The New Yorker Radio Hour - Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women,” and Damon Lindelof’s “Watchmen”

Episode Date: December 13, 2019

Greta Gerwig tells David Remnick that her adaptation of the novel “Little Women” didn’t need much updating for 2019: the world hasn’t changed as much as we might think, she says. Isaac Chotiner talks with Jack Goldsmith, the conservative legal scholar whose new book is a surprising and personal account of a man who was regarded as a suspect in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. And the creator of HBO’s “Watchmen” tells Emily Nussbaum about the uncomfortable process of learning to write about race. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Greta Gerwig started out as an actress, mostly in a lot of indie films. But two years ago, she made her debut as a solo writer and a director, and the debut was amazing. The film was Lady Bird, a coming-of-age story about a young woman trying to navigate and graduate high school, leave home, get out of town. It's a beautiful film and it got Gerwig nominated for an Oscar for Best Director. Her new movie has been eagerly anticipated, and maybe that's even an understatement,

because the cast includes Merrill Streep, Emma Watson, Searsia Ronan, and Timothy Shalameh. It's Gerwig's own adaptation of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott's classic novel. Hi, nice to see you. How is everything? Little Women comes in. out later this month on Christmas Day, and I talked recently with Greta Gerwick.

So it's got to take a certain amount of I don't know, nerve or something to take on a book that's so beloved that's been adapted before for film I don't know a number of times. Seven. And make it your own.

Yeah. Tell me how all this started and how it and what the thinking is going into it. Well, this book was my book. It was the one that I loved and lived through. And I couldn't really distinguish between what the March sisters went through

and what I went through. It all kind of melded into one thing. And Joe March was my favorite character. You were in a theatrical production? Yes. How old were you? I think I was 11 or 10 or 11. I was in a community theater production, a children's production.

And I played Joe. This is in Sacramento. Yes. I remember I was wearing my hair. Joe had this line. Meg says, you're almost a young lady right now. You're almost a young lady now. You'll turn up your hair soon. And Joe says, if turning up my hair makes me a woman, then I'm going to wear it in two tails until I'm 20. And I remember thinking, I'm sort of not saying this right, but this is all I have. This is my only, I mean, I think in some ways maybe you become a director because you're, in some way, know your own limited capacity is an actor. So you get to vicariously. lives through other people. So why did Joe March

mean so much to you? Because of what she stood for in feminist terms or creative terms or independence terms? Well, what's wonderful about reading when you're a child is you don't really have any, you have no sense of what you should or shouldn't like and you have

no sense of something being politically activated or not. You just like what you like. I loved Joe because she was competitive, because she was angry, because she wanted to be a writer because she was ambitious. And I feel like I was all of those things. Now, for those who haven't read little women in a little while, tell us about the four March sisters. You have Meg, Joe, Beth, and Amy. And what did they represent to you when you read the book

and how are they different in the film? Sure. Well, I mean, what I will say about reading the book and my history with the book is that this sort of rereading love of it lasted until like, 14 or 15, and then I didn't read the book again until I was 30. And when I read it at 30, I couldn't believe it. I felt like I'd never read it before. I felt like I couldn't, I couldn't believe how modern it was, how strange it was, how spiky it was, that I kind of allowed it to become this snow globe of sweetness. And it was nothing like that. It was much more complicated. But what was spiky, for example, about it? I mean, so many lines that I put in the movie, like Marmee Singh.

I'm angry almost every single day of my life. I didn't remember Marmee saying she was angry almost every single day of her life. I mean, of course she was. She was a woman in the 19th century. Why wouldn't she be pissed off? But I didn't, that wasn't sort of how I had internalized what she'd said, or Amy saying about her art, I want to be great or nothing. That's a very ambitious thing to say.

Or her saying, the world is hard on ambitious girls. which I thought the world is still hard on ambitious girls. There were just so many lines that I couldn't believe how much they jumped out at me. And that was, I had this thought when I was rereading it. Like, oh, I would love to make a film out of this. But I at that point hadn't made Lady Bird. And I didn't, I had not solo directed. So it was a thought that didn't really have anywhere to go.

And then in any case, I heard that Amy Pascal and someone, Tony and Denise Donovi and Robin Swikewood were interested in making little women and I got myself, I begged to get in that room and I explained to them, I want to write it and I want to direct it and here's what I'm going to do. And what was the reaction? Did you get a good reaction? I think they were sort of like, who are you?

