
a believe 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
(43:28):
to late eighties.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
There were some.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Class action lawsuits that followed by patients where the attorneys
said they could draw a direct line basically between a
patient dying by suicide and the fact that this film
wasn't shown, like it should be allowed to be shown
for these reasons.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Yeah, Like had it been shown, there would have been
a public outcry for more refrains and that wouldn't have
led you know, those reform might have prevented those suicides
at Bridgewater. And so Wiseman said that he never gave
up on the film being released to a wider audience,
and he saw that that was a good time to
bring this up again, and it actually worked out. He
(44:11):
got a judged to basically say like, Okay, this is
a 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.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
And then also work with me here man, right, he.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Said, Also, it'll artistically ruin my film. You remember when
we did that one gorilla filming in the supermarket. We
ended up having to go back and blur every single
thing in the supermarket out except 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,
(44:44):
and finally they said, you know what, not a single
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.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
Right, that was a ninety one with Judge Andrew gil
Meyer of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. And then after
that it was still because Weisman 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. You could always
(45:19):
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
class from a VHS tape that the professor owned, probably
bought it from Weisman, and that's sort of how it
lived its life. I mean, it's interesting that this still
(45:42):
is a relevant topic and irrelevant film and you know,
is being talked about today, like in twenty twenty two.
I think in twenty seventeen he even tried to or
I think he successfully finally got it on his streaming
service called Canopy with a K, which is also kind
of through the library, which is awesome.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Yeah, you can watch it for free if you sign
up for a Canopy account with your library card number. Yeah,
you can go watch I think all of Wiseman's films
all forty eight, which is pretty great. But there seems
to have been some direct effects of the film on Bridgewater,
but still from what it sounds like, there's still a
(46:21):
long way to go with Bridgewater too.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Yeah, I think they made a lot of strides. And
then they found even as recently as this year that
they were using what they call chemical restraints, basically just
doping people up more than they said they were doing.
So this is ongoing there. And then Wispan, like you said,
made forty eight films and they had names like hospital
(46:44):
or high School. And it's just sort of that very
bare bone cinema verite look at a single topic that's
sort of been his.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
Bread and butter. I think it's a really cool thing.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
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. Yeah, which is pretty awesome
to say.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Yeah, and zup. Poor Films is named.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
After his wife, who passed away a couple of years
ago at the age of ninety.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
And he's, like you said, still going strong.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
Yeah. What's his latest one City Hall?
Speaker 3 (47:19):
Yeah about Boston City Hall.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Yeah, it came out in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
Pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Well, if you want to know more about Titty 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 cinophile I always had an extra syllable, So
that of course means it's time for listener.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Now I'm going to call this follow up on the
effect of altruism. One of our favorite things is when
we talk about a topic and someone from that topic.
Speaker 3 (47:54):
Gets in touch and as a listener. Yeah for real,
and that's.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
What happened in this case with Grace Adams. Guys, we
are so excited that you covered effective altruism and you
did so wonderfully, and Grace is with giving what we
can giving what we can. Would love to give your
listeners a free book on effective altruism if you include
this link in the show notes, which we don't have
but we'll just say it here. People can opt to
(48:18):
have a free book sent to them, including 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 you all the
best from a big personal fan, Grace Adams, And oh
I should have made this into a bit lee Should
I do.
Speaker 3 (48:34):
That real quick?
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (48:36):
All right, so you just talk to people while I
do that.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Oh okay, well, hey, everybody, I.
Speaker 3 (48:40):
Actually we could edit this together.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
But Toby Ord wrote in and said the same thing too.
But he also sent us well wishes and said 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 too over
the top a subjective, don't you think?
Speaker 1 (49:00):
I think so, although we did get one email from
someone that's like kind of acted like we didn't point
out any of the downsides, which she disagree with.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
I disagree with that. But anyway, how's that Bitley coming, Chuck?
Speaker 3 (49:12):
Okay, my friend, I am done. I have the bit Lee.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
If you go to bit bit dot l y slash
s y s k give you can get your free book.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
Yes, pretty great free books on effective altruism and free
books buy Toby ord on Existential Risks, which I mean,
come on. If you want to get in touch with us,
like Grace from GiveWell did, we would love to hear
from you. You can send us an email whether you
want to give away free books not. It's okay, you
don't have to send it off to Stuff Podcasts at
(49:46):
iHeartRadio dot.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, and welcome to the Summer Movie Playlist. Chuck
here introducing today's show, which is I think maybe the
last one in the series on Teddy Cut Folly. So
this is not I guess we're ending on sort of
a down note because this isn't some fun talk about
a fun movie. It's some pretty serious talk about a
pretty sad documentary. But it's a remarkable film in its
(00:24):
own way and has its place in film history. So
we thought it was a pretty good episode. We hope
you enjoyed it all over again. Welcome to Stuff you
should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
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.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Yeah, Jerry's in the Disney World. Ye kind of went
right after me.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
She's in the in the d.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I said, hey, Jerry, and the South bathroom of Frontierland,
above the toilet I've left. I've taped a gun. Go
shoot Mo Green, Go shoot Mo Green in the restaurant booth.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Wow, no, Mo Green got it in the on the
massage tape.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Oh that's right.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Police Commissioner or the police chief.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can't believe he.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Was tangential to the hit with the bathroom. I don't
remember who was trying to hit.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
That's right. I goofed that up. Hey, shout out to uh.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Wait, no, we're not done sorting this out.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Okay, go ahead, name all the hits in the Godfather.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
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 Adlin. They are
entering their final season and I watched the first episode
the other night and Pollock, who plays her brother on
(02:06):
the show, had a great line that I knew was
improved where he was getting in his car and I
can't remember what they were talking about, and he said
right in the eye like Mae Green. And I texted
him 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 nice.
It was very fun, and it's always fun to be
able to watch a TV show and text your pal
(02:26):
that's on that TV.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Show, right, Yeah, he's got the best parts. He just
pops up in all the best stuff. You know.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah, he's in masl He's I think, And I've talked
to Pollock 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 a really great actor and he's
great at comedy. But I think he's, on top of that,
just a really really great actor.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Didn't he star in that Project green Light film? I
don't know, did he which pretty I'm pretty sure I
think the first season?
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Oh boy, I don't remember those movies. I know that
Shila Both that was where he got his start.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Was he in one of those the Battle of Shaker
Heights or something?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I think that might have been the one that Pollock was.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Was he in that? I think of that movie? But
I mean a really good movie. I'm not sure the
Project green Light moves, but it was a cool show though,
I dug it.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, yeah, Surrily hadn't brought that back in the iPhone
filmmaking age.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, it's a little surprising who would be who would
bring it back? Though?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Now Ben and ma could bring him back. I mean
they that's who did it.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
The first time, right, sure, But I mean are they
still relevant? Aren't there two? Like younger versions of the.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
New and Math better? I don't know who the new
Ben and Matt are.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
How about whiz Khalifah.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
And Charlomagne the God?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Sure there? You all right?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Great anyway? Keppa Bok's a great actor and a good dude.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah, I agreed, And probably somebody I would guess who's
seen the movie that we're going to talk about today.
I would be really surprised if he has it, just
because I feel like, if you are 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, you've probably seen Titty Cut Follies, right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Mean this is one that I saw in film class
in college. It is one that you there's about a
fifty to fifty chance that you will see this if
you've seen it in film class in a college. People
like Casey, our colleague Casey Pegram, no doubt. As a
Frederick Weisman fan, I'm surely if I texted him me,
but oh sure, Weisman. Yes, Although I found Tittcut Follies
(04:36):
was not one of his greatest works.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah, that sounds like Casey.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
God Bless Casey all time greatest movie crush guests. But yeah,
Fred Weisman made this film. He was a law professor
in his thirties in the sixties and made this documentary
film about a mental institution, specifically one for the criminally insane,
(05:00):
that's what they called it. Yeah, 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.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
But when you kind of.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Peel it back, it's just a very straight up, sort
of cinema verite documentary about a institution that needed to
get their act together.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Right, And that was kind of Wiseman told jam like,
he's made forty eight films. I think he just turned
ninety two a couple months ago, amazing, and starting in
nineteen sixty six, he made about a film a year. Yeah,
and he has his own style, like you said, cinema verite,
which I feel like we should probably kind of just
go ahead and explain, don't you sure, Yeah, go ahead,
(05:46):
go ahead, film guy.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
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 you it's really just uh.
(06:10):
One good example is that documentary and that, of course
now I can't think of it 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 purest form reality
TV can be this, but it really turned into something
(06:33):
else entirely.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, it's just so deeply manipulated by producers behind the
scenes who tell them to do this or that or whatever. Yeah,
cinema verites would would not would not want to do that.
They just shoot and hope hope also that people act
like themselves. It's another thing. And yeah, one thing. Frederick Wiseman,
the guy who made Titty Cut Follies, said like he
(06:57):
believed that people basically acted like themselves when the camera
was around, because people are in general lousy actors.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Yeah, we cant to that.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
They're behaving like you would expect them to behave, so
they're probably acting like they would without the cameras, but
especially in a cinema verite kind of setup, because 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, or like there's lighting people and gaffers
and a craft services table that's calling your name, but
(07:29):
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
as much as possible.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
From what I understand, Yeah, that's exactly it.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
And I love cinema verite documentaries especially, 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
as long as there's a lot of just sort of
watching life happen. It's really amazingly engrossing. There were these
two filmmakers that I think inspired Weissman, Richard Leecock, and
(08:09):
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 Fowl, which is about a high school football
championship and Mooney and Fowl are the two coaches, and
I watched the trailer for that today. I guess I'm
(08:31):
guessing it's his daughter that put this up on vimeo,
along with some other 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 twenty
twenty two and you're like, what was life like in
the nineteen fifties, you don't get that from I love
(08:51):
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 the
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.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, no, totally, but yeah, I feel like, even even
if it isn't your cup of tea. You would, like
you said, be engrossed by it. I don't think there's
any way to just be like I don't know, some
people would probably find it dull. There, 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.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, and Drew, I sent you that one little interview snip,
and I don't know if you saw it, but he
sort of was talking about being a new form of journalism. Yeah,
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 playwriter, a movie without actors,
or journalism without opinions. And I was like, oh, well,
(09:49):
that's interesting to say in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Yeah, all the way back then.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, but it's they saw it as leelock, 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 a
big time entertainment.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Yeah, what do you think about How do you feel
about recreations and documentaries?
Speaker 1 (10:17):
I think it can be cool if you have a good, uh,
like a new spin on it, kind of like when
the kid Stays in the picture came out the documentary
about the producer.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
What's his face.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Robert Evans, Yeah, Robert Godfather, Yes, exactly, full circle. They
did those recreations through animation and this really cool style
of animation that was really engaging and awesome, 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.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Oh yeah, like, but those are kind of fun too. Yeah,
you mean like the one Headline News shows it one
hundred episodes a day, Forensic Files.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
I haven't seen it, but it's the recrease I'm thinking
of where it's like, you know, they recreated murder on
like yet.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Five hundred dollars to shoot this.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yes, that's exactly right. Yeah, you're thinking of Forensic Files.
But still, if you watch enough of it, it'll really
like your whole life will turn dark. Yeah, I would
be careful with Fransic Files.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Everybody, So should we go back and talk about Bridgewater
State Hospital.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, because this is the place where Frederick Wiseman showed
up with his camera with permission, as we'll see. And
by the time he got there in nineteen I think
he shot in nineteen sixty five, maybe nineteen sixty six, yeah,
sixty six, Okay, when he got there, it had been
around for over one hundred years. It didn't start out
(11:39):
as a state hospital. It started out as a poor house,
an almshouse, I think, all the way back in eighteen
fifty four.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
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.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Like that's one of the descriptions.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Right, Like that'd be on par with like labeling them
alcoholic or schizophrenia or something like that.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
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, you might have been put in
this poorhouse in eighteen fifty four.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
So in Massachusetts, by the way.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Yeah, I don't know if we said that or not. Yeah,
So that's how it started out. And then over time
they started adding criminals and focused more on criminals and
the mentally ill, and then by the time eighteen ninety
five rolled around, it became the State Asylum for Insane
Criminals at the State Workhouse at Bridgewater, and then eventually
(12:58):
it became known as Bridgewater State Hospital, I think by
nineteen oh nine, and then very crucially here it was
handed over from the State Board of Charity, because remember
it started out as a poorhouse over to the Massachusetts
Beerau of Prison. So, for all intents and purposes, at
least bureaucratically speaking, is a place where the criminally insane,
(13:22):
how they were termed in the twentieth century as are held.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, and there were some bad criminals in there. I mean,
there were murderers, There were people who were convicted of cannibalism,
of rape of children, or just generally of rape. So
there were some bad dudes in there, for sure. But
then there were also and this was sort of one
(13:48):
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 commit
a crime at all, and they were just quite unquote
