Errol Morris on Steve Bannon, Self-Loathing, and Life as a Private Eye

come together slowly. Take his breakthrough project In The Thin Blue Line. That film, one of the most celebrated documentaries of all time, overturned a murder conviction. Maurice allowed all the key witnesses, over the course of hours and hours in front of the camera, to tangle themselves up in contradictions and ulterior motives. He's one of cinema's most distinctive a tours, but unlike most of his peers, he seems to have stumbled into filmmaking After college. Morris sold cable subscriptions.

He wrote term papers for money, then at all. At the same time, and in the middle of a pH d in philosophy, Morris fell in love with film Noir, met Werner Herzog and developed a fascination with serial killer Ed Geen. At that moment in his life, if he was going to make something about Gain, a movie seemed like the thing. He never did make the film, but Erro Morris had gotten the documentary bug. He just wishes there were a better word for them. I don't like documentary,

So there we'll explain that. Explain it if you care to. UM, it's a strange category. You don't have this in feature filmmaking. The minute you suggest that it's about reality, the truth clearly enters the picture. Is what you're seeing true false. Um. There's a documentary police, of course, but how you deal with truth and falsity is up for grabs. All that you have to do is pursue the truth, UM, in your own way. When The Thin Bool Line came out,

I had so called re enactments in the movie. The documentary committee at the Oscars turned the movie off immediately, a movie that was on the top of most critics list. Guess what I don't do re enactments. What amazed me at the time of the Thin Boo Line as I showed scenes of the murder on this Desolate Road in West Dallas. They were all false. They weren't used to show you what happened. They were used to make you think about what didn't happen. I hate reenactments that are

show and tell. Someone says blah blah blah, and then you illustrate it. Visual material in a movie, whether it's a documentary or a feature, it should take you to some unexpected place. It shouldn't be just illustrating dialogue. What was documentary film in your life? When did you first encounter these films and watch them and wear My introduction was not too ordinary traditional documentary film, but to whack out films. They didn't obey the standard rules of documentary

at all. What is a whack out film? Something that doesn't really do what we imagine documentary to do. Documentary you're supposed to have an identifiable subject matter. It's about so and so, or it's about this issue or that issue, handheld camera available, light fly on the wall, blah blah and blah. And I never liked any of it. I

like documentaries to be stranger, expressionistic. One of my favorites it was a film by bun Well, call it a serialist Um strange documentary Land without Bread, Um, Land Without Yeah, I recommend it. My connection the documentary film tenuous probably like everybody else. Um. And I was in graduate school Berkeley, and I started compulsively going to movies at a place

called the Pacific Film Archive. And I met a young German filmmaker there who was making documentaries among other films, when he heard song and we went to visit a mass murderer together. It's a good first date. And we went up as phoe of psychiatrist Dr Hertzog, his producer Dr Sacks or Dr Morris. Um. I met him at a time when I was first doing interviews the ed Guime project. Well ed Geen. By the way, it's not German. Everybody thinks the name is German. It's from the Scottish,

not the German. It's Gaen. I know if I was a mass murderer, serial killer, I would always hope people would get my name right. Yeah, we have to give the mass murderers there if they're due. When did okay, were you commissioned or this was your idea? Yeah, the commission that asked people to interview mass murders approached me one day. We want to make a movie and wanted to commit No, I wanted to do it. I was planning to write why I was playing to write PhD

thesis on the Insanity play? Maybe because insanity interests me and what better way to examine those issues than to talk to a number of people who pled insanity. But my point was, you start to interact with this material, what was it that made you want to make it? I don't know, because your life is a kind of you're kind of a cork in the ocean before you start making films. You're into this and you're into that. Well, I still am into this and into that. Why not?

Why not be lecture as a filmmaker? I guess is that what it is? Let me fill in that line in your bank application occupation filmmaker. But what I'm saying is that you know you're going to go to You're you're selling subscriptions, You're you're going a PhD program at Princeton. You know, you're you're kind of all over the place, not in any bad way before you land the plane, probably in a bad way. Well they'll let you say that it's in a bad way, in a very bad way.

So when you're in Berkeley. Uh, and mean, filmmaking saved me. It gave me something to do with myself. My wife very kindly says that my office is a daycare center for myself. Well, I could consider filmmaking in general as a daycare center for myself. I didn't say that. I just said it was a daycare center. You're allergic to feeling good, I take it. I don't know. Maybe I'm not allergic to feeling good, just don't feel good now.

One of the things that I consider all the time is that, you know, because I've produced documentary films and I've produced narrative films. In a narrative film, presumable, you have to have some decent writing that at the very least will attract a cast. There's a beginning, middle, in an end. There might be a story, hopefully or not, as the case may be, well crafted characters and so forth,

and you've got to lure people to the project. Where when you make documentary films, which I've always enjoyed, you do whatever the funk you want to do. This point the camera, this person. Sometime their reluctants, but I don't think they're so different. Really, don't tell me why I don't have to cast Alec Baldwin in order to get the money from my project. But getting the money for the project is still not a done deal. It's often difficult um. Getting people to agree to actually be interviewed

can be an almost impossible task. I can think of countless projects where I thought I had people who are going to do the project with me, and then it all suddenly fell through. Give me an example of someone that was relatively easy. Was McNamara easy? No, McNamara is not easy to book to cajole Um. Someone wants to asked me why I was good at getting people to appear in front of a camera, and I said, I learned it from my mother. My mother was an exquisite nag and I like to think that I am too.

McNamara agreed to be interviewed because he thought I was part of a book tour. He wasn't really thinking, and after saying yes, he called me back and said, you know, I've been talking to people about you, and they tell me this is a very bad idea talking to you, and for about minutes explained to me why he wasn't going to do it, and then said, but I said, I would do it, So I'll do it. And as a friend of mine later said, well I know that story.

That's the story of Vietnam. Um and he came. He said he'd give me five minutes, which is not particularly generous. He saw my interviewing machine, this machine that I used to preserve eye contact, the entire ron. Describe that for our listeners. Oh, good god, you don't want the description. It's so fucking boring. Of course people want. People want to know all about your technique. Describe the terrortron. What is it named by my wife because it had the

word interview and terror in it? Um. I like eye contact. Right now, we're making an eye contact. What does the device do? It allows you to film an interview and to preserve eye contact, which you can't do otherwise. Otherwise, if we were filming this discussion rather than doing angle, you would have a raking angle on you. But what if I wanted to preserve what is happening right now? My looking into Alec Baldwin's eyes and you want to make you talk to Yes, it's two prompters cross connected.

You go to Florida to do vernon. You go down there and there's a fascinating element to what was going on in Vernon that you didn't put in the movie about the South amputees. I'm a failed filmmaker who makes films. I think it's probably the most apt description. I read an article of the New York Times magazine about an insurance investigator, John J. Healely. Some of my best stories come out of the Times. People don't usually think of the Times as a tabloid newspaper, but inside every issue

of the Times is excellent tabloid material. So I read about this insurance investigator and he describes the worst case that he ever worked on, which was a small town in the Panhandle of Florida where there was this extraordinary incidents of insurance fraud, people suspiciously losing arms and legs, sometimes an arm and a leg after taking out massive policies on themselves. And it became known in the insurance trade is nub City, the nub Club, the Nubbies, nub City,

nub this. How many people were doing that? Roughly dozens scores or just a few, um dozens. I think it's contagious. If I were to mutilate myself in this studio, there's a good chance you might follow suit like that actor who was that famous actor who was very good looking through because and he was high. I think he was on acid. He was tripping, and he thought he wasn't getting all the interesting character work he wanted. There's probably right,

because he was too beautiful. So he threw acid in his face in Central Park, and any man that boys wound up being a heavily scarred. I'll look it up, but please don't do that. Let's do a movie about him, and I'll play him in the re enacting footage. But the so nubsity, but you don't put that in the film. Correct. There's a problem with documentary Sometimes I wonder why in

hell are you applying this particular trade. I am under psychiatric supervision, so I've had occasion to professionally address this issue. But often I'll embark on a story which cannot be done as a documentary. Um and nub City was the perfect example why it couldn't be done. Why we'll think about it for a moment, or we'll think about it together. People admitting that they committed this crime. There you go.

So I kept investigating. I'm an investigator at heart. I would go around the town talking to Nubbies, members of the Nub Club, other people, and I got beaten up. Now, I sometimes think a person like me should probably be beaten up every single day. But it hasn't happened that often. And why should you? Why should you be? Because I'm impertinent, I asked questions. I'm an annoying person. Why shouldn't I be?

In fact, I have to keep my eye out for you that you just jump across this table and throttle me. You live in fear of that? Not much. I wish i'd gotten a degree in psychiatry before we did this. You'd probably have a degree in psychiatry. Look kind of actually, I kind of do ye. But yet you make the movie Someone gives me money, and it's true, I get it. Someone gives you money, and you better do something. Nothing wrong with a little commerce every now and then. I

agree with you, it's essential. So I made a different movie. What did you make? I made Vernon, Florida, which is a portrait of a lot of people in Vernon, Florida. Vernon, Florida was nub City, and it's one of my best films. But it has nothing whatsoever to do with nub City or the Nubclay didn't even sneak in A couple of shots of amputees at the Piggy Wiggily at the checkout

count of none of that. Some limbless guy bench in front of civic hall um called dead Pecker Bench where these old guys would sit all day talking, the dead Pecker Bench in nub City. The Dead Pecker Bench in nub City. And one of them was an amputee. But here's supposed it was like Karl Hyacinth. To me, well, it's better than Karl Hyacin. The guy did not lose his limb through insurance fraud. It was a genuine accident.

After you do that film, After I do that film, I'm out of work for a long period of time, and I become a private detective in order to earn a living. And where did you apply that trade? You have to get licensed. I'm assuming you don't have to get a license I worked for. You have to pass the psychiatric tests to get that license. Now, thankfully no, And I work for a guy was probably one of the best private detectives in the world. And where did

I work. I worked in this very obscure place called Manhattan, which is just pristine in terms of people's behavior and their code of ethics and what's what's what's defined there? And I did big cases. It was if you open the financial pages of the New York Times, usually there would be one or two of the cases that I was working on. What kind of cases did you work on your Private Eye where we Wall Street financial fraud? Exactly right? What did you find whether if you can describe,

leaving out the identifiers, what's one case you worked on? Uh? There was wash trading um commodities fraud. I worked on this huge case involving a rogue trader. There's so many rogue trading stories, but this was one of the first where a rogue trader builds up a position loses a very large sum of money. In those days, it wasn't so big as it is now. It was roughly a billion and change. But I worked on that case for over a year. What made you decide that that was over?

You go back? I mean, we're getting close in the amount. Don't mean to be so linear here, but in the timeline, we're getting close to the movie that makes your reputation as a filmmaker within Blue Line. I like to think that almost everything I've ever done is out of desperation and some kind of necessity one does have to earn a living. Um. Eventually I found commercials I've directed. This is something to be proud of. I've directed over a

thousand of them. Um. When I couldn't get any work as a filmmaker none, I was lucky enough to be offered a private detective job and I was able to survive. H I sent a proposal to public television for a project I didn't really even want to do. It was to interview a psychiatrist in Dallas, Dr James Griggson, who had the name Doctor Death. He told me he had lost most of his private patients in psychiatry because they felt nervous confiding their deepest thoughts to someone named doctor Death.

Started to interfere with his bus. This and his main business became making predictions about future behavior at death penalty trials. So I went down and I interviewed him. I got money, and that was the start of the thin Blue Line. By accident, it was only at this guy's behest that I started doing death row interviews and discovered this guy named Randall Dale Adams, who told me he was innocent, and that was the beginning of two and a half

years of investigation. I said to myself when I started this whole thing, thank God, you don't have to be a private detective anymore. And of course it's probably the best work I've ever done as a detective. I agreed. Now, um slollowing between the creative and the monetary has been a tremendous strain for me as well. I'm gonna turn sixty two years old in April and four my six the second birthday, my wife is giving me another baby. We're having our fifth child. Congratulations, thank you so um.

Being from the Five Towns on Long Island, I was hoping you would have said most thank you. What that means the world to me? So um, I like a good Long Island maltop. What time do you reven? Five Towns, you little Long Island. So you're old enough to remember where I bought my suit from my prom which was Edward Miller's Town and Country and Cedarhurst, Lord Eddie Miller's. I bought my first eve, said, la raw three piece suit there when I was a boy. Do you know

the Chinese restaurant in the Five Towns, the Chinese. Well, there's a number of Chinese, but it's my favorite. Which one It's called Chosen? Chosen. That's very funny, that's right. But when you're doing this over the ark of a couple of years, you said, a couple of years, you're doing the work on the thin blue line, and you're getting paid. I was in trouble, okay, but you felt you see, this is what I find to me, this

is the nvil of a career. Sometimes you've tasted this difficulty and worried about money, but there's something about this film that you had to see it through, and then your life changes after this film comes out. Why I started to believe this guy was innocent. He had been sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit. Sentenced to death for the first degree murder of a Dallas

police officer. Well you if you truly believe in someone's innocence, someone who has been on death row, who in all likelihood will never get out of prison, came within a couple of days of being executed. What are you supposed to do? Punt? Whatever happen. Stories are sort of like prison cells, and sometimes you get trapped in them and you have to fight your way out. You have to fight your way to some kind of conclusion. Dig a tunnel.

Did Emily Miller ever get punished for her perjury? This is the chief prosecution witness against Randall Adams at his capital murder trial. Whatever happened to her? Nothing which was unpunished? Nothing and she did commit perjury? Oh yes. Filmmaker crime solver Aero Morris. Another great documentarian is Dawn Porter, director of Bobby Kennedy for President. It features footage of the Attorney General with his family. Porter had worked at ABC News and knew about a trove of unseen tape from

the months leading up to r F K's assassination. ABC was just an upstart network trying to make its mark. Who do you do you follow the like sexy, good looking, charismatic candidate. ABC was the most recent. So they're following Kennedy and shooting him, and we had to watch it all. So it was like living in that time and living with Kennedy. The rest of that interview can be found in our archive a Here's the Thing dot org Erro Morris talks about the terrible men he's made movies about

coming up. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. Recently, filmmaker Erro Morris has become known for his deep dives into the men in suits who lead our country into armed conflict. First was his two thousand three Oscar winning Fog of War and unsparing and yet human portrait of Johnson's Defense secretary Robert McNamara. Then came Unknown Guns in two thousand thirteen, which gave Iraq war architect Donald Rumsfeld

the same treatment. And out now is American Dharma, about the architect of a war of culture and politics, Steve Bannon, who led Donald Trump to victory. But accomplishing this trip tick portrait of American power hasn't cured marris Is neurosis. He remains as insecure in his success as he was in ninet when he leapt from day jobs and rejection to comfort and creative freedom. After the Thin Blue Line, things did change. Yes, well, I still feel like a pariah.