Are you, do you act or what's? And I was like, no, I, that's, yes, but I'm on my way to directing, just hang on. Yeah, but I mean, to my great delight, They did actually hire me to write it. So, and that was in 2015, I started writing it. So when you're in this meeting with Sony executives and potential producers, and you say, I want to do little women. And once they got over the shock and informed you that it had been done a number of times before,

what's the thinking process to take a book of the 19th century and make it your own, Make it a personal vision. Is there a model for that in adaptation? Oh, is there a model? Oh, goodness. If there was, I don't think I followed it. I was aided in that I had this, however, I had a vision for it. I had a vision of how it should look, how it should feel, how it should sound, the restructuring of time.

I mean, to go back to your question about these girls, Joe, Beth, Meg and Amy are very distinct from each other, but also I've really, I wanted to take, first of all, I wanted to take each of their artistic ambitions quite seriously. And for example, with Bess, I didn't want her to be some girl who only plays hymns in a corner. I wanted her to be playing Bach, and I wanted her to be playing Schumann. And with Joe, of course, and in my film, I kind of collab, the space between Louise May Alcott and Joe March, but she's selling scandal stories. I mean, she's selling stories that are, you know, kind of low morals and pulpy plots, but she's

making a living doing it. And Amy's utter ambition with art to be this great artist, and I was thinking about what would it be to be a, you know, a 23, 24-year-old woman who goes to Europe in 1868 to study the old masters, which she does in Rome, and then she gets to Paris. And what's happening? Impressionism. And that you would think to yourself, oh, no, oh, no, I've missed it. And I just thought, that's so fascinating.

And then one interesting thing to me is the character of Ames, Amy, who is played by Florence Pugh, is a character that I think for all of time people have not enjoyed. Because she burns her sister's book and she, I mean, spoiler alert, I don't know. I figured most people probably know the story. Marys Theodore Lawrence, who's the next door neighbor who readers that had wanted Joe March to marry. So anyway, she's always gotten a lot of hate. And what's interesting is I've talked to a lot of people who say, oh, my God, in this adaptation, Florence is so wonderful and you really are understanding. You're on her side.

But also, almost everything that Amy does is from the book. So it's all there. And I think it might represent some sort of cultural shift that now this character that says what she wants and goes for what she wants is not something we hate any longer. And in fact, Florence Pugh, who has one of the great voices in the history of cinema, a playing game. The best. And also laughs. Oh, man. She's got a great laugh. It's a deep, weird, low laugh.

She's like Lauren Bacall. And she's got the great bravora speech, particularly on marriage. I've always known I would marry, Rich. Why should I be ashamed of that? There's nothing to be ashamed of, as long as you. Love him. Well, I believe we have some power over who we love. It isn't something that just happens to a person.

I think the poets might disagree. Well, I'm not a poet. I'm just a woman. And as a woman, there's no way for me to make my own money. Not enough to earn a living or to support my family. And if I had my own money, which I don't, that money would belong to my husband the moment we got married. And if we had children, they would be his, not mine.

They would be his property. So don't sit there and tell me that marriage isn't an economic proposition because it is. It may not be for you, but it most certainly is for me. So who wrote that? Okay. So that speech, that speech is not in the book. That speech came out of an early lunch I had with Meryl Streep, who is also in the film. The best of everything and also in the film.

And genuinely one of the smartest people I've ever met. And she said to me, among many things she said to me, she said, one of the things you have to make the audience understand is it's not just that women couldn't vote because they couldn't. It's not just that they couldn't own property. They couldn't. It's that if they wanted to leave a marriage, they would leave with nothing. They wouldn't even get to leave with their children. So that decision is the decision. There is no bigger decision than that because that's your whole life.

And so essentially wholesale took that and gave it to Florence. Another thing about that speech is I gave that speech to Florence on the day we were shooting. I knew I had had a draft of the script that had that in it. But as you're leading up, this is sort of technical stuff about filmmaking. But as you're leading up to shooting, you're always trying to cut page count because you never have enough. time and you never have enough money and I tend to write very long scripts that I know as a director will be said very quickly so that actually the page count there's a sort of rule of thumb one page per per minute per minute that's not true of me it's it's you're zipping through faster much faster

that's what you tell the money people anyway oh I tell everyone that but so but I was trying to be you know a good student and cut my pages and but I what I ended up doing is I said I ended up feeding the actors, all these pages, either the night before or on the day, because then it was too late for anyone to do anything about it, because by the time it's in the dailies, what are you going to do? Tell me, I can't have the lines. They're already in there. And so I had given this speech to Florence the day we were shooting. And I remember saying, there's so many things that I said with utter confidence, which I had no idea, but I remember saying, while arguing for this, to be in the movie,

I said, this will be the clip people play. And they said... Because it's straight. Because she does it amazing. And also, she's not angry as a character. She's just explaining the world,

which I think is compelling because that sort of explaining the world is almost more heartbreaking than saying all the ways you want to change it, just saying, here's how I've got to get along.

And she does it so she does it fabulously. But so in any case, it's from Meryl Streep that I stole and then gave to Florence the day of because I knew I wanted to sneak it in. But I remember I was like, mark my words, this will be the moment. I want to know all about that lunch. What else did Meryl Streep tell you? She said, you know, she said so many things. I feel like I quote her all the time. she said for her she said it was one of the precious few books

where that girls had of girlhood and of sisterhood and of growing up in that way and she said that women have all kinds of practice imagining themselves as men and men have very little practice imagining themselves as women which is just such an obvious thing to say, but it's completely correct. I want to ask you about the activity of directing. I first became aware of you

when you were in movies that were known as Mumblecore films quite a while ago. And then as a writer, so an actor, a writer, and then being a director seems like you've got to be a bit of a Napoleon. I once watched

Lena Dunham come to a short film for The New Yorker, It's just thinking that went for three minutes. She's very young at the time. She's very young now. And it was amazing. I was watching her not boss around, but direct, you know, set people and actors and this one and that one, electricians. And they were all doing exactly what she said.

There were about 40 people there. Right. She had command of the room. It was really interesting to watch. Right. How do you learn how to do that when your activity? before was being directed or being alone in a room

with a blinking screen. Right. Well, to be honest, I think that's who I always have been. I think I... Even more than a writer or an actor. Yes. Well, writing

was always a way to get to that moment for me. I mean, this is kind of, maybe this is too much just personal information, but I think up until I was around 13, I'd say, I was the bossiest control freak you'd ever met. I mean, I remember, my dad had a business trip in New York, and we all went, and we went and saw, we saw, I remember we saw Starlight Express, which I just loved. This is the roller skating thing on Broadway? It's Andrew Lloyd Webber's Starlight Express.

It's about trains and it's on roller skates. And I can still recite every single word. But I remember I came back to my kindergarten and I told everyone that I would be putting on a production of Starlight Express and everyone better start working on their roller skating, which I did stuff like that up until I was assigned to do a group project and I completely took it over in seventh grade. And I was like explaining how everyone was going to do everything.

thing and I remember some kid made fun of me and said like it's just you know that I was annoying and and I then was considered kind of a bossy unappealing girl and you tamped it down I tamped it down I deliberately tamped it down but it didn't really it didn't go away it just kind of went underground and then I think in high school and college it kind of simmered and then it started really coming out again. And I think it's the person who I tried to crush. Well, when did you give you, and how did you give yourself permission

to let this thing resurface and set yourself free? Because I wanted to do it so badly. Just it was the desire that was bigger than my person. And I think actually this is a strange but true thing. that happened to me. I met Sally Potter, the director, and I asked her about writing. And I said, you know, what's your process? How do you write? I cornered her and I was asking her questions. And then she grabbed me by the hand and said, why don't you ask me what you really want to ask me about? And I was like, oh my God, what do I really want to ask you about? And she said, you really want to ask me about directing.

And I said, how do you know that? And she said, it's written all. all over you. Like, that's what you want to ask me about. And then I did ask her about it. And then four years after that, she came up to me at an event in London for Lady Bird and she said, you did it. I was like, oh, my God, you're a mystic and I love you. But I felt like there were a number of things. There was also, I was given a pair of shoes by not one, but two women directors. Rebecca Miller and Miranda July both gave me shoes.

That never happens to me. No, no, I know, nor me. And I was like, I mean, if you were going to send a sign, this is really on the nose. There were like lots of things like that. And I think, you know, I was, they happened, and also I was looking for them. Nora Ephron, who I was a friend,

used to say that if I have to sit on one more panel. I know. About women and directing, I'm going to shoot myself or someone else. When she passed, they printed that in the New York Times. She said she had that list, things I'll miss, things I won't miss. And under things I won't miss, women in film panels was one of them. But I think this awareness of the lack of women, writer, and directors in film has begun to be addressed. I think the Annenberg study just came out again.

and actually this year is going to be the first year there's real progress made in the number of films written and directed by women, I think, in the top 100 grossers. It's difficult because all you really want is that you're thought of as just a filmmaker. But to get to that point, we need it to be much closer to 50-50. I want to ask you about your own future.

In other words, are there a set of themes? Is there an aesthetic that you think I want to really pursue these themes, this aesthetic and chase it up a tree for quite a while? Is there any sense of coherence in that? Right. Well, I will say I am, what I am deliberate about and what I do care very much about is I would like to make a lot of films as a writer and director because there are films. I'll be able to make on film 12 that I would not be able to make on film 2 in terms of budget

or you're just not ready for it? In terms of budget well I mean budget but sort of in terms of your development is an artist and I think I've always been interested in long careers of directors because you know making Fannie and Alexander is not

a thing he would have done on his second film in Bergman's film yeah right but there's a lot of people that I look at their career and Yeah, of course. I'll actually go and I'll say, wait, what was their first film? Oh, and they made that second. And then, oh, my God. And then seven later, they did this one. And again, I go to the ones who've made a lot of films for a long time because it's their way of moving through life and moving through the world. Greta Gerwig, thank you so much. Thanks so much. It was so fun. Greta Gerwig wrote and directed Little Women, which comes out on Christmas Day. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. If you've seen the movie The Irishman, you're familiar with the character of Chuckie O'Brien, the young assistant and friend to Jimmy Hoffa, almost Hafa's surrogate son. And in the film,

it's O'Brien who betrays Hafa, playing a crucial role in his disappearance and presumed murder. A new book about Chuckie O'Brien has just come out. But it's not exactly the mob thriller you might guess. It's by a prominent legal scholar named Jack Goldsmith. So pause on that for a second. Goldsmith is a professor at Harvard with books on international law and regulation of the internet.

He ran the office of legal counsel for a time under George W. Bush. Goldsmith is often called on to discuss legal theories of executive privilege, which is very much a subject of the day. But the story of Chuck E. Brian seems like a different kind of business altogether. But Jack Goldsmith comes to it from a very specific and personal angle. He was O'Brien's stepson. His new book is called In Hafa's Shadow, and staff writer Isaac Chautner sat down to talk with him about it. Jack, thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me. I want to start with your stepfather. How did he come to know Jimmy Hafa and how did he come to be your stepfather? He came to know Jimmy Haffa when he was nine years old. His mother came from a crime family in Kansas City. His dad left when he was seven, and Hoffa, for whatever reason, took a huge shine to him. And they were so close that people thought Chuckie was Hoffa's illegitimate son. Did Chuckie sort of have an evolving opinion of him, or was he pretty consistently in your mind loyal towards him and fond of him?

Yeah, no, no. He was extremely close. I mean, intimately close for literally 25 years. You know, they spent evenings together, weekends together. Chuckie did all of his errands for him. And Hoff, as I said, looked out for Chuckie. They did have a falling out about six months before that his appearance, and this is one of the reasons why his suspicion came on Chuckie. The reason for the falling out was in part because Chucky realized that he didn't have a future in the teamsers union.

Since Hafa had no power in the teams'ers union, but mostly because my mother came into Chucky's life. They fell in love and wanted to get married, and that meant he had to leave Hafa, and Hafa was not happy about that. So, yeah, talk a little bit about your feelings towards Chucky. Sure, I was 12 years old when he entered my life. I had had a father and a stepfather, neither of whom were a very good father. I wasn't very close to either one of them. And very suddenly, at age 12, I had this new stepfather, and he was an extraordinary father. I loved him deeply.

My mom was suffering for mental and physical health issues, and Chucky before and after the Hoffa disappearance. He came into my life about six months before the Hoffa disappearance. It just showed me extraordinary love and attention and gave us a stability. really just helped us to get through some very, very difficult times, even though he was himself going through very difficult times. So I actually changed my name, which was Jack Goldsmith, to Jack O'Brien when I was 13, and I just adored him for my teenage years. You write of Chucky in the book that, quote, Chuckie inhabits a different linguistic and conceptual universe than I. What did you mean by that? I meant a lot of things by that.

First of all, I mean, his nickname for me when I was a young man was the educated idiot. and that kind of captures the differences between us. He viewed me as having lots of book learning, which I do, and lots of degrees, which I do. He got his degree on the street, as he said. He's not an intellectual. He's not widely read. He's very smart. He's very insightful.

He also, we have different conceptions towards truth. I think it's fair to say in writing this book, my main concern was to try to figure out the truth, the truth of Chuckie's involvement in the Hoffa disappearance, which he's always been accused of. the truth of what happened to Haifa, and basically puncture the layers of misinformation that have surrounded the Hafa disappearance for 44 years. Chuckie, on the other hand, while he was trying very hard to help me figure out this truth, he had a different truth, and that was the truth of Omerta, the Code of Silence. So he really struggled a lot with what he could tell me, how he could tell me.

He wanted to try to help me. He told me a lot of things, but he also held a lot back. One of the themes of the Irishman, the Robert De Niro character, who in the film is responsible for Hoffa's death, it portrays his daughter in the film as looking at him suspiciously, realizing he's up to no good, realizing he's surrounded by mob figures. Did you ever have that sense that maybe there was something not quite right, and did that ever gnaw at you? So I agree with your take on that part of the movie. I thought it was very powerful. And the answer is, no, I had something of the opposite reaction. When I was, you know, I had something of the opposite reaction. When I was a teenager, I knew a bunch of mobsters. I mean, we hung around with them, Anthony Jackaloney and Anthony Provenzano, two high-level mob guys in New Jersey and Detroit who were also in the film.

These were my uncles, Tony, and we used to hang out with them. And I was completely under Chuckie's worldview. And what that meant was I was kind of thought the government was full of it and cutting corners and saying things that weren't true. my experience of these mobsters who were described in FBI reports I later read as terribly violent people was that they were fine, upstanding gentlemen, they were nice to me, they were well dressed, they lived in nice homes, and they treated me well, and they were part of my family. You know, I read the newspapers, but I kind of discounted it, and I had a convenient world view that was basically Chuckie's worldview. It wasn't until I got to college and got some distance

from it, started reading books and thinking about it, that I came down to understand the truth. Do you think accuracy matters for a film like this, number one, and two, what did you think of the movie apart from its potential issues with the truth? I think the accuracy of the story matters to me personally for one very important reason. The book on which the movie is based and the movie put my stepfather, Chuckie, in the car picking up Hoffa and taking him to his death. Dad.

Chuckie? Yes, sorry. I'm late. I had to... Frank. Timmy. I was waiting for you. How was there at 2 o'clock you're supposed to show? What happened? I'm sorry, but McGee's here.

He decided to come, but he ain't comfortable here. He don't want to come here. He's at the house. McGee's in Detroit? Yeah, he's here. He decided to come. Oh. Yeah, he came to help straighten this all up.

Okay. And this is just simply not true. And the FBI doesn't think it's true anymore. They thought this. This was the original theory in the 1970s that Chuck Ewe picked up Hoffa and took him to his death. Every story that's been told about the disappearance. for 44 years has been some version of Chuckie picking up Hoffa. And it's just not true.

I show in my book that it's not true. The FBI currently believes it's not true. They've got evidence to think that it was an entirely different operation altogether. So it matters because it portrays someone delivering essentially his father to his death, and it's just simply false. And Chuckie's lived with the stain of this for 44 years now, and this is kind of the final indignity. So I understand art, and Scraise's basic point is, he's not really sure it's true, but it's the drama of this guy torn between the mob and his friend.

And I get all of that, but by tying it to a real story and tagging someone with the responsibility who's still alive, that's why it matters to me. You listen to a lot of tapes made by the FBI of your stepfather and Hoffa. What did you learn about both of them from listening? One of the themes of the book, I should say, is kind of this idea of hearing people in a, format where they don't expect to be heard and what we can learn about another human being that way. What did you come away with? Yeah, this was one of the most extraordinary and upsetting things I stumbled across in writing this book. So starting in the late 50s, the Justice Department began to place bugs in mob headquarters and mob offices. This was all clearly illegal and it was

indiscriminate and they basically just listened in on every aspect of these lives. Chuckie, his mom, Anthony Jackaloney and Josephine Hoffa, and they were all very tight. A lot of infidelity, a lot of lawbreaking, a lot of backstabbing, a lot of alcoholism, a lot of mental health issues, and it was all in there, and the FBI was just listening in illegally for years. And I think it's a very powerful story and kind of a cautionary lesson for today. I mean, I think we're in a much better situation today than we were in the 50s and 60s in terms of legal regulation of surveillance, checks and balances, inside.

and outside the government in terms of surveillance. But there are still human beings involved, still exercising judgment. And we saw this in the IG report. Basically, the IG was scathing in his criticism of the way that people in the FBI went about finding factual support for the Carter Page application. Carter Page was a Trump campaign advisor of sorts. He was a Trump campaign advisor. He had lots of contacts with Russia. And he was one of the early suspects from the FBI in thinking that he may have been involved with the Russians and some kind of campaign related to the election. Let me stop you there and just give a little background for people. Can you just explain a little bit what the Inspector General's report was tasked

with looking at? Right. The Inspector General was tasked with looking at the opening of the investigation into the Trump campaign. Trump campaign officials in 2016 with special attention to the controversial FISA application for Carter Page, which basically allow the government to engage in electronic surveillance of Carter Page. So on Monday, after the release of the report, William Barr, the Attorney General, came out with a statement saying, quote, the Inspector General's report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken. So, look, Attorney General Bard gave it an interpretation. that was kind of a tendentious interpretation of what Horowitz found. And I don't think it's helpful to the credibility of the department.

It's one of a series of episodes in which Barr, who might have defended in many respects for what he's done in the department, but on this point, I can't defend him because time and time again, he has prejudged the case, prejudged the investigation Durham is doing. He's insinuated things like treason and malfeasance. So I think Barr's statement was of a piece with what. what he said before, and I don't think it's good for the department. I want to turn to something else. This was almost nine months ago when we talked about Attorney General Barr's letter

summarizing the Mueller report when it was not yet released to the public. And you told me, quote, I'll just read what you wrote. It was carefully written but powerful letter by a man, Barr, who obviously understands the issues intimately, and the letter exudes attention to right process into Justice Department hierarchy and norms. Has anything happened in the last nine months that makes you doubt Barr's, quote, attention to right process into Justice Department hierarchy and norms? Yes, I would say that what I said about that letter has not been borne out in the last nine months. He's consistently spun things in a way that shows him not to be neutral and detached that suggests that he's prejudging cases, that suggests that he has an agenda. Look, I like Barr. I think he's told himself a story that he's acting.

to restore the department and the executive branch to his proper place. Barr, that's the main lens through which to view bar. Everything he does comes from the perspective of his conception of executive power and the proper role of the Attorney General in protecting that power. They're not crazy views. There's a lot to support them. They're often painted as crazy in the press, but in fact there's a long tradition behind his views.

The problem is presidents are usually kind of quiet and circumcure. about rule of law issues and law enforcement issues. And Trump is exactly the opposite. He's pounding the issue every day, violating norms every day. And this is the context in which Barr is expressing these executive power reviews. And, you know, the combination makes things seem really bad. Worse than they are, in fact. Jack Goldsmith is the author of Inhoffa Shadow and a number of books on the law.

He spoke with Isaac Chautner, who writes the Q&A column on New Yorker.com. This is the New Yorker Radio, Our Our Our Our Our, stick around. Welcome back to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I'm going to turn things over now to our television critic, Emily Nussbaum, who's got a few words, maybe more than a few, about a show that she's been watching very, very carefully. So one of the shows that I'm really excited about is Watchmen on HBO. And this is a drama that's an update. It's a response to, a sequel to, this graphic novel that came out in the 1980s.

it's pretty impossible to describe the book, but it's about a group of mass crime fighters, and it's set during a period of enormous nuclear threat, and it delves into ideas about American imperialism, the notion of superheroes as a cathartic fantasy of American strength, all of that kind of thing. And the HBO show is set about 30 years later in 2019, and it also uses superhero characters,

but the central subject matter is different. It's very much about race and the traumatic history of that in America, specifically the way that those stories have been repressed, ignored, and wiped out of people's memories. Damon Lindelof is the showrunner of Watchmen, and he is best known for having created Lost and the Leftovers, two very different shows, but two shows which share the qualities of being kind of chopped up chronologies, puzzle box shows, and also shows about big, social traumas that affect enormous amounts of people. But they're precursors to this new show that's about a different kind of social trauma and social catastrophe. I recently wrote about Watchman and I was excited to talk to Lindelof about it, part because it's one of the most exciting, audacious new shows this year. Hi, Damon. Hey, Emily. How are you? I'm good. How are you doing? I am well. I have to say when I was watching the show, the way that I saw it, it felt both like a sequel, which is set 30 years after

the original events. That's simultaneously a celebration of the original and also kind of a critique of it along racial lines. And there's one episode that really gets at this. It's probably my favorite episode of the season, This Extraordinary Being. And in it, one of your new characters, Angela Abar, played by Regina King, flashes back in time, and she experiences the memories of her grandfather, who was a massed crime fighter in the 1930s. What color are those towns for?

White. Tell me, what happened to the Dreamland Theater where you watched that picture over and over while your mama played the piano? What the clan and the fine white citizens of Tulsa do. You ain't going to get justice with a badge, Will Reeves. You're going to get it with that hood. And if you're going to stay a hero,

row. Townsfolk will need to think one of their homes under it. One of the things that that episode does is it does this remarkable thing to the whole narrative of Watchmen, which is that there's a character named Hooded Justice, who in the original is coded in all sorts of ways as white. And in this episode, you do a big reveal. You show that hooded justice is actually a black man. And I want to talk to you about, like, where did that idea come from? Like, trace that for me. Well, you're very familiar with the phrase retcon. And for those who aren't, it's short for retroactive continuity. It's when you go back and you change something as a storyteller

that is pretty much like not the way that it was originally intended. We knew that there was a paradox before us, which was that we wanted to treat the original text as canon, but in order to tell a story about race, we had to do this massive piece of retcon. And Hooded Justice was an ancillary character in the original Watchman. He's really only mentioned a couple of times and seen maybe two or three times, but he had this unique distinction of being the first one to put on a mask and fight crime. And he actually inspired all these other heroes.

And I was like, this is really interesting because in a comic book where all is revealed, almost every mystery is answered, every masked hero is unmasked. Alan Moore decided to never tell us who Hooded Justice was. I've obsessed on that question in a really good way over the course of the last three decades. And this was something that I just always wondered about. Not who was he, but why wasn't his identity revealed to us. And when I was thinking about all these things about what I wanted to watch them to be about, all of those ideas sort of combinated to, oh, I understand why Hooded Justice was never unmasked because if people knew who he really was, they would have killed him. They would have

murdered him. So in the late 30s, the idea of an African-American man fighting crime with a mask on, he would never be revered as a hero. They would have lynched this guy. And so we all agree that the only way to do this would be to put a lot of diversity in front of and behind the camera, not to engage in a certain level of tokenism, but to really build a, a writer's room where white dudes were underrepresented. And so that's what we did. Can you tell me a little bit about one of those conversations in the writer's room? Because I know that you'd said you were specifically looking for writers who were skeptical of your instincts, which interested me. And you've talked about how there were what you said

were bad ideas that you were talked out of. Like, what were the conversations like in the writer's room? You know, what I'll say is what happens in the writer's room has to stay in the writers room. But because Core Jefferson, who co-wrote the episode that you were referencing earlier, episode six, which really kind of leans hardest in some of these issues, I saw him talk about this in an interview. And so I think it's appropriate to tell the story, which is, I think one of the things that I was saying was, I don't ever want to use the N-word in this season of Watchmen, because I don't, like, it's my position that, as a white person, I don't ever want to use that word, even on the page. I don't want to write.

it. I don't want it to appear in any of my shows. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and a number of the other writers of color in the room basically said, we had to use that word. To not use it was even worse than using it. And, uh, and we did in that episode. It's the, it's the one time that it's uttered in the entire season. And I think maybe that gives it maximum power. Why are your stories so full of conmen? It's like a consistent theme on all of your shows is the primal problem of trusting somebody and being inspired by them and being lured toward them and then being enormously betrayed. It happens on this show in a racial context, but it happens on all your shows. Where do you think that comes from? I guess my therapist would tell you because I'm a con man, you know, and that actually,

I'm not saying that to be cutesy. I think in terms of my storytelling, that's a little bit a part of what excites me. And I think that when you look at what the provenance of the term con man is, it's confidence man. And the reason that it's called Confidence Man is because in order for them to work their mojo on you, in order for you to act against your own best interests and allow yourself to be snookered by them, they have to create confidence in the idea that what they're selling is real. That's my favorite kind of storytelling. And so I've always really been attracted to stories about Conman.

One of my favorite movies of all time is The Music Man. And I think that the sort of idea of just pretend that you know how to teach people to how to play music, and lo and behold, they will play music at the end. You know, in Watchman, the person who initially gets conned, it feels, is Angela, who finds out that somebody that was a trusted friend and colleague to her is actually tied into white supremacy. She literally finds a clan robe in his closet. You said Crawford had skeletons in his closet. So I went and I looked in his fucking closet. Oh, that didn't mean literally. What's this?

Did you put it there? Are you trying to set him up? Because that was really fucking easy to find. Why did that feel like an important place to start her story? Well, I think that that's the fundamental idea or fear that exists in any relationship between potentially a white person and a black person. from the perspective of the black person, which is, is this person really my friend, or are they secretly a racist? I'm not saying that that is the case as a broad generalization, but as it was described to me, this sort of idea of, we were really interested in trolling the idea of

the white savior and taking an iconic cop figure like Don Johnson, who I worshipped and adored in Miami Vice. And then one of my first writing gigs was on Nash Bridges and basically taking him and saying, you have a clan robe hidden in your closet. You're still just as charming as Don Johnson is charming. And that is a, it's not necessarily a mask. Both things are true. You're still a super nice, funny guy. You also have a clan robe in your closet. That's the idea that feels like very relevant to today's times. The white supremacist group in the show, the Seventh Cavalry, is devoted to one of the major characters from the 1980s comic named Rorschach, who I think a lot of people regard in a strange

way as the anti-heroic central character on the show, somebody that people look up to. And he's this quasi-fascist, strict law and order moralizing character. When you read it when you were 13, did you love Rorschach? Yes. If you're a teenage boy, you love Roorshack because he's cool. His mask is cool. He breaks people's fingers. He has a code. He's going to be the one who solves the mystery. But I think the first time that it occurred to me was probably like in my mid-20s. Whereas like this guy, it's not, he's not highly problematic in terms of because he's a homophobic or a misogynist. It's highly problematic that I ever believed that he was. meant to be the hero. And Alan Moore has talked about the idea that people would come up to him and tell him how much they loved Rorschach and it would scare him. And so I wanted to take all of that and basically mix that into the appropriation stew and say the actual Rorschach is dead and has been for multiple decades. But in our watchmen, it's more interesting to think about the idea, the

the virality of Roershack and the idea that anybody who wanted to put on his mask could now define what they thought he was all about. That's fascinating. I'm just sort of thinking to myself about what Roershack means. Because, you know, when you read the book as, you know, as a woman in your early 50s, is like a very different kind of feeling. And it was hard for me to even get into the sort of teen boy worship of Roershack because he has enormous pathos. But I could see the appeal certainly of him seeing things in black and white. On the casting thing and the way in which the whole show feels like a meditation on the notion of casting and diversity and casting and basically who gets to be the center of the story, I wondered whether you could talk a little bit about how that's changed for you during your time in making TV. I was really struck by the fact that certainly on Lost when the show started, there was a whole different period in TV and the conversation was taking place at a different level.

I think that it's probably less about my thoughts changing as more as it is. It's a process. I kind of went into lost feeling like patting myself on the back for how diverse the cast was. But the show really engaged more in tokenism than anything else. The predominant stories being told were about the white characters and understanding that we were doing an eight o'clock network show on ABC, it is a little bit odd that Michael and Walt and Brod, were the only black people of 48 people on that entire island, and even more odd that the color of their skin was never really a significant issue. And so I just wasn't comfortable talking about or dealing with race. I think most white people aren't, and certainly most white writers aren't, and I'm not any more comfortable now than I was two decades ago. But that no longer became a viable excuse to not do it. What was great talking to you, thank you again for doing it.

And congratulations on the show. Thanks. The New Yorker's Emily Nesbam talking with Damon Lindeloff, creator and showrunner of Watchman. The season finale of Watchman airs Sunday, December 15th. I'm David Remnick, and that's The New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for listening. And please join us next time for a conversation with the actor, Peter Dinklage. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garland. of Tuneiards with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Riannon Corby, Karen Frulman, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino. With help from Isaac Jones, Morgan Flannery, Adam Ty Schultz, Alison McAdam, Monk Faye-Chin, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Turina Endowment Fund.