>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. >> Welcome to the second annual Books to Movies Presentation here at the National Book Festival. My name is Mike Micron, I'm head of the moving image section at the Library of Congress. I'm very proud to represent my colleagues who work at the Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Virginia. It is a purpose built facility. It was funded by David Woodley Packard expressly for the purpose of acquiring and cataloguing, housing, preserving, and making accessible the world's largest collection of film, video, and sound recordings. A lot of people are not even aware that the library even has film and video collections, but they're the largest in the world. We have roughly 1.4 million moving image items in our collection. We have film dating back to 1891, the very first Edison camera test up to all the current releases coming out today. So if you're worried about Minions being preserved for future generations [laughter], got you covered, good. And we're especially delighted to be a part of this program tonight. There's one little -- I was debating whether or not to talk about this but I'm going to use my opportunity here, my minute or two, for a little teachable lesson. Now we're the copyright library of the United States. And so when film producers, television producers want to register the work for copyright they have to submit a copy to the library. Now you're familiar with this for -- with books and all, but they do this for movies, television shows, documentary, poodle grooming with Debbie, you know, those sorts of video -- it's a real title by the way, you're familiar with that. But we are sort of in -- we're in the end days of 35 millimeter film. It's very hard to see 35 millimeter these days. We still operate a film preservation laboratory and we preserve film, we make new film copies, film on film. We have a lot of digital tools in the toolbox as well. But when I was asked to put together some clips for the second half of the program tonight, I had to get clips from the recent HBO documentary Going Clear and from The Woman in Gold, which was a film with Helen Mirren that was released earlier this year. And I will tell you, neither one of those clips look particularly good. I had to rip them from DVD-Rest. Now Woman in Gold, you know it was a major theatrical release, but the studio simply aren't making very many 35 millimeter prints anymore, they're making digital cinema packages and they come encrypted to prevent piracy. Well, we can't preserve those at the library. We have to get them unencrypted. So we actually need a change to the copyright law. So when you see the clip tonight from Woman in Gold, you're going to see at the top, it says something like property of TWC, that's The Weinstein Company that released it. And another little bug in the lower right-hand corner that says U.S. copyright. Okay. So, instead of getting a nice 35 millimeter print of that film we're now getting a watermarked DVD-R. So I'm sad about this. But I figured I would at the very least give you a little teachable moment so we'd understand, so you wouldn't look at that and say why couldn't that guy come up with something better. But we're going to have a really terrific program tonight. I'm glad to see we have such a great turnout tonight. It is my very distinct pleasure to introduce to you to start tonight's program, the chief film critic of the Washington Post, Ann Hornaday. ^M00:04:20 [ Applause ] ^M00:04:29 >> Ann Hornaday: Thank you, Mike, and thank all of you for being here. This really is a great turnout. How many of you here were here last year? We had fun, didn't we? We're going to fun tonight. You know A. Scott Berg is the author of the Pulitzer prize-winning biography of Charles Lindbergh. You know A. Scott Berg is the author of Wilson, his most recent book, the biography of Woodrow Wilson. But for our purposes here tonight we're going to focus on his other work that includes books about Katharine Hepburn and William Wyler and Samuel Goldwyn. It includes a screenplay that he wrote in 1982 for a pivotal film called Making Love. It includes his personal history with the film business, it's literally in the family so he has personal knowledge of that of which we speak tonight, and perhaps most important, his book, Max Perkins, Editor of Genius, is soon to be a major motion picture after a long and winding road I might add, and I can't wait to get into the details of that. But he has a lot of wisdom to share and he has very generously agreed to share a special part of it with us as the first part of the program with a presentation about the history of Hollywood and film making. I can't wait to see what he shows us and what he says, and it's my distinct pleasure to introduce A. Scott Berg. ^M00:06:00 [ Applause ] ^M00:06:05 >> A. Scott Berg: Thank you. Thank you. Well that was a real over promise of wisdom. I'll give you a lot of talk, I don't know how much of it will be wisdom, but it will all be heartfelt. Books to movies is the main theme of all this. I mean this is the National Book Festival. So what I was going to do with my time here, before we break into the panel in the next session, is to talk about not just of books to movies but about a book I wrote about the movies, a biography of Samuel Goldwyn, and to talk about the movies themselves and how you might even start to read movies, which is something I did. I am a biographer. I spend my life telling life stories. And I have now written five biographies as you -- as you have heard. The first I did was based on my senior thesis in college. It was a biography of a man named Maxwell Perkins, who was a book editor by trade, who is most famous for basically discovering and developing the talents of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, James Jones, Taylor Caldwell, Erskine Caldwell. I could then mention another two dozen authors who literally changed the course of the American River that we call American literature. I then did my book on Goldwyn, which I'll get back to in a minute, but I then did a book on Charles Lindbergh. This -- I do my books because I decided very early on that I wanted to try to capture 20th-century American culture in a shelf full of books. So after doing the story of Perkins, who was an east coast, ninth generation, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, my third book, and as I said, I'll jump back to number two, was Lindbergh, who was a mid-westerner, that became a book about aviation, but also about modern celebrity. My next book that I was about to do was about Woodrow Wilson, who is a southerner, as many of you know. It was a book obviously about politics, about government, it was also a book about higher education in this country, he having been a college professor and a college president for most of his career in fact. Before I started that book my publisher said but gee, Scott, before you get into that Wilson book it occurs to me, although you don't talk about it much, that you seem to sneak off on weekends with Katharine Hepburn, is that true? Well, yes, it is true. Would you ever think about writing a book about her? And I said well, yes, it's funny you should mention that because she has asked me on more than one occasion to write a book about her. And, in fact, at one point when I asked why it was so important she -- know that she thought I should write a book about her, she explained quite simply because I'm fascinating [laughter]. And, of course, she was. And, of course, I did. And what happened is for 20 years in which we were friends, after almost every meal we had together, after every weekend, after every trip, whatever it was, she would say the same thing to me, go upstairs and write down everything I said [laughter]. Why? You know, you got it. So that has been how I've spent most of the last 40, 45 years. Now to go to book two, right after my Max Perkins book, I began -- that's when I began to think of putting this apple pie together, of trying to tell the story of the 20th century through a half dozen books of American cultural figures. ^M00:10:00 So after writing about the quintessential WASP Harvard educated east coast book person, I began to think what's the opposite of that? And I immediately thought, of course, of that remarkable first-generation, a half dozen Jewish immigrants who had come to this country all within a few years of each other at the turn-of-the-century, all within -- they all were born within 500 miles of each other back in middle Europe. And none of them was educated. They all migrated to the west coast and they started something new, something we now call Hollywood. And of all the moguls, the early moguls, there was one who really stood out as the quintessential mogul to me, the most interesting to me, and that was Samuel Goldwyn. And so he is the one I selected to become the subject of my second book. Now there was one other really good reason for me to write about Sam Goldwyn, and that is I received a phone call just as I was going this thought process from Samuel Goldwyn, Junior. I mean, out of the blue came this call asking if I wanted to write a biography of his father. And he explained to me that before his father had died he had promised that he would get a biographer to write about him, and the old man, old Sam Goldwyn, said that's great, I want a biography written me but I want to be dead before it's published because I want the book to tell the truth. And this has always been a problem in writing about Hollywood figures, because Hollywood itself is this great invention. These six moguls were self-inventors. They were all self-invented characters in point of fact. And the problem was trying to dig up actual hard facts on these people. In the case of Samuel Goldwyn, fortunately for me, he had kept all his archives, every one of his papers, and Sam Goldwyn, Junior was making them available to me. So when he approached me and asked if I wanted to write about his famous father, Samuel Goldwyn, he said you will have access to all this material, does that interest you? Yes, that definitely interested me. I said but, you know, I'd take your word for it but you're the son of Samuel Goldwyn, Junior, I'd like to see what I will be dealing with. And he lived in Beverly Hills and I went to visit him there and there he said look, here is a key, and here is an address of Lion's Moving and Storage in the middle Hollywood, go down there, use this key when you get to the first -- the first of the three family vaults up there. And I went over and, well, I'll never forget driving over. It's a six-story building. You took the elevator up to the top, got out, climbed up a fire escape, went across the roof, and then down another stairwell into a whole other part of the building that couldn't normally access, and then down two long, dark halls and there at the end was a huge door with a padlock and there was the key. So put the key in, turned on a light switch, one bulb hanging down in the middle of a room that I would say was probably 20 by 20 feet. It was completely surrounded by file cabinets. I went to the first file cabinet to see what I was dealing with and I found papers going back relating to a man named Schmuel Gelbfish, who was a teenage runaway from Warsaw, Poland, who came to this country, I would later learn he stole the money to get to this country, did not come through the border normally. He was an illegal alien who jumped ship in Canada, having come over steerage, walked across the border somewhere in Maine, made his way by foot to New York City. Once he got there he went to the Jewish sector of Manhattan, realized it was a Jewish ghetto just like the one he had run away from in Warsaw, wanted to get out of the city, heard about a place upstate called Gloversville, New York, where Schmuel Gelbfish changed his name to Samuel Goldfish. Samuel Goldfish become a glove maker and then glove salesman, and then moved to New York City where he became the greatest glove salesman in the United States. And one day in 1913 he felt something was happening to the glove business and it was about to suffer. And he walked one very hot August day for the first time into a movie theater in Times Square. And as he walked in Bronco Billy, who was the biggest western star of the silent screen at that moment, was riding along on a horse and he made a leap onto a moving train. Well Samuel Goldfish thought this was the most exciting thing he had ever seen and decided by the time he walked out of that theater that he was going to go into the film business. And that's what he did. He talked his brother-in-law, who was a Vaudevillian named Jesse Lasky, into going into business with him. The two of them, they decided, to option a play together, which they did called The Squaw Man. Sam Goldfish thought this was the perfect vehicle for a movie because it was a western and it was a love story. So he thought it would appeal to men and it would appeal to women, and he put it together. They decided to find a director. There was one man that wanted to go to, his name was William DeMille. And so they went to William DeMille's agent, who happened to be his mother [laughter]. They said Mrs. DeMille, we'd like to hire your son, William, to direct our first movie. And she said well, he's very busy, you know, he's a very busy man. But I happen to have another son named Cecil. Now, yes, Cecil B. Well has he ever directed? No, but he's a very good actor and we're sure he could direct a movie. Well she was a damn good agent, mama DeMille, because took [inaudible] on this guy, Cecil DeMille. They got on a train in New York City with a small crew and a small cast. They went to the end of the line, which was Flagstaff, Arizona. They were going to film the western out there. Then Cecil DeMille and crew walked outside, looked around. It didn't look at all the way Cecil DeMille thought the west should look, so they got back on another train, which was then going to go to the end of that line, which landed in Los Angeles. And after a few days in Los Angeles Goldfish, he's still back in New York mind -- he's minding the store, while Jesse Lasky and DeMille are out there now in Los Angeles, and they find a barn in the middle of some orange groves where they decided to film their movie. And reputedly, Lasky swears this is true, so I'm sure it's false [laughter], it's Hollywood, but he said that he sent a telegram back to Sam Goldfish saying, have rented a barn in a place called Hollywood. And there they made the first feature film ever made in a place called Hollywood. Now this is pretty exciting stuff. So I'm finding all this just going through files. This is awfully exciting. So now I'm really revved up about all this. So I decide just to start opening drawers, whatever I can find. I find that indeed when Goldfish decided to go into the movie business and was going to send Cecil DeMille on this train, the first person he talked to about how to make a movie was Thomas Edison. Imagine this, all right, Edison. Who better, how to make a movie then the guy that invented it. Okay. Now I went to the very last drawer, and the very drawer had the phone sheet that Samuel Goldman's secretary kept, every time somebody placed a phone call to him. He had had a stroke in his late 80s. The last call to come in before he had his stroke was from Warren Beatty. And I realized everything in between in all these file cabinets would allow me to document the story of Hollywood, between Thomas Edison and Warren Beatty. That was a story I wanted to tell. So not only did I spend the next year and a half going through hundreds of thousands of documents. I spent much of the next few years interviewing about 150 people, most of whom were from golden age of Hollywood. ^M00:20:00 I was able to interview Olivia de Havilland, Betty Davis, Katharine Hepburn during that period, Myrtle [inaudible], Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrea, the great directors, William Wyler, George Cukor, King Vidor, Henry Kane, Henry Hathaway, I mean virtually any actor, writer, director who was alive from the golden era, who had worked with Samuel Goldwyn, I was able to see, 150 interviews. I should hasten to add that about 110 of them died before my book was published. Now, Hollywood is a small town, and word began to spread [laughter], that when you get a call from Scott Berg for your interview, don't say yes. Oh no, it's your time. It's time for the interview, oh yes. Come quietly, come gently. Well anyway, interview I did. Now I want to get into some film clips here. I was also fortunate enough, because Samuel Goldwyn, who later changed his name from Goldfish to Goldwyn when he went into business with the Selwyn brothers. So they could have either formed Goldwyn Pictures were Selfish Productions [laughter], far more apt but they went with Goldwyn, which sounded like a winner, you know, Goldwyn. So that was kind of great. Now Samuel Goldwyn got kicked out of what initially became Paramount Pictures. That's when he went into business with the Selwyns, formed the Goldwyn Company, which went into business with Louis B. Mayer and the Metro Company. He got kicked out of what became Metro Goldwyn Mayer, he's gone from that one now. He finally realizes maybe I should work alone. Maybe I have a personality problem. And indeed, Samuel Goldwyn started his own independent film company call Goldwyn Pictures. He made 80 motion pictures as himself, as produced by Samuel Goldwyn. That is to say, every one of these movies he financed himself, he owned himself, he personally selected which movies of the thousands, the tens thousands of alternatives, of options that cross a producer's desk in a lifetime, he selected which ones he would make. And so those 80 films I began to think, and this is what I would like you to consider tonight when I run a few clips for you, do these clips reveal anything about Samuel Goldwyn, the person? I'm a biographer. I want to illuminate his life. Are there some little nuggets in any of these films that tell me what made him tick, that tell me who he was? Then, you know, the job of a biographer is not just to tell a life but to tell about the world in which a subject lives. So do any of these clips, in fact, reveal anything about Hollywood as Hollywood was developing over the 50 years or so that he was making movies? Does it tell anything about the country in which Samuel Goldwyn lived? Indeed, does it tell us anything about the world, anything perhaps about the human experience? So that's what I wanted to do in the book, when I was watching the movies, and also I want to do for you tonight in the next few minutes. So Samuel Goldwyn, with his own company now, is rolling along, he's a very successful producer of silent films, he's doing extremely well, especially in the mid-1920s. He has now developed two big silent screen stars. They are Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky. And, you know, well I'm going to show you a clip of the two of them in a movie called The Winning of Barbara Worth, which was based on a book by a very popular author of the day named Harold Bell Wright, and you will see -- and this is one of the great ironies to me about Goldwyn and about so many of the other moguls, these semi