But what why? I don't know. Because you thrive in a place of discomfort. We gotta keep that underdog thing going. Is it an underdog thing? It's a self loathing whatever. But then we'll say the arrow Morris self loathing technique of filmmaking is that, but you felt like you had to keep that going. Do you hate yourself? Um? I wouldn't say hey, because that if I'm trying, at my age now with my young children to exercise hate. But

I do. I'm I'm I disappoint myself constantly when I talk to myself, I look at myself across the room and go, oh, alec. But for you, you you have this success and then once you have more options because in the creative world, when things change, what changes is we can go do more what we want to do. What's the first thing you want to do? Once Thin Blue Line becomes a big sensation, what do you want to do next? I was confused what I should do? Uh?

And as you become more successful, there are always people out there to tell you what you should do or could do. Um? What was next? After Thin Blue Line? You got involved in doing a feature with people that I should never have been in business with, which was Robert Redford teacher. It was called dark Wind. Who finally went up directing it? Me? Or you did? You did direct dark Wind? Luta? Who did it? I'm the fall guard?

You didn't walk away? No, call me a coward. They come to you and they want you to make a movie. And did you think to yourself maybe that you just didn't want to do those kinds of movies. You want to go back to documentary. You didn't want to be a filmmaker like that. But I did. Finally I did get an opportunity to work with actors in a series that I did for Netflix called worm would um why be polluted by reality? Well? Why be polluted by reality?

You were asked, what's the one thing you most strongly believe? Your answer was, there is such a thing as objective truth. But aren't all your movies about subjectivity? Your own films? Do I believe there's a real world out there and which things happen? Do you believe it's an objective truth? Yes? You do. I don't know if we can ever know it. I have often thought that history is about the evasion of history. Cover ups are endlessly interesting evasions, and say interesting,

it's a route to truth. Truth is never handed over to you as such. Were you pursuing that when you talk to McNamara? Uh? I wanted to learn something about McNamara. I was certainly pursuing it when I was working on the Thin Blue Line in Dallas. That was the part of it. Do you want to answer some fundamental question? And did this guy shoot the cop? Right? And and and and in that film that the falsely accused man,

there's an that doesn't need to be stated. There's an abundant empathy people have for the guy that's wrongly convicted. What's the idea when you go in the room with McNamara, who I studied assiduously because I played him in a movie I did well, and and and and and McNamara as somebody who like LBJ and like Nixon, I find

it impossible to let them off the hook. When I see Bob Caro and he's gonna write his fifth volume about Johnson, and I want to say, Bob, we are you gonna really write the truth about what a monster? I mean, even I just imply it that Johnson McNamara was a monster. The men who were the engineers of the Vietnam War, I mean, they're among the worst war criminals in history and human history. The Vietnam War was something we will never get out from under, you will

never get off from under. And McNamara is largely to blame for that. I mean he was. It was he was, you know, he was that velvety, ivy league. Uh, you know, monster, He's a monster, you know when I'm what's funny is you interview him? And I just want to share this story really quickly. A friend of mine or at some congressional office, and Kissinger's mother had just died up in Harlem. She lived up there for her whole life and was a big community activists up there. She was like nineties

something news. And my friend is introduced me here Senator so and so, Congressman so and so. And as I turned, just out of my field the vision in my blind s about my friends and you know, Secretary Kissinger, and I turned and I gasp, here is Kissinger on par with McNamara, one of the great war criminals of all human history. I didn't know what to say, and I go, I'm very sorry about your mother. And he hugged me.

He thank you a very much for saying this to me, and he hugs me, and I thought, I'm comforting and Kissinger, you're suggesting that I don't think he's a war criminal. I told his son. I really came to love Robert McNamara came to dinner at our home several times. But do I think he's a war criminal? Yes, I'm not a great believer in redemption. I think the whole idea is a kind of bad idea. After all, I am a Jew, not a Christian. I think you do bad things,

they stay bad forever. There ain't the thousand or ten thousand or a hundred thousand hours of community service that's going to erase that, like lifting up the acetate window on a magic slate. Um, badness stays badness. When when you started the project with McNamara, I mean when you ended the project with mcmarray. In terms of your own opinion, what was the journey? I'm not sure what I thought

of him in the beginning. I certainly demonstrated against the war as a young student, like you, I find the Vietnam War to be a horrible, horrible episode in American history. Um, it's really hard to know. It's hard to know whether the sixties and early seventies were worse than it is now, because it seems pretty bad now. Um. At the end of all of it, I came to like McNamara, why because he was so smart. I enjoyed talking to him.

We invited him to dinner. He went to the bathroom and tripped on a rug in our living room, hit his head on a footstool, opened up this cash in. His forehead was bleeding profusely. My wife and I are going crazy. You want to get him to an emergency room immediately. We get coal, compresses to put on his forehead, etcetera, etcetera. My wife later says to me, oh, my god, you know, thirty years ago, forty years ago, if we had killed

Robert S. McNamara, we'd be heroes. They put a plaque on your house, and now we're The footstool would be in the Smithsonian. Now we're worried about him. It's one thing to respond to another human being who you've become friendly with for whatever reason. Is that? Is that the danger of what you do Where there's a person that's a sebject matter, you develop a relationship with them, and does that color the process? Inevitably it does? You know,

it's a danger. It's a danger which I believe, maybe there's a self deception on my part, can be overcome. I've interviewed over the years some pretty nasty characters. What would Trump call them? Nasty? Ambrese bad ambres. It's a I don't think in the case of Robert McNamara, I've lost a perspective on who he is and what he's done. Um,

he's a person you could talk to about things. The other hand, Donald Rumsfeld was a person I never felt that you could talk to really about anything except his self, his legacy, even well maybe his legacy. But he Um, he radiated a supreme self satisfaction, pleased enormously with himself and what he had done. No apologies, no remorse, no guilt, no nothing. I called him the least Jewish person I'd ever met. No self hatred, no no introspection, no none, nothing.

What year did fog of work him out? Um? Two thousands? Right after? Because I we did a path to war, we shot it in the fall of two thousand one, and and and I'm watching fog of war. And for the love of God, I lean in and I listened. I lean and I listened. That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said. Say go I said, Mr Mcnamaric, go a, you have my attention. Tell me, tell me, teach me what what What was your perspective? And you could tell obviously in the film that he had his

regrets and he's interviewing is about listening. It's about creating, in my maybe not so humble view, it's about creating a situation where people want to talk to you, where they want to reveal things to you. Um. It's not about difficult questions. It's not holding treating people feed to the fire. I'm not Mike Wallace. It's not Mike Wallace. Um,

it's something very, very very different for me. I'm not saying for brand X. But to get to this in terms of then you do Bannon, and I must say I don't really feel like leaning in and listening to Bannon. I mean when you say there is such a thing as an objective truth, and I want to think to myself, well, how could the guy at Bright bart Or understand what objective truth is? Probably maybe he can't write part as

a lie factory of the highest order. You can have no understanding of objective truth, no interest in objective truth. But guess what that doesn't mean There isn't such a thing. There's a fact of the matter. Going back to the thin blue line, someone shot this Dallas police officer. It's not up for grabs. You put a hundred people in a room with a hundred different opinions, it doesn't change the underlying reality of what happened. Who pulled the trigger

and shot the underlying reality of the Bannon film. He won, and I think it's really important for us to understand how that happened. People don't want to deal with it. I don't even want to deal with it, although I have dealt with it. People would prefer to see that election and when he's sixteen as conspiracies of one kind or another. Um m hm. To me, it's one of the worst things that's happened in my lifetime, a nightmare that America is still in the middle of. How and why?

And I do believe that Bannon was instrumental in putting Trump in the White House. How did this happen? Or if you prefer, how the fund did this happen? And it's a question that my movie tries to answer. How did you? How did you connect with him? How did you reach out to him? Uh? I have this very little known agent. Are you, Emmanuel who have connected me

with people who knew Bannon? And as a result, we set up a meeting at the Bright Bart mansion, which is a townhouse very close to the Supreme Court in Washington, and I met Steve Steve Bannon and we agreed to make a movie together. What do you What do you think? Was his reasoning for making the movie. His main reason was he was a fan of my movies. He was at the Tell Your Ride Film Festival when I appeared with The Fog of War and Robert S. McNamara. He

was in the audience. Um. He's during his movie executive days. The end of his movie executive days, he had become a documentary filmmaker. He made over a dozen documentary films. I've seen all of them. Do I want to admit to this? I think there might be consequent brain damage. Take out from Chosen, watch them. We'll go out to take out from Chosen and ten Bannon films. That sounds like a weekend of May point. If that doesn't kill you, nothing will. Was there a good one among them? Was

there an adequate one among them? They're crazy. They're crazy because they're filled with unbelievable violence. Even if you were a connoisseur of violence, you would find these to be unusually violent. Guillotines, crucifixions, shootings, Garrottings, electrocutions, documentary film. Yeah, they're about how the world is going to hell because we've lost our connection with God. Their films and praise

of Ronald Reagan. They might not be exactly. No, I don't want to to suggest something that might be wrong, but I don't believe they would be your cup of tea. I'll be the judge of that. Errol Morris, please, Now, when you sat down with him, described me, what is this list of films? You you you you you watched? He had you watch, You had him watch. I asked him about his favorite films. He's a film producer and a film lover, film lover, filmmaker. UM, I asked him

about his favorite films. His favorite favorite film Twelve o'clock High, which you know I've seen thousands of American films. I hadn't seen twelve o'clock. Um. The first week of Harvard Business School, what does the entire class watch Twelve o'clock High? Gregory pecks best performance? Much better than To Kill a mocking Bird? Yes, yes, yes, it's a lot less sappy and the movie is amazing. It's insane, it's neihilistic, it's dark. What do you have to do in order to win

a battle against Nazi Germany. You do what you're told to do, and you do it, no matter whether you're going to live or die. You do it because that's a fulfillment of your destiny, your dharma, your duty. Okay, you know, maybe that's what you have to do in order to win a war against fascism. But Bannon uses twelve o'clock High as the model for the twenty sixteen election.

