March 22, 2022 • 49 mins
Titicut Follies is a documentary made famous by its banning. But why was it banned? And what was it even about? Listen in to learn all you need to know about this infamous doc.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
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 1 (00:22):
Yeah. I think Jerry's in the Disney World.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
And it went right after me. She's in the in
the d I said, hey, Jerry in 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 (00:42):
Wow. No, Mo Green got it in the on the
massage table.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Oh that's right.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Oh, police commissioner or the police chief. He was. He
was tangential to the hit with the bathroom. I don't
remember who was trying to hit.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
That's right. I goofed that up. Hey. Shout out to uh.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Wait, no, we're not done sorting this out.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Okay, go ahead, name all the hits in the Godfather.
Shout out to our pal and friend of the show,
Kevin Pollack, 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
(01:25):
entering their final season, and I watched the first episode
the other night and Pollock, who plays her brother on
the show, had a great line that I knew was
improved where he was getting in his car and I
can't remember what they were talking about, and he said
right in the eye like Moe 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.
(01:48):
It was very fun. It's always fun to be able
to watch a TV show and text your pal that's
on that TV.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Show, right, Yeah, he's got the best parts. He just
pops up in all the best stuff, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
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 (02:15):
Didn't he star in that Project green Light film? I
don't know, did he which I'm pretty I'm pretty sure.
I think the first season.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Oh boy, I don't remember those movies. I know that
Shila boff that was where he got his start, Is
that right? Was he in one of those the Battle
of Shaker Heights or something?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I think that might have been the one that Pollock was.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Was he in that? I don't think of that movie,
but I mean a really good movie. And I'm not
sure the Project green Light It was a cool show though,
I dug it. Yeah, yeah, and brought that back in
the iPhone filmmaking age.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, it's a little surprising who would be who would
bring it back? Though?
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Now Ben and Mack could bring him back. I mean
they that's who did it the first time, right.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Sure, But I mean are they still relevant? Aren't there too?
Like younger version of math better?
Speaker 1 (03:03):
I don't know who the new Ben and Matt are.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
How about Whiz Khalifah.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And Charlomagne the God?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Sure there you go?
Speaker 1 (03:13):
All right? Great? Anyway, Keppa Bok's a great actor and
a good dude.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
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 hasn't seen 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 cinemaphile, if you want to get punched
in the stomach, you've probably seen Titty Cut Follies, right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
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, is a
Frederick Weisman fan. I'm surely if I texted him, he'd
be like, oh, sure Weisman. Yeah, although I found Tittercut
(04:01):
Follies was not one of his great at work.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Yeah, that sounds like Casey.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
God bless Casey, all time greatest movie crush guest. 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,
(04:26):
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 that kind of thing. But when you kind of
peel it back, it's just a very straight up, sort
of cinema verite documentary about a institution that needed to
(04:47):
get their act together right.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And that was kind of Wiseman's 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 you, which I feel like we should probably kind
of just go ahead and explain, don't you sure, Yeah,
(05:11):
go ahead, go ahead, film guy.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
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. Don't
you don't do interviews, you don't do talking head shots,
you don't. It's really just one good example is that
(05:37):
documentary in the 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 else entirely.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah. 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 they just shoot and hope
hope also that people act like themselves. It's another thing
and one thing Frederick Wiseman, the guy who made Titty
(06:20):
Cut Follies, said like he believed that people basically acted
like themselves when the camera was around, because people are
in general lousy actors. Yeah, and 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
(06:42):
camera there, but it's not nearly as intrusive as like
a camera on like some rig that's flying around, Like
there's lighting people and daffers and a craft services table
that's calling your name, but 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 1 (07:06):
From what I understand, Yeah, that's exactly it. 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
(07:30):
I think inspired Weissman, Richard Leecock and Robert Drew, who
in the early I think in the fifties and early
nineteen sixties were kind of dabbling in cinema verite documentaries.
And they made one in particular called Mooney Versus Fowl,
which is about a high school football championship and Mooney
(07:51):
and Fowl are the two coaches. And I watched the
trailer for that today. I guess I'm guessing it's his
daughter that put this up on VIM along with some
other like interviews with her dad, Drew's daughter that it's
really engrossing, just to watch, and especially because all you
see if you're a modern person in twenty twenty two
(08:13):
and you're like, what was life like in the nineteen fifties,
you don't get that from I love Lucy and Dick
Van Dyke, Like, those are great shows, but to be
able to just sit in and take a peek at
these high school football coaches and these people the community
and 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 (08:33):
Yeah, no, totally, But yeah, I feel like, 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 no, I don't know. Some people
probably find it dull. I'm sure there are, but it's
just it is engrossing. I don't think there's any other
way to universally describe it.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
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,
(09:15):
that's interesting to say in the nineteen.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Fifties, yeah, all the way back then.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
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 at
big time entertainment.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, what do you think about How do you feel
about recreations and documentaries.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
I think it can be cool if you have a good,
like a new spin on it, kind of like when
the Kid Stays in the picture came out the documentary
about the producer what's his face Robert Evans, Yeah, Robert Godfather,
Yeah exactly. They did those recreations through animation and this
really cool style of animation that like was really engaging
(10:06):
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 (10:15):
Oh yeah, like, but those are kind of fun too. Yeah,
you mean like the one Headline News shows it one
hundred episodes today. Forensic files.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
I haven't seen it, but if it's the recrease, I'm
thinking of where it's like, you know, they recreated murder
on like you got five hundred dollars to shoot this.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
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'd be
careful with court files everybody.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So should we go back and talk about Bridgewater State Hospital?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
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, yes, okay,
when he got there, it had been around for over
one hundred years. It didn't start out as a state hospital.
(11:06):
It started out as a poor house, an almshouse, I think,
all the way back in eighteen fifty four.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, and it's interesting when you read these it's disturbing.
But when you read these old timey classifications in medicine,
or especially in mental health, where someone be you know,
the description of someone that might be put there might
just be bad. Like that's one of the descriptions, right.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Like that'd be on par with like labeling them alcoholic
or schizophrenia or something like that.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
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 (11:57):
Right, so in Massachusett by the way, Yeah, I don't
know if we said that or not. 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
(12:20):
State Workhouse at Bridgewater, and then eventually 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 Bureau of Prison.
(12:40):
So for all intents and purposes, at least bureaucratically speaking,
is a place where the criminally insane, how they were
termed in the twentieth century is are held.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah, and there were some bad criminals in there. I
mean there were murderers, There were people who were convicted
of can 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
(13:13):
one of the saddest things about sort of that time
in this country. Those people were right alongside other people
who either committed a very minor crime or maybe didn't
commit a crime at all, and they were just quote
unquote being held there temporarily, but that could stretch on
into years.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
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
(13:50):
a mental hospital, maybe you started out in jail and
then you were 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
(14:11):
you're fine, to let you out was really difficult to do.
And so it was a really desperate place, especially for
people who didn't feel like they should be there, belong there,
because after a while it seemed to exert its influence
on your mind and your outlook, and it would bend
you to reflect it so that you kind of needed
(14:34):
to be there after a while, even if you didn't
start out that way.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Yeah, I mean, anyone who's ever seen one floor of
the Cuckoo's Nests 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
big thanks to Livia for digging us up and putting
(14:58):
us together for us. 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, yes.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
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
(15:43):
you were meant to be in there for another year
until they could hopefully see you again and reevaluate you.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, there was this one example Olivia found of jeez,
it's hard to believe. Matteo Kalicochi was arrested in nineteen
twenty seven, at my daughter's age almost 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 stand trial and then sent
(16:11):
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 is 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 for twenty
(16:33):
eight years and released in nineteen sixty three. So that's
just one example of how like sort of a small
petty crime, but if you maybe have an attitude or
your troublemaker as a kid, and you bounce around from
place to place, you just might wind up here with
no one advocating for you. This all made me think
of like what families were doing. But I guess at
(16:55):
the time some families were kind of like maybe convinced
themselves there were or off there, or they didn't want
to deal with the trouble, or there were no family
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah, or their family was poor and had no influence
over anybody, so they couldn't do anything about it.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Very sad.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah, I say, we take a break and we'll come
back with Wiseman and his tenure while he was at Bridgewater.
(17:44):
So Frederick Wiseman 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 two.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Years kind of after the war.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Name, Zippora Batshaw A great name.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
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, Frederick Wiseman
got into filmmaking. He started just shooting stuff with a
little eight millimeter camera about the time that cinema verite
(18:41):
was being developed in France.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
That's right. 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
(19:06):
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.
And one of the things he did because he didn't
(19:28):
love teaching law was take his class on a lot
of field trips, I guess, just to mix things 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 verite kind of becoming popular, and his interest in that,
and then his interest disinterested in law and interest in Bridgewater.
(19:48):
So he had this idea to make this film there.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
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
she 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.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
From sounds like he's done that before though, which is.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Kind of cool. Yeah, we've done that before too in
grocery stores. Remember, Oh, that's right. 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
(20:31):
filming in Bridgewater, and he would just do his cinema
verita style where he would just walk around and just
film stuff, film whatever. He could, just film film film.
And I saw something where he said that for his
documentaries he films anything from like seventy five hours at
a minimum chuck now, to two hundred and fifty hours,
(20:53):
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 it together into like an
arc A story arc.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
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.
I would guess somewhere in the region.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
I didn't really pin pink for the Bridgewater area, that's
what they called it.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Okay, And the follies were that, you know. The film
opens up with a musical performance by the I guess
there were inmates with a song strike up the band
where all they're all dressed the same and you can
see you can see quite a few clips on YouTube.
But as Livia points out, like Wiseman has always been
really guarded with how his films are exhibited, and so
(21:44):
I don't think you can just like go YouTube this
thing up and watch the whole thing still, even.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I did last night.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Oh on YouTube?
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Yeah, okay? And not on YouTube, nos on vimeo.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Oh interesting, all right? I wonder if that's like some
sort of pirated upload.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
It was. It's it was a VHS copied put online,
so I'm thinking, yeah, it was pirated.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Did you watch it all?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (22:06):
I did.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
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
what do you think certainly striking? It was really something
like I had ups and downs and highs and lows.
And I think I it was everything Wiseman wanted me
to feel about it. It was pretty great.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
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. That's the
best way to put it. But it's also obviously in
this case, it's not about high school football championship. It's
(22:45):
it's literally watching these people. I mean, I guess we
should just talk about some of the scenes maybe.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah, And a lot of the people are going to
go back and be like, justa this was great. Bear
with us everybody.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yeah, I mean, hey, you're a cinophile, right, punch me
in the face.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
No, the stomach, he says, way too hostile stomachs. A
little bit of friendliness left in it, you.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Know, Yeah, like Kudini style, Right, that'll do. Uh well.