being held there temporarily, but that could stretch on into years.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Yeah, there's still something today called civil commitment, and it's
basically that you were being held not because of a
crime or because of a minor crime, and you maybe
you've even served your sentence, but you're being held because
you had been deemed mentally unfit to return to society,
even though maybe you didn't even start out like in
(14:24):
a mental hospital. Maybe you started out in jail and
then you're just a trouble maker. 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
attention of a doctor long enough to say, oh, actually
(14:45):
you're you're fine, yeah, and 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 bend you to reflect it so that you kind
(15:07):
of needed to be there after a while, even if
you didn't start out that way.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, I mean, anyone who's ever seen One Floor with
the Cuckoo's Nest is kind of exactly that happens in
the plot. Like people got worse at these places, right,
And you mentioned the medical actual medical attention. President of
the Massachusetts Bar Association at the time, Paul Tamborello, and
a big thanks to Livia for digging this up and
(15:32):
putting us together for us. But he told the Harvard
Crimson back then that of the six hundred 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. So other
than that, you're like, well, then who was it. If
it wasn't medical staff, it was like prison guards basically.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
And 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 was looney, right, 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
(16:17):
you were meant to be in there for another year
until they could hopefully see you again and reevaluate you.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yeah, there was this one example Olivia found of jeez,
it's hard to believe. Matteo Kalakochi was arrested in nineteen
twenty seven, at my daughter's age, almost seven years old,
for stealing seven bucks from a grocery store, which is
pretty good take in nineteen twenty seven, by the way,
and he was found incompetent to stay in trial and
(16:45):
then sent to 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
was another one of those archaic terms. Was charged with
bad habits and resisting authority, and this seven year old
eventually ended up here later in life, but stayed there
(17:07):
for twenty eight years and released in nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
So that's just just.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
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 with no one advocating
for you. 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
(17:33):
they were better off there, or they didn't want to
deal with the trouble, or there were no family I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Yeah, or all the family was poor and had no
influence over anybody, so they couldn't do anything about it.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Very sad. So we take a break, Yeah, I say, we.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Take a break and we'll come back with Wiseman and
his tenuere while he was at Bridgewater. So Frederick Wiseman
(18:19):
had an interesting origin story as a filmmaker. He was
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 anyway, and he was
in there for almost.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Two years kind of after the war.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
But yeah, yeah, but I still I'll bet he was
not happy about being drafted either way. Sure, so he
he went he I guess went to Korea for a
couple of years, and then after the army he and
his wife what is her name.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Is Zora Batshaw?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Great name yeah, she was a law professor as well.
They went to Paris, lived for a couple of years,
and then decided they need to move back, so they
moved back to like the Boston area. But while there
Frederi 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.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
So, like you said, he came back from France, started
teaching law at BU and 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 a very small I
(19:40):
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, which is to say it was probably
not seen much. But Wiseman was like, hey, like, 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.
One of the things he did, because he didn't love
(20:02):
teaching law was take his class on a lot of
field trips, I guess just to mixings up, 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. His love of filmmaking, his cinema veritae
kind of becoming popular, and his interest in that, and
then his interest disinterest in law and interest in Bridgewater.
(20:23):
So he had this idea to make this film there.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Yeah. So, as we'll see later, this is kind of crucial.
He got permission to show up. He's said many times
in later interviews, Bridgewater is no the kind of place
you just kind of parachute in at night, do all
your filming and then creep away at dawn with all
of your footage. Like he had to get extensive permission from.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Sounds like he's done that before though, which is kind
of cool.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Yeah, we've done that before too, in grocery stores.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Remember, Oh, that's right.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
So 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 cinema veritas style where he would
(21:11):
just walk around and just film stuff, film whatever. He could,
just film film film. And I saw something where he
said that his for his documentaries, he films anything from
like seventy five hours in a minimum chuck Wow, 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, he'll start piecing
(21:34):
it together into like an arc A story arc.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Wow, which boiled down in this case to eighty three
minutes of a movie. Yeah, and the name Tittcut Follies
comes from I think Titticut was a Native American name.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
I would guess somewhere in the region. I didn't really pick.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
For the Bridgewater area. That's what they called it, Okay.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
And the follies were that, you know, the film opens
up with a musical performance by the I guess there
were inmates with the song struck 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
as Livia points out, like Weiseman has always been really
guarded with how his films are exhibited, and so I
(22:19):
don't think you can just like go YouTube this thing
up and watch the whole thing still, even.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
I did last night.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Oh on YouTube?
