This is Later with Lee Matthews, The Lee Matthews Podcast More what You Hear Weekday Afternoon, So on the Drive. Kurt Inger is best known as the editor and co producer of two Michael Moore films, Fahrenheit nine to eleven and the Oscar winning Bowling for Columbine. He's also produced a one of a kind podcast taking a definitive look at one of the most popular and beloved holiday movies
of all time, and that is It's a Wonderful Life. The name of the podcast is George Bailey was never born by the title Kurt, I am intrigued. Hey, Lee, thanks for having me on. Well, the basic idea of this movie came out of the mind of my partner Raynobashlsky, who is for ten years have been thinking about this film It's a Wonderful Life and just it's his favorite film of all time. It's had a huge impact on him and one of my favorite films too, honestly. And if you
don't like the film, I don't want to know you. And you know that's episode six, but go ahead, I apology. No, no, no, there's there's episodes for those people too. You know, everyone, We're very inclusive here in George Bailly was never born podcast world, and we you know what's funny is, you know, the basic conceide of the film is George Bailey reflects on or is given the chance to see a world where
he was never born and what kind of impact he had? And that got us thinking, well, what kind of impact does any of us have? And instead of being a podcast about the movie, you know, behind the scenes stuff or who did what or why certain things were done certain ways, which we do deal with a little bit, instead of doing instead of being about that, we decided to think about what kind of impact the movie has had on our culture here in the States. And you know, we really
the movie is so part of what we think about as Americana. You know, what does small town America look like? And it's based on this film in a lot of in a lot of ways, And so thinking about through that kind of lens, it was like, well, what would what is our world like without any of us? And what if any of us were to go away or see the world without our impact? You know, how
would we feel about that and what would happen? So it's it's kind of a big metaphysical kind of you know, college dorm room type, thinking that somehow iHeart gave us the money to actually explore and and we thank them for that. And so, you know, it was like, is the the actual name is just reflective of you know, of any of us isn't here? So George Baill what if George Billy was never born anywhere? So that's
kind of where it came from. Well, the movie itself has a very curious impact because it was buried, it died and withered, and nobody heard about it until until video came you know, VHS video rentals came back. That's when it seemed to have a renaissance. Yeah, it was. It
was that. But it was also when in the early seventies, through a whole bizarre chain of events, that the film fell back into the public domain and all the the UHF stations and stuff started being able to program it without paying any royalty State of Buddy, So they just kept playing it over and over because hey, it's reprogramming and it was a really We explore that in one of the episodes too, is how and why the film actually fell into
the public domain and what the downstream ripple effects of that are. So right now. It's it's you know, you can you can see it on Prime and this and that and and NBC plays it every year and it's like, but but who really owns it? You know? And you know who whose film is this? And that's another episode we explore, is whose film is this? And we we talked to Jimmy Stewart's daughter, Kelly Harcourt, Kelly Stewart Harcourt, And we also talked to Monica Capra Hodges, Frank Capra's granddaughter.
And we also talked to the granddaughters of the man who wrote the original short story that the film is based on, Phil Ben Dornstern, who wrote a story called The Greatest Gift in nineteen forty three, which was basically Act three of the movie. And Frank Caprin his team, actually, we're able to flesh it out and create the whole first two acts to leading up to George on the bridge, like how did this guy get on that bridge?
And that's kind of our thinking. That's what the podcast is. Podcast is is if any of us were on the bridge, what would we be thinking. So we look at these kinds of issues in the podcast, we look at, you know, where both the real life town that Bedford Falls is based on, which is Seneca Falls in upstate New York. We look at that town and what happened to that town since the film, since ninth, since the late forties? What would Bedford Falls have been like since the late
forties? What if George Bailey? What if there are no George Bailey's Are we all Pottersville? These kind of big issues. You know, what if George Bailey were a Nazi? What he have jumped off? No? I don't know. You may have pushed someone out there. Yeah, yeah, we're talking to Kurt Ingfer. He has produced a podcast called George Bailey Was Never Born. You know his work from some of the editing he did on Fahrenheit nine to eleven and Bowling for Columbine. I'm old enough to remember the
television movie version of It's a Wonderful Life. I think it was called It Happened One Christmas and it starred Marlow Thomas. Oh my goodness. I don't know if it was an Aaron Spelling production, but it probably was. Yeah, Oh no, it was a it was a Marlo Thomas production. Oh okay, it was. It was her thing. That is so amazing. Oh man. I remember then after me and Ray sat down and we watched this thing and we were like, what did we just watch? It was
crazy? Yeah. And you you know Orson Willis was in that right or yeah, played played Potter, played Potter. Yeah. Oh man, Oh I just wish he would have they would have led him directed the Uh the podcast. The podcast is George Bailey was never born. I want to begun podcast as you can hear on the iHeartRadio appen everywhere you get podcasts. And Kurt as an editor, to me, I know as an audio editor that the magic happens in the editing, and the same I think happens when you're
editing a film. So I imagine your podcast as well edited I hope. So so far, the people there haven't been any complaints about the editing, let's just say that. And I must say that our person did most of
the editing. Elizabeth Marcus did a bang up job, and I did quite a bit of editing also, and uh, and you know it was just a team effort, because you know, we interviewed over two hundred people for this, everyone from journalists for the New York Times like Wendell Jamison to conservative talk show hosts Tom Mullen, to h Esquire writer Dom Nero, to you
know, uh, various people all over the country. We interviewed librarians in New Hampshire and real estate agents in Massachusetts, and it was just, you know, we just want to get people's opinions about the film, and we wanted to get some actual, uh you know, kind of expert opinions, uh in some ways about the issues we wanted to deal with. So we talked to people like Ryan Pohle, who are you know, uh they're historians or sociologists and stuff. And and we also talked to like David Wilson,
who is a Scottish psychopath criminologist. Yeah, and he has videos on like Vandy fair Page and he examines the you know, the mind of of of serial murders and we ask him, okay, do your thing on Potter, what's he love? Yeah, And so we really did a big deep dive into into you know, the psychology of the characters and and that way kind of the psychology of our country in a way like right now, like how
did we get here? And what does this film have? What does what can this film teach us or show us about ourselves that maybe can help us. George Bailey was never born. The podcast available on the iHeartRadio app everywhere you get podcasts. Kurt Ngfer is the one who brought it to you. We thank you for joining us and Merry Christmas. All right, Thank you,
Lee, Thanks so much for everyone out there. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation