Fresh Air - Remembering PBS Anchor Robert MacNeil

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

Longtime PBS news anchor Robert MacNeil died last week at 93. He spoke with Terry Gross a few times over the course of his journalism career. We revisit those conversations. Also, we listen back to Eleanor Coppola's 1992 interview about her documentary, Hearts of Darkness. It chronicles the chaotic filming of Francis Ford Coppola's movie Apocalypse Now. She also died last week, at age 87.David Bianculli reviews HBO's The Jinx — Part Two, which picks up where The Jinx left off: With Robert Durst admitting to murder.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. Today on Fresh Air, we're going to remember two notable people who died last week, documentarian and author Eleanor Coppola and veteran TV news reporter and anchor Robert McNeil. We'll start with Robert McNeil, who was 93 when he died last Friday. Robert McNeil was born in Montreal in 1931, the son of a Royal Canadian Mountie. Though his early ambitions were to be an actor and a

playwright, he changed gears while at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and became a journalist. During his long and distinguished career, McNeill was in Germany when the Berlin Wall went up in the 60s and was there again when it was torn down in the 90s. He was in Dallas working for NBC the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. In 1971, he joined PBS, covering the news in a way that offered more depth and less flash than the other U.S. broadcast networks were doing at the time. He was still a relatively unknown entity. But at the time, so was PBS, with programs like Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, and imported British dramas presented under the title Masterpiece Theater. Eventually, these shows became very popular on public television. And so did McNeil,

when he was paired with another journalist, Jim Lehrer, to anchor the network's primetime evening reruns of each day's coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings. The other networks rotated live coverage during the day, but PBS considered it a public service in the days before home video recorders to have the hearings available for viewing at night. Here's how Robert McNeil introduced that very first primetime program on May 17, 1973, offering context and substance all at once. Good evening from Washington. In a few moments, we're going to bring you the entire proceedings

in the first day of the Senate Watergate hearings, hearings to bear the truth about the wide range of illegal, unethical, or improper activities, established or still merely alleged, surrounding the re-election of President Nixon last year. As the hearings progress, we shall see cross-examination of men who were once among the most powerful in the land. As the Select Committee tries to answer the ultimate question, how high do the scandals reach, and was President Nixon himself involved?

After Watergate ran its course, Robert McNeil used his newfound celebrity to launch the Robert McNeil Report in 1975, a serious news program looking at a single issue in depth each day. Within a year, he re-teamed with his Watergate co-anchor, and the series was renamed the McNeil-Lehrer Report. That award-winning program was expanded to an hour and retitled the McNeil-Lehrer NewsHour in 1983. McNeil retired from the show in 1995, and Jim Lehrer went on to anchor the NewsHour solo until 2011. In 2020, Jim Lehrer died at the age of 85. The first time Terry Gross spoke with Robert McNeil was in 1986. She asked him about his early work as a news correspondent.

You did foreign correspondent work pretty early on in your career and stuck with that for several years. What were the stories in which you most felt you were really covering history in the making, that you were there for what was to later be recognized as a great moment in history? You don't realize the significance of something. But the Berlin Wall clearly was. I was sent by NBC. And I went to Berlin and I checked into the Kempinski Hotel and went out and had dinner. And then I was feeling tired, so I went to bed. And about three in the next morning, the news desk in New York rang up and said, what's this about they're closing the border? East Germans have closed the border to East Germany. Of course, there was a lot of tension over Berlin that summer,

so I don't know, I'll go and find out. I'm dressed and got a taxi down to the Brandenburg Gate just at dawn on a nice August day, Sunday, and there were the East German guards putting up barbed wire across the Brandenburg Gate and rolling huge cement flower pots into position as a kind of fence to block the traffic, which was the beginning of the building of the Berlin Wall. And I just knew

that was a momentous thing. I mean, there had been all sorts of speculation that summer about something the Soviets or the East Germans might do and whether it might provoke the West into something that could ultimately lead to war. And this was regarded as a major provocation. And for the next few days, although the West ultimately did nothing, there was a sense in the air that very terrible things could happen, you know. And so that was a moment of history. Another was the Cuban Missile Crisis. And I was whisked off to Washington to help in the Pentagon and the State Department coverage there. And then a few days later, because I had a Canadian passport, they said, why don't you try and go to Cuba?

As a result, I ended up there with a bunch of European journalists and one Japanese, and they had visas. I didn't. But we all got locked up in rooms in a hotel and were held there for nine days and observed what we could see of the Cuban Missile Crisis going on out the windows. You were basically held under house arrest in a hotel in Cuba. With armed guards outside the door and all that. What were you told? Nothing. How did you end up?

Did they round you up and take you away? Yeah, at gunpoint. They said, you're coming downtown. And we got under a truck and then we went into the hotel lobby and a Cuban army officer said, you're going to be the guests of the Cuban government. And I said, no, no, I'm NBC and I'm going to pay my own way. And I don't want to be your guest. Thank you. You're going to be the guest of the Cuban government. So we were put in rooms and they cut off the phones. You were at one end of a corridor and they put two chairs outside and there were Cuban soldiers with machine guns on their laps outside. And so while all the most fraught days of the Cuban Missile Crisis were going on,

we were on the ninth floor of the Capri Hotel, able to look out over the harbor and see Soviet chips and other things there, look down at the rather antiquated anti-aircraft guns that the Cubans were jumping onto and wheeling around very rapidly every time some American reconnaissance planes flew over. We didn't know whether there was going to be an American air raid, as there was some talk of, or not. But eventually, after a lot of false attempts, once we knew that they weren't going to shoot us or do anything harmful to us, it was just boring and sometimes very amusing. When you first started to work for public television, it was through NPAC, the National

Public Affairs Center for Television, which was basically attacked by the Nixon administration, and that's been revealed in detail through documents released through the Freedom of Information Act. The great irony was that after nearly being run out of town by the Nixon White House, in Sandy Van Oker and I, when we were doing this one-year thing called NPACT, which was an attempt to set up a kind of PBS news in Washington, a politically premature attempt. We came back. Sandy left.

Jim Lehrer replaced Sandy, which is where I got to know him. And we came back and anchored Jim and I, the public television continuous coverage of the Watergate hearings, which of course led to Nixon's downfall. Not that we had a sense of revenge doing that, but that, those Watergate hearings, because commercial television never covered them in their entirety. And if you remember, public television also, we rebroadcast them at night when everybody could watch. That brought an enormous audience to public television. It doubled and trebled the memberships of prominent public television stations because people were so grateful for an opportunity to see these hearings. It also demonstrated to the

public television system that journalists in public television could handle the most sensitive story and do it fairly and do interesting commentary on it and pungent analysis and do it in a responsible way. And our desire to do a nightly program grew out of that experience. Now, it is true that when we set up what was first called the Robert McNeil Report, later the McNeil-Lehrer Report, one of my considerations was to demonstrate to the public television system and the constituent stations that we can do journalism that is fair, objective, and balanced. And that has been a particular thing of Jim's and mine. I mean, we are really obsessed by that. Not out of a desire to pussyfoot

or because we're afraid of anybody, but because it's needed in the nation's journalism. And we don't apologize for any of that, and I don't think it's because we're afraid to pull punches. We only have a couple of seconds left, but I'd like to know if it was really hard for you when you gave up smoking. Knowing the kind of pressures and deadlines that you're under, was it really hard to do?

Like Mark Twain, it's easy. I've done it many times. Are you smoking again? Not now, but I did it again. As a matter of fact, it was the story of English that got me back to smoking again because I went back many times to Britain, and I always associate that and the pubs, which I like very much, with smoking. Danny Ron's smoking. And I started again when I was over there as recently as this March, and I smoked for another month, and then I thought, this is dumb.

So at the end of March 1986, I gave it up again, and I've held so far. Well, good luck. Robert McNeil speaking to Terry Gross in 1986. After a break, a later interview with McNeil from 1995 when he was stepping down from the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour. This is Fresh Air. Who's claiming power this election? What's happening in battleground states? And why do we still have the Electoral College?

All this month, the ThruLine podcast is asking big questions about our democracy and going back in time to answer them. Listen now to the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This is Fresh Air. Let's continue our tribute to journalist, author, and TV news anchor Robert McNeil, who died last Friday at age 93. In 1995, Terry spoke with him again for an interview timed to the last day he was hosting his long-running PBS news show, which was then celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Terry called him up to wish him good luck and ask him about his decision to go. She wanted to know how many times he heard a little voice in his head saying, this is the right time. Oh, quite a lot. It occurred several times. We had one moment back during the, when the Gulf War was about to happen, and it was early January 1991. It looked as though Bush was about to go to war, and I was feverishly trying to finish my first novel.

I was determined I was going to have a novel finished before I was 60 years old, and I was about to be 60 later that January. And my wife and I had arranged to go away to the Caribbean for two weeks where I could be 60 quietly and finish my novel. And so we had this meeting, and they started to say, well, you know, it looks like we're going to go to war. What are we going to do? And I said, well, whatever you're going to do, just remember that I'm planning to be away.

And they all jumped on me, starting with Jim, and said, what kind of a goddamn journalist are you? You know, you kind of walk away during the biggest story of our time. And one after another, they all made the same point rather strongly. And I said, okay, yeah, all right. So we stayed. I stayed. I didn't have to be 60. And we did the war, and it was obviously the right thing to do, and they were right. But clearly, a subversive little voice in me was saying, you know. Your style on television as a journalist has always been based on fairness and straightforwardness. You know, no prosecutorial posturing,

no show-off kind of stuff. Did you feel like your style has changed at all over the years? Has mine changed? Yeah, or do you think that you found a style and found an approach and stuck with it? I think I found an approach and stuck with it. I said recently at a reception here that when I got back into broadcasting, having been

five years at Reuters and never thought I'd be doing anything in broadcasting again, I had early in my career, as you know, done some radio acting and some announcing, but I had no idea I was going to go back into broadcasting when NBC hired me in London. And I was lucky enough to spend several months, a couple of months, with John Chancellor, who was the number two correspondent in London. And I was hired as an editorial assistant, but also to do some broadcasting. And I had to choose a style. And there were many styles to choose from at the time. There was the kind of declaiming style of the news. And then there was the sing-songy style of the news, you know, and then there was the sort of very clipped BBC style, and there

was a CBC style that I knew, which was very self-important. This is the CBC, you know. And it was so refreshing to listen to Jack Chancellor, who instead of intoning or declaiming or proclaiming or announcing the news like some kind of electronic town crier, simply told it to you conversationally. He was also very funny in a lot of his stuff. And I thought, that is the way I'd like to be. And so I started doing that in my first radio stuff for NBC from London. And then Chancellor got transferred to Moscow, and I got his job as the number two correspondent, and that sort of cemented it. So I chose a style,

at least in terms of delivery, deliberately, the most conversational way. And it's interesting that that has now become pretty well the standard in American network television. There's very little bombastic style now. A few people still do it, but the old sing-songy, the declaiming, the mobytone news styles, all those things, all the portentous styles have gone away largely. You know, your interviewing style on camera has always been as fair and as dispassionate as possible, so that the story is about the views being expressed and not about your views. You don't try to bait people or anything. Well, there are two parts to that, Terry.

One is that if you're going to be on a program every night, Jim and I, we discussed this way back at the very beginning. We don't have to make big demonstrations to make people aware of our presence. We're there night after night after night. And we are a medium through which viewers gradually, getting to know us better, judge the guests. The purpose of the program is to let people hear what the guests have to say, to help the guests have to say it, help them say it, as well as challenging them so that they clarify and defend what they're saying. And we are criticized by some people as saying we're soft interviewers because we're so polite, and they even will accuse us of deferring to important

officials we have on. I don't think we do that at all. I think the pointed, informed question and a persistent attempt to get an answer for it, while couched in polite terms, is every bit as devastating to an individual as the so-called hard, you know, interviewing somebody like Perry Mason with A Witness in the Dark or F. Lee Bailey interviewing Mark Furman. Have you ever done anything that you consider to be wildly out of character? Lose your cool, blow up, say something you regretted, become too emotionally involved?

Not since we've done this program. I did in the past. Once when I was at NBC, it was election night, 1966. Covering the governors, I was referring to Spiro Agnew, who was running for governor of Maryland. And he, it's hard to remember that nownew, who was running for governor of Maryland. And he, it's hard to remember that now, but he was the liberal candidate, the relatively more liberal candidate of two that year. The other guy was much more of a racist and so on. Anyway, I said that what it might come down to was the votes in Montgomery County, Maryland, adjacent to Washington, where a lot of people who worked in Washington lived and was rather more liberal in its views. I said, for instance, David Brinkley lives there.

And Brinkley swung around in his chair and said, how do you know how I voted? And I said, this is on the air. I said, I didn't know how you voted, David. I just said that that's an area which has rather more liberal voters than you live there. He said, I thought the ballot in this country was meant to be secret, you know?

And here you are. I said, I didn't say that. Anyway, it went back and forth about, and he was partly kidding, and we had a laugh about it later, and he apologized very nicely to me afterwards for getting mad at me, but it was kind of dumb for me to have said it. I mean, you want to keep that sort of stuff out of where somebody lives is no business of the audience.

But I was a bit cocksure, I think. That's a funny story. I was a bit overpleased with myself. Do you worry at all that tomorrow morning, Saturday morning, the first day after you've left the McNeil-Era News Hour, that you're going to wake up and say, what have I done? I mean, you're on deadline all the time, right? And that adrenaline is, like, pumping away. Yeah, I know, but you can, what is the word, divert that adrenaline flow into writing books.

I certainly can. And I can get just as excited and driven writing a book as I can putting on a television program. And I'll tell you one neat thing about it. Yeah. You would appreciate this because the work you do is very much more yours than most of what we do in television. Television is necessarily a highly collaborative business. It takes many people and much negotiation and compromise with many people contributing ideas and then modifying those ideas to put on a television program like ours. So each day is a series of tiny little negotiations and compromises. And this is in

the best of shops like ours, where we all agree on the philosophy, where we all see eye to eye on the approach, and yet it just requires it. Well, do you think you can do this in 13 minutes? I don't know. I suppose so. Maybe if you could give me 12 and a half, I could do it. Let's see here. Well, I think we're going to have to consider. You know, it's 100 of those every day, and it is a blessed luxury to be sitting down by yourself writing a book when it is just yours.

Well, let me say on behalf of many, many people, we will miss you. And I wish you very good luck. And thanks for all the years of broadcasts. And I look forward to more books. Well, thank you. Now I can listen to you more. Oh, I knew there was going to be a big advantage. Thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you, Terry. News anchor, journalist, and author Robert McNeil speaking to Terry Gross as he was retiring

from the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour in 1995. He died last week at age 93. Finally, I'd just like to say to the audience how grateful I am to public television nationally and to all the 300 local stations who carry us for the opportunity you've given me to work in a manner I could be proud of when I went home every night. But that applies equally to our viewers.

Without you, no program. There are now some 5 million of you a night, and you express a loyalty to this program of a quality I've never experienced anywhere else. Thank you for understanding what we do. You'll find all the same values there on Monday night and in the years ahead. Thanks and good night. After a break, we remember filmmaker and author Eleanor Coppola, who famously chronicled her

husband Francis Ford Coppola's frenetic filming of his epic war movie Apocalypse Now. And I'll review HBO's The Jinx Part II, continuing the story of convicted murderer Robert Durst. I'm David Bianculli, and this is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University. Eleanor Coppola, who died last Friday at age 87, became a filmmaker by request. Her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, who had become a major Hollywood figure thanks to his mega-successful Godfather movies, asked her to chronicle the making of his new movie, Apocalypse Now. Not because it was going so

smoothly, but because it wasn't. The result was the 1991 Showtime documentary Hearts of Darkness, a filmmaker's apocalypse. A hauntingly honest look at a film and filmmaker lost in the jungle, just like the story's protagonist. There were many times Francis Coppola was sure he could not make a movie out of his increasingly incoherent footage. What I have to admit is that I don't know what I'm doing. How do you account for the discrepancy between what you feel about it and what everybody else who sees it? Because they see the magic of what has happened before. I'm saying, hey, it's not going to happen. I don't have any performances the script doesn't make sense I have no ending I'm like I'm like a voice crying

out saying please it's not working somebody get me off this and nobody listens to me everyone says yes well Francis works best in a crisis I'm saying this is one crisis I'm not gonna pull myself out of I'm making a bad movie so why should I go ahead I'd rather I'm gonna going to pull myself out. I'm making a bad movie, so why should I go ahead? I'd rather... I'm going to be bankrupt anyway. Why can't I just have the courage to say it's no good? Eleanor Coppola's later works include documentaries about two of her daughter Sofia Coppola's movies, The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette.

She also created an art installation called Circle of Memory, remembering her son Giancarlo Coppola, who died instantly in a tragic boating accident in 1986 at age 22. Eleanor Coppola was born Eleanor Jessie Neal in Los Angeles in 1936. She was an assistant art director on the film Dementia 13 when she met and soon married its director, Francis Ford Coppola. Terry spoke with Eleanor Coppola in 1992 and asked her what it felt like to be in the middle of a phony war. Well, I found it really exhilarating. incredible 4th of July kind of a light show with these enormous explosions, and the earth shook like an earthquake.

They were huge, particularly the napalm attack and the scene with Colonel Kilgore, Robert Duvall, was just a powerful event to be there. It was just your whole event to be there. It was just your whole body felt the concussion and this enormous, you know, whatever it was, 10,000 gallons of fuel was lit and exploded in the jungle. I really found it extraordinary. And I think sometimes that even annoyed Francis that he was trying to get his work done and everybody else was kind of at a light show.

One of the stories that the movie gets into, the documentary on the making of Apocalypse Now, is how Francis Coppola used helicopters from the Philippine Army because the United States Army wouldn't cooperate with the making of a movie about Vietnam. But the government kept wanting the helicopters back to fight a civil war against communist insurgents. Tell us some of the ways that kept disrupting the shooting of Apocalypse Now. It was a very disruptive situation because the Army would send out their helicopters and whatever pilots they wanted to send out, and the pilots would be different every day, so they'd fly too high and they wouldn't be in the camera shot or they just wouldn't realize what was involved in really, you know, performing for the camera, so to speak. So they would lose many, many, many shots because the pilots wouldn't be flying in the right place to be seen in the camera. And then the next day, you know, by the time they finally learned how to do it, the next day they'd send different pilots. And then very frequently they would call the planes away.

They'd be all set up for a shot. Everyone would be out there on the location shooting, and they would get some radio communication that four of the helicopters had to leave for military reasons, or some days all of the helicopters, or some days they would be out there ready to work and expecting eight helicopters to be provided provided and only two would show up. So it was a very difficult part of the production.

And it cost tens and tens of thousands of dollars in lost footage and waiting for the helicopters to come that never came. And there were guards at your house because Marcos was afraid that rebels would kidnap you and Francis Coppola for publicity? Yes, they had some idea that if Francis would be kidnapped for some political reasons by the insurgents that it would create an international incident and bring attention to the Philippines and unwanted attention, so that they provided us right from the beginning with guards, personal bodyguards. I actually felt more concerned, finally, that the guards might cause some accident. They got very casual about their weapons.

You know, our main bodyguard just would stick his pistol in the belt of his blue jeans and he'd get it out and show the kids how it worked and he had a trunk full of shotguns and other, I don't know, other guns and things

in the trunk of the car and it just seemed like I was really in more danger of some accident from the bodyguards than I really was in danger from insurgents. I could see how that would not be very reassuring. No, and I'm there with three children, and the casualness of the weapons that the guards had was really a concern to me. When Marlon Brando arrived on the set to play Kurtz, Francis Coppola didn't realize that Brando was going to be as heavy as he was.

How did that affect the way the role was conceived. Well, when Francis realized that he was not slimmed down and able to play the Green Beret that he was originally committed to the part for, that Francis had to decide what to do in this situation, and his first idea was to play Marlon as an indulging mango eating, just over indulging himself here in the jungle in this situation and just play him sort of overweight in his uniform not really fitting properly and just go with that whole kind of look.

And Marlon did not want to do that. He just was unwilling to do that. So then Francis was really at a loss. What could he do then if he wouldn't do that? So the two of them sat down for days talking about what part he could play and how they could resolve the ending of this movie. And they, at one point, came up with this very theatrical,

larger-than-life personage that you see just emerging from the darkness and the light, and you never really fully see him as a reality. He's much more of a sort of archetypical, you know, mythical figure, and that was sort of a new approach for Brando because he was known for his great, you know, reality, the grittiness of his realness and his performances, so that he struggled with that, too,

and the two of them had a real head-to-head go there trying to resolve the ending of the film. A lot of Marlon Brando's part was improvised. There's some really interesting footage in Hearts of Darkness of Brando improvising. Would you describe a little bit the process that he and Francis Copley used to improvise the part? Well, they would come up with some actual lines and some of the dialogue that Marlon was to say, but the way Marlon works is he has to find a reality, so he would then put those lines into kind of just a sort of free form, improvising and talking as he went along through the part.

So they had definite points that he was supposed to make, and he then kind of created around those points and kind of gives it that reality. Because one of the things he does, he, for instance, would like write a line on his hand or put it on a piece of tape on one of the props nearby so that he sort of has to look for that line and sort of give it that little edge of struggle that, just like we have in our own conversation, I don't know exactly what line I'm going to say next, and it gives my, you know, voice a kind of edgy reality because I'm sort of fishing for what the next line is going to be. And he does that. It's part of his technique to not learn his lines and just spit them out slickly, but to really just have to have that little edge of reaching for them.

It sounds from the footage you shot that one of the techniques that they used to improvise was that Francis Coppola would ask Marlon Brando questions off camera, and then Brando would have to respond to the questions, and the camera would be rolling as he responded. Yes, that's right. Why are we in Vietnam? It's our time to grab this moment in history.

It's our time to teach. Huh? I can't think of any more dialogue to say. Dennis Hopper played the part of a really drugged-out American journalist in Vietnam. When he was cast in this role, he already had the reputation for being genuinely drugged out and burned out. And there's some terrific footage in the documentary of him and Francis Coppola talking together and trying to work out what the part's going to be. And Coppola wants to know how come he doesn't know his lines yet. Why did Coppola even bring on Dennis Hopper? And I'm a

really big fan of Hopper's asking this question, but he was in such bad shape then. You know, you wonder, why would you ask for this kind of trouble? Well, I don't think Francis actually realized he was in that kind of shape. He thought he was a really good actor, and he had a lot of admiration for him, and he was cast in a role, a Green Beret role, and when he really got out there,

Francis realized there's no way that he could play this Green Beret, and he had to then sort of invent a part for him because he thought he was very talented and there must be some way to use his gifts. So Francis has the great ability to make the part fit the actor rather than the other way around. If the actor comes and can't play the part as written, he rewrites the part. And he certainly did that in Dennis's case and tried to somehow utilize the character that he was because that was one of the

issues in the Vietnam War is the use of drugs and the availability of drugs. And in fact, there in the Philippines, because of where we were there in Asia, there were drugs available and cheaply and things that aren't available just here while everybody's home in Los Angeles. So that there was experimentation among the people who were out there. And Dennis, of course, was just really far out at that moment. In fact, he looks back at that period and is pretty astounded himself, I think.

Why did you say that to him in the scene? Who? Something clever like that. When he says, who are you, why did you say, who are you? Because I haven't learned my lines yet. I know, you've had them for five days. Who? Something clever like that. When he says, who are you? Why don't you say, who are you? You know why? Because I haven't learned my lines yet. That's why. I know.

You've had them for five days. The other thing I'd like to say is that... Whose glasses are these? These glasses. I can't see anything through them. But like, you know, every crack represents a life I've saved. You know what I mean? They represent a life I've saved.

You should play that all out in the scene. I do, but you see the director, you know, the director says, you don't know your lines. Well, if you know your lines, then you can forget them. Oh, I see. But that's what I'm trying to do. Forget those lines. But it's no fair to forget them if you never knew them.

My guest is Eleanor Coppola, and we're talking about the making of Apocalypse Now. Are you still on the set now when your husband makes a movie, or do you prefer to be off of it? Well, up until, through Godfather III, the whole family went to the locations with Francis on all of his films. We lived there. We put our kids in school there. We lived our life in the, you know, like a circus family, going with the productions wherever they went.

And it's just been in the last year that my daughter has left home, and she's 20 now. And our lives have changed to a certain extent so that I don't have to be there with the children, making a family home on a location. And Francis is shooting now in Los Angeles. It's the first time that I haven't really been there on a quite a regular basis. I've had the freedom to come and go and maintain some of the threads of my own life. How does it feel? Well, it's a new experience. It's a new freedom. And after 28 years of living your life one way,

it's quite an adjustment to shift. And I'm excited. You know And I'm very excited about the future. And also, there's probably part of me grieving for the unity of the family and the structure and sort of being told where we're going to be next rather than having to have the freedom to make those choices myself. So it's mixed, but I'm excited about my freedom, so to speak. There's an entry in your journals where you say that people, you know, when you write a check or give a credit card, people always want to know, oh, are you related to Francis Coppola? When they find out that you're married, they're always, you know, a little bit flustered. And you say you sometimes wonder, like, what did they expect to see? Did they expect Francis Coppola's wife to be a playboy bunny?

Do you feel that way a lot, of people have this expectation that any famous director is going to have this young sex pot type wife, fashion model. Yes, you know, it does seem to sort of be the cliche of what the film director's wife or partner is going to look like and be like. And somehow, though, over the years, I've sort of gotten the impression that people have sort of come to the realization

that Francis has the same wife. Oftentimes he introduces me as his first wife. You know, that we have been together all these years. It's actually going to be 29 years next week. And yet recently I've done some interviews and I realize that the person interviewing me says, oh, I didn't realize you were still married. And so I guess that my kind of low-key, laid-back,

willing-to-be kind of invisible in the shadow of things, has really, in a certain sense, not fully given a picture of what our life is like, but we are very much a family and a married couple. And I guess it does come as a surprise to some people who see the typical Hollywood family as one of many marriages and kids that are mixed up. solid and centered and creative and haven't really taken any blows from the way our life has been lived. And they've been able to actually gain from all the travel and the experiences. And it's enriched them, I think. And I really feel that it was all worth everything to have my kids turn out in a solid, centered way. I have one question that I realize might be too personal,

so let me ask it and feel free to tell me it's too personal or that it's whatever. Okay. You have a son who was killed in an accident, and I was wondering if his death in a way made it even more important for the family to stay together. Well, when there is a death in the family, it creates a complete crisis within the family. And actually, the statistics are that 92% of marriages break up when there's a death of a child. So it is a time of perhaps the most extreme crisis. And knowing that, I sought help and the family really went through their crisis, you know, all together. And I think that we've come out the other side with, yes, even a deeper closeness. I thank you so much for talking with us.

Well, thank you. It's really a pleasure to have an opportunity to talk to you. Eleanor Coppola speaking to Terry Gross in 1992. The filmmaker and author died last Friday at age 87. Coming up, I review HBO's The Jinx Part II, Andrew Jarecki's new sequel to his documentary about the then-suspected and now-convicted multiple murderer Robert Durst.

This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. I'm TV critic David Bianculli. Ten years ago, This American Life presented a podcast called Serial, examining the facts and loose ends involving a cold murder case. Nine years ago, HBO followed with a TV equivalent, The Jinx, The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. Together, those two wildly popular programs helped ignite the true crime documentary and podcast craze, a genre that itself became so imitated that it was spoofed by Hulu's Only Murders in the Building.

The Jinx recounted the story of Robert Durst, a wealthy man suspected over many decades of the murders of several people. The documentary series was made with Durst's cooperation, specifically several on-camera interviews with filmmaker Andrew Jarecki. The final episode climaxed with some stunning remarks made by Durst while he was alone and talking to himself, still wearing a hot mic. Durst was arrested the night before HBO televised the final episode of The Jinx, and later was convicted of murder and died in prison in 2022. This Sunday, Jarecki returns to HBO with a sequel documentary series, The Jinx Part 2, which also will stream on Max. I highly recommend you see the original Jinx first if you haven't. It's available on most

streaming sites, but it's not required. The Jinx Part 2 is amazing right from the start because filmmaker Jarecki never stopped filming. In the original series, it was the accidental recording of Robert Durst muttering to himself in a bathroom after Jarecki confronted him with a damning piece of physical evidence that helped lead to the wealthy man's arrest. The Jinx Part 2 swoops right back in using phone wiretaps recorded by prosecutors, interviews with investigators, and even conversations with witnesses on both sides at the trial, some cooperative, some hostile. The Jinx Part 2 starts its behind-the-scenes narrative, just as the original Jinx is days away from premiering on HBO.

Jarecki, being driven in a car with a colleague, discusses a phone call he'd gotten from Durst's attorney. Jarecki's crew is filming the conversation in the car, leading us seamlessly into this sequel. So I just heard from Bob's lawyer, who has been pressing, as you know, to see the finished episodes. And he was sort of saying, we're curious about whether you come to the conclusion that he's guilty or he's not guilty. But obviously, there's a concern that there could be a prosecution as a result of this. And we are very keen to see it as soon as possible.

I mean, I said to him, well, I know for sure they'll let me show you one, you know, episode one tomorrow or whatever. And he said, well, then I might as well just wait for Sunday. Events are captured in real time, revealing themselves like elements in a thriller. Halfway through the run of the original Jinx, Bob Durst, watching from home, is feeling kind of cocky. But then, because of a spelling error in his handwriting that seems to connect him to an anonymous note sent to police after one murder, he shifts gears. FBI agents and Los Angeles district attorneys track him withdrawing large sums of money, then fleeing before the final episode. But as The Jinx Part 2 shows, he's cleverly tracked down in a New Orleans hotel and captured.

Please hold while we attempt to connect your call. Steve? Bob? Steve, it's Bob. I was arrested in New Orleans. By who? By the FBI. Oh, boy. L.A. Deputy District Attorney John Lewin is the first to interrogate Bob Hurst.

It was filmed and recorded, so we see it in The Jinx Part 2. But Lewin asks Durst a question about the original film. Obviously, you're aware of The Jinx. Obviously, yeah. And what made you do... I don't get it. What made you talk to them? Still sort of putting that together in my own mind. What follows is a story with as many twists, turns, and shockers as the original.

Jarecki is as good an interviewer as he is a director, and what he gets out of his conversations with people, from Bob's friends and lovers to his investigators and prosecutors, is unexpected and sometimes is almost laughably candid. As it turns out, there's a great story to be told in the continued telling of the Robert Durst story. And there are some lessons to be learned, too. Don't commit murder. If you do commit murder, don't cooperate with a documentary filmmaker. And if you do kill someone and talk about it on camera, learn how to spell. On the next Fresh Air, Minority Rule. We talk with Ari Berman, who writes, The Founding Fathers created political institutions within

a system that concentrated power in the hands of an elite, propertied, white male minority. We'll talk about the compromises made by the Founding Fathers and how they're reflected in today's politics. Join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman and Julian Hertzfeld. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Sallet, Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Joel Wolfram.

Our digital media producer is Molly Seavey-Nesper. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli. This message comes from Grammarly. Back-and-forth communication at work is costly. That's why over 70,000 teams and 30 million people use Grammarly's AI to make their points clear the first time. Better writing, better results. Learn more at Grammarly.com slash enterprise.