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