Fresh Air - Remembering actor Robert Duvall & filmmaker Frederick Wiseman

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

The great actor Robert Duvall made his mark starring in epic movies and intimate dramas including ‘The Godfather,’ ‘Tender Mercies,’ ‘The Great Santini,’ and, of course, ‘Apocalypse Now.’ He died Sunday at age 95. We listen back to archival interviews from 1996 and 2010. Also, the documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, whose approach was to choose a subject and capture it at great, revealing length, died Monday at age 96. His films include 'Titicut Follies,' 'Central Park,' 'Juvenile Court,' 'High School,' and 'Hospital.' He spoke with Terry Gross in 1986 about why he chose documentary as his medium. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm David Being Coulee. Robert Duval, the Oscar-winning actor whose roles in both blockbuster movies and small independent films were equally powerful and memorable, died Sunday. He was 95 years old. Born in San Diego in 1931, Duval studied acting in New York City alongside such other future stars as Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, and James Kahn. Duval was performing at Long Island's Gateway Playhouse when screenwriter Horton Foote's saw him and recommended him for a part in the movie Foot was adapting. The movie was to kill a mockingbird, and Robert Duval was indeed cast in his first screen role as the silent but haunting

Boo Radley. Duval was 31 years old, but never stopped working afterward in film and TV. His last two credits were in 2022, six decades later. Duval's contributions to film were constant and indelible. The characters he played were passionate, intense, and often combative. Tom Hagen, the Consigliary and the Godfather, earned Duval his first Oscar nomination. The role of the Napalm-loving Lieutenant Colonel in Apocalypse Now earned him his second. Eventually, Duval won a Best Actor Academy Award for playing a country singer in Tender Mercies. But whether or not his roles garnered nominations or awards, they certainly made their mark with audiences. He played the uptight Dr. Frank Burns in Robert Altman's original movie version of MASH,

the ruthless TV executive in Patty Chayefsky's network, a cynical sports writer in the natural opposite Robert Redford, and the abusive father in the Great Santini. On television, Duval played Gus McCrae, the charming Texas Marshall in the CBS miniseries Lonesome Dove. In the 60s and early 70s, he clocked a lot of episodic TV, including episodes of the Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the Outer Limits, and even the Wild Wild West and Maud Squad. Today, we're going to remember Robert Duvall with two conversations, one with Terry Gross, the other with Dave Davies.

Terry Gross spoke with Robert Duvall in 1996. So your father was in the military, in the Navy, I believe? Yes, he was. He was an admiral? Well, he retired as a rear admiral. His active rank was captain. He went to the Naval Academy when he was 16 years old. and graduated the class of 1924.

He came off a farm in Virginia and went to one-of-the-room country schools down in the woods, and then graduate. He went to high school when he was 11, and he waited a year, and he went to the Naval Academy when he was 16. So it was all... Yeah, he was a career naval officer. He was 39 during the war of the youngest captain in the Navy.

He was in destroyers and so forth, but he was a career naval officer. I bet your father didn't want any. he went to think that he was the character in the Great Santini. Well, kind of. Actually, my father was a lot quieter than that. So that character was a little more boisterous. And there was some, let me put it this way.

In the book The Great Santini, it said there's an imperceptible passing of the mantle of the husband to the wife, of the wife to the husband when the husband comes off of duty and is at home for a while. When he takes over the family, there was no transference in my family. My mother ran it at all times. Oh, really? Yes, she did. Robert Deval is my guest. It's interesting.

The Godfather films are such like operatic movies with, you know, people playing gangsters who are given to grand displays of emotion and violence. And you're the one in the movie, the legal advisor. His job is to advise, to be discreet, to tone everything down. So in a way, you're playing a very opposite type of personality than all the other personalities in the film. Yeah, well, it was a pretty interesting character in that he was an adopted son plus this legal. advisor, so therefore as an actor and as the character, you really can't cross the line. You're kind of

an outsider, but yet you're not an outsider. I really enjoyed the part. I mean, those first two godfathers, that's about as good as you can get filmmaking-wise, I think. I agree. Francis was at top form. Although, as you say, maybe a touch they romanticized the organized crime to a point, but it was such good filmmaking.

You can excuse that. Do you have any favorite scenes in the Godfather films? Well, there were a lot of my light, you know. I mean, the one with Michael Gazo and Godfather, too, where I have to tell him he has to slit his wrist at that scene. And the scene where I had to tell Brando that suddenly died and Godfather won. That was nice. And there were other scenes I liked a lot, too.

But those kind of come to mind very quickly. A wife is crying upstairs. I hear cars coming to the house. I see the area of mine. I think you should tell you down what everyone seems to know. I didn't tell Mama anything. I was about to come up and wake you just now and tell you. She needed a drink first.

Now you've had the drink. They shot sunny on the causeway. He's dead. You worked with Francis Ford Coppola again on Apocalypse now. Right, right. And in Apocalypse now, you were Colonel Kilgore, famous for the line. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Is that the one?

That's the one. It smells like victory, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was a wonderful line. People come up to me and quoted to me as, and say it like it's such an in thing between just me and them. And like they're the only ones that ever thought of it. But that happens with everybody the same way.

Did you get the script and say, well, first of all, was that line in the script? Or is that something that you ever thought? Yeah, no, that was in there. And I think the part was offered to somebody else, and they turned it down. And I said to Francis, I know that the part's written for a bigger guy,

real tall, big guy, but, you know, I'll just say once. I think maybe I could do the part, and I'll put in my plea, and he gave it to me. So it was enjoyable. It was a lovely part, and I enjoyed playing it very much. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know one time we had a hail bomb for 12 hours ago? It was all over, I walked up.

We didn't find one of them, that one stinking body. Smell! You know, that gasoline smelled. The whole hell. It smelled like victory. So when you saw the line in the film, I love the smell of napalm in the morning, Did you say to yourself a classic line? People will be repeating this back to me?

No, I didn't. I didn't think of that. I didn't think of it that way. I wasn't sure, you know. I mean, sometimes you're not so aware of that, although you like lines like that. Did you do a lot of different line readings on that? I love the smell of late.

I love the smell of napalm in the morning. The one that was most predominant. There was Jimmy Keene, a friend of mine who played a small part in that from Buffalo. I made him call him Mr. DeVall for a year because that was a relationship in the movie. because, you know, but we're all on a first-name basis. But he said, now, how do you do this? He was watching me.

And he did great imitation. We were always doing imitation. So the final dress rehearsal before we were film, we were always doing brando imitation. So I said, I love the smell of Napal in the morning. I paused. And I said, smells like, victory. I didn't my brand-no.

And he couldn't believe I would do that, you know. So then he began doing brand-new imitation. So then when Brandon wanted $100,000 to do six lines of the censored stuff for the censored version of the, TV version of The Godfather, and they wouldn't pay him. They got Jimmy Keene from Buffalo for $200 to do Brando. Oh, really? Yeah.

So those imitations started in the Philippines, and Jimmy got, because of those imitations, blossomed into the guy that would do the censored version for Brando. Hey, they could have stayed a lot of trouble with Brando and Apocalypse now, I guess. I suppose, yeah. Well, Jimmy was the guy that was there that told me all these wild stories after I left. See, I did the second half of my part first, and then six months later came back into the first half.

It was strange the way I had to go do another job because they got so bogged down with weather and with different actors and approaches and so forth. It took a long time to complete that film. It must have been really different working with Coppola on the Godfather movies and working with him on Apocalypse Now. Yeah, well, you see, I had worked with Francis in the rain,

people, as I had said. And that was in the late 60s. Kind of a moody guy, and I didn't quite get a handle on Francis, but then I gained a tremendous amount of respect for him because on Godfather I, we started out. I said, okay, this Francis again, he's not saying much, A little moody, you know, the way he is. He's a real, he never comes.

I want to write a book someday called The Rushes are great because everybody protects everybody saying the rushes are great. Francis is one of the only guys that comes out of the cutting room with a long face, and maybe that's why he's so good in that he doesn't always thrilled, you know. But I gained a lot of respect for him because in Godfather, one, physically, they had an understudy director following him around and case he failed to fire him and take over. And he worked under that pressure.

I don't know how you would do that with a guy physically. like over your shoulder in case we in and I think the first AD was the best friend of that would be hopeful director that was that's quite a uh a lousy thing to do to it directly and I and I gained a lot of respect for Francis for for working under that that that pressure when you were young brand there was one of your heroes right yeah I think so I mean he was he was quite a phenom I mean there were others too but he and then you have to you grow away from somebody's influence and find your own way so what was it like to work with him when when he was much older, he'd physically changed.

It wasn't, I think, of a particularly good period for him. Well, no, the Godfather, he was very easy. In the Godfather, yeah. Right, right, right. And when I first worked with him in the, well, apocalypse, yeah, I didn't really, I wasn't really there when he worked. Right. I worked with him first in the chase way back, and, you know, the first day he called me

into his dressing room and we talked about the par. I said, oh, to my wife, this is going to be great. We're going to be like brother. We had a great report. Then he never spoke to me again for eight weeks. I wasn't quite used to that lifestyle of somebody not speaking to you at the beginning of a day but that's the way he is I guess

But no, I was respectful and admired him And enjoyed working with him And as I say in the apocalypse now He came into the jungle With his baby blue Mercedes He's driving down the jungle You know, after I had left And then when I came back he'd finished you know

So tell me when you were young and getting started in acting What were your expectations? What did you think would come of your career? career? Well, you know, maybe I was innocent, and maybe innocence's not the same as naive. Maybe it is. I always felt that somehow I would fit in. I went to New York feeling I would be a stage actor. I didn't think a lot about movies. I thought about them, but I wasn't sure. I just figured I was going to work. I didn't know how, but I figured it would happen. And when I got one of the worst reviews anybody could ever get, I went back to Virginia for a while, and then I came back

again, my friend Ula Grosbar. Then we had done a view from the bridge, and we did it again off-broadway, and it was a wonderful production with John Void. Dusty Hoffman was assistant stage manager, Susan Ansbach, Ray Bieri, you know, Richie Costellano, it was a wonderful production. That helped launch my, getting more into film and TV, you know. So if you don't mind my asking, what did that terrible review say about you? I'm going to tell you exactly what I said. You still remember. It said Shaw has invented some impossible young men in his plays, but never one so revolting

as a romantic young interest in this one. And the character is made even less palatable by Robert Duvall, whose spine tends toward a figure s, whose diction is flannel-coated, and whose simpering expressions are moronic. Now, that's a pretty bad review. Yeah.

And the other paper likened me to Liberacee, so I had to get off the bus. Liberace? Yeah, I had to get off the bus. I was physically ill. What was the connection to Liberace? I don't know, maybe I played him a little of feet. I don't know what it was.

It was a guy from the active studio, I don't know, he had us lying down doing sense memory before we were doing George Bernard Shaw. I said, we should be telling jokes not lying on the floor for sense memory. The whole approach was wrong. It was a disaster. But, you know, at least it was an experience at least. Well, Robert Duval, I want to thank you so much for talking with us. Well, thank you.

I enjoyed it. Robert Duval, speaking to Terry Gross in 1996. In 2010, Robert Deval visited fresh air again, this time to be interviewed by Dave Davies, who asked about his immersive acting. technique. You know, I read a fair amount about you, and people talk about your ability to completely disappear into a character. I forget which director said. It's almost eerie that Robert DeValle becomes that character. And then I've also read, you say, no, it's work. I mean, you prepare and you bring some of yourself to it. You never leave yourself. You don't transform.

Never. And at that moment. If you do, you're in trouble. Okay. Yeah, you do. It's like play actor. Kids play house, right? And here we play houses grown-ups. We get paid good money to play house. So it's a game, really. It's a game of, you know, it's a game. I mean, you become the character,

but it's really you turning yourself in a certain way, as if you become the character. But you cannot lose sight of who and what you are. You have one set of emotions, one psyche, one soul, and you can't, you don't become another thing. It's all those things turn. to what seems to be something different. You did so many memorable supporting roles earlier in your career in the 70s.

In fact, I read in a piece of the New York Times that one problem you had was audiences didn't always recognize you from one movie to the next because you disappeared so effectively into those roles. One of them, of course, was the Consiglier Tom Hagan in the Godfather roles. Did you realize that these were going to be such iconic films as you were making them? Absolutely. I mean, well, I mean, a third of the way through, I said, Godfather One, I said, this is going to be pretty important. And I can remember when the film was finished, and we had an opening night party. I think it was at the St. Regis Hotel. And there was a wonderful buzz and a wonderful feeling about around the whole film of Godfather One.

And I remember, I won't mention names, a well-known film director came up and said, you boys did a wonderful job in this movie. I want to congratulate you. He said, I don't know about the movie, he said. And this guy never made a movie that good ever. I won't mention names. Okay. So anyway, but there was always that feeling that, wow.

And then Godfather II, it went in. But Godfather, too, we didn't have Jimmy Con on the set, so it wasn't as much fun. Well, then, of course, there was apocalypse now. Right. With Coppola again. Right, right. And your portrayal of Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore. Initially, the character was called Colonel Carnage.

No kidding. But they had to water it down a little bit. That was a little bit too much. A little too obvious. Yeah. Just tell us a little bit about you getting into the head of somebody who would love that gasoline smell and bodies burned so badly you couldn't find him. Yeah. Well, you just have to just go and do it.

You know, I was in the Army as a draftee, and I used to, you know, I did know I'd ever play a guy like that. But, I mean, out of curiosity, I used to just watch some of the special service officers and the way they behaved. where they stood. And when I got over there, they had the character as carnage, and they changed it to Kilgore, and they had him in a cowboy hat and boots. And some of the Marines and so forth, the more hardcore military said, well, this didn't go on. Well, it did go on because I understood that the head general of the air cavalry used to deer hunt on his own along the Cambodia border on Friday nights, and his helicopter was

shot down, and he was killed. These guys did crazy things. He was deer hunting from the helicopter? Yeah, from the helicopter. And I was told that by a gentleman who had served, you know, with the air cavalry. I mean, I guess guys, you know, you have to have hobbies to break up the monotony. So, like, you know, people have hobbies. I suppose he'd been in wartime, you know.

Your character's hobby here was surfing. Yes. Was that in the script? Did you come up with? Yeah, no, all those things were in the script. Yeah, very much so. Well, I want to talk about Tender Mercies, the 1983 film, for which you won the Oscar for Best Actor. Yes.

And this one, you were a Max Ledge, right, a once popular country singer whose career had dissolved in alcoholism, finds himself in a little Texas. A highway motel where the widow who runs it kind of takes care of him and he puts his life back together. Yes. And I thought we'd listen to a clip here. And this is late in the film where you have, as Max Ledge, have heard that your daughter has died in a car accident, a daughter you had just reconciled with after many years apart. And in the scene, you're hoeing in the vegetable garden. And your wife, who's played by Tess Harper, comes up and asks if you're okay.

And here is how you respond. I was almost killed once in a car accident. I was drunk. I ran on the side of the road, and I turned over four. times and it took me out of the car for dead but I lived and I prayed last night to know why I lived and she died but I got no answer to my prayers I still don't know why she died and I lived I don't know the answer to nothing but a blessing thing I don't know why I wondered after this part of Texas drunk and you took me in and pitied me and helped me to straighten out and marry me why why did that

happen is there a reason that happened and son of Daddy died in a war. My daughter killed an automobile accident. Why? You see, I don't trust happens. I never did. I never will. And that's our guest, Robert Duval from the 1983 film Tender Mercies.

You know, as I hear that again, I just, it's such a powerful moment, and this man feeling such pain, it's so intense, never raises his voice. We'll talk a little bit about him and this character. Yeah, well, this scene in particular, I remember that, you know, I said, Look, I would rather not loop this.

Let's get the sound right because you're outside. So they put trucks around to, and we didn't have to loop it. When you say loop it, you mean like provide an ambient kind of sound? No, well you add your voice to your voice to make it clearer at the end in post-production? Oh, I see it. You dub it, so to speak. And I didn't want to do that. And they hung back with a camera and didn't come in on close-ups because sometimes close-ups.

It spells it out too literally. and they left the camera rolling in a kind of work for me. Robert Duvall, speaking to Dave Davies in 2010. The Oscar-winning actor died Sunday at age 95. After a break, we'll continue their conversation and will also remember documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, who died Monday at age 96. I'm David Bean Cooley, and this is Fresh Air.

This is Fresh Air. I'm TV critic David Being Coulee. And as TV critic, I'm a third-year-a-a-frey-a-a-li. thrilled that this portion of Dave Davies' interview with Robert Duval, who died Sunday at age 95, is devoted to the 1989 CBS Western miniseries Lonesome Dove. Based on the Larry McMurtry novel, Lonesome Dove was and remains one of the best mini-series ever made. And though Duval didn't win the Emmy Award for which he was nominated that year, his performance was one of the best he ever gave in television or film. He plays Augustus Gus McCrae, who, like his best friend, Captain Woodrow Call, is a former Texas Ranger.

Woodrow is played by Tommy Lee Jones, and the two men are very different. Duval's Gus loves life and shows his emotions. Woodrow doesn't. In this scene from Lonesome Dove, Woodrow comes upon Gus, who's weeping over a lost love. Their conversation turns to prostitutes, and to one, with whom Woodrow apparently his fathered a son. I don't know why you sit down on a horse, Woodrow. You've had yours as I recall.

Yeah, and that was the worst mistake I ever made. It ain't a mistake to have been a human being once in your life, Woodrow. Poor little old Maggie left you a fine son before she quit this world. You don't know that. That boy could be yours or Jakes or some damn gamblers. Yeah, but he ain't. He's yours. Anybody with a good eye can see it. Besides, Maggie told me.

We were good friends. I don't know about friends. I'm sure you was a good customer, though. Well, it too can't overlap, you know. You're the one that to know about overlapping with hoars already. You know what hurt her most? You wouldn't call her by name. You never would say Maggie's.

That's what hurt her most. I don't know what it amounted to if I had. It would have made her happy. What are you talking about? She's a whore. Well, hoars got hearts, Woodrow, and Maggie's was the most tender I ever saw. Well, why didn't you marry her then? She didn't love me, she loved you.

You should have seen how she sat in that saloon every day, watching the door, after you quit coming around. I reckon the man has got more to do than to sat in a saloon with a whore. Like what? Go down the river every night and clean his gun. Maggie needed you, you let her down. You know it too, don't you? No, I don't know anything of the dang kind. And that's why you won't claim that boy is your own, because he's a reminder, see, a living reminder that you failed somebody. somebody. And you ain't never going to be up to admitting that. Now are you? Like I said, Maggie was just a whore. Well, I God would draw, at least you finally called her by name. I guess that shows some

improvement now, don't it? And that's my guest, Robert Devald with Tommy Lee Jones in the series Lonesome Dove. You know, you guys are both, you mount and ride horses as you're having that conversation. You were both horsemen, right? Yes, sir. Back then, I was really, I rode everything back then. Jumping horses, English saddle, Western saddle, yeah, especially to get ready for the part. Yeah. Did you know Tommy Lee Jones? Had you worked with him before? No, I met Tommy Lee when we were going to do that.

I went to his ranch down there in San Saba. We talked. We herded cattle in Argentine polo saddles. We went out, and I got to know him. I haven't seen him too much since because he lives way down there. And it was a good experience working with him and all the women. It was wonderful experience, wonderful. My ex-wife who lives there in Philadelphia, Gale, she was the one that told me to read this book.

She liked it better than Dostoevsky, a great, great novel, and that makes sure that they gave me the part of Augustus, not the other part, which they were going to give me the other part. But we talked and arranged it so that I could play Augustus, you know. So if she's listening to the show, I want to thank her for that. And Augustus fits you better, why? I don't know. It's just, you know, because I've played those more covered. guys before, but you know, this was more of a muted guy, but he's a more outgoing guy, Augustus, and suited a certain side of my personality as much or more than the other part, really.

James Garner was, they offered him to the part, I said to my age and he handled us both. If you can get him to switch parts, I'll be in this, and I don't want to play the other parts. So he called back a few hours later and said, well, James Garner can't be on a horse for 16 weeks. I said, okay, now go after that part, and he didn't. So he got me that part, so I really, really, I really loved it. I really did. My favorite probably. Yeah.

This is a film about a cattle drive, and I don't know if you used stuntmen at all. I mean, I guess you and Tommy Lee did not, right? Well, the only kind of used a stuntman when I had to ride down among the buffalo, which was a little hairy. But I did almost all my own riding. And my horse got a little iffy, so they put me on a ranch horse, a local ranch horse, which were good and more and more sound, so to speak, and well broke. But then it was working great until the pistols went off. Then this horse started bucking, and I stayed on for about four or five seconds,

and then I bailed, or he helped me bail, and the cowboys were laughing. Oh, give you a 75 when I ride, they were all laughing. And I said to the director, you know, get a cutaway me on the ground, getting back on. So they were able to use it when the horse actually bucked, and I came off, so they really used it. But, you know, I did all my own riding. I took the horse to the ground when I used to had to slid his throat and used him as a shield. And the stuntman, Rudy Euglin told me, showed me how to do that. So I was glad that I could do my own riding, you know, it's because it was, you know,

that's because they were only horses, there, no cars way back. Yeah, you know, that really was one of many moments that I remember from that series. You're being chased by a bunch of guys, about seven or eight guys. You're not going to outrun them. And so you quickly dismount, cut your horse's throat, drop him so that he forms. a shield and you fight these guys. It's amazing. Yeah, and Rudy and those guys showed me how to dropping because he was a falling horse by training. Robert Duvall speaking to Dave Davies in 2010. More after a break, this is fresh air. This is fresh air. Let's get back to Dave Davies

and his 2010 interview with actor and director Robert Duvall. He died Monday at the age of 95. You wrote and directed the film The Apostle in 1997. Yes, sir. A story of... Financed. Financed. Right. Right. The thing that gets forgotten, but that's so hard to pull off.

Oh, boy. This is the story of a Pentecostal preacher that you play. A flawed man who faces a crisis in his life when his wife finds another man and he is ousted from the church that he's the preacher. Tell us where this came from. What was your experience with Pentecostal Christians? I was doing an off-broadway play called The Days and Nights of Bebe. defense to make a wonderful play by William Hartwell Snyder that just was terrific and uh I played a guy from Hughes Arkansas so I was flying back from California to New York and I got off the plane in

Memphis I said let me go to Hughes just to see what it's like not that you have to do that to be an actor but I decided so I went back and there was no place to stay the highway guys built in a highway from Louisiana let me bunk in with him I walked down the street at night the sheriff gave me dirty looks it was strange but there was a little white clapboard church I went into, and I'd never been to something like there was a woman preaching, a woman preaching, a Pentecostal preacher, and I said, I've never seen anything like this, even in my own country. I want to put this on film someday. So it took me many, many, many years to get it off the ground. And finally I did, you know, when my wife came up, I finally got to go ahead to do it.

I did resume my research that I did all over America, and she said, hey, Bobby, you think we'll ever go to any white churches? Because I love the black preacher. They're like surrogate fathers for their community. And it was a great, great experience. Right. Right. And of course, this isn't just about Pentecostal culture. It's about a truly fascinating character.

I mean, your guy. Yes, I pieced it together from many, many, many stories. Yeah. I think it's a tribute to the film that I watched this again over the weekend, and I still can't tell whether I like this guy or not. Oh, I like him okay, because let me put it this way. What he did by killing a guy just out of the way, just out of the moment is not half as bad, one iota as bad as King David who wrote the Psalms,

who sent a man off to die by design so he could be with that guy's wife. That's what David did. But my guy just did it. So my guy wasn't as bad as some people, you know. I mean, these guys, a lot of them start out and some of them end up charlatans on TV. But I think even if he had his moves and he's whatever, at the core of his being, he really believed in what he believed in, I think. It was a labor of love, but, you know, something. I mean, I heard Billy Graham liked it, and I got a wonderful letter from Marlon Brando. He liked it, respected it, so I got it from the secular and the religious. You know, I was going to ask you how evangelicals reacted to it, yeah.

They liked it? Well, some didn't like it, I think, but, you know, I mean, I talked with Pat Robertson. He just thought it was right on the money. It just was terrific, you know. Most people, you know, I get letters from people. My father was a Pentecostal preacher, or my uncle was, and you just. You got it exactly right. So I feel, you know, right.

And there's always somebody, you know, like some people didn't like the godfather. Come on, you know. Great, great movie. Well, Robert Duval, it's been fun. Thanks so much for speaking with us. Well, thank you for a wonderful interview. Wonderful job. Thank you.

Robert Duvall recorded in 2010. He died Sunday at age 95. Here he is singing a song from the film Crazy Heart. Nobody here will ever find me. I'll always be around Just like the songs I'll leave behind me I'm gonna live forever now

Your fathers and your mothers Be good to one another Please try to raise your children right Don't let the darkness take them Don't make them feel forsaken Just lead them safely to the light And when this old world has blown us under And all the stars fall from the sky

Just remember someone Really loves you We'll live together forever, both you and I, I'm going to live forever. I'm going to cross that river. I'm going to live forever now. Coming up, we remember documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air.

Frederick Wiseman, the documentary filmmaker whose approach was to choose a subject and capture it at great, revealing length, died Monday at age 96. A law school graduate who was studying at the Sorbonne when he picked up a movie camera, Wiseman became excited by the possibilities of the new, less cumbersome recording equipment to capture sound and images from actual settings and events. His first documentary was 1967's Tiddy Cut Follies, filmed inside a Massachusetts institution for the criminally insane. He edited the vast amount of footage into a harrowing story told without narration or any talking heads,

just capturing the action and the people and letting the drama and morals reveal themselves. New York Times film critic A.O. Scott once wrote, Walt Whitman wrote that the United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. And in a Whitmanian temper, I would argue that Frederick Wiseman is the greatest American poet. Some of Wiseman's films were the length of TV miniseries

and many were shown on PBS. His films included Central Park, Juvenile Court, High School, and Hospital, which, though made in 1970, has scenes of operating room intensity and patient care humanity to rival anything on the pit. Here's a nurse calling a pair of colleagues to try to find a bed for a young boy. She's willing to claim he has an illness, any illness, if that'll help. Her conversation isn't staged, it's just captured. What I want is a bed. Well, for really nothing. I mean, there's no disease, but I need a bed.

And I was hoping you and Dr. Waite could think of something that I could get one by. A bed for a little boy doesn't have any place to go. I'll give him anything you want. What do you want to have? Terry Gross spoke to Frederick Wiseman in 1986. What have most of your films been about institutions? Why have they been about institutions? Well, because after I made Titicot Folleus, which is a film about a prison for the criminally insane,

or in the course of making that, I realized what you could do for a prison for the criminally insane, you could do for other places, namely make a film about them. And it seemed to me that this was relatively unexplored territory in film terms, because not all, but many documentary films up to that point, would pick one charming person, a prize fighter, a movie producer, a movie star, or somebody with an eccentric personality and make them the focus of the film. And I thought it would be more interesting

to try and do a series of films where the place was the star and where the film would be an impressionistic and perhaps novelistic account of what the place was like and not following anyone individual. Do you have a point of view about the place when you go in and start shooting?

Yeah, I always have a point of view, but invariably that point of view changes as a consequence of learning something because most of the time my point of view is based on very little knowledge or experience or certainly frequently is the case. The most extreme example I can give you to illustrate that is my attitude, say,

about the police before I made law and order. Because the film was shot in the fall of 1968 in Kansas City and it was shot right after the Democratic Convention and the police riots on the streets of Chicago. So that it was the trendy view at that time, not only because of what happened in Chicago but elsewhere that the police were all pigs

well you're right around in the police cars for approximately 15 seconds and you realize that the piggery is in no way restricted to the police because you see what people do to each other that make it necessary to have police in the first place which is not any is not to excuse police brutality

or does exist but what it is to do is not isolated from other forms of human brutality which make it necessary to have police to respond to and protect other people from. It's a less simplistic way of looking at things that there are good guys and bad guys on both sides of the fence.

Do you find that a lot when you go into a place that there aren't obvious good guys and bad guys and that the good and bad is a lot more ambiguous? Yeah, well, I mean, ambiguity and ambivalence rules the day because, you know, I mean, it's just like in our own experience or the way we act ourselves. I sometimes wonder why people or why the people at the time. of an institution would let you film them. Because sometimes the people really don't end up looking very good. And you never know how you're going to come off

if there's someone with a camera and a microphone recording everything that you do. Well, as someone, as the fellow once said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And I've now made 18 films in this style. and only in three of those situations have the people given me permission not like the film and in each of those situations

they've only turned against the film not when they first saw it because when they first saw it they liked it but only when they didn't like the way they or some of the people in the film were characterized in reviews. Which were those three? Primate High School and Titicot Follies.

And those are the most controversial ones that you did too. Well, I mean, they're controversial because, in part, at least, because the people that were in them originally liked them and then subsequently were put on the defensive by what was written about the films, not by their initial response. You became a filmmaker when you were in your 30s.

Your first career was as a lawyer. It's always a hard decision, I think, for anybody who's already started one career to change into another, especially into one as financially risky as documentary filmmaking. What did you want to enter into that? Well, I didn't like being a lawyer. I taught law, and I just simply didn't like it.

And I was bored. And I guess I reached the witching age of 30 and figured I better do something I liked. And I had been fiddling around making 8mm movies for a long time, and I was interested. What did you like about documentary movies? You didn't want to go to Hollywood and shoot Hollywood feature films? No. Well, I'm interested in feature film, but not the kind that gets turned out by the studios.

But it just seemed to me there was a whole great, interesting world out there that hadn't been explored in film terms. I mean, with all the documentary movies that have been made by everybody that makes documentary movies, America is still a relatively unexplored country from the point of view of documentary film. And one of the things that's exciting about it is the fact, if you're lucky and hang around long enough, you're going to stumble across situations that are funnier, more dramatic, more tragic, sadder than almost anything except really great works of literature. And it's not you that have invented them. You've just been lucky enough to be a witness to them and be able to record them on film and include them in a film. But it's an opportunity.

I mean, in one sense, it's novelistic. In another sense, it's a form of natural history. There were many, when you were starting in the mid-60s or so, documentary filmmaking had, I think, just turned a corner. There was Cinema Verite. There were a lot of documentary filmmakers who were inventing a whole philosophy and style in approaching their subjects. What were some of the theories of that period that excited you and what were some of the ones that you rejected and thought were really baloney in? Well, I mean, I think the whole notion of cinema verite is a, a baloney notion. I mean, it's just to use a, I mean, it's a French term like that. I mean, the notion that documentary film represents truth rather than one person's view of a matter, I mean, or which gets tied in with a whole idea that there's such thing as objectivity. I mean, again, strikes me as obvious nonsense, but a lot of people cling to that.

and there's also a certain amount of pretension among some documentary filmmakers who I think see the real subject of their films as themselves frequently the documentary filmmaker will be a character in the film or there'll be lots of shots of the documentary filmmaker in a mirror just to remind the audience

that this isn't really true but it's a movie and the way to demonstrate that is if the audience didn't know they were watching a movie So I guess I'm part responding to that And it seemed to me what was interesting Was to explore Not to pick one's navel

But to see what was out there And that's quite interesting To say the least None of the movies of yours that I've seen Have any narration in it or any interview with it In a lot of documentary films The filmmaker will be off camera But will be asking questions

to the person who is the subject of the movie or the subject of that scene and the person will then be like discussing what they're doing or discussing their life or whatever in response to those off-camera questions. Why have you decided to not either have narration or interview in your movies? Well, I guess, you know,

it comes down to something as simple as I don't like to be told what to think. And I think when this kind of documentary technique works or you're photographing and recording unstaged events, it works because, or at least in part, because you're placing the audience in the middle of these events and asking them to think through their own relationship to what they're seeing and hearing,

so that the editing of the film, and by the editing I mean what the structure of the final film, represents my point of view toward the material. And that's the substitute for narration. The order in which I present the sequences, and the pacing of the sequences is the way I express my attitude. Now, that is related to both traditional storytelling fiction film terms, and it's also related to the way a story gets told in a novel.

Because of a novel you really like, you don't demand that the novelist summarizes attitude toward the characters in an introductory chapter. I mean, we, Trollope is a great writer, but we sort of laugh now at his asides where he tells us, I mean, he steps out of the role of the omniscient narrator of the novel and sort of intrudes his own presence. Well, that, what I try to do is express my point of view indirectly through structure and, but leave enough room in the material so that the audience can respond on the basis. of their own values, but yet if they want to think about what my attitude is,

they can figure it out by saying, by thinking about what sequences I've included and the order in which I've included them. I'm trying to think about your position of not discussing what your intentions are with movies or what you finally think of the subject of your films. And I guess part of me is a little uncomfortable with that because I always feel like your opinion is there

and it's up to us to crack the code. Well, I don't think it's so difficult. I don't think it's so. I mean, I don't mean to make it a mystery. Then why wouldn't you want to just say it? Well, because I think it trivializes the subject. Uh-huh. And because I think if I've made the film correctly,

the final film isn't an expression of a complex attitude toward a complex subject. And to the extent that I say, well, welfare centers run poorly, The administrators are poorly trained or the clients are all psychological or biological basket cases, well, that's demeaning. It's demeaning both to the administrators and demeaning to the clients because the problems of each of them are unique, complicated, and manifold, so to speak. And if the movie just even begins to suggest that, it will have accomplished one.

of its purposes where and I think another part of it is that I don't want to set my, there's a certain temptation which I try to resist to set myself over, I think it's one that any documentary filmmaker has or any journalist has or any radio person interviewing on a radio

program has too. And that is the setting yourself up as an instant expert on a subject about which you may not know all that much but where sometimes the occasion may demand that you assert yourself with an authority that your information or your background on the subject doesn't warrant. So I'm very hesitant about, say, generalizing about police or the health service delivery systems or welfare or whatever. Because to the extent that I

understand it, what my understanding is, is, in the film, to the extent that I don't understand it or the film has failed will be readily apparent to someone who has a greater understanding about it than I do. Okay. I want to thank you very much for talking with us. Well, I enjoyed it. Thank you. Frederick Wiseman, recorded in 1986. The documentary filmmaker, whose films included Titty Cut Follies, Hospital, and Central Park, died Monday. He was 96 years old.

More than 20 years after winning an Oscar for Almost Famous, Kate Hudson is nominated again for playing a Milwaukee hairdresser turned Neil Diamond tribute performer in Song Sung Blue. On Monday's show, she discusses how she prepared and why it's taken so long to start making music. Hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show

and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorok. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Deanna Martinez. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited

by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldinado, Lauren Crenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaliner, Susan Yucundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nestberg. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David B. Inc.