So a movie about battling fascism becomes suddenly a story about promoting fascism, or in their mind, battling the deep state and the entrenched political permanent political class in Washington. Remember he says that the permanent political class in Washington. It's incredibly ironic, the railing against the deep state, the

permanent political class, the Party of Davos. This is a guy who went to Harvard Business School, who worked for Goldman Sachs, who gets his money from right wing fascist billionaires, and is telling you that he is a champion of the people. It's right out of Facing the Crowd, one of my very very favorite movies. But he wasn't willing to watch that movie video. I didn't pick these movies

at all. He picked them and we discussed them. Uninterested in getting inside somebody's head, and how do you even do that? You have to have some kind of strategy. My strategy was movies. Put him in a set which is based on his favorite movie, Twelve o'clock High. Put him right in the Kanci Hut where Gregory Peck General Savage in the movie addresses the troops. There he is addressing the troops kind of sort of in my movie

and Action and Action. I love this movie. I showed it to a group of journalists at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, and one of these journalists said, now, you know this is not how you should interview Stephen Bannon. You know it, well, guess what I don't know it? And what did they mean? They meant that this should have been Charlie Rose, where David Frost, no metaphors, no filmmaking, no desire to tease out the unexpected or something that you don't know? Did you? Yes, what's an example of

something he said that you thought? There it is. It's the overwhelming feeling that this is not a plan for anything but a plan for destruction. In the film, at some point I called Trump the fuck You President because for all those people out there in the world who have wanted to say fuck you to their teachers, fuck you to their neighbors, fuck you to their families, fuck you to the state, he's their guy. And Stephen Bannon.

Despite all of the populous talk doing good for the working class, um, preserving jobs for American labor, despite all of that whoha, at the heart of it is something deeply destructive and nasty. Um. There is a destructive anger I feel at the heart of almost everything that he says. Um. Trump as well, that's the one thing that does unite them. Wherever the truth was damaged, altered, defaced, Vietnam, the Rand Corporation, Elsberg, all these seismic events in our life. When people see

truth corrupt, truth is never corrupted. Baby, our willingness to pursue the truth because we're burned out, and we're also and I can speak for myself here, we're scared. Um, there's this shock. I remember people talk about the day where they were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. For those people old enough to remember, like myself, I will never forget the day that Trump was elected president of the United States when it beg came clear that he

actually was going to win the election. A nightmare, A nightmare that I hope eventually we recover from. Um and people got angry. It's a really interesting phenomenon. Someone said to me, I don't want to believe this to be true, but alas I think it is true. People got so angry at this movie and got angry at me for having made the movie that I was attacked. You know that theory kill the messenger. It's a good a good theory. I mean, if you're going to kill someone, the messenger

standing right there, why not kill him or her? I UM, I received this anger, and it's as if people don't want to deal with it. They want it just so badly. Please Mommy, make it go away. You want to treat it. Look at an emily, it's an anomaly, or even worse that it's not even happening, that somehow, if I patiently hide in the closet, that it'll go away. Mommy will fix it. Mommy will see to it that this bad guy is pushed out of office and America is restored

to the splendor that it once was. We're a world of magical thinking today. I mean, Bannon is a he's a wizard. He is a wizard, he's a snake oil salesman, he is a very frightening guy. And he won, and he won. I think that's important to remember, and then ask yourself the important question, do you want him to win again? I most certainly do not. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. After our your view, I realized I still had a couple more

questions for Maras. Thank you so much. It's Alec, Thank you so much for taking this phone call. This is not a cold call from some policeman's benevolent association. I hope it's a caulle from a T and T. Years ago, when I kept failing to pay my phone bill, phone company was after me. They were hot on my ass, and my stepfather took me aside and said to me, Errol, don't you think it's time you turned yourself into the phone company? And I looked at him and I said, hmmmmm, no,

I don't think I want to do that. Well, while I have you, I want to ask you. I want to ask you about collaboration. We wanted to append every now and then I think about things I did not due to my satisfied action. And I wanted to talk to you just briefly about collaborations, because obviously as a filmmaker you have fairly steady you know, there's a couple of films you've made with different people, and I just

wanted to go through some of these folks. Now. Of course, the first one that comes to mine is Glass, because I downloaded and I watched Fog of War again the other day, and I've rarely I'm kind of a nut for score and music and how well it fits or how intrusive it is, and blah blah blah. And he composed that original score. You didn't access some material of this that was original score for the film? Correct, I

with him at the piano. I've rarely heard score that was more compelling than that score for Fogg of War was beautiful, And I was wondering, how did you first begin your collaboration with Glass? How did you guys find each other? Well, I had shot most of the symbol line I was editing. I was using scratch tracks. When you're editing a film music hasn't been written for the film, you need something to edit with what had I added with?

I added with Philip Glass, various tracks from music that he had written previously, from Glass works from in the upper Room. It works. So kept saying, we need to find somebody who can write like Philip Glass. And then there was that do we want to call it an epiphany? Why I'd get the dude himself when I'd get Philip not so easy. I just kept nagging him and nagging him to see the film, and we set up a screening.

He reluctantly came in, looked at the kind of the sinboo line and immediately said, I'm righting, wow, And it was really really I mean, we've done many things together now, but it was really interesting collaboration. Um. I remember sitting at the piano with him and one, you know, the trouble with this music is it's just not repetitive enough. And he gave me this very funny look and he said, that's a new one. But the collaboration works. I believe

we work really really well together. Fantastic now when he when you work with someone like that, and I apologize because I should have asked you this earlier, but uh, did you have any background of music? You say, you sat at the piano, so you played. And when you're there with him, is he putting four things and playing selections for you and music, you know, pieces of it for you and you are just going great? Yes? Or do you actually make suggestions to him about what you

want in terms of the film's music. I was, I mean, I said all kinds of crazy things to him that are probably deeply inappropriate. How so, why well? I remember him playing the main cue for the thin Boe line. I said, you know, if you raise that voice up an octave, I think it could be much even two octaves. And he did, and then he said, I think you're right. What's the last project you did with him? Oh? We

did Fog of War. We did a filmed commemorate hundredth anniversary of IBM together, and he for my new series. So it's an ongoing relationship. And I am a fan. I've always been a fan, and I remain a fan. You two had the same music teacher over in France? Is that correct? We did? Who was that teacher? Can you believe that? Well? I guess I can act with you. Anything is possible. Was it was the the formidable, frightening Naughtia Bolage herself, and you were with her when still

in high school. It's a thousand years ago. The done um one of the other collaborations. I just want to hit some of the key ones here was Doug Able and you just did Fog of War with him. He didn't You didn't do any other projects with him. I did something you would really really like, which is a portrait of Rick Rossner, one of the smartest men in the world. What's the name of the film. I think it's called One in a thousand million trillion. Was it released,

It was on television. It was part of a person It's really one of the strangest and one of the funniest things I've ever done. I'll look it up. I have this misfortune. No one thinks. Maybe I can convince you that I'm funny, But it's that rum Sell. Did

we talk about Rumsfeld? Well, you told me that you thought Rumsfeld was the least I don't want to say self disclosive, but that's really not the goal, I guess when you're talking to people like that, but just the most up to If that's a version I have a version of his, oh none unknown, etcetera. Etcetera. My version is the known funny. For example, you would be the known funny. I know that you're funny. I find you funny. You constantly say funny things. And there is the known unfunny.

We're all familiar with that. Yes, I would put RUMFLD in that category, the known unfunny, the known deeply unfunny. We released the film and call it that. Well, let's look at some old footage to see if we can foot Then there's another category, the unknown unfunny, which is a very scary category. It's deeply unfunny, but you don't know it yet. For that describes half the things I see on TV. Only half. Yeah, well, I'm trying to

be kind. I'm trying to be too negative. If I told the truth about how I felt about you know, much of what's going on after that would be a sunny from this conversation. Are you going to work with me? That's the only question that I'm interested in the answer is yes. The answer is fuck yes, Well, I would be pleased to work with you. We will think of what we can do, think of what we could anything. You need, anything you need to please, don't don't hesitate

to contact me. Now. So, so when you're with able and someone like that, I mean, I'm assuming that you're very hands on editing. What does an editor do for you other than just give you an assembly? They work with me, We talk, we think about what we're doing together. They're a companion. Did you have an editor that you thought you worked really really closely with it? You had fabulous editors? My editor as we speak, Stephen Hathaway here, who is one of the editors on Fog of War,

Doug Abel. I've been lucky. I've been lucky with cameraman, with editors, with producers, I've been unlucky too, But I for the most part, been very very lucky. I mean, have you ever worked with an editor more than once? Of course you have, because I look, I look at the I look at the you know, I am my current editor, Stephen Hathaway has been working for me for twenty years. What makes it? What makes a good editor? Uh?

He's really smart, really good idea of structure and story, and he actually rolls up the sleeves and immediately gets to work. All he lives on the dailies. You know, the only thing, it's not clear that I'm really good for anything. But I'm a dailies producer. It's what an editor wants. Please give me more dailies. The ted Bathe Lucas was your production designer, an amazing and amazing character. He workedn't in Baffal Lucas work with Let me look up and see he worked with Levinson and he uh

trying to see what else he did. It is a kind of um not that every story is in a tragic story properly considered. But one of the most talented people that I have ever met, certainly one of the most talented people I've ever worked with, and he was never really given his due. He should have been directing many, many, many films. He directed one film limited distribution, but as a kind of film called Rockers. What was his wife? Didn't he have a wife in the business? That was

almost he did that. That's that Eugenie Buffaloucas, that I worked with her, I worked with her. That that's the ke the connection I had with him. I remember his wife. I remember his wife. We worked and we worked, we worked together for um. I think probably something with Denny, something with DEMI. That makes sense. Yeah, let me ask you just two more here. Robert Chappell. I can't reraman that I've worked again and again with Chopsky, who did

the Sinbouline, who also did Batman Returns. Someone asked me I was being interviewed for the d g A. They asked me, why are all so dark in the thin law? And I thought, what what are you saying? This is about a murder that occurred on a dark roadway in West Dallas close to midnight? Film noir documentary, if anything? Would you ask a film noir director say you're talking to Jacques Tuner about how to the Past. Would you say to him, Oh, no, no, sancha so dark? What

was that about? It's a dark story involved the cop killing. Still, to this day, the way people see documentary, it's as if they don't even see it. They see something other than I want to show the Eugenie Baffalupas did Miami Blues, the movie that I did that Demi produced and George Armitage were directed, and then she did Grass Point movie. It's it's a looping movie, but but I had a good time. Ye. George did Gross point Blank with um sure, and let's not forget the guy that I work now.

It was my dp Igor Mortinovich, who is just kind of fabulous. He did Wormwood, he did American Dharma. He's doing my news here. You're not the best I've seen, but you're up there in terms of this game you play where you just you know, people love you and admire you, and you do what I do. And I mean in the Irish maybe the Jews are like the Irish, where it's like, let's just get this over with. That's my theory of life. We know what's gonna end. The Irish way of living is, let's just get this over

we know what's gonna end. Let's just cut to the ending. Maybe we can be in a nursing home together. I always told my wife literally, I said, when I die, if I could, maybe you could shoot this movie. It would be great you and all your gang. Philip Glass could do the music. It would be so compelling. I said to my wife. If I found that I'm gonna die they had a terminal illness, we'll go to film it all. We're gonna film. You know, the doctor's gonna say, I think you need to come in and see me

as soon as possible. Boom, we get the cameras. Do we go in he says you have cancer, and we find that I'm sick, and by the end I'm in the bed and we do split screen and you kind of see a camera like kind of like raking over my face, a little little light coming through the window, but you see the monitor at the foot of the bed in the other split screen. So when I flatline and I'm dead, the moment I die, it's on camera. We filmed the moment. I just go, did he really

he filmed the moment of his death. He filmed the whole week his dropping dead? Yeah, and when was anything ever done? I think that we did it come out? You mean that your local multiplex? Yes, it's available where it's like everything else on YouTube. Of course it's on YouTube. What isn't on YouTube? Oh god, oh god, oh god. Let's make a movie about that. I'll play Leary. No, you don't want to do a narrative film. We're doing a narrative film. Let's do it all right, Let's do

do me a favor. I always say the same thing, just but let me finish my question. Representation. Have you ever agents managers? Has anybody ever helped guide your career and open doors for you? Are you. Like most people I know who are extraordinarily talented, you just get the work yourself. It all just comes to you yourself. I have perhaps the most powerful agent in the business. I

can't really recall what he's done for me. Yeah. Well, my agent would say to me, I want you to read this script, and he would start to describe the merits of the film, and I would say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no no, don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. I said, you're an air traffic controller. You just land the plane and make sure there's plenty of peanuts and diet coke on board, and then we take off again. And I said, I'm not interested in your

creative interpretation of the material. This way on the plane, there was a terrible crash at San Francisco International Airport. Some plane came in from I believe it was Korea and they crashed. Um people were killed horribly. And very shortly after that, I flew into San Francisco and as I'm getting off the plane, I looked at the pilot and said, thank you for not hitting the sea wall. It's a very strange look, but I thought it was appropriate. Thank you. For landing the plane. Well, let me just

say this to you. I'm gonna find out how I can email your office. I don't want your personal contact, but i'll get like an assistant and office email something that's appropriate. And I'm gonna make you so sorry that you mentioned working with me, because I'm just going to keep pulsing you and pinging you and driving you insane until you let me come. I'll play a cab driver, I'll play a Somali. Yeah. I don't give a ship, how small it is. I just want to shoot something

with you. I have trouble driving me insane because I'm already there. Well, we're gonna drive you further down down the well of insanity. Many thanks to you. I wanted to put this in there about collaborations with you. That's very important, okay, and thank you for doing this. People bonded to it. What's the word favorably? I gotta I can't tell you how many people have said this something

to me. People come up to me all the time and they'll go and the more unusual if it's somebody that we know is on a tour and you know somebody who's selling a book or what have you. We don't object to that. I mean, that's a part of the business. But I have had so many people say to me how much they love this interview with you. You have many, many, many, many many admirers out there. Many. Well, I am on a tour. I'm on a tour to nowhere. I want to go on that tour with you. Let

me come on tour with you, tour again. I'd have a lovely day and thank you. Okay, we're on a tour to nowhere together. M Errol Morris, the director of the Steve Bannon portrait American Dharma. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing.