- Hey, humans. How's it going? Susan, Ruth here. Thanks. Listening to another episode of Hey Human Podcast. This is episode 395, and my guest is Gary m Bettman. Gary tells a story of his father-in-Law, who was a guard during the Nuremberg trials and had a unique interaction with those on trial. Gary tells this wild story and, uh, the artifact that comes from that story. It's really interesting, a one of a kind artifact, I should say. Gary's a film and TV producer and executive producer.
His hit show northbound is currently on Zika d and some of his previous productions include the Omega Code Wax work and the film, A Gun, a car, a Blonde. He's the COO of marketing advertising company, the Miller Group, and has spent the last few decades as a democratic political consultant. Really interesting guy, and I met him through my dear friend John Penny. And, uh, Gary was kind enough to say yes when I asked him to be on the show.
And in a couple weeks, his father is also going to be on the show. Really fascinating story there too, with his father. So, all right, check out, hey, human podcast.com for links. And to learn more about my guests and the show, check out Susan ruth.com to learn more about me and my other artistic endeavors, follow Susan Ruth and hey, human podcast on social media, and find my music on Spotify, apple music, Amazon music, wherever you get your music rate. Review and subscribe to.
Hey, human podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, including iHeart. It's back up on iHeart. And thank you for listening. Be well, be kind, be love, and go see the movie Zone of Interest. Don't get paid to say that, but holy moly. Just saw it. And it is an incredible film. Breathtaking, actually, uh, sat there stunned at the end of it. Really definitely a theater movie. So go, go see it if you haven't already. All right, uh, let's get into this. Here we go.
Gary Batman, welcome to Hey, human. - Well, thank you. Glad to be here. It's - Nice to see you. - It's always good to see you again too. - We, uh, introduced by our mutual friend John, so thank you John - John's great and and a good friend indeed for both of us. - Yeah, y'all are neighbors, aren't you? - We are almost, I would say, less than a minute walking distance. That's nice. A few homes away. John, John and Kathy are terrific people. - They really are. They're lovely.
Let's get into, today we're gonna cover a couple different things. You have an extraordinary story about your father-in-Law, and after we're done talking about that, we're gonna talk about you because your life is also fascinating and has an arc that I am absolutely wanna hear about. So, let's start with your father-in-Law, a little backstory, and then getting into what we're here to talk about.
- My father-in-Law, his name was Danny Miller, and he was living with his daughter, and he lived in Cleveland at the time. And we made a, an initial visit in the early nineties to meet the family. He, I mean, after all the meals and conversation, he heard that I was very interested in history, political history, military history overall. And he goes to a, a drawer and pulls out this book, and he said, I think this would be of interest to you.
And I mean, Renee was there, my wife, my not my wife, then my girlfriend at the time. And she didn't even remember this was in the house. And what this book is, is just fascinating. So the book was in a brown bag, paper bag, and inside. So a little backstory for, for my father-in-Law, who's been deceased for a number of years, but right out of high school as an 18-year-old. This was World War ii, 1944. And he gets drafted.
I mean, he goes right in after high school, does his basic training, and goes overseas. I mean, he went to the, obviously the European Theater, and he was very, very, how many more varies, uh, quiet about the campaigns that he saw. I don't know if he caught the tail end of the Battle of the Bulge or more in early 45. He wouldn't talk about much of anything, really, truly. But afterwards, the war ends, you know, may, and he still has his tour of duty, um, to fulfill.
And he gets assigned to the Nuremberg Trials. Now, he was a private, so, I mean, I, if you know that in, was it 1935, the Nuremberg Laws that the Nazis passed, which were extremely onerous, uh, for Jews. And one of the reasons that Nuremberg was selected for the famous Nuremberg Trials was because it tied in to Nuremberg, the Nuremberg Laws. It was sort of like going full circle to have these Nazis tried, because the Nuremberg laws were, were passed there.
And I guess it, you know, the city, like most German cities were in shambles, but there was enough operable to have the British, the Americans, the French, all there to, with their lawyers, to conduct what was gonna be a very, very long, extensive trial. So my father-in-law, ends up being assigned. And here's where we get deeper into the story. If you've seen pictures of Nuremberg, which people who know history or World War II history know that, you see mostly the courtroom.
And inside the courtroom, all the Nazi defendants were seated mostly with their headphones on for the translation, but some of them actually spoke a fair amount of English. Um, and you see the judges, and you see the lawyers and all that. And then on the back row, there were the white helmeted mps all spiffy looking with their mps. That was not Danny, he was not an mp.
He was not, he was just a private, you know, the basic, what we, sometimes they call the grunt, you know, that's more of Vietnam term, I think. But his job as he told it, now, it's interesting because he would talk a lot about this part as quiet as he was about the military in battle exploits. That's how flip that around. And that's how talkative he was about this.
So he would escort whatever particular Nazi he was assigned to from their jail cell through the bowels of the building to the front door of the courtroom, the very big courtroom. And then from that point, the mps, which I always look, 'cause you can always look at a picture, you see they have those white helmets. It's kind of cool looking. They would take it from there.
So Danny was never in the courtroom, per se, but somehow, and this is just amazing, 'cause as I got to know him, of course, later in his life, he was kind of a quiet guy. He wasn't verbose or outspoken, timid in some ways, not one to get involved, or certainly not a rabble-rouser, none of these things.
But at this point, as an 18, at this point, I guess a 19-year-old private in the Army, he decided to do something, which to my research, and I've done a bit of research on, this has not been done when no one did it. So in the United States Army privately printed a book, a nice sized book, hardcover in Nuremberg, uh, about the proceedings.
It's about the size, uh, of a small coffee table book, uh, with pictures of Nuremberg, but really all about the proceedings, the defendants, the judges, and it's a nicely printed book. So he gets one of these books, and he basically smuggles it in, because you, you're, the idea is you can't get too friendly with any Nazi. They didn't want you to, because there was always the concern.
If you know, what ended up with Herman Goring at the end, that's a well-documented story that someone, the, the day before his execution, some American soldier smuggled in the cyanide, or a capsule. So Herman Goring could die in his pajamas, in his sleep at his own time, and not with a noose around his neck. I think ultimately they figured out it was, uh, an officer or someone who was sympathetic, obviously, but they didn't want any American soldier to get too friendly with any of the Nazis.
So as Danny tells the story, the the soldiers would, who were escorting the Nazi from the jail cell to the courtroom door, they would be rotated. And so you, you would like, for a week, you would have Herman Goring, and then you would go to Spear, and then you would go to nus, and then you would go so that you didn't bond any that deeply.
So what I'm saying with this book, he decides, and this is just, I don't know where this comes from, he decides to smuggle in this book, because you can't just walk in with a book if you're a gi, you have to hide it under your uniform, your coat, whatever. And he wants to get the autographs of every single Nazi defendant.
Now, mind you, Danny is Jewish and comes from a moderately religious Jewish household, I believe from what he said, that he started with Herman Goring because he was figuratively and literally the big man in the room. So if Herman signs, then he figures everyone else can sign, will sign. And as you see, and Herman signed, obviously, that's why we're one reason we're talking. Um, and Herman signed in a very Jan John Hancock sort of a way with a flourish.
And it's big and top of the page, you know. And then in the subsequent weeks and weeks, Danny went to each Nazi, most of them signed on the page below Goring, uh, a couple or a few more signed on an adjacent page. But his goal was to get every single Nazi. And I, I'm pretty sure that was at Spear who spoke English. And he, he said that he told them that he was Jewish, and they just wanted to sign the book. Why did they wanna sign it? Who knows?
I mean, was it, did most of them think death was imminent or whatever? And they were just, this was something to immortalize them by signing this book, who can say probably that? Yeah, I, I don't know. But eventually they did it, Danny and he, not only did he get that very nice book, but there was also, uh, pamphlets that the, the trial of proceedings had. And, and he kept, and it's in remarkably almost perfect condition, this pamphlet from 1945. So - They knew he was Jewish.
Yes. And they still did it. That's pretty - Interesting. Absolutely. Absolutely. They, they all did it. And he comes home from the war and goes on with his life, whatever, and who knows how the war, the battle part of the war scarred him. If you guys don't talk, you never know. You never know. And that was it. And then we segue from the mid forties to the early nineties, and this book in a brown paper bag comes out and it's like, oh my God, this is amazing.
And at one point, when he was showing it to me, he started to actually touch. And I go, no, Danny, don't, don't touch the ink that, you know, because you don't want to just for a preservation sake. But the, the signatures hadn't faded because they hadn't been in the sunlight and they hadn't seen anything. They were in a bag for decades. So, you know, that started some research from my end to see, to see if anything like that existed and what it might be worth.
And I called around a bunch of people as I'm a book collector. Um, books are my passion. So I know some of these antiquarian book dealers, coast to coast. I called them, um, guys who deal in, uh, military collections. And, uh, through another friend of mine who connected me with. So I made a bunch of calls to see how unique this really was. And there, there were a couple of other guys who got Goring's Autograph. So you can still find that around.
And a few of the other higher profile Nazis during, it's like I mentioned spe, but there was no Anywhere case where this privately printed book by the United States military had all the autographs. It seems like a truly one of a kind. Now, um, I won't get into numbers, but assessing value was challenging because like Sotheby's, Christie's, they don't handle anything that has anything to do with Nazis. So they were not even interested in seeing it, talking about it the minute I said what it was.
They say, thank you, goodbye. But there were a couple of private dealers back east, uh, one in particular, a Jewish guy in Connecticut who was enthralled with it. He goes, oh my God, this is amazing. I've never heard of this book, anything like this book before. And so I, I talked to him, but I mean, the book right now sits in a bank safe deposit box down in Culver City. So it's, it's, you know, it's, it couldn't be more secure if we tried, and we're not, it's not, it's not my father.
So when Renee's dad and we're not selling their other siblings, so there was a discussion about possibly, uh, putting on maybe like a permanent loan to the Simon Ental Center, to the Holocaust Museum in Washington dc which is an amazing museum. Uh, I urge everyone, if they're in DC to go there, there's even another museum smaller in LA called the Museum of the Holocaust, near the Grove. Do you know that one? Mm-Hmm, . Yeah.
So that, you know, there, there are people who probably in museums who would probably be interested in this as a display item, as a discussion coming from a, a Jewish gi. Um, but right now it, it's, these are all discussions. 'cause it's, uh, you know, siblings have to agree on what to do. And you know, how, how that can go. - Is it just, is it priceless? - No, it's not. I mean, it's just, it, it has value.
But I think, I think what I would prefer is that in, in Danny's name, it goes on display at one of those museums I mentioned, because that's a tribute to Danny Miller. And to me, that's, that has more oomph and the uniqueness of it with a little backstory, you know?
But it's not priceless. No. And you, you know, you have to also wonder if someone like this collector in Connecticut who was willing to purchase it, who, who wants this, who's gonna spend X thousands of dollars and want this in their home, is that, so isn't it better to have it at the Vth all center or in Washington and say, you know, but it's certainly unique. And, um, uh, so that's, you know, that's kind of just the most remarkable story.
And even the book itself, he acts besides the pamphlet, which I mentioned, there's also a second copy of the book that he, for some reason, he, he bought two copies, one, I guess to keep, which is in like Immaculate Condition. And the one that the Nazis signed, which got a little wear and tear because it was being handed back and forth, and obviously stuck in his clothes to get there.
But the book itself is, is a, a nice treat also just about the proceedings, you know, - I feel like that definitely deserves museum to, to live on in a museum for a lot of reasons. It's a lot for a lot of layers of reasons. Yeah. - I mean, they, they could do a nice display on it.
Um, they, they would have to figure out, WI guess the page that is on with the most signatures would be the one if you opened it up on display, because to get to a couple of other signatures, you'd have to turn the page. So they'd have to figure out how to display it. But, you know, I don't know what's gonna happen. But it's, it's remarkable to know that my father-in-law had this interaction with Herman Goring, who, you know, I hierarchically after Hitler.
You probably would have Bels Hemler and Goring as the big three right underneath Hitler. So, I mean, it's like, this is my relatively timid, but not that timid at the time. Father-in-law, talking to Herman Goring, who, you know, everyone who knows history and, and, and her goring not only World War II history, but I'm also a student of World War I history. And Goring was an accomplished fighter pilot, uh, and flew with Baron von Ovn, the Red Baron.
And so Goring didn't just come into being in World War ii. I mean, he was already making a name for himself in World War I. He was actually the, after Von Ovn was shot down, uh, April 21st, 1918. The leader of a squadron was another pilot who was subsequently shot down. And then Goring ultimately took over the von Rick Tobin's squadron and finished the war. He was even ballsy back then. I mean, he painted Von Ovn, the Red Baron was known because he painted his plane mostly all red.
He had different planes, uh, but he generally, they were almost all red and Goring, who was even flamboyant at the time with a walking stick and all that, he painted his plain all white, which was, you know, a different sort of approach. So this is a man, uh, from two world wars of significant historical status. And my father-in-Law was like chatting with him.
So, I mean, it's like, it's crazy. It's amazing. So I'm - Just so curious to think about what their, take these Nazis take on this young Jewish private roaming the halls trying to get signatures like a school school book, like an annual. - Exactly. I mean, it had that feel to it. Like, - Have a nice summer, see you in hell, kinda thing, right? Yeah, - Yeah. What we, we did when we were kids getting the, the autographs. And so, and they were just autographs.
I mean, one person asked me, did anyone write a salutation or anything? No, no, no, no. It wasn't that, it was just sign your name and thank you very much. Fascinating. Yeah. So, and you know, like I said, I, I, there's, uh, I've printed out this list. There's Kle was in there on Ribbon Trop.
I mean, people who know Hess Duritz, Von Papin, these are all guys, if you look into their sorted, clearly, their sorted past were important enough in the, the Nazi structure of the killing apparatus to be on trial at Nuremberg. I mean, let's, and, and, uh, they were not all executed. Some were given different levels of sentences. They were not all executed. Many were, but not all it made, it made me wanna go back, which I did, and watch film, you know, thing.
There was the, I think it was Stanley Kramer, I'm not sure the famous movie that came out in the early sixties about Nuremberg, big feature film. But I went just more for the historical record, you know, on YouTube and stuff, and just looked at, um, the proceedings. And, uh, and they, they went on for a very long time. So that's a story about the Nuremberg book, and that's - So much, it's, it's a wild ride, that one. Yeah, - No, it really is.
And, and the, the rare occasion, I take it out of the, the bank security box and show it to people, everyone is like, you know, living history, you know, not unlike when we first met at Ross's house, where we looking at some of his artifacts, which are Yeah, amazing. I mean, it's beyond what he has as a collection for the ages.
But this particular book, it, it's, um, it's a real link to a generation, a part of history that, I mean, most of these guys, Danny, would be 98 now or something like that, if he were alive. And yet, sadly, when we're talking about Nazis and stuff like that, it's not gone. I mean, these guys are long gone, but what they created, it's with us every day, sadly, isn't it?
- It really is. I'm really looking forward to, in, in a future episode, I'll be interviewing your dad, and that's gonna be a really incredible conversation. I feel like, as someone who lived the experience of Nazi Germany. - Yeah, my dad had it, and we'll be talking to him in a couple weeks, I guess. But my dad far more dramatic story than, than Danny. I mean, Danny's was an interesting story. 'cause where did he have the to do this? But, and it's an amazing artifact.
I mean, it's, but what my father lived it, my father was there, he'll tell you the story of the time with his grandmother, my great-grandmother, where they encountered a Hitler rally. He'll tell you that story. And he has memories as a very little boy of the pervasive fear that he felt instantly with his grandmother picking him up off the street and running in the opposite direction, uh, away from Hitler, uh, in Berlin.
Um, so yeah, his escape from the Nazis, I mean, he has a little boy, but he has memories. But my grandparents, my grandparents, my uncle who was even younger than my, my dad, you know, it's remarkable because, and I, again, we have other things I guess we're gonna talk about today, but at that point, most of the Jews in Germany at, at that point were very secular and were Germans first and again, many, many thousands of German Jews fought and died for the Kaiser in the first war.
So there was a real sense of loyalty to Germany. And so that this all happened from, you know, I mean, it was brewing through the twenties, but obviously in 33 when Hitler took power, 32, when he was running whatever the dates, we know what happened subsequently.
But there was, it was a disbelief on almost all the secular Jews in Germany, and especially in the big cities, that this could happen because we, we meaning the, the German Jews fought and died for the country in a war not that long ago. You know, the echoes of World War I people could argue, help create World War ii. That's a discussion from their time.
I've, I've been in seminars where some say the Treaty of Versailles and this and that, but either way, the bottom line is that the Jewish population in Berlin in Germany never thought this could happen until it happened. - . Yes. That seems to be an echo that resounds throughout history. - Right? What's the only history you're doomed to repeat it? Or what's that line? - The paraphrasing of it is, if you don't know your history, you're doomed to repeat it.
- It takes the people that takes followers to make all this happen. He, he couldn't do it in a vacuum by himself. So, and, and, and I guess multiple reasons, uh, that hatred was obviously bubbling below the surface. Otherwise, I don't know. But I can't imagine if someone, a Hitler type person at that point in say, England wouldn't have happened. 'cause it was a different set, you know, different political mindset in England, - The, the economics of the country.
I mean, if you take people who are disenfranchised, impoverished, hungry, upset, they don't know who to blame for that. And then you have a charismatic figure telling them, you can blame these people and take the onus off yourself. Or even the onus off of me blame all those people. Right. Then they got everyone on board. Right?
Then you get everybody to, to blow the horn and the whistle and say, yes, if I can blame all of them and make myself feel better for how shitty I feel, then let's do that. - Yep. The blame game works. We mm-Hmm. , we know, but the, the confluence of events with the depression hitting worldwide Yes. In late 29, added to it. And like I said a minute ago, you, you can't escape the, the defeat that Germany went through. They, they tried to not even package it as a defeat.
They, you know, Germany had to, on November 11th, 1918, actually, I guess it was the night of the 10th into the 11th, they surrendered in this rail car to the French and British and that rail car that basically humiliated the Germans in 1918, that same rail car Hitler found and had the French sign their defeat in that same rail car with, you know, so Hitler, you didn't forget what happened in the first war, or the great war as it was called at that time. 'cause there was no second war yet.
But yeah, I think all the confluence of these events, the Depression, but Chamber - Then Chamberlain didn't take 'em seriously. I think there, - No, that was a big mistake. , you know, a big, big mistake. And so it, you know, it was just the, I mean, I hate to use the word perfect storm, but it, it, in some ways, it, it, it was, what can we say?
And we could talk about that for forever, but there's, there's no, there's no doubt that, you know, he, if you look back at the last century, uh, Hitler would have to be one of the most dominant preeminent figures of that whole century, I would guess. Right? I mean, you could make a short list of other people, but he'd, he'd be up there Rwanda. Yeah. I mean, and watch that fantastic movie storing Don Cheadle.
Mm-Hmm. , um, I mean that's, well Killing Field's, very good movie, but based on a true story. And, and the guy hang nor who was playing Death Prawn ends up, um, he went through it himself. He wrote a, wrote a book that I read many years ago, and it had such a sad ending in real life because he moves to la I mean, he did this movie with Sam Waterston and John Malkovich and a bunch of others, a really good movie. He was murdered over a wristwatch, uh, many years ago.
Uh, and so he survives the killing fields. He portrays death prawn, he gets these accolades, he has this all new life, and then over he is murdered over a watch or something. Uh, I mean, a real tragedy, but sure. Genocide, it's, it's far from new. And, and each time it comes up, what do people do? Do they turn away? Do they try to help a little bit? You know, what, what did we do? What did the West do in Cambodia at that time? Right, - Exactly.
- Many, many years ago, I read this comprehensive biography on Hitler, uh, I think his name was John Toland, really very good o author. And he spent some time in there talking about the Armenian genocide in the first war, and how the West didn't do much. We were fighting the war and this and that. And, you know, they, they didn't really were concerned about it. The other things were more important.
And I think there was a, a small, small part in Hitler's demented mind that said, we killed the numbers vary. 'cause it was 1915, but 800,000 or so Armenians, and no one seemed to care. The Turks got away with it. So I can do that to the Jews, but I mean, but what Hitler did is took it to heights way beyond the Armenian genocide, beyond Rwanda, beyond anything we've ever seen. And what a lot of people forget is that it wasn't just Jews that were exterminated.
Um, I, I know that out there, the ethos is that it was a Jewish holocaust. Yes, it clearly was 6 million. That's, but there were roughly another 5 million, whether you were homosexual, whether you were, uh, had Catholics, intellectuals, - Disabilities, dissidents, writers. Yep. Actors, artists. - Right. So that's another roughly 5 million more. These are numbers that are just staggering, uh, when, when you think about it. Right. His place in, in history is, - He's a hall of famer in hell yeah.
- Sadly. Yeah, sadly inescapable. I mean, we, I don't know. But anyway, so that's the, that's sort of the overall with, with Danny Miller and - Yeah. Well, let's, uh, get into you. You have led a fascinating life thus far. - You know, I, I always had major interests as a kid, and one of 'em was, I loved the movies and watched a lot of tv. The movies held a special place for me. I always did.
Grew up with my family, being from New York, we went to Broadway shows, all the classic shows of the sixties and seventies that, you know, were legendary. And there was just something so magical about the entertainment business, about theater, of course, but especially movies. And it kind of was all ever wanted to do.
I didn't even know, I mean, I'm a, you know, a young kid and I just, they didn't have any film programs in high school, but I did the local theater and, you know, sort of found my niche, uh, as a producer director, but much more so as a producer.
And went to film TV school where I was a major and did that and graduated from small school, upstate New York, called Ithaca College, where I had the privilege of meeting Rod Serling, who was like, uh, a, I think the Twilight Zone is one of the, you're talking about most influential people in history. I think it Twilight Zone is one of the top, I don't know, top 20 TV shows ever. The fact that he started it in 59 and ended it in, what, 64?
And people still talk about certain Twilight Zone episodes. Oh, the Burgess Meredith one, oh, the William Shatner one, oh my, you know, and so on and so on. It was a great show. It was a great honor to meet him. He was from upstate New York. He taught classes at Ithaca College. He was very involved in bringing our television studio into the modern age. He was a terrific man who sadly died very young. He was a heavy smoker. I mean like, I dunno, two, three packs a day. And just a brilliant man.
And I was a privilege to just shake his hand and call him Mr. Sterling. And I wish, I, obviously, I wish he had lived a long, happy, healthy life, but if he had just lived a few more years, instead of being a sophomore meeting him, I would've had him as a, a senior where I had even more interaction. But he, uh, he helped our school immensely. The business to me was like sort of all I wanted to do.
And I did a lot of stuff at Ithaca Films and all that, but it was really, uh, you know, get into the, the business. As soon as I graduated, um, concurrently, I always had a political involvement, uh, because I came from a somewhat political family at Ken, you know, Kennedy was President Kennedy was revered, uh, in my family. And, um, you know, I know a lot of people from my grandparents' generation felt that same way about FDR. So I had that sort of imbued in me too.
And there was even a story about my, on my mother's side about her grandmother, my great-grandmother marching to get the rights for women to vote, you know, before women didn't get the vote till 1920. And she was marching before the war to get, you know, and I think actually the war accelerated women getting the vote all over the world. 'cause if you look at the countries when women got the vote, I think world, the Great War help helped that.
But I had that sense of like, you know, pride that someone in my family was actually marching to get women. The, and it's, isn't it incomprehensible that women couldn't vote till 1920? Think about that. That's not, they - Can't own, they couldn't have their own credit cards in the eighties. , - That, that's beyond nuts. I mean, it's like, there, there's a, a really good movie with Carrie Mulligan who could do no wrong called Suffragette. And I don't know if you've seen it.
- I haven't, but I love her. - Oh, she's fantastic. Meryl Streep has a small, basically an extended cameo in it. But it, it, it really talk, 'cause the suffragette movement, which I learned a lot about because of my great-grandmother, but just in the importance of it wasn't just in America by any stretch. The suffragette movement was in Europe. And I mean, it was all over my - Great-grandmother. It was a suffragette. - See? So that, I'm sure you're incredibly proud of that.
- It's pretty badass. She was a badass. - And was she out there with a placard? Marching? See, that's great. - Oh, yes. Very politically inclined. Very married to a officer in the military. So they would host big parties and, and she would flapper gums . She was not afraid of confrontation or speaking her mind. Uh, she wrote news articles. She was badass. - That's great. Right? Yeah. Did you have a chance to meet her or get to - Know her?
I, no, no, no, no. She passed along before I ever was a twinkle in the eye, as they say. - Well, but you have those photo photos. I have. - I have photographs of her in my apartment, uh, because of, as I do of all the really strong women, independent women in my family, on my, on my mother's side, on my father's side only a few people survived World War ii. - So I need to interview you so you can tell your father's story. - I've interviewed dad a few, a couple times for the show.
And my mom, uh, they are great interviews. And I say this on a lot of different episodes. If you have the opportunity to interview your parents, your grandparents, your great uncles, whatever it is, your neighbors who are above a certain age, please do it. You they hold in their hands and in their minds and in their, their stories, stuff that we're gonna lose if it's not recorded. - So to that point, Susan, I a hundred percent agree with you.
And what I did at Ithaca, besides being a film TV major, is that I ended up being a history minor and part of the prerequisite. So this is 1976, I did an exhaustive, uh, family history paper interview because my grandparents were still alive, and I had a chance to sit down and talk with them on both sides. And I got it all on paper. And even went back, uh, just about a decade ago, I had the paper and sat again with my mom and dad.
Of course, my grandparents are long gone at this point, but I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything but sitting, especially with my grandmother, my, the one who escaped from the Nazis and what that was all like, and some of that we'll talk more in a couple weeks with my father. But I mean, this was, you know, a woman who at any point could have been killed with two young children and, and parents and all this thing. And, and, you know, I I, it needed to be put on paper.
And so I did that and talking with my mother's father, who I loved beyond words, I can even get choked up how much I, I still miss my grandfather talking about his family from the 1880s and the pogroms and the great-grandmother I talked to you about a minute ago. The suffragette, the women must get their vote that she was born in some tel, which were kind of figured out somewhere. Poland, Russia, as those borders changed a lot.
She had stories of survival too, through the pogroms that were were lost. I mean, we know a little bit about the pogroms and what the cossacks did and all that, but it that, that's really lost to history, don't you think? I mean, that era - Abso Well, absolutely. - She had told a story, and I, I know we we're gotta get back on track, but she was a little girl when the Cass ex would come in and the marauders would come in and they're in their home behind a bureau was a little crawl space.
And the children, when these marauders would come in, the children would be hidden in the crawlspace and the bureau would be closed. So they, you couldn't tell so that if they were gonna r rape and pillage and beat up, it was just the adults that took the brunt of it and the children. So imagine you're 5, 6, 7 years old in a crawlspace in, in the dark listening to your mother, your father, your aunt, your uncle being beaten up because they were Jewish.
And then of course they would leave and they'd come out of the crawlspace and they'd, you know, deal with what happened. But the psychological damage that that does to a little girl, little child, whatever, knowing that, and, and their escape ultimately to get to freedom when they, they left. And the irony is that they left the Polish Russian area. And at that point in the 1880s, they went to Germany for freedom for a small amount of time before, of course eventually coming to America.
And I have my great-grandfather's citizenship papers framed under museum glass in my office from 1898. And, uh, you know, he, that was always something kind of special that he became a, an American citizen in 1898. - That's really incredible that you have that, because so much of that has been lost to time. - Oh, totally. I mean, we're losing things to time in the last a hundred years or even less, let alone before that, you know?
Yeah. You say, you say programs to people and they go, what program? No, not program pogroms. They're like, ah, okay. But anyway, so PO politics was always something that was interesting to me. I, um, uh, you know, obviously I a, a progressive, um, and I, I remember before I could even vote, uh, I was in high school and I worked for George McGovern, and we got a chance to heckle Richard Nixon at a rally. It's like students from McGovern.
And, you know, that was sort of my, my first foray a little bit into politics. And it was fun. And, you know, it was about Vietnam and civil rights and women's rights and, you know, earth Day had, just, earth Day was only like two years before that. And like, there were things that were important. Um, and so I got involved and, you know, I mean, obviously the McGovern thing, we kind of knew the handwriting was on the wall, but it was still energetic and it was fun.
And, you know, I would, after high school classes, I would run down to the headquarters and do volunteer work. And so, but you know, the, the business was my front burner thing for sure. And so I get outta school, I end up in New York working in the news business for a local New York news. Then I got a chance to direct, uh, cable Network news at a place called Satellite News Channel. And it was great fun.
And that it was a, an international cable news, 24 hours, even before Turner was truly 24 hours. It was a little ahead of its time. It lasted a year and a half. And then Turner shut it down. He bought us out, shut it down. It was owned by group W and a B, C. But news was interesting, and it was live, and I really got to, to direct news in multiple cameras and remotes, and which was gonna serve me later in life with a project I ended up doing just a few years ago.
But I really wanted to make movies. I mean, that was really the dream. And somehow News thrived and was at its most exciting when it was built around tragedy and horror, plane crashes, fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, murders, whatever. If it bleeds, it leads, right? And that's been the mantra forever and ever. And I didn't necessarily want to do that. I wanted to make movies.
So I, it was in a way a good thing that Turner shut down the satellite news channel, bought them out, put, put like 430 people outta work overnight. I said, okay, move to la. I I came to LA and really started the pursuing of, uh, a film career, or, you know, I ended up working, uh, a bit as a, an ad, a first ad, which is an interesting position, a means to an end to get to be a line producer and a producer.
Had a, had a fun time and a, a network pilot called Man About Town with Daniel Stern, who you probably know Daniel Stern. Yeah. Um, it was a really fun project at MTM at the height of MTM when they were doing St elsewhere and Hill Street Blues. And we did our sitcom in the Mary Tyler Moore stage. So this is where, talk about women that blazed the trail. Mary Tyler Morman, she up there with Carol Burnett and a bunch of others. And I was on that stage and that, that's just really amazing.
And then I just started doing low budget films as a first. And the, the goal for me, of course, was to not be a first ad for too long, uh, and got a couple pm credits, line producer credits, producer credits, and um, I think on my IMDB page, I've got 20 producer credits and other production credits. First, some of my acting credits, I dabbled in that I got into SAG in 1983 and, you know, so LA and, uh, I miss New York. Uh, my family's there, but LA's been home career-wise, it's been pretty good.
And, you know, I, uh, I did go back for a time to work on the Mondale Ferraro campaign where I was assigned as a video crew, uh, for Geraldine Ferraro's Northeast Speeches. We would, uh, record them and to shoot B roll. And at that time, everything was like on Threequarter Inch. Remember those Threequarter Inch mission? You're too young to remember that. It was an, an old system anyway, uh, but it came back here.
And, uh, you know, it's been a progression of movies through the eighties, nineties, early two thousands, had a lot of movies that are near and dear to me. Some not so much. You know, when you start looking at the title, some actors that I loved working with and some that were real pain in the butt, who - Did you love working with? - Linda Carter was absolutely fantastic. Um, you know, she, and most people remember her as Wonder Woman. Um, but she, she couldn't have been nicer.
She even in fact said that because of her Wonder Woman fame, that when people found out where the, where we were filming mostly, it was up in Santa Clarita at that point, but still within the 30 Mile Zone, people would come and she said, I'm gonna have fans show up. And she said, here's what I'd like to do on my time. Meaning our lunchtime, not on the films time, but during her lunch break, she said, let's set up some chairs in a little area where they can sit.
I'll take pictures with them, I'll sign autographs and all that. Then I'll ask 'em to leave. But I won't take away from production's time. Just, you know, and I mean, and Linda was just great. She, she was great with the crew also on, on that film, Dee Wallace, the mother from et - Oh, she's, so I met her at John's house, - Right. And so I reconnected with her at John's party too. Yeah.
And Dee Dee looks at me and I look at her and I'm going over, and she says, we worked together 30 years ago, and she gave me a hug, and we talked about the film. And Dee is just that on, on the actor side, a lot of good guys. Probably the two I'll mention there is Jason Alexander, who a real mensch, what a guy. I would work with him in a heartbeat on anything. Um, the nicest guy. I mean, it's like, just, you know, so we did our film between season two and season three of Seinfeld.
So Seinfeld was already on, but it, it hadn't become the explosive hit that I think it became, certainly once season three. And the other actor, which I did two films with in the, uh, early two thousands was Michael York. If you look at his credits, they're amazing. I mean, from, he was in, I think in Cabaret, the Three Musketeers, was it Logan's Run? I have to check. Michael worked all the time. He was a kind of a refined British actor, um, very into Shakespeare.
And, uh, the two movies I do with him, we film mostly in, uh, Europe. And so, um, it was fun hanging with him. Michael's a great, here's a one quick anecdote about Michael. He wrote a book, which I'm telling you this a little backwards. So I kept in touch a little with Michael. We had the occasional lunch, but between the first and second movie and a little bit less after the second movie. And then he calls me, and I thought it was just to check in.
He said, um, I'm having a book signing at Book Soup, you know, book Soup on, yeah, I love Book Soup. Great store. Yeah, great, great. I, I hope it stays around. I love that story. And he said, I'd like you to come and sit in the front row and join me. I go, sure. What's the book about? He said, well, it's, I need to tell you that you're, you're mentioned all throughout the book.
I go, well, Michael, what I, he says, well, I chronicled the filming in the making of this film called the Omega Code, which I was a producer on, and he was the star. And I'm thinking, okay, I hope you portrayed me in a good light and all that, and not some. He goes, no, no, I, I tried to tell it as it happened. So I I part of me. So I went, and I, I supported Michael and he had a good crowded book soup, and it was really nice.
And we chatted a bit afterwards, and his wife, pat York, was an accomplished photographer, was there. But part of me was like, if you're gonna write a lot about a person, shouldn't you have given like that person at least a heads up, that you're like scattered throughout my book in as Gary Bettman? I didn't say that, but I'm thinking that. I said that to my wife. I said, you know, Michael should have just, and, and unfortunately one key thing that happened, he got wrong.
And now that's in print. There's no way to correct it. And so it, it was a, a very key moment in pre-production that he attributed something to the wrong person. And it, it, anyway, it, it, but I, you know, what are you gonna do? Poor Michael, though. I, I, uh, when he got his, um, star on the walk of fame, I went down there, got him a bottle of champagne. But the last I have been, I've lost question because he has some terrible illness that he survived.
And if you, you know, look, research, Google, whatever, Michael York, the, the poor guy went through hell and became partly unrecognizable with this rare illness. And he wrote another book about it, and it's a real tragedy. I mean, he's alive and he's okay. It's a real sad ending. So those were two women, two men too, that I, you know, and there, there's, there's a lot of nice people in the business. There's a lot of pain in the asses too, right?
- Sure. Just like in any profession, - You, you know that, right? - For sure. - Yeah. So anyway, and so I made a lot of movies and had a lot of fun shot in Italy, and I did a couple films in Israel, did a wonderful film, and the entire film start to finish in Puerto Rico, one of my favorites called Undercurrent with a guy named Lorenzo Ami - Sure. - Who made a big splash on some primetime shows. Then he had a syndicated show called Renegade in the nineties.
And well, Lorenzo Ami was the son of Fernando Ami, who was a, a big, you know, they used to call it, now you can't say it, but they're like a Latin lover type from my parents' generation. So he was born into the business, and I think he was on some show like Falcon Crest or one of those shows.
But he, he, he also, after he did the film with me called Undercurrent, I know he had some difficulty with drugs and things that I think he's about, but at the time, his, that was a, a, one of my favorites of the 20, and I think there was a film, I don't think there was a film called A Gun, A Car, A Blonde.
That was another one of, if I had to pick like four or five of my favorite that would be up there with Billy Bob Thornton, who we did this right at the time, he had, just right after the time, he had done Sling Blade. Remember Sling Blade? Sure - Do. - Put him on the map. And, uh, in fact, Billy invited Renee and I to a private screening of Sling Blade at the Raleigh Studios, you know, kind of across from Paramount. - He is a really interesting human being.
I mean, he is an exceptional writer, an actor, deep thinker. He's talks about when his brother passed away, how that affects him still to this day, obviously, why wouldn't it? And, uh, that is a person I think has many pools of depth. - Well, Billy and he talked to me a lot about, this came from, oh, like kind of poverty in Arkansas, and he grew up, uh, he, I think the story was when he was a little boy, he didn't even have plumbing yet. I mean, he was still using an outhouse.
So he, he came from, you know, they used to call it hard Scrabble life. Remember that term? Like what does that even mean? But Billy was great for the project. It was a small movie, proud of it. He got us, John Ritter, who he, he was friends with. So John John was, uh, in it rest his soul. Yeah. Billy was very gregarious and hang out with the crew. And John was very reserved. John would come, go to his trailer, never forgot a line, always showed up on time, but he wasn't a hangout sort of a guy.
He kind of was. But it was great because we needed some names. Uh, the lead was a, an actor named Jim Metzler, who was wonderful, but he was in one false move many years ago. He had a small part in LA Confidential, and he's worked a bit, but it was a really interesting story, a two concurrent. We shot half in black and white and half in color.
And the, the Jim, the lead, who was a guy racked and dying of cancer, and he was very sick, and he created this alternative world in his mind to escape the, the pain that he was going through. And so the real world was in color, and the, the manifested world was in black and white, but it was a tribute to film noir. The black and white was all a noir.
And, you know, uh, even our composer, a guy named Harry Manini, who I've worked with on a number of films, and he's even scored commercials, he's best known for Friday the 13th. I mean, Harry does, you know, you know that whole, but he created a jazz score, a noir type jazz score, and a, a title song that just wonderful. And it tells, it tells a good story.
And, you know, I'd done a lot of action films and a couple of romantic comedies, and this kind of movie that was telling parallel story was, was a lot of fun for me as a producer. - How did you get involved in working for political campaigns then? I know that you came up as a kid doing stuff, but yeah, that seems like a heavy load of doing the film production and - Unbelievable.
And, and there were times, um, so I mean, I, I volunteered, like I said, I worked on the Mondale Ferraro by the time 88 came around in Du Caucus. We knew we had an uphill battle then, but I was able to, the last month and a half, two months, if I wasn't working, I could then donate, donate my time, because at that point it was volunteer work. Uh, but it really, I really got much more involved in, in Clinton 92 and 96. And fortunately, I was able to coordinate my workload and my volunteer work.
In 2000. I was in Italy for the Gore Lieberman, and I didn't come back from filming in Italy, which is, I mean, what a wonderful place to film movies. And I did too there. And the Italians are awesome. I mean, I got to know Rome as well as LA or New York. I loved Rome, just fantastic. But I missed virtually the whole campaign. I came back, I was 10 or 11 days before that much contested election.
And so sadly short of a bumper sticker on my car, and a little bit, I, I wasn't able to contribute what I wanted to do for the Gore campaign. Of course, we know what happened there, and it, you could easily say how that was stolen by the Supreme Court, by one vote, set the stage for what's happened in the subsequent 20 plus years. But there got to a point where I was getting a little older, and I loved the volunteer work, and it was really good. But I said, you know, you're older now.
It's time to get paid for your work. And so I had a, an opportunity to run as a paid person on a limited basis, but run the John Kerry Presidential headquarters in Santa Monica, which was a big consortium of clubs. And, um, it was a real pivot point for me because I had, you know, I, I believe John Kerry was a, a good man. He was a hero. He had shrapnel in his body, purple Heart, silver star, whatever, you know, he was on those boats.
And, and the other side, swift boated him by a, a guy who didn't serve his country, dodged the military, lost by half a million votes before that. 'cause Al Gore got half a million votes. So John Kerry seemed like the right man, but, you know, we didn't, that didn't work out. But for me, it was my entree into deeper into politics. But it came at a pivot point. 'cause I was offered, right at that time, two films. One, uh, of, of Vlad the Impaler film to be shot in Romania.
And another action picture, similar to one of my other favorite movies called Death Ring. Um, death Ring probably would be one of my top three favorite films that I produced. Um, just for the, the enjoyment. And I'm not saying it's like a classic cinema, it was just a hell of a good ride. So I turned those two films down because I didn't wanna lose the opportunity to work with the Democrats and with Kerry.
So the idea at that point of spending two and a half months in Romania doing a, a lead, it just, it didn't, so maybe it would've been different if someone said, Hey, you know, you're going to Paris, or you're going to London, or, or back to, - Although Romania's beautiful, I've been to Romania, it's gorgeous. Well, this - Was oh four Romania, maybe it wasn't quite, were they still earlier in the throes of communism?
Maybe they, 'cause my research showed that they were still, at least equipment wise and crew wise, still very much a third world country. That was, that was that. And, you know, so I, I worked, I ran the, uh, both Obama headquarters, which was an amazing thrill. We had, uh, an enormously successful one on ninth and Wilshire, and even more successful one, uh, for Obama 12 on the Promenade. That was - Such an incredible time. - Unbelievable. And I, I mean, it feels longer ago than it actually was.
Um, but it was great. I even won a Democrat of the Year award from, for the city of LA for my work on Obama oh eight. Uh, we had a visit from Valerie Jarret, president Obama's right hand advisor who came to the Obama 12 headquarters. She was wonderful. And she's still working with the Obamas. That was very exciting. Hillary, I, you know, we had Hillary on Montana and Santa Monica, that headquarters, uh, we had people phone banking, text banking, like literally on the streets.
And we won't go into, you know, the whole Hillary situation, what happened and all that. Maybe for another time, I guess. But there's a case where she won by almost 3 million votes. I mean, gore won by half a million. Hillary won by 3 million. And I hope though, I don't think it's gonna happen, that I'm alive to see a one person, one vote in this country. Um, I understand what our forefathers did, why they did it. The true democracy is true. Democracy is one person, one vote.
And truthfully, if you're a Democrat in Mississippi or you're a Republican in California and you're want, you want your vote to be counted the way our system is now, it, it doesn't matter. And it should matter. I'm very passionate about that. 'cause it, I I, I think if we had true one person, one vote democracy, uh, you, you know, we wouldn't have had a lot of things. You, you could even argue we wouldn't have had nine 11.
'cause Bush was shucking hay in Crawford, not reasoning, reading the presidential briefings properly. It was under his watch that nine 11 happened. He'd been president for eight months. And I think Gore would've been different. The environment certainly would've been different. I think the response to Katrina would've been different. Uh, and we could just go on and on about one person, one vote and how it would've changed the last 23, 24 years. But that's another conversation.
But anyway, so work-wise, I then was working, uh, with the Miller Group. My wife's that, she a company she founded in 1990 and brought a lot of production to the company, to the ad agency. Um, that's why I was in Chicago. We were doing two web television shows for a client of ours, which I directed, which gets back to my news background directing live multi-camera shows. So I dusted that off my headsets and all that. So it was fun to be back doing that for the Miller Group.
We just finished, literally just finished shooting our third season called Northbound. It's, uh, a web series that has garnered over a million views, uh, northbound. The third season that we're in post on, uh, will be our final season. Uh, we've done well with it. It's on a platform called Seek a tv. I'm the EP of that. And that, that's been a lot of fun. We shoot the whole thing in the upper peninsula of Michigan - Where they stick up their hand and - they flick.
They're up there. That's right. And it's, um, they, it's really, people think of Michigan and they think of Detroit, of course, grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, but the up is far away from that. I mean, they're actually, when we were flying in talent from New York and la, we didn't fly them into Detroit. We flew them in usually to Green Bay or Madison because they're a closer drive to Wisconsin and the up.
But that's been a fun project and we have a, a feature film we wanna make based on northbound called North Star. So we'll see where that goes. And so that's been fun. And you know, uh, if you look at the Miller Group YouTube page, there's around 200 videos. I think probably 95% of them I either produced or directed and or directed. So that's been fun having my, you know, feeling now in the ad agency world, but still a little bit in the production world and the political world.
And so it's a, a multihyphenate hy, is that the term? Multihyphenate? Yeah. Yeah. So that's sort of my story. - It's a great story and hopefully fingers crossed you keep dipping your toes in the political realm and as we move forward. - Well that's, that's the idea. I mean, we're, you know, as we talked a little bit, I am, uh, in deep discussion to do some of the same things I did for Hillary, both Obama's, John Kerry for President Biden. So hopefully we'll see what happens.
- How can people find you if they want, uh, other than the Miller Group obviously is a, is a place to poke around, but is there, yeah, - I mean, it's, miller group.com is the agency's website. We do great work. I'm proud of, uh, the output. It's a full service ad agency, marketing production. I mean, you name it, we can do it. LinkedIn, obviously that's, everyone uses LinkedIn. Um, maybe some people overuse it. I don't know. But that's the, the resource. - Are you on Instagram or anything?
- I'm not. I've kept off a lot of the, so I'm not a Facebook guy either, even though a lot of my high school chums like, ha, you know, we got reunions coming up, you should go on Facebook. I go, I don't know. I I find - You're not missing anything. Trust me. Well, - I trust you. And other people would say, oh, you know, but it's okay. You know, I, I, I know what's going on with my high school classmates as much as I really need to know.
But you know what, it becomes Susan like a bandwidth thing every day. There's so much to do, so many people to connect with, speak to, whether it's Miller Group, production, politics, even down to, I've been asked again last night. Kathy was one of 'em. Please rejoin our homeowners association board. I was, uh, I mean, I I like Kathy so much, but I just can't, I, I can't, I don't have that to be back on the homeowners board, which I served there for a number of years, but it's like, so that's
- A whole other animal. The HOA - Oh my. Have you experienced those things? - No, but I have friends who have, and it's just, - It's, it's beyond, it's beyond the thought. It's - Beyond, yeah. - , I mean, you, you wanna get into a nitpicky world about landscape and light bulbs and, you know, color of paint for the, oh, it's just, you know, another world. And I, I lived that, like I said, for a number of years. And finally I said, I've got other things.
I'll attend some meetings. But I said to Kathy, thank you. I know you want me back on the, I can't do it. - Yeah, . Well, Gary, I really appreciate your time and your stories. I'm super excited to talk to your dad in a couple weeks. - No, thank you. I mean, I'm super excited and I know my dad's really pumped about this and I look forward to that. But thank you. I mean, this has been great. You're great at what you do. You make it easy. You make the flow happen, and - I appreciate that.
- Thank you. Appreciate that. And I'm sure we'll see each other, whether it's John and Kathy's or somewhere else soon. I hope so. - Oh yeah. Well, it's a, it's a pretty small world around here, so I'll definitely be seeing you. Thank you for listening everybody, and thank you Gary again. - Thank you, Susan, so much appreciated. We'll see you soon. - Bye. Rate review and subscribe to, Hey, human Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, iHeart, wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks. Bye.