Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment
The last Drew Associates film that I was involved in has become a “classic”: Crisis, A Presidential Confrontation. In 1963, the Kennedy administration was in direct conflict with the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, over the integration of the University of Alabama.
Once again we went and got a privileged view of the event. As I understand it, one of the “absolute laws” of journalists is that you must never allow the subject of your filming to control what you’re doing. In other words, they cannot censor what you’re doing. The normal result of this is that the press is locked out of whatever it is that is happening. They are condemned to hang out in the corridors with all their cameras, far away from the action and waiting for the handout. So, since we already had a unique relationship with the President and we had equipment at this point that nobody else had, we thought it would be interesting try something new. And so we made a deal: the White House, the Administration, had the ultimate right to pass on what we filmed, and in return for this we got what I would say was total access to what was happening.
Pennebaker and Greg Shucker were in Washington filming with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, shuttling back and forth with him to the White House. Jim Lipscomb and I went down to Alabama. The Washington crew had a slightly vague agreement with their subjects. We had none and spent a couple of days waiting outside Governor George Wallace’s office, being ignored. Finally we collared him as he strode past and explained what we wanted to do: make an honest record of his confrontation with the administration to prevent the court-ordered integration of the University of Alabama. He invited us to breakfast in the Governor’s mansion.
As we arrived, the Governor was coming down the grand staircase. He greeted us with my camera rolling, introduced us to his young daughter and to a portrait of a civil war General who died young, in combat. Wallace turned to me and said, “His dying words were, ‘I’d rather live a short life of principle than a long life of compromise’. I guess that wouldn’t mean much to you fellows”. Bless you George! It’s in the film.
As we went into the breakfast room he turned off Jim’s Nagra, shook his head, put the Nagra and my camera in a closet, and locked it. Then, he regaled us with stories of his experiences as a Night Court magistrate and the grotesque excuses that people, especially blacks, had for their crimes; he was an excellent mimic. From then on we had limited but real access to him. Later, Jim took over shooting with Wallace and I started filming the Deputy Attorney General, Nicholas Katzenbach, with Pat Powell as my journalist. Abbot Mills and Hope Ryden went filming with the black students.
Katzenbach set up in a small office at the University and to my astonishment plans were still being negotiated via telephone. At our end, we had no way of knowing whether Pennebaker was filming at the other end of the line. Maybe they had been thrown out? Gone out for coffee? Gone to the toilet? One side of a phone call doesn’t add up to much. So we just went on filming. At one point, while I was reloading the camera, Katzenbach turned to me and said, “I know you have others filming outside... if you tell them one word of what you have just heard... I will personally see to it that you spend a very long time in a Federal penitentiary!” And I assure you, he meant it.
My people were very mad at me when I came out. They asked, “What’s going to happen?” I said, “I’m not going to tell you.”
They said, “What do you mean you’re not going to tell us?”
I said, “I don’t have to tell you. Just follow your nose. It’s obvious what’s going to happen. It’s all going to happen here, it’s not going to happen some other place.”
This whole event was an extraordinary one for us. When the New York Times learned that Pennebaker had been filming inside the Oval Office, they wrote an editorial condemning the Kennedys for permitting it. This made the administration more sensitive and they asked Drew to eliminate the White House dialogue. The program went on the air (sponsored by Xerox) with Narration covering this sequence but with the rest of the film intact. To this day it amazes me that the Kennedy’s did not ask that the conversation between Katzenbach and little Caroline Kennedy be eliminated.
My own reaction was a moment of extraordinary excitement when Pennebaker and I started to line up the footage that we had of the one-sided telephone calls. We started trying to fit them together, like a crazy jigsaw puzzle. And suddenly, click! We had it! I’ll never forget that night, screening with two projectors, in sync, with both ends of the phone conversation up on the screen. It may sound trivial, but my God was I thrilled!
But overall, I found the film to be a little bit flat. It can give the impression that the civil rights movement was driven by virtuous white people and nothing could be further from the truth; these politicians were Johnny-come-latelys to what was going on. And that bothers me. I am leery of “Documenting” with the inevitable shortcomings of the pure film form for dealing with complex situations that need text. When Drew first talked to me in 1954, his dream was to combine writing with film, something that is now possible with books tied to DVD’s. Our latest goal.
Once again we went and got a privileged view of the event. As I understand it, one of the “absolute laws” of journalists is that you must never allow the subject of your filming to control what you’re doing. In other words, they cannot censor what you’re doing. The normal result of this is that the press is locked out of whatever it is that is happening. They are condemned to hang out in the corridors with all their cameras, far away from the action and waiting for the handout. So, since we already had a unique relationship with the President and we had equipment at this point that nobody else had, we thought it would be interesting try something new. And so we made a deal: the White House, the Administration, had the ultimate right to pass on what we filmed, and in return for this we got what I would say was total access to what was happening.
Pennebaker and Greg Shucker were in Washington filming with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, shuttling back and forth with him to the White House. Jim Lipscomb and I went down to Alabama. The Washington crew had a slightly vague agreement with their subjects. We had none and spent a couple of days waiting outside Governor George Wallace’s office, being ignored. Finally we collared him as he strode past and explained what we wanted to do: make an honest record of his confrontation with the administration to prevent the court-ordered integration of the University of Alabama. He invited us to breakfast in the Governor’s mansion.
As we arrived, the Governor was coming down the grand staircase. He greeted us with my camera rolling, introduced us to his young daughter and to a portrait of a civil war General who died young, in combat. Wallace turned to me and said, “His dying words were, ‘I’d rather live a short life of principle than a long life of compromise’. I guess that wouldn’t mean much to you fellows”. Bless you George! It’s in the film.
As we went into the breakfast room he turned off Jim’s Nagra, shook his head, put the Nagra and my camera in a closet, and locked it. Then, he regaled us with stories of his experiences as a Night Court magistrate and the grotesque excuses that people, especially blacks, had for their crimes; he was an excellent mimic. From then on we had limited but real access to him. Later, Jim took over shooting with Wallace and I started filming the Deputy Attorney General, Nicholas Katzenbach, with Pat Powell as my journalist. Abbot Mills and Hope Ryden went filming with the black students.
Katzenbach set up in a small office at the University and to my astonishment plans were still being negotiated via telephone. At our end, we had no way of knowing whether Pennebaker was filming at the other end of the line. Maybe they had been thrown out? Gone out for coffee? Gone to the toilet? One side of a phone call doesn’t add up to much. So we just went on filming. At one point, while I was reloading the camera, Katzenbach turned to me and said, “I know you have others filming outside... if you tell them one word of what you have just heard... I will personally see to it that you spend a very long time in a Federal penitentiary!” And I assure you, he meant it.
My people were very mad at me when I came out. They asked, “What’s going to happen?” I said, “I’m not going to tell you.”
They said, “What do you mean you’re not going to tell us?”
I said, “I don’t have to tell you. Just follow your nose. It’s obvious what’s going to happen. It’s all going to happen here, it’s not going to happen some other place.”
This whole event was an extraordinary one for us. When the New York Times learned that Pennebaker had been filming inside the Oval Office, they wrote an editorial condemning the Kennedys for permitting it. This made the administration more sensitive and they asked Drew to eliminate the White House dialogue. The program went on the air (sponsored by Xerox) with Narration covering this sequence but with the rest of the film intact. To this day it amazes me that the Kennedy’s did not ask that the conversation between Katzenbach and little Caroline Kennedy be eliminated.
My own reaction was a moment of extraordinary excitement when Pennebaker and I started to line up the footage that we had of the one-sided telephone calls. We started trying to fit them together, like a crazy jigsaw puzzle. And suddenly, click! We had it! I’ll never forget that night, screening with two projectors, in sync, with both ends of the phone conversation up on the screen. It may sound trivial, but my God was I thrilled!
But overall, I found the film to be a little bit flat. It can give the impression that the civil rights movement was driven by virtuous white people and nothing could be further from the truth; these politicians were Johnny-come-latelys to what was going on. And that bothers me. I am leery of “Documenting” with the inevitable shortcomings of the pure film form for dealing with complex situations that need text. When Drew first talked to me in 1954, his dream was to combine writing with film, something that is now possible with books tied to DVD’s. Our latest goal.