One of the scenes that Livia picked out that certainly
stands out in my mind too, and I think you
can actually find parts of this one on YouTube is
a guard. I guess was he dry shaving him? It
looked like dry shaving or was it a wet shave.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
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 1 (23:40):
It was fast, It was fast, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
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 eat a little bit, but he doesn't seem
like he doesn't seem in distress at all while he's
(24:04):
shaving him. At the very least, he's not in distress
because of the shaving, right. But then what happened, Well,
there are these at least two guards, right, and this inmate,
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 he's
(24:27):
very it's easy to get a rise out of Jim,
as hard as Jim tries to not let you get
a rise out of him. If you press his buttons,
he's gonna like, yeah, he's gonna get mad. He's going
to try to contain himself. And there were a couple
of guards that were guarding Jim while he was being
like like washed and shaved and all that stuff, who
just spent the entire scene trying to get a rise
(24:48):
out of him by saying like, why is your room
so dirty, Jim? Or is your room going to be
clean tomorrow? Jim, You've 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. Yeah, and in fact,
Jim is kept naked in his room, so there's no
(25:10):
way for Jim for Jim's room to be dirty, and
also for no way for Jim to keep his room clean.
These guards, you realize, we're just trying to get a
rise out of Jim, and they do over and over again,
and it's really hard and sad to watch Jim like
like just get up, saying he's trying so hard to
just not let these guys get to him. Because he
(25:31):
knows what they're doing. He's fully aware of what they're doing,
and he just can't help himself. Probably like five different
times he reacts and then tries to regain his composure again.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yeah, it's almost as if they're trying to drive him mad.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
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
(26:05):
they're torturing this poor guy mentally.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Yeah, and we should point out too that you know,
Wiseman showed scenes like this, but it wasn't it wasn't
like a 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 net net
(26:31):
on that?
Speaker 2 (26:33):
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 do 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
(26:56):
is trying to get you to form an opinion, it's
so obtuse that it's tough to put your finger on.
In retrospect, maybe maybe you respond exactly the way he
wanted you to, but he's not very rarely does he
like hammer you with it. So yeah, 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
(27:18):
he's raped, 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
(27:41):
how Wiseman portrays it, And so like, if he's treating
that guy equal, he's definitely treating like the guards and
the clinical staff and everybody equally. But I think more
than that, he just turns the camera on and lets
them behave as they're going to behave. He lets them
present themselves to you, rather than him trying to manipulate
it so that you see what Wiseman I want you
to see.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Yeah, I mean that's the purest form of cinema verite,
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 can be like more
unsettling I think than hearing that creepy score totally. It
(28:23):
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.
You're like, when was a baseball game? What do they do? Like?
All they had was the organ player and the announcer going,
(28:48):
you know, all off the bat number five, so and
so so and so awesome, man done that 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
(29:08):
of all the extra boy, especially in an NBA game, sure,
all the extra stuff that's there until it's gone. And
it was really really weird. I liked it. Our family
was like, I'm bored, and I was like, I think
this is kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Did they have jacks at least?
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Oh? Yeah, I mean they sold this 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
(29:50):
all that artifice is gone, it can have a reverse
effect that all the artifice has like you're using it for.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
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 the background noise. If they put background noise in,
it's folly 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,
(30:22):
like televisions that are on that you can't see, other
people's 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
(30:45):
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,
(31:06):
fully naked, stomping around, Yeah, 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. Yeah, 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
(31:27):
in the doorway. 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 (31:44):
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,
(32:05):
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's a scene of the clinicians like discussing things,
(32:28):
and it's sort of like sounds like we need to
up his medication 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 into here together. Yeah,
he's never lost on you.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
His is a particularly sad case. Yeah, because you can tell,
like you 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 you're when you're pleading your case to
be released from a mental institution from somebody who's just
(33:09):
taking you as as you know, nuts, So why should
you be listened to? There's even one of the 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
as true, then everything he says from that is totally logical.
(33:32):
But of course his basic premise is total hogwash or whatever.
She says something like that. I'm paraphrasing. So it's like
that guy never had a chance. He just wasted his breath.
He just like they they were never going to listen
to him, And it's like red, yeah, yeah, what was
he not supposed to be there? He was supposed to
be there, wasn't he?
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Well, yeah, but every time he came up for parole,
he would plead his case and they would deny it,
and then and finally in the end he was like,
you know, it doesn't matter what I say in here,
you're not gonna let me out anyway. That's my Morgan Freeman.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
But that's sound a little more like boss Hog un tranquilizers.
What yeah, that was boss Hog sedated. Oh man, let's
hear it again.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
No, no, I can't.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Maybe Jerry can edit that.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
I can't have a new mom. Morgan Freeman again one
of the great voices. But uh yeah, he basically says,
you know, institutionalized you're not You're not gonna let me
out no matter what I say. And of course that's
when they let him out, because it's a dramatic film
and with a great, wonderful, happy ending, not like titty
cut follies.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
No 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 or Jim. There's no
(35:01):
no one explaining how Jim got here or what Vladimir did.
There's no nothing, Nothing is explained. It's just here's a scene.
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
(35:21):
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 stuff down knows all the way into
(35:42):
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, They 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 feedback. I don't
even think he says anything. So there's a there's a
force feeding scene. You watch an emaciated man who's starving
himself force fed, and he intercut that part with scenes
(36:08):
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 the institution and
(36:29):
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,
scenes seen, and like no explanation of who these people are,
(36:51):
what they are trying to say.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
All right, should we take a break? Yeah, all right,
we'll take our second break and be back right after this,
(37:24):
so before we talk about the sort of court cases
in the whether or not this film could be banned
or exhibited. It's interesting you talk about like it's just seen, seen, seen,
But on the flip side of that, it is like
a such a carefully curated edit from all those hundreds
(37:45):
of hours of footage down to eighty three minutes. And
that's one of the things that Weissman 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
(38:08):
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. You know, it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
He is a master edit and it's pretty remarkable. This
was his first film and he was that masterful at it.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
So I said earlier that it was crucial that he
had gotten permission to film, not only from you know,
the Lieutenant governor in the Superintendent of Bridgewater, but also
from everyone he shot. He got either written permission from
them or verbal permission audio visual I guess, on camera
them giving him permission to use them in his film.
(38:47):
So he was covered up in permission. And don't 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 out into wider release at the
(39:09):
very beginning I think New York Film Festival or something
like that. Yeah, 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 1 (39:29):
Yeah. 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 you count against him,
and it became sort of like O Livy calls it
(39:51):
a political tool, that's exactly what it became. Richardson would
end up accusing Wiseman of double crossing this, and it
all sort of hinged on the idea, not like, oh,
you showed these awful things, but it hinged on the
idea of permissions in privacy was sort of the legal
framework of it, because the argument was, sure, you might
(40:12):
have gotten the permission from these men, but they are
in no state to give real permission. And so there
were a series of court 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 this
(40:34):
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 and said it's just a
hodgepodge of sequences with no narrative, and said each viewer
is 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
(40:56):
verite is. But I thought that was like this judge
just said you should destroy that should like ordered it
to be destroyed.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yeah. He also called it a nightmare of ghoulish obscenities
and said the negative has to be burnt and judge judge, yeah,
And of course Wiseman was like, well, I'm not burning
my negative. I'm going to fight this and appealate.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Oh sure.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
That case, by the way, was the first one in
Massachusetts history where a 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 dried, though,
because Wiseman has First Amendment right to freedom of expression.
So it became freedom of expression versus freedom of privacy
(41:40):
or right to privacy, I should say, And it the
I think the ACLU got involved and they formed it.
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, law students, medical students, psychiatrists,
(42:06):
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 an appeal, that's what they came up with.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
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 was shown in
the library. 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.
(42:43):
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 to late eighties, there were some class action
lawsuits that followed by patients where the attorneys that they
could draw a direct line basically between a patient dying
(43:04):
by suicide and the fact that this film wasn't shown,
like it should be allowed to be shown for these reasons.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Yeah, like had it been shown, there would have been
a public outcry for more reforms, and that wouldn't have
led you know, those reforms might have prevented those suicides
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
(43:36):
got a judge 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, it's impossible. This is film, it's not video.
And then also work with me here man, right, he said, Also,
it'll artistically ruin my film. Yeah, but you remember when
we did that one gorilla filming in the supermarket, we
(43:59):
ended up having to go back. I can blur every
single thing in the supermarket aut exo for us. I
kind of screwed it up a little bit. I could
see where he's coming from, right, And so he appealed
again and finally they said, you know what, 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
(44:22):
by the early nineties.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Right, that was a ninety one with Judge Andrew Gilmeyer
of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and then after that
it was still because Weisman is, like I said earlier,
very picky about house 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 buy
(44:45):
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 like this still is a
(45:08):
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 a streaming service called
Canopy with a K, which is also kind of through
the library system, which is awesome.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
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
(45:46):
long way to go with Bridgewater too.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
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
oping people up more than they said they were doing.
So this is ongoing there. And then we Wispan, like
you said, made forty eight films and they had names
(46:09):
like hospital 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 bread and butter. I
think it's a really cool thing.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
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 1 (46:33):
Yeah, and Zuppora Films is named after his wife, who
passed away a couple of years ago at the age
of ninety. And he's, like you said, still going strong.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
Yeah. What's his latest one City Hall?
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Yeah about Boston City Hall.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Yeah, it came out in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
Pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
Well, if you want to know more about Tidny 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, I would use it. How
about that a centopis I always add an extra syllable,
so that, of course means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
I'm going to call this follow up on the effective altruism.
One of our favorite things is when we talk about
a topic and someone from that topic gets in touch
and as a listener, yeah for real, And that's what
happened in this case with Grace Adams. Hey, guys, we
are so excited that you covered effective altruism and you
did so wonderfully and graces with giving what we can.
Giving what we can. Would love to give your listeners
(47:35):
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 here people can opt to 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 at the ideas. Wishing you all the best from
(47:55):
a big personal fan, Grace Adams And oh I should
have made this into a bit lead Should I do
that real quick?
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (48:02):
All right, so you just talk to people while I
do that.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Okay, well, hey, everybody.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Actually could edit this together.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
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 (48:26):
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 I disagree with.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
I disagree with that. But anyway, how's that Bitley coming, Chuck?
Speaker 1 (48:38):
Okay, my friend, I am done. I have the bit lee.
If you go to bit b T dot L y
slash s y sk give you can get your free book.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Yes, pretty great free books on effective altruism and free
books by 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 or not. It's okay.
You don't have to send it off to Stuff Podcasts
(49:12):
at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (49:17):
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
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
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 1 (00:22):
Yeah. I think Jerry's in the Disney World.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
And it went right after me. She's in the in
the d I said, hey, Jerry in 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 (00:42):
Wow. No, Mo Green got it in the on the
massage table.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Oh that's right.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Oh, police commissioner or the police chief. He was. He
was tangential to the hit with the bathroom. I don't
remember who was trying to hit.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
That's right. I goofed that up. Hey. Shout out to uh.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Wait, no, we're not done sorting this out.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Okay, go ahead, name all the hits in the Godfather.
Shout out to our pal and friend of the show,
Kevin Pollack, 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
(01:25):
entering their final season, and I watched the first episode
the other night and Pollock, who plays her brother on
the show, had a great line that I knew was
improved where he was getting in his car and I
can't remember what they were talking about, and he said
right in the eye like Moe 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.
(01:48):
It was very fun. It's always fun to be able
to watch a TV show and text your pal that's
on that TV.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Show, right, Yeah, he's got the best parts. He just
pops up in all the best stuff, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
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 (02:15):
Didn't he star in that Project green Light film? I
don't know, did he which I'm pretty I'm pretty sure.
I think the first season.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Oh boy, I don't remember those movies. I know that
Shila boff that was where he got his start, Is
that right? Was he in one of those the Battle
of Shaker Heights or something?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I think that might have been the one that Pollock was.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Was he in that? I don't think of that movie,
but I mean a really good movie. And I'm not
sure the Project green Light It was a cool show though,
I dug it. Yeah, yeah, and brought that back in
the iPhone filmmaking age.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, it's a little surprising who would be who would
bring it back? Though?
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Now Ben and Mack could bring him back. I mean
they that's who did it the first time, right.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Sure, But I mean are they still relevant? Aren't there too?
Like younger version of math better?
Speaker 1 (03:03):
I don't know who the new Ben and Matt are.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
How about Whiz Khalifah.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And Charlomagne the God?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Sure there you go?
Speaker 1 (03:13):
All right? Great? Anyway, Keppa Bok's a great actor and
a good dude.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
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 hasn't seen 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 cinemaphile, if you want to get punched
in the stomach, you've probably seen Titty Cut Follies, right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
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, is a
Frederick Weisman fan. I'm surely if I texted him, he'd
be like, oh, sure Weisman. Yeah, although I found Tittercut
(04:01):
Follies was not one of his great at work.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Yeah, that sounds like Casey.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
God bless Casey, all time greatest movie crush guest. 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,
(04:26):
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 that kind of thing. But when you kind of
peel it back, it's just a very straight up, sort
of cinema verite documentary about a institution that needed to
(04:47):
get their act together right.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And that was kind of Wiseman's 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 you, which I feel like we should probably kind
of just go ahead and explain, don't you sure, Yeah,
(05:11):
go ahead, go ahead, film guy.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
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. Don't
you don't do interviews, you don't do talking head shots,
you don't. It's really just one good example is that
(05:37):
documentary in the 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 else entirely.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah. 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 they just shoot and hope
hope also that people act like themselves. It's another thing
and one thing Frederick Wiseman, the guy who made Titty
(06:20):
Cut Follies, said like he believed that people basically acted
like themselves when the camera was around, because people are
in general lousy actors. Yeah, and 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
(06:42):
camera there, but it's not nearly as intrusive as like
a camera on like some rig that's flying around, Like
there's lighting people and daffers and a craft services table
that's calling your name, but 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 1 (07:06):
From what I understand, Yeah, that's exactly it. 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
(07:30):
I think inspired Weissman, Richard Leecock and Robert Drew, who
in the early I think in the fifties and early
nineteen sixties were kind of dabbling in cinema verite documentaries.
And they made one in particular called Mooney Versus Fowl,
which is about a high school football championship and Mooney
(07:51):
and Fowl are the two coaches. And I watched the
trailer for that today. I guess I'm guessing it's his
daughter that put this up on VIM along with some
other like interviews with her dad, Drew's daughter that it's
really engrossing, just to watch, and especially because all you
see if you're a modern person in twenty twenty two
(08:13):
and you're like, what was life like in the nineteen fifties,
you don't get that from I love Lucy and Dick
Van Dyke, Like, those are great shows, but to be
able to just sit in and take a peek at
these high school football coaches and these people the community
and 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 (08:33):
Yeah, no, totally, But yeah, I feel like, 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 no, I don't know. Some people
probably find it dull. I'm sure there are, but it's
just it is engrossing. I don't think there's any other
way to universally describe it.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
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,
(09:15):
that's interesting to say in the nineteen.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Fifties, yeah, all the way back then.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
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 at
big time entertainment.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, what do you think about How do you feel
about recreations and documentaries.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
I think it can be cool if you have a good,
like a new spin on it, kind of like when
the Kid Stays in the picture came out the documentary
about the producer what's his face Robert Evans, Yeah, Robert Godfather,
Yeah exactly. They did those recreations through animation and this
really cool style of animation that like was really engaging
(10:06):
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 (10:15):
Oh yeah, like, but those are kind of fun too. Yeah,
you mean like the one Headline News shows it one
hundred episodes today. Forensic files.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
I haven't seen it, but if it's the recrease, I'm
thinking of where it's like, you know, they recreated murder
on like you got five hundred dollars to shoot this.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
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'd be
careful with court files everybody.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So should we go back and talk about Bridgewater State Hospital?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
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, yes, okay,
when he got there, it had been around for over
one hundred years. It didn't start out as a state hospital.
(11:06):
It started out as a poor house, an almshouse, I think,
all the way back in eighteen fifty four.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, and it's interesting when you read these it's disturbing.
But when you read these old timey classifications in medicine,
or especially in mental health, where someone be you know,
the description of someone that might be put there might
just be bad. Like that's one of the descriptions, right.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Like that'd be on par with like labeling them alcoholic
or schizophrenia or something like that.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
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 (11:57):
Right, so in Massachusett by the way, Yeah, I don't
know if we said that or not. 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
(12:20):
State Workhouse at Bridgewater, and then eventually 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 Bureau of Prison.
(12:40):
So for all intents and purposes, at least bureaucratically speaking,
is a place where the criminally insane, how they were
termed in the twentieth century is are held.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah, and there were some bad criminals in there. I
mean there were murderers, There were people who were convicted
of can 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
(13:13):
one of the saddest things about sort of that time
in this country. Those people were right alongside other people
who either committed a very minor crime or maybe didn't
commit a crime at all, and they were just quote
unquote being held there temporarily, but that could stretch on
into years.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
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
(13:50):
a mental hospital, maybe you started out in jail and
then you were 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
(14:11):
you're fine, to let you out was really difficult to do.
And so it was a really desperate place, especially for
people who didn't feel like they should be there, belong there,
because after a while it seemed to exert its influence
on your mind and your outlook, and it would bend
you to reflect it so that you kind of needed
(14:34):
to be there after a while, even if you didn't
start out that way.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Yeah, I mean, anyone who's ever seen one floor of
the Cuckoo's Nests 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
big thanks to Livia for digging us up and putting
(14:58):
us together for us. 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, yes.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
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
(15:43):
you were meant to be in there for another year
until they could hopefully see you again and reevaluate you.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, there was this one example Olivia found of jeez,
it's hard to believe. Matteo Kalicochi was arrested in nineteen
twenty seven, at my daughter's age almost 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 stand trial and then sent
(16:11):
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 is 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 for twenty
(16:33):
eight years and released in nineteen sixty three. So that's
just one example of how like sort of a small
petty crime, but if you maybe have an attitude or
your troublemaker as a kid, and you bounce around from
place to place, you just might wind up here with
no one advocating for you. This all made me think
of like what families were doing. But I guess at
(16:55):
the time some families were kind of like maybe convinced
themselves there were or off there, or they didn't want
to deal with the trouble, or there were no family
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah, or their family was poor and had no influence
over anybody, so they couldn't do anything about it.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Very sad.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah, I say, we take a break and we'll come
back with Wiseman and his tenure while he was at Bridgewater.
(17:44):
So Frederick Wiseman 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 two.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Years kind of after the war.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Name, Zippora Batshaw A great name.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
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, Frederick Wiseman
got into filmmaking. He started just shooting stuff with a
little eight millimeter camera about the time that cinema verite
(18:41):
was being developed in France.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
That's right. 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
(19:06):
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.
And one of the things he did because he didn't
(19:28):
love teaching law was take his class on a lot
of field trips, I guess, just to mix things 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 verite kind of becoming popular, and his interest in that,
and then his interest disinterested in law and interest in Bridgewater.
(19:48):
So he had this idea to make this film there.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
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
she 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.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
From sounds like he's done that before though, which is.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Kind of cool. Yeah, we've done that before too in
grocery stores. Remember, Oh, that's right. 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
(20:31):
filming in Bridgewater, and he would just do his cinema
verita style where he would just walk around and just
film stuff, film whatever. He could, just film film film.
And I saw something where he said that for his
documentaries he films anything from like seventy five hours at
a minimum chuck now, to two hundred and fifty hours,
(20:53):
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 it together into like an
arc A story arc.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
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.
I would guess somewhere in the region.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
I didn't really pin pink for the Bridgewater area, that's
what they called it.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Okay, And the follies were that, you know. The film
opens up with a musical performance by the I guess
there were inmates with a song strike up the band
where all they're all dressed the same and you can
see you can see quite a few clips on YouTube.
But as Livia points out, like Wiseman has always been
really guarded with how his films are exhibited, and so
(21:44):
I don't think you can just like go YouTube this
thing up and watch the whole thing still, even.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I did last night.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Oh on YouTube?
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Yeah, okay? And not on YouTube, nos on vimeo.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Oh interesting, all right? I wonder if that's like some
sort of pirated upload.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
It was. It's it was a VHS copied put online,
so I'm thinking, yeah, it was pirated.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Did you watch it all?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (22:06):
I did.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
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
what do you think certainly striking? It was really something
like I had ups and downs and highs and lows.
And I think I it was everything Wiseman wanted me
to feel about it. It was pretty great.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
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. That's the
best way to put it. But it's also obviously in
this case, it's not about high school football championship. It's
(22:45):
it's literally watching these people. I mean, I guess we
should just talk about some of the scenes maybe.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah, And a lot of the people are going to
go back and be like, justa this was great. Bear
with us everybody.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yeah, I mean, hey, you're a cinophile, right, punch me
in the face.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
No, the stomach, he says, way too hostile stomachs. A
little bit of friendliness left in it, you.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Know, Yeah, like Kudini style, Right, that'll do. Uh well.
One of the scenes that Livia picked out that certainly
stands out in my mind too, and I think you
can actually find parts of this one on YouTube is
a guard. I guess was he dry shaving him? It
looked like dry shaving or was it a wet shave.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
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 1 (23:40):
It was fast, It was fast, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
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 eat a little bit, but he doesn't seem
like he doesn't seem in distress at all while he's
(24:04):
shaving him. At the very least, he's not in distress
because of the shaving, right. But then what happened, Well,
there are these at least two guards, right, and this inmate,
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 he's
(24:27):
very it's easy to get a rise out of Jim,
as hard as Jim tries to not let you get
a rise out of him. If you press his buttons,
he's gonna like, yeah, he's gonna get mad. He's going
to try to contain himself. And there were a couple
of guards that were guarding Jim while he was being
like like washed and shaved and all that stuff, who
just spent the entire scene trying to get a rise
(24:48):
out of him by saying like, why is your room
so dirty, Jim? Or is your room going to be
clean tomorrow? Jim, You've 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. Yeah, and in fact,
Jim is kept naked in his room, so there's no
(25:10):
way for Jim for Jim's room to be dirty, and
also for no way for Jim to keep his room clean.
These guards, you realize, we're just trying to get a
rise out of Jim, and they do over and over again,
and it's really hard and sad to watch Jim like
like just get up, saying he's trying so hard to
just not let these guys get to him. Because he
(25:31):
knows what they're doing. He's fully aware of what they're doing,
and he just can't help himself. Probably like five different
times he reacts and then tries to regain his composure again.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yeah, it's almost as if they're trying to drive him mad.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
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
(26:05):
they're torturing this poor guy mentally.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Yeah, and we should point out too that you know,
Wiseman showed scenes like this, but it wasn't it wasn't
like a 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 net net
(26:31):
on that?
Speaker 2 (26:33):
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 do 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
(26:56):
is trying to get you to form an opinion, it's
so obtuse that it's tough to put your finger on.
In retrospect, maybe maybe you respond exactly the way he
wanted you to, but he's not very rarely does he
like hammer you with it. So yeah, 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
(27:18):
he's raped, 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
(27:41):
how Wiseman portrays it, And so like, if he's treating
that guy equal, he's definitely treating like the guards and
the clinical staff and everybody equally. But I think more
than that, he just turns the camera on and lets
them behave as they're going to behave. He lets them
present themselves to you, rather than him trying to manipulate
it so that you see what Wiseman I want you
to see.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Yeah, I mean that's the purest form of cinema verite,
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 can be like more
unsettling I think than hearing that creepy score totally. It
(28:23):
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.
You're like, when was a baseball game? What do they do? Like?
All they had was the organ player and the announcer going,
(28:48):
you know, all off the bat number five, so and
so so and so awesome, man done that 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
(29:08):
of all the extra boy, especially in an NBA game, sure,
all the extra stuff that's there until it's gone. And
it was really really weird. I liked it. Our family
was like, I'm bored, and I was like, I think
this is kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Did they have jacks at least?
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Oh? Yeah, I mean they sold this 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
(29:50):
all that artifice is gone, it can have a reverse
effect that all the artifice has like you're using it for.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
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 the background noise. If they put background noise in,
it's folly 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,
(30:22):
like televisions that are on that you can't see, other
people's 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
(30:45):
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,
(31:06):
fully naked, stomping around, Yeah, 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. Yeah, 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
(31:27):
in the doorway. 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 (31:44):
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,
(32:05):
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's a scene of the clinicians like discussing things,
(32:28):
and it's sort of like sounds like we need to
up his medication 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 into here together. Yeah,
he's never lost on you.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
His is a particularly sad case. Yeah, because you can tell,
like you 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 you're when you're pleading your case to
be released from a mental institution from somebody who's just
(33:09):
taking you as as you know, nuts, So why should
you be listened to? There's even one of the 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
as true, then everything he says from that is totally logical.
(33:32):
But of course his basic premise is total hogwash or whatever.
She says something like that. I'm paraphrasing. So it's like
that guy never had a chance. He just wasted his breath.
He just like they they were never going to listen
to him, And it's like red, yeah, yeah, what was
he not supposed to be there? He was supposed to
be there, wasn't he?
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Well, yeah, but every time he came up for parole,
he would plead his case and they would deny it,
and then and finally in the end he was like,
you know, it doesn't matter what I say in here,
you're not gonna let me out anyway. That's my Morgan Freeman.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
But that's sound a little more like boss Hog un tranquilizers.
What yeah, that was boss Hog sedated. Oh man, let's
hear it again.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
No, no, I can't.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Maybe Jerry can edit that.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
I can't have a new mom. Morgan Freeman again one
of the great voices. But uh yeah, he basically says,
you know, institutionalized you're not You're not gonna let me
out no matter what I say. And of course that's
when they let him out, because it's a dramatic film
and with a great, wonderful, happy ending, not like titty
cut follies.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
No 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 or Jim. There's no
(35:01):
no one explaining how Jim got here or what Vladimir did.
There's no nothing, Nothing is explained. It's just here's a scene.
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
(35:21):
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 stuff down knows all the way into
(35:42):
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, They 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 feedback. I don't
even think he says anything. So there's a there's a
force feeding scene. You watch an emaciated man who's starving
himself force fed, and he intercut that part with scenes
(36:08):
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 the institution and
(36:29):
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,
scenes seen, and like no explanation of who these people are,
(36:51):
what they are trying to say.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
All right, should we take a break? Yeah, all right,
we'll take our second break and be back right after this,
(37:24):
so before we talk about the sort of court cases
in the whether or not this film could be banned
or exhibited. It's interesting you talk about like it's just seen, seen, seen,
But on the flip side of that, it is like
a such a carefully curated edit from all those hundreds
(37:45):
of hours of footage down to eighty three minutes. And
that's one of the things that Weissman 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
(38:08):
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. You know, it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
He is a master edit and it's pretty remarkable. This
was his first film and he was that masterful at it.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
So I said earlier that it was crucial that he
had gotten permission to film, not only from you know,
the Lieutenant governor in the Superintendent of Bridgewater, but also
from everyone he shot. He got either written permission from
them or verbal permission audio visual I guess, on camera
them giving him permission to use them in his film.
(38:47):
So he was covered up in permission. And don't 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 out into wider release at the
(39:09):
very beginning I think New York Film Festival or something
like that. Yeah, 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 1 (39:29):
Yeah. 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 you count against him,
and it became sort of like O Livy calls it
(39:51):
a political tool, that's exactly what it became. Richardson would
end up accusing Wiseman of double crossing this, and it
all sort of hinged on the idea, not like, oh,
you showed these awful things, but it hinged on the
idea of permissions in privacy was sort of the legal
framework of it, because the argument was, sure, you might
(40:12):
have gotten the permission from these men, but they are
in no state to give real permission. And so there
were a series of court 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 this
(40:34):
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 and said it's just a
hodgepodge of sequences with no narrative, and said each viewer
is 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
(40:56):
verite is. But I thought that was like this judge
just said you should destroy that should like ordered it
to be destroyed.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yeah. He also called it a nightmare of ghoulish obscenities
and said the negative has to be burnt and judge judge, yeah,
And of course Wiseman was like, well, I'm not burning
my negative. I'm going to fight this and appealate.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Oh sure.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
That case, by the way, was the first one in
Massachusetts history where a 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 dried, though,
because Wiseman has First Amendment right to freedom of expression.
So it became freedom of expression versus freedom of privacy
(41:40):
or right to privacy, I should say, And it the
I think the ACLU got involved and they formed it.
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, law students, medical students, psychiatrists,
(42:06):
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 an appeal, that's what they came up with.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
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 was shown in
the library. 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.
(42:43):
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 to late eighties, there were some class action
lawsuits that followed by patients where the attorneys that they
could draw a direct line basically between a patient dying
(43:04):
by suicide and the fact that this film wasn't shown,
like it should be allowed to be shown for these reasons.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Yeah, like had it been shown, there would have been
a public outcry for more reforms, and that wouldn't have
led you know, those reforms might have prevented those suicides
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
(43:36):
got a judge 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, it's impossible. This is film, it's not video.
And then also work with me here man, right, he said, Also,
it'll artistically ruin my film. Yeah, but you remember when
we did that one gorilla filming in the supermarket, we
(43:59):
ended up having to go back. I can blur every
single thing in the supermarket aut exo for us. I
kind of screwed it up a little bit. I could
see where he's coming from, right, And so he appealed
again and finally they said, you know what, 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
(44:22):
by the early nineties.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Right, that was a ninety one with Judge Andrew Gilmeyer
of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and then after that
it was still because Weisman is, like I said earlier,
very picky about house 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 buy
(44:45):
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 like this still is a
(45:08):
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 a streaming service called
Canopy with a K, which is also kind of through
the library system, which is awesome.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
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
(45:46):
long way to go with Bridgewater too.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
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
oping people up more than they said they were doing.
So this is ongoing there. And then we Wispan, like
you said, made forty eight films and they had names
(46:09):
like hospital 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 bread and butter. I
think it's a really cool thing.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
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 1 (46:33):
Yeah, and Zuppora Films is named after his wife, who
passed away a couple of years ago at the age
of ninety. And he's, like you said, still going strong.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
Yeah. What's his latest one City Hall?
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Yeah about Boston City Hall.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Yeah, it came out in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
Pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
Well, if you want to know more about Tidny 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, I would use it. How
about that a centopis I always add an extra syllable,
so that, of course means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
I'm going to call this follow up on the effective altruism.
One of our favorite things is when we talk about
a topic and someone from that topic gets in touch
and as a listener, yeah for real, And that's what
happened in this case with Grace Adams. Hey, guys, we
are so excited that you covered effective altruism and you
did so wonderfully and graces with giving what we can.
Giving what we can. Would love to give your listeners
(47:35):
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 here people can opt to 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 at the ideas. Wishing you all the best from
(47:55):
a big personal fan, Grace Adams And oh I should
have made this into a bit lead Should I do
that real quick?
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (48:02):
All right, so you just talk to people while I
do that.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Okay, well, hey, everybody.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Actually could edit this together.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
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 (48:26):
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 I disagree with.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
I disagree with that. But anyway, how's that Bitley coming, Chuck?
Speaker 1 (48:38):
Okay, my friend, I am done. I have the bit lee.
If you go to bit b T dot L y
slash s y sk give you can get your free book.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Yes, pretty great free books on effective altruism and free
books by 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 or not. It's okay.
You don't have to send it off to Stuff Podcasts
(49:12):
at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (49:17):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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