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, okay, on YouTube. No, it was on vimeo.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Oh interesting, all right, I wonder if that's like some
sort of pirated upload.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
It was. It's it's a it was a VHS copied
put online. So I'm thinking, yeah, it was pirated.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Did you watch it all?
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah? I did. I watched I'd never seen it before.
I was familiar with it the title. I had not
a lot of idea of what it was about, but yeah,
it was. But do you think certainly striking? It was
really something like I had ups and downs and highs
and lows, and I think it was everything Wiseman wanted
me to feel about it. It was pretty great.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, I mean it is great. It's even the eighty
three minutes. 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.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
That's the best way to put it.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
But it's also obviously in this case, it's not about
high school football.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Championship.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
It's it's literally watching these people. I mean, I guess
we should just talk about some of the scenes.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Maybe, Yeah, And a lot of the people are going
to go back and be like justa this is great
or bear with us everybody.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Yeah, I mean, hey, you're a cinophile, that's right, punch
me in the face.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
But no, the stomach, okay, says way too hostile stomachs. Yeah,
a little bit of friendliness left in it.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
You know, Yeah, like Houdini style, that'll do well.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
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 It looked
like dry shaving or was it a wet shave.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
No, they put like shaving cream on him and everything.
Oh okay, And everybody seems to characterize it as like
really rough, like forceful, kind of almost like he's being
tortured with the shave.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
It was fast, It was fast, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
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 one of his mouth,
one of the edges of a corner of his mouth. Sorry, Right,
so he's bleeding a little bit, but it doesn't seem
like he doesn't seem in distressed at all while he's
(24:38):
shaving him at the very least, he's not in distress because.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Of the shaving, right, But then what happened.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Well, there are these at least two guards, right, and
this ismate. By the way, his name Jim. He's probably
the most famous character in the in the movie. Yeah,
or patient, I should say, he's not a character he has.
It's easy to get a rise out of Jim, as
hard as Jim tries to not let you get a
(25:06):
rise out of him. If you press his buttons, he's
gonna like, yeah, he's gonna get mad. He's going to
try to contain himself. And there are a couple of
guards that were guarding Jim while he was being 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?
Or is your room going to be clean tomorrow. Jim,
(25:28):
you got to keep your room clean. Jim just ceaselessly
and incessantly, and we 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 is
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,
(25:51):
you realize, were just trying to get a rise out
of Jim, and they do over and over again, and
it's really hard and sad to watch Jim like just
get up saying 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
(26:11):
he reacts and then tries to regain his composure again.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Yeah, it's almost as that they're trying to drive him mad.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yeah, and they're also doing I saw somebody describe it
as they're they're goading him with the kind of like
bored desensitization or desensitivity 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, which is even worse, you know, because
(26:39):
they're torturing this poor guy mentally.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, and we should point out too that, you know,
Weisman showed scenes like this, but it wasn't It wasn't
like a one indictment on the people who work there,
because he did also show some parts where there was
some caretaken. I mean, what was your like, I haven't
seen the whole thing since college, so what was your
(27:05):
net net on that?
Speaker 2 (27:07):
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 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 right. And if he
(27:30):
is trying to get you to form an opinion, it's
so abuse that it's tough to put your finger on.
In retrospect, maybe maybe you respond exactly the way he
wanted you to, but he's not very rarely does he
like hammer you with it. 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,
(27:53):
and he knows that it's bad. He knows that it's
like that, like what he's doing is wrong and he
can't help himself. But there's like Wiseman makes no effort
to make this man seem despicable or evil or anything
like that. He might as well be talking about like
a car he's thinking about buying. Yeah, for how Wiseman
(28:16):
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. He lets them present themselves to you,
rather than him trying to manipulate it so that you
see what Wiseman wants you to see.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah, I mean that's the purest form of cinema veritae,
which you know, it's interesting how conditioned we are to
even hearing an ominous musical score during a scene where
a guy might talk about crimes like that, and when
all that's stripped away like it's it can be like
more unsettling, I think than hearing that creepy score totally.
(28:58):
It reminds me then this is certainly not the same thing.
But 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, and you don't really think about that.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
You're like, when was a baseball game? What do they do? Like?
Speaker 1 (29:17):
All they had was the organ player and the announcer going,
you know now after bad.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Number five so and toe so and to awesome, yeah done.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
You didn't play a song when they came up that
the batter picked out. They didn't have the home depot
hammer and nail and shovel chase each other around the
field between innings and 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 an NBA game, sure,
all the extra stuff that's there until it's gone. And
(29:51):
it was really really weird. I liked it. Her family
was like, I'm bored, and I was like, I think.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
This is kind of cool the shortag jacks at least.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
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 a camera move
or you know, cinema verite is all about sort of
just locking that camera down or handholding it. Sometimes when
(30:24):
all that artifice is gone, it can have a reverse
effect that all the artifice has, like you're using it for.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, And I think in addition to what is added
to kind of manipulate you emotionally or unconsciously, there's also
a lot 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. Yeah, that's not what
Wiseman does. This film is replete with disturbing background noise,
(30:56):
like televisions that are on that you can't see other people,
both conversations 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 just
kind of watch it, you're like, this is just like
looking in on real life, which makes what you're seeing
(31:19):
all the more disturbing because, in addition to almost 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 Jim when he's taken
back to his cell after those guards got a rise
out of him while he was being shaved. He's naked,
(31:40):
fully naked, stomping around basically throwing a tantrum, trying. You
can tell he's trying to calm himself down. This is
how he's like getting out his anger, and Wiseman just
sits there and 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.
(32:01):
Even after the guards have left, you're still standing there
watching this man in one of the probably one of
the several worst points of his recent life. Just gawking
at him basically, and it's it's that's the hard part
of it for sure.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Yeah, Or you know, at the other end of the spectrum,
there's a scene with a guy named Vladimir, and this
guy is very lucid and he's speaking very clearly about
you know, I think, my, my, I've 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,
(32:40):
it's sort of driving me crazy. And I would like
to go back to prison where I actually could work
out in a gym and I could take classes. And
this medication that they're giving me is making me worse,
Like I feel that it's harming me. And when he's
you know, when the guards take him out of the room,
then there there's a scene of the the clinicians like
(33:01):
discussing things, and it's sort of like, sounds like we
need to up his medication right and his tranquilizers because
he's paranoid. So when you see something like that, it's
sort of 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 in the here together.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
Yeah, he's never lost on you.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
His is a particularly sad case. Yeah, because you can tell, like, no,
he's with it. This guys, 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 not to get
worked up. How would you not get worked up when
when you're pleading your case to be released from a
mental institution from somebody who's just taking you, as you know, nuts,
(33:45):
So why should you be listened to. There's even one
of the medical staff at that meeting. After he leaves
the room and they're discussing him, she says, what did
she say? She's like, if you take his basic premise
is true, then everything he says from that is totally logical.
(34:06):
But of course his basic premise is total hogwash or whatever.
She says something right, I'm paraphrasing, just so it's like
that guy never had a chance. He just wasted his breath.
He just like they they were never going to listen
to him, And it's like red and yeah, yeah, well
was he not supposed to be there? He was supposed
to be there one.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Well, yeah, but every time he came up for parole
he would plead his case, they would deny it.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
And then finally in the end.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
He was like, you know, it doesn't matter what I
say in here, You're not gonna let me out anyway.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
That's my Morgan Freeman.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
But that sounds a little more like boss Hog on Tranquilizers.
What Yeah, that was boss Hog sedated.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Oh Man's again. No, I can't maybe Jerry can edit that.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
I can't have a do my Morgan Freeman again, one
of the great voices. But yeah, he basically says, you know, institutionalized,
you're you're let me out no matter what I say.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
And of course that's when they let him out, which
is it's.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
A dramatic film and with a great, wonderful, happy ending,
not like titty cut volleys no.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
One. Other thing that I think we should point out
too for people who haven't seen the movie, like we
know Vladimir's name in Jim's name, just because it comes
up 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. Yeah, Jim. There's no no
(35:35):
one explaining how Jim got here or what Vladimir did.
There's no nothing, Nothing is explained. It's just here's a scene,
here's another scene. Here's another scene, here's another scene. Nothing
necessarily leads into anything else. There's one part that scene
that Wiseman says he regrets because it was so he
(35:55):
calls it ham fisted. Where there's it's really hard to watch.
It is the main doctor, the main clinician who's a
recurring character whose name we have no idea who it is,
at least if you just watch the movie. He force
feeds a patient who stopped eating and through with a
naso gastric tube stuffed down his nose all the way
(36:16):
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 he's like, you're gonna have to force feedb I
don't even think he says anything. Yeah, So there's a
there's a force feeding scene. You watch an emaciated man
who's starving himself. Force fed, and he intercut that part
(36:41):
with scenes from the man's preparation for burial right to
kind of show like, you know, he didn't make it,
he was successful in ending his own life through starvation.
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 pallbearers from
(37:02):
the institution and he's like treated very well compared especially
to this this force feeding through a tube down his nose,
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 seen, seen,
scene seen, and like no explanation of who these people are,
(37:25):
what they are trying to say.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
All right, should we take a break, Yeah, all right,
we'll take our second break and be back right after this.
(37:58):
So before we talk about the sort of court cases
and whether or not this film could be banned or exhibited.
It's interesting you talk about like it's just seen, seen,
but on the flip side of that, it is like
a such a carefully curated edit from all those hundreds
(38:19):
of hours of footage down to eighty three minutes. And
that's one of the things that Weisman 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 just shooting stuff and putting it in
front of people. And he said, I am manipulating people,
but it's through the edit. So while you may not
(38:42):
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 careful edit.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
You know, it's interesting he is a master edit and
it's pretty remarkable. This was his first film and he
was that masterful at it.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
So I said that it was crucial that he had
gotten permission to film, not only from 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
(39:19):
to use them in his film. So he was covered
up in permission and no forget he was a law
professor too, 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 movie came
(39:40):
out into wider 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 what would come to become a banned film.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
So one of the central players here is Elliott Richardson,
who was that lieutenant governor you referenced at the time,
had a loftier political aspiration, so when it came time
to run for an office higher than that, tried to
suppress this film, thinking it would count against him, and
it became sort of like Olivia calls it a political tool,
(40:26):
that's exactly what it became. Richardson would end up accusing
Weisman of double crossing the state, 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 have gotten the
(40:47):
permission from these men, but they are in no state
to give real permission.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
And so there were a series of court.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Cases over the years that sort of debated this, like
for many many years. In sixty eight, it was a judge,
spirit court judge named Harry Callous who found that it
breached privacy. And uh, this was interesting though, because like
I get that as a legal basis for argument, but
this judge said he kind of attacked the filmmaking process right,
(41:17):
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 in what context. And
in the meantime, Weisman's over there going to a duh,
Like that's what cinema verite is. But I thought that
was like, like this judge just said you should destroy
that should like ordered it to be destroyed.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Yeah. He also called it a nightmare of ghoulish obscenities
and said the negative has to be burnt.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Very judge, judge yeah, And of.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Course Wiseman was like, well, I'm not burning my negative.
I'm going to fight this and appeal it.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Oh sure.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
That case, by the way, was the first one in
Massachusetts history where court affirmed that a right to privacy exists. Yeah,
it had never been affirmed in a court case, and
it was established in that case. So it was it was.
It was not cut and dry though, because Weisman has
First Amendment right to freedom of expression. So it became
freedom of expression versus freedom of privacy or right to privacy,
(42:15):
I should say, and it the I think the ACLU
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,
(42:36):
law students, medical students, 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.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yeah, And so for a number of years after that,
for those reasons, it was shown in like film class,
it was shown in medical schools, it.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
Was shown in a library.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Yeah, it was shown in libraries that was a great
place to see something like this, or in different institutions
would show this and say this is what not to do,
like you can't do stuff like this. Yeah, there was
a believe 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
(43:28):
to late eighties.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
There were some.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Class action lawsuits that followed by patients where the attorneys
said they could draw a direct line basically between a
patient dying by suicide and the fact that this film
wasn't shown, like it should be allowed to be shown
for these reasons.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Yeah, Like had it been shown, there would have been
a public outcry for more refrains and that wouldn't have
led you know, those reform might have prevented those suicides
at Bridgewater. And so Wiseman said that he never gave
up on the film being released to a wider audience,
and he saw that that was a good time to
bring this up again, and it actually worked out. He
(44:11):
got a judged to basically say like, Okay, this is
a 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.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
And then also work with me here man, right, he.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Said, Also, it'll artistically ruin my film. You remember when
we did that one gorilla filming in the supermarket. We
ended up having to go back and blur every single
thing in the supermarket out except 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,
(44:44):
and finally they said, you know what, not a single
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.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
Right, that was a ninety one with Judge Andrew gil
Meyer of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. And then after
that it was still because Weisman 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. You could always
(45:19):
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
class from a VHS tape that the professor owned, probably
bought it from Weisman, and that's sort of how it
lived its life. I mean, it's interesting that this still
(45:42):
is a relevant topic and irrelevant film and you know,
is being talked about today, like in twenty twenty two.
I think in twenty seventeen he even tried to or
I think he successfully finally got it on his streaming
service called Canopy with a K, which is also kind
of through the library, which is awesome.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Yeah, you can watch it for free if you sign
up for a Canopy account with your library card number. Yeah,
you can go watch I think all of Wiseman's films
all forty eight, which is pretty great. But there seems
to have been some direct effects of the film on Bridgewater,
but still from what it sounds like, there's still a
(46:21):
long way to go with Bridgewater too.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Yeah, I think they made a lot of strides. And
then they found even as recently as this year that
they were using what they call chemical restraints, basically just
doping people up more than they said they were doing.
So this is ongoing there. And then Wispan, like you said,
made forty eight films and they had names like hospital
(46:44):
or high School. And it's just sort of that very
bare bone cinema verite look at a single topic that's
sort of been his.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
Bread and butter. I think it's a really cool thing.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
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. Yeah, which is pretty awesome
to say.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Yeah, and zup. Poor Films is named.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
After his wife, who passed away a couple of years
ago at the age of ninety.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
And he's, like you said, still going strong.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
Yeah. What's his latest one City Hall?
Speaker 3 (47:19):
Yeah about Boston City Hall.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Yeah, it came out in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
Pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Well, if you want to know more about Titty 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 cinophile I always had an extra syllable, So
that of course means it's time for listener.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Now I'm going to call this follow up on the
effect of altruism. One of our favorite things is when
we talk about a topic and someone from that topic.
Speaker 3 (47:54):
Gets in touch and as a listener. Yeah for real,
and that's.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
What happened in this case with Grace Adams. Guys, we
are so excited that you covered effective altruism and you
did so wonderfully, and Grace is with giving what we
can giving what we can. Would love to give your
listeners a free book on effective altruism if you include
this link in the show notes, which we don't have
but we'll just say it here. People can opt to
(48:18):
have a free book sent to them, including 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 you all the
best from a big personal fan, Grace Adams, And oh
I should have made this into a bit lee Should
I do.
Speaker 3 (48:34):
That real quick?
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (48:36):
All right, so you just talk to people while I
do that.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Oh okay, well, hey, everybody, I.
Speaker 3 (48:40):
Actually we could edit this together.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
But Toby Ord wrote in and said the same thing too.
But he also sent us well wishes and said 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 too over
the top a subjective, don't you think?
Speaker 1 (49:00):
I think so, although we did get one email from
someone that's like kind of acted like we didn't point
out any of the downsides, which she disagree with.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
I disagree with that. But anyway, how's that Bitley coming, Chuck?
Speaker 3 (49:12):
Okay, my friend, I am done. I have the bit Lee.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
If you go to bit bit dot l y slash
s y s k give you can get your free book.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
Yes, pretty great free books on effective altruism and free
books buy Toby ord on Existential Risks, which I mean,
come on. If you want to get in touch with us,
like Grace from GiveWell did, we would love to hear
from you. You can send us an email whether you
want to give away free books not. It's okay, you
don't have to send it off to Stuff Podcasts at
(49:46):
iHeartRadio dot.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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