Fresh Air - Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

This month, musician Bonnie Raitt and filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola were both honorees of the Kennedy Center for their contributions to American culture. We're revisiting interviews with both of them. First, blues guitarist, singer and songwriter Bonnie Raitt spoke with Terry Gross in 1996 about her early years, finding her blues sound. And Francis Ford Coppola told us in 2016 the story of casting Marlon Brando in The Godfather. And film critic Justin Chang reviews two new movies: The Brutalist and Nickel Boys.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

There are celebrity interview shows and then there's Wild Card. It's a podcast from NPR that the New York Times just named as one of the 10 best of 2024. It's hosted by me, Rachel Martin. I ask guests like Issa Rae and Bo and Yang, revealing questions like what's a place you consider sacred? Has ambition ever led you astray? And I'm telling you, it is such a good time. Listen to Wild Card wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. One of this year's Kennedy Center honorees is singer and songwriter Bonnie Raitt. She's a ten-time Grammy Award winner, best known for her soulful voice and her hit singles from the late 1980s, Something to Talk About and I Can't Make You Love Me. She's also known for her depth of knowledge of classic blues. We're going to listen to Terry's 1996 interview with Raitt. At the time she had released a live double CD called Road Tested. That collection featured duets with some of the singer-songwriters and rhythm and blues performers who had

shaped her musical style. Raitt was a 20 year old college student when she got to know and learn from them. Terry invited Bonnie Rait to bring and play some of the blues recordings that most influenced her. Before we hear them, let's listen to a song from her first album, which was released in 1971. This is the Robert Johnson song, Walking Blues. Well, you know by that I must have had them walkin' through Bonnie Raitt, welcome to Fresh Air. Hi, Terri. It's a pleasure to be here.

You've brought with you some of your favorite recordings, some of the recordings that have really influenced you over the years. So I'd like to start with a recording that you brought by Mississippi Fred McDowell. Write me a few lines. Tell me why you've chosen this. This was recorded in 1964. Well, I did because I've been performing that song. Write me a few of your lines as well as his Kokomo blues.

Probably since the first time I met Fred, I was about 19 in 1969. He was part of the great blues rediscovery in the 60s of all these traditional Delta bluesmen who a lot of times like Fred had spent the last 20 years being farmers and then suddenly were discovered by either British or white college kids coming over that just fell in love. And I got his record on our Hoolie Records and learned the song and then I was honored enough to meet him and travel around with him and I actually opened a lot of shows for him early on when I was still cutting my teeth and right before I got my first record deal.

So he's really my favorite and my closest friend and I miss him a lot and I want people to know that when they hear my version on the live album for example that this is where we got it, the great Mississippi Fred McDowell. Oh let's hear it, recorded in 1964. Lord, wake it on baby, somebody write me a few of your lines That's Mississippi Fred McDowell, one of the records that Bunny Raid has brought with her today for us to listen to. Now, what was it like when you were actually traveling with him and opening for him? I mean, was that one of the first times that you met one of the blues musicians who you liked so much from record?

Actually, I started out with the father of Delta Blues, making an appearance in Cambridge at the house of a man who helped rediscover him, Dick Waterman, who came to be a very important part of my life and a lot of lives of blues people. Sun House was staying with Dick Waterman in Cambridge where I was going to college and I heard through the Harvard radio station that he was going to be there and his other blues fanatic, a friend of mine said, would you like to meet him? So it started with that and then I met Dick Waterman that day and went on to get to hang out with the Skip James and big boy Arthur Crudup and Fred McDowell and the Mance Lipscomb and then Buddy Guy Jr. Wells were all people that Dick booked and he had

worked with Mississippi John Hurt who unfortunately had passed away before I got a chance to meet him but that was my entry into meeting all these great blues people and part of the reason I took a semester off in my sophomore year was because I knew that these guys were up in age and that I wasn't going to have this opportunity to kind of get to know them and learn at their feet and be of service or just hang out and soak this up. And that was when Fred and I just made this bond. And I'm sure he, as well as the other bluesmen, always got a big kick out of the fact that this little round-faced redhead was

playing Robert Johnson songs and Son House songs. And I just sat there listening to their stories and learned to drink and, you know, try to be a blueswoman at 20, which, you know, I managed to do by the time I was 40 and get recognized for it. I worked at it pretty hard there in the early days. Were you overwhelmed when you were 20 by the incredible differences between, you know, in age, race, gender, class between you and the older blues musicians who you were understudying? You know, I'm sure it was it was odd from the outside but for the inside most of the people that were in love with blues were white middle-class kids that were just, you blues were white middle-class kids

that were just going to folk festivals and going around the South with tape recorders. And of course, the British interest in the blues and Big Bill Brunsey and Leadbelly, and that led to so many of these records being exposed to groups that became the Rolling Stones and the Animals and the Beatles even. The rhythm and blues music was on the radio at that time, not Delta Blues, but rhythm and blues was on the radio right next to the Beatles and all the white groups. So it wasn't as segregated and it didn't seem as culturally odd to me at the time.

I just knew that I'd lucked into something. Now on your latest album, your live album, you do a tribute to Fred McDowell. You play part of Write Me a Few of Your Lines, which we just heard. This is your Kokomo medley. Did you learn things from Fred McDowell on your guitar playing or your approach to the song that you're still using today that you could describe for us? Well, his particulars, you know, my style is obviously a little different and of course

the key is different because I'm singing a woman's key. There were some chords that he used, you know, certain positions on the guitar that I wouldn't have been able to figure out until I watched him do it. But the basic way you learn guitar for me, because I didn't take lessons, was just listening and mimicking. And his soulfulness and just his abandon, the way he got into it. And when he played electric guitar, which he did a lot of the time in later years because it cut through more to clubs where kids were noisy. And that's what led me to the electric guitar

was the way that the note would sustain and just sing and the way you could just, it's so funky when you get these cheap amps. And that's the stuff that makes David Lindley and Ry Cooder and Jackson Brown slide plans so great because they just use these really incredible amplification that duplicates the old really inexpensive amps. People want to know how to get that funky sound.

Well, get a $25 guitar and the cheapest amp you can find. Let's hear your tribute to Fred McDowell, the Kokomo medley from your latest album, Road Tested. When you get home, little baby, write me a few of your lines That'll be consolation, Lord, honey, on my worried mind That's Bonnie Raitt. Bonnie Raitt is my guest. Did he show you that opening riff? No, I just heard it. It's not that difficult to play. Whenever you're learning a song from somebody else, you don't really have to see it, because you can just, unless you're playing some kind of amazing Jimi Hendrix thing, which I probably wouldn't even be able to tackle,

these things that I play are really stuff that I can manage. It's the finesse of it and the soul that you put into it that makes him different from me, probably, and hopefully one day I'll get to be as funky as he is. Now, I know when you were starting out, you were listening to folk music as well as to blues. Now, I know when you were starting out, you were listening to folk music as well as to blues. Now, women's voices in folk music at the time were kind of like clear bell-like soprano

voices. I'm thinking of, you know, Joan Baez, Judy Collins. And in blues, of course, it's a much kind of rougher voice that blues singers use. And I was wondering if you have a beautiful, clear voice. I was wondering if you try to also develop a gruffer voice for the blues singers. Oh yeah. I mean, I thought if I just drank Jim Beam and hung out with those guys and stayed up too late. And I couldn't stand the way I sounded when I was singing blues tunes. It just sounded the fruitiest, you know, whitest voice I'd ever heard, which I didn't mind singing Joan Baez songs. But, you know, I really did think that if I just lived that, you know, I went from being pretty much not a rebel rouser as a

teenager. I was a really good student. I went away to a Quaker school and went right to college. And I don't even think I partied at all until I was about 20. And the drinking age in Massachusetts wasn't even until 21. So I started hanging out with these hardcore guys, like any kid sitting at the feet of the masters. I also got to go on tour hanging out with Buddy and Junior's band on the Rolling Stones tour of Europe. So that was some professional hound dogs there.

So those first few years, it was very difficult to be as light sounding as I was. And so I kind of made up for it by bravado and kind of swaggering around thinking I could be, you know, like Etta James in a minute. You know, when you started on the road and you were opening for a lot of older blues performers, you said that you had to kind of care for the alcohol for them, make sure they drank enough to get on stage, but not too much. Yeah, yeah, that was an interesting position to be in. Would you, I'm sorry I cut you off, Terry, go ahead. No, I was just going to ask you about that period and what it was like to realize that

with some of the musicians they needed to drink, but you had to make sure they didn't drink too much? Oh, that was just, yeah, there was one blues festival where it was kind of my job to, because there was a lot of different bluesmen in one backstage area, all of whom had not only different tastes in what to drink, but could handle it differently. For example, Sunhouse, if he had a couple of shots of vodka, he could remember all of his songs, and if he had too much he couldn't remember them. So if he didn't have any at all, he usually didn't even want to play.

So it was just one of these chemistry experiments that was kind of a funny anecdote for a young college student hanging out with these blues guys because it was kind of my job to help road manage. And I had to be sure not to let somebody just pass a pint bottle to somebody that I knew was just going to get totally toasted and he had to be, didn't play until four hours from now. You know, you get old guys that have been farmers and Pullman Porters for 25 years and suddenly everybody wants to give them anything they want in whatever quantity and it did a lot of them in, you know. You have to be really careful. Otherwise, it's not, it's not helping

anybody to give somebody who has a propensity to alcoholism too much alcohol. And we've all seen that in every lifestyle in rock and roll. Bonnie Raitt, the next record you've brought with you is by Sippy Wallace, and your fans all know that you've recorded a couple of her songs, You Gotta Know How, Women Be Wise. Tell us about the record you've brought with you and why you've chosen it. Well, this particular album, which has now been re-released on Alligator Records, it's from an album called I think it's Sippy Sings the Blues if they left the name the same, and I picked it up when I was 18. I spent the summer my freshman year in on a charter college

charter flight and traveled around Europe with a couple of girlfriends, went into the famous Doe Bell's record store in London and found this incredible picture of this woman in these rhinestone cat glasses, and it said Sippy Wallace. And I recognized the name from my old classic blues collection records, you know, compilations. And I'd always really liked Sippy's music because she really didn't take any slack.

You know, she didn didn't take any slack. She didn't cut anybody any slack in terms of men at the time. She wasn't a victim. She was, you know, you can make me do what you want to do, but you got to know how. So I had bought the record, fell in love with her, had no idea she was still alive. And at that point the record was only two or three years old, I think. And I'd recorded a couple of her songs, three actually, over my first two albums. And when I was invited to come to the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival in 1972

to perform, I at that point had found out that that's where she was living in Detroit and invited her to come out on stage. She said she would only do gospel because she was recovering from a stroke and had given up the blues and was playing in the church. And so I started playing Women Be Wise in the little trailer backstage and she started kind of sashing back and forth and she said, well, maybe I'll just do one blues, you know. And the rest is kind of history because after that she was the big hit of the festival, our duet of this song, and we went on to record it together in her subsequent album Sippy on Atlantic Records. And we toured together for the next 15 years till she passed

away at 86. Well, why don't we hear that 1966 recording that you brought with you. And this is re-released on Alligator Records, Sippy Wallace. gossiping explaining what your good man really can do now these women nowadays all ain't no good they laugh in your face then try to steal your man from you now women be wise

keep your mouth shut and don't advertise your man. Don't be no fool, don't advertise your man. Women be wise. Man, oh man. That's a wonderful recording. That's really, really great. It just makes me smile so much to hear this again. Did Sippy Wallace give you any interesting advice about life or music?

Well, I'd say those lyrics, for starters, I mean, both You Got to Know How and Women Be Wise and Mighty Type Woman, all these tunes that she writes are real lessons. I learned a lot about what kind of songs appeal to me by what she chose to write about. And yeah, I mean, just in terms of her love of family and her independence from men, I mean, she lost her husband many years previous to when I met her and seemed to have a very full life not being somebody's wife. I'm sure she would have, you know, she missed her husband. He was the love of her life. And she really had no desire to get connected again.

And that was a very strong lesson to me as a young girl. Because I did grow up in a feminist era. And to have a blues woman or someone like Ruth Brown or Aretha Franklin as my role models, as well as Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, you know, these are women that just stood up for themselves and demanded respect. Bonnie Raitt is my guest and we've asked her to bring with her some of her favorite recordings from the past, recordings that have really influenced her over the years. And Bonnie Raitt, the next album, the next recording that you brought with you is B.B.

King and this one goes back to 1958. Rock me, baby. Tell me why you chose this one. Well, I just this is this is one of the greatest vocals I've ever heard on so simple. And the piano part and the arrangement, this is really early in, you know, even though B.B. started in the late 40s, early and they've got a lot of his hits in the 50s. This was a record that was that when I was 10 or 11 years old, I happened to hear on a radio station.

Everybody's got that one record that just turned their head around. Sometimes there's a Ray Charles tune that did it for me, and then later hearing John Lee Hooker when I was about 14. But B.B. King was a big star in Los Angeles on the black radio and Rock Me Baby's just a classic tune. I mean, many people have covered it, but I just wanted to bring it to let you know how unbelievably simple and pure and right to the bone this song can be. And B.B.'s still one of our greatest bluesmen. I love him dearly. Let's hear it. Rock Me Baby, Me Baby, BB King, recorded in 1958 and reissued on the BB King box set. Rock me baby, honey rock me all night long.

I want you to rock me baby, like my're on a wagon wheel. Wanting to roll me baby, like you're on I can will. Wanting to roll me baby. You don't know how it makes me feel. Bonnie, do you think that there's a specific influence BB King has had on your singing or guitar playing? Well, I sure hope so. I don't know how to play single string lead on electric guitar as well as any of the guitar players that are currently out there. I play acoustic solos more and I play pretty good rhythm guitar but my lead playing tends to remain on the slide guitar where I know what I'm

doing better. So I just, it probably has more to do with phrasing and what to leave out and just, you know, when you go crazy for somebody's style, it's not, unless you're doing a specific mimicking of what they're doing, which I don't do, I would say my singing, just because of his restraint, his restraint and his passion. I hope I got some influence from him because I just think he's one of the tastiest and most deep singers I've ever heard, as well as one of the greatest blues guitar players in the history of guitar players. Bonnie Raitt speaking to Terry Gross in 1996.

After a break, we'll continue their conversation and also hear from another of this year's Kennedy Center honorees, Francis Ford Coppola. Also, Justin Chang reviews two new films, The Brutalist and Nickel Boys. Meanwhile, from Bonnie Raitt's latest CD, here's the track, Livin' for the Ones. I'm David Bianculli and this is Fresh Up. Hi, it's Tanya Mosley. Before we get back to the show, the end of year is coming up

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This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli, Professor of Television Studies at Rowan University. Let's get back to Terry's 1996 interview with Bonnie Raitt, who is one of this year's Kennedy Center honorees. She grew up listening to Broadway songs. Her father, John Raitt, was a star in the Broadway musicals Carousel, Oklahoma, and The Pajama Game. Raitt sang with her father on his self-titled album, which was nominated for a Grammy in 1996. I'm interested if it took you a long time in your career to feel comfortable recording something like this, recording outside of the genre that you're known for. Yeah, it took a long time to summon up the nerve and I think somewhat of maturity and

sobriety had something to do with it, what comes with sobriety in terms of being able to have with it. You know, what comes with sobriety in terms of being able to have a perspective. And since that coincided with, you know, my late 30s, early 40s for me, it's hard to separate the two. I think that a great song has appealed to me and I've been in love with the songs of Carousel in Oklahoma and Pajama Game since my dad has been singing them all my life. I just never really thought I would sing them in public. I certainly sung them enough in private just for fun and grew up singing them. We started this idea out when we used to just practice, you know, Christmas carols and would sing different Broadway songs in his pool. We'd be exercising together and that was a good way to

spend some father-daughter alone time. And next thing I knew, you know, he sort of suggested doing something together, maybe for the Pops. And before we knew it, we were performing with John Williams for Evening at the Pops a few years ago, and we did these songs that we ended up putting on my dad's album. And I enjoyed it so much and was terrified to sing in front of an orchestra in a town in Boston that I stood at my start in. I think the fact that it was a safe ground made it an easy first date.

We went on to do David Letterman together and he's been coming out over the many years and singing Oklahoma at the end of my shows. I must say I was shivering in my boots the first time I sang. They say that falling in love is wonderful in front of my audience, but they, you know, stood up and cheered and that gave me the confidence to put it on a record. Okay, well from the album John Rate Broadway Legend, let's hear Bonnie Rate and her father singing Hey There from the Pajama Game. Hey there, you with the stars in your eyes Love never made a fool of you You used to be too wise

Hey there, you are that high flying cloud, though she won't throw a'll come to you Better forget her Forget her Her with her nose in the air With her nose in the air She has you dancing on a string A puppet on a string, a puppet on a string, Break it and she won't care. She won't care for me. Won't you take this advice I hand you,

Like a brother? Brother, or am I not seeing things too clear? Are you too much in love to hear? Is it all going in one ear? in one ear and out the other. That's Bonnie Raitt and her father John Raitt. Well, I want to end with something from your Roadtested album. And this is I Can't Make You Love Me. It's a really beautiful ballad, very moving. Is this a favorite of yours too? Yeah, I'd have to say that of all the tunes I've recorded, this one moves me the most.

And it's the one that gets mentioned to me when I'm out and about You know sky caps or people that are taking my reservation on the phone on the phone You know they just have spoken to me about how much that song means and and I just have to thank Mike Reed and Alan Shamblin for feeling as deeply as they did to come up with this because I definitely Think this is one that's going to stand the test of time. Let my head lay down with me Tell me no lies Just hold me close Don't patronize

Don't patronize me Cause I can't make you love me if you don't You can't make your heart feel heart feel something in one here in my dark these final hours I will lay down my heart Feel the power You won't No, you won't I can't make you love me If you don't Bonnie Raitt to dawn. Bonnie Raitt.

Coming up, another of this year's Kennedy Center honorees, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Francis Ford Coppola also is a Kennedy Center honoree for 2024. We're going to listen to the story he told Terry Gross in 2016 about how Marlon Brando came to be cast in Coppola's masterpiece, The Godfather.

At the time she spoke with him, he had published the notes he had written while he made that film. The notebook contained his thoughts about each scene, including the pitfalls he wanted to avoid. It also included pages from the novel on which the movie was based, Mario Puzo's The Godfather, with Coppola's notes in the margin. Let's begin with the opening scene, in which the character Bonacera has come to the Godfather, Don Vito Corleone, seeking justice.

Bonacera's daughter was brutally beaten after she resisted two boys who had tried to take advantage of her. Bona Sera says he went to the police like a good American. The boys were tried in court, but the judge gave them a suspended sentence and they went free that very day. Bona Sera wants revenge against those boys. The Godfather, played by Marlon Brando, offers this response. I believe in America. America has made my fortune. father, played by Marlon Brando, offers this response. Even though my wife is godmother to your only child. But let's be frank, you never wanted my friendship.

And you were afraid to be in my debt. I didn't want to get into trouble. I understand. You found paradise in America. He had a good trade, made a good living, police protected you, and there were courts of law. He didn't need a friend like me. But, uh, now he come to me and he say, Don Corleone, give me justice. But you know that's with respect. You don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me godfather. Instead you come into my house on the day my daughter's to be married

and you ask me to do murder for money. I ask you for justice. That is not justice. Your daughter is still alive. Then let's suffer then. As she suffers. How much shall I pay you? Born of Sarah. Born of Sarah. What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? If you'd come to me in friendship, then the scum that ruined your daughter would be suffering this very day. And if by chance an honest man like yourself should make enemies,

then he would become my enemies. And then they would fear you. Be my friend? Godfather? Good. Someday, an update may never come. I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, accept this justice as a gift on my daughter's wedding day.

Grazie. Grazie, Madam. Grazie. That's a scene from The Godfather featuring Marlon Brando. Terry asked Francis Ford Coppola if Mario Puzo had first suggested casting Brando. Well, it's true that Mario had always liked the idea of Brando, but Mario was often basher. He was not really on the scene so much as even a lot of my work with him was my sending him drafts and him writing notes. So although he had posed the idea of the Godfather being Brando, I don't even know if he told

me that because I just was hit by a whole bunch of ideas from the studio. Danny Thomas was one, Ernest Borgnein, it was a whole bunch of ideas. Even Carlo Ponti was suggested. And finally I came down to the thing about the character of that character was that you couldn't find anyone new as we had done for all the other parts. Al Pacino was totally unknown, Johnny Casale was well, Bobby Duval was relatively unknown. So a lot of new people got big parts but like a man who was supposed to be in his 60s it would couldn't be new and like had never been in anything before because what was he doing all

those years so finally with my colleague in casting Fred Roos we said well who the two greatest actors in the world so So we said, well, Laurence Olivier and Marlon Brando. Each one had a difficulty for that part. Olivier was British. He was perfect age. He looked like one of the real guys, Genovese. And Brando was only 47 years old. He was extremely handsome as always.

He had long flowing blonde hair. And most important, he had just been in some pictures, notably one by the great Panticorvo called Bern. That was a huge flop, tremendous financial flop. So the studio felt that Brando was supposedly difficult to work with, sort of irresponsible, you know, would cause big delays. The film was only budgeted for two and a half million dollars, you have to understand. It wasn't like we would throw money around. And my decision to make it in the 40s and have period cars and shoot in New York was already impacting the cost.

So that's one of the reasons why I was so unpopular. But they also hated my casting ideas. They hated Al Pacino for the role of Michael and they hated Marlon Brando for the role of the godfather. And I was told categorically by the president of Paramount Pictures, Francis says, the president of Paramount Pictures, I tell you here and now, Marlon Brando will never appear in this motion picture and I forbid you to bring it up again. But you won. How did you win? Well, when he said I forbid you to bring it up again, I like feigned that I just fell on the floor on the carpet and like, you know, as if, you know, what?

And then I said, what am I supposed to do? If you tell me I can't even discuss it, how can I be a director if the part I think should be a cast that you won't even let me talk about it? And they said, all right, we'll tell you it this way. One, if he will do the movie for free. Two, if he will put up, well if he'll do a screen test. And three, if he'll put up a million dollar bond that he will in no way have any misbehavior that causes the, you know, the overrun of the picture budget, then you can do it. So I said, I accept. You know, so at least they were saying if I did three things, have a screen test, if I could get him to do the movie for nothing, and if I could have him put up a million dollars,

which is absurd. But at least I said I accept, meaning, okay, now I can talk about it. So did he do the movie for free? No. I called him up and I said to Marlon, Marlon, you know, of course this is an Italian-American, you know, wouldn't it be fun if we could like do a little experiment and kind of improv and see what playing in Italian might be like? That was my way to talk to an actor, essentially asking for a screen test, but I didn't put it in those ways. And I knew that if I could

do something with this little screen test that was convincing, the absurd idea of him doing it for nothing, although they didn't pay him much more than nothing, I think they paid him scale, which was an insult. Uh, and obviously the putting up a bond to prevent misbehavior was, you know, sometimes, you know, you, you,, you say you accept terms meaning that you just have a way to continue. So the important thing was to do some sort of a little screen test that I could get on tape and show to all these executives. So you played this kind of little trick and he did, he did improv on, or whatever, on film for you.

What did he bring to that audition that he didn't realize was an audition? Well, I had always heard the rumor that Marlon Brando didn't like loud noises and he always wore things in his ears. So I took a couple of my colleagues from San Francisco from this period of having young filmmakers all over. And I told them all to dress in black and no one was to speak.

We would do sign language. And so we descended on Marlin's house early in the morning. He wasn't up and these ninjas went to different corners and set up their cameras. And I also brought a whole bunch of like Italian Sazic and little Italian cigars and Provolone and little things. And I put them in dishes around just without even saying what I was doing. And then the door opened, they said he was going to wake up and the door opened. Out came this beautiful man in a Japanese robe with flowing blonde hair.

And we're shooting all of this. And he came out and he didn't talk very much. He, you know, he's, Marlon was a brilliant man, and he just knew what was going on instantly. And he, I remember he came and he took his hair and he rolled it up and made it sort of like a bun in the back, and then he took shoe polish and he made it. And he was mumbling the whole time, and he made the shoe polish and made his hair black. And then he put on the shirt that I had brought and I remember him folding the lapel.

He says, those guys always, the lapel is always folded, he said. And right in front of my eyes, then he said, oh, he's shot in the throat in the story. Somebody should talk like this in his throat. And he started doing that and and and and Right in front of my eyes. He transformed himself Into this character and I couldn't I couldn't believe it and then he started picking up the sausage Eating it and he he just gravitated to the props and was using it to Create a kind of Italian this the way he did it And the whole time he was just going like this.

He was going, he wasn't saying anything, which was funny because his phone rang. This was his home. This phone rang and he picked up the phone and went, I said, my God, who was it who called? What are they going to think? But when it was all done, I had this tape and it was quite remarkable. Francis Ford Coppola speaking to Terry Gross in 2016. He and Bonnie Raider, two of this year's Kennedy Center honorees. The ceremony, held earlier this month, is scheduled to be televised Sunday on CBS.

Other nominees for 2024 include the Grateful Dead, jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, and the iconic Harlem theater, The Apollo. After a break, Justin Chang reviews two new films that have made many critics end of year top ten lists, Nickel Boys and The Brutalist. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Our film critic, Justin Chang, recommends two new movies that have been hailed by critics groups as among the year's best. In The Brutalist, Adrian Brody stars as a Hungarian Jewish architect who ends up in Pennsylvania after World War II.

Nickel Boys is an adaptation of Colson Whitehead's novel set in a juvenile detention facility in the Jim Crow South. Both films are now in theaters. It's a common complaint among moviegoers that the best new films aren't released until the last few months, or even weeks, of the year, so as to maximize their Oscar prospects. While that's not always the case—great movies are in fact released all year round – I do wish audiences hadn't had to wait until December to see Nickel Boys and The Brutalist. They're both ambitious period dramas, directed by two filmmakers of extraordinary talent and vision.

Nickel Boys is simply one of the most thrillingly inventive literary adaptations I've seen in years. It's based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel by Colson Whitehead about two black boys in 1960s Florida who were sent to a reform school called Nickel Academy. Elwood, played by Ethan Herisi, is a studious teenager who lands in Nickel after unwittingly hitching a ride in a stolen car. At Nickel, he meets Turner, played by Brandon Wilson.

The two forge a close friendship that sustains them through the tedium and the terror of life at Nickel. Whitehead based his story on real-life events at Florida's Dozier School for Boys, which operated from 1900 to 2011, and where many students were found to have been abused, tortured, and in some cases murdered by staff. Elwood, an idealist deeply inspired by the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., believes he can get out of Nickel through legal channels, with some help from his loving grandmother, wonderfully played by Anjanu Ellis Taylor.

But the more cynical, streetwise Turner has his doubts. My grandmother got me that lorry, man. Make a move there first. The courts play both the white and the black. They just move us around when they're ready. Mm. Then we have to be like knights. Checkmate. How many people you know done that, L?

There are four ways out of nickel. Serve your time or age out. Co-op my ravine if you believe in miracles, you could die, they could kill you, you could run. Nickel Boys is the first narrative feature written and directed by Rommel Ross, who previously made Hale County This Morning This Evening, a lyrical documentary about black life in Alabama. Remarkably, Ross's filmmaking has lost none of its poetry

here. He and his cinematographer, Joe Mofrey, have boldly decided to tell the story in the visual equivalent of first person, so that at any given moment you're seeing the world through the eyes of either Elwood or Turner. The approach takes some getting used to, but the effect is astonishing. It calls on us to empathize in a radical new way with these two young men, their fleeting hopes, and their crushing sense of entrapment. By toggling between Elwood's and Turner's perspectives, and showing us how much they depend on each other, the movie makes us feel as if their souls are truly connected, an achievement that becomes all the more heartbreaking as the film goes on.

The Brutalist is no less beautifully shot than Nickel Boys, but it's told in a more straightforward, classically sweeping fashion. Adrian Brody, in his best performance since he won an Oscar for The Pianist, stars as Laszlo Toth, a Holocaust survivor who arrives in New York in 1947. Back in his native Hungary before the war, Laszlo was an architect, famed for designing austere unadorned buildings. In the US, he winds up in Pennsylvania, he's a nobody, shoveling coal and struggling with a heroin addiction. But then Laszlo finds an unlikely benefactor in Harrison Lee Van Buren, a self-made titan

of industry who lives in Doylestown, just north of Philadelphia. He's plagued magnificently by Guy Pearce. Harrison learns of Laszlo's European reputation, and hires him to design a local community center, a years-long project that will become an expensive, all-consuming obsession. In time, Laszlo is reunited with his wife, Erzsébet, a very good Felicity Jones, from whom he was separated during the war. But her return can only do so much to ground him, as he succumbs to the pull of ambition and addiction. The Brutalist is clearly in conversation with the Fountainhead. Like Ayn Rand's architect protagonist, Howard Rourke, Laszlo is a stubborn, uncompromising visionary. But the actor-turned-filmmaker Brady Corbet,

who previously directed the corrosive pop star psychodrama Vox Lux, is chasing after some thorny ideas of his own. The Brutalist is about the challenges of cultural assimilation, the crucial role that immigrant labor played in America's postwar boom, and the inherent power imbalance between patrons and artists. It's also about anti-Semitism. Laszlo is tolerated, barely, within Harrison's waspy inner circle. His genius makes him interesting and valuable to them, but it also makes him exploitable. Not everything about The Brutalist works. One late plot twist seems a touch literal-minded,

and I'm still chewing over the meaning of the final act. But Corbett, who's only 36, is already a director of startling confidence, and he's made a rare American film that feels genuinely worthy of the word epic. Here I should note that The Brutalist runs three hours and 35 minutes and holds you for every one of them. There is a 15 minute intermission, and I couldn't wait for it to end. Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed The Brutalist and Nickel Boys. On Monday's show, some great Christmas music.

John Battiste will be at the piano to play, sing, and talk about some of his favorite Christmas songs. It's part two of the session we recorded with him. And we'll listen back to Amir Questlove Thompson playing recordings from the Christmas playlist he put together for us. Hope you can join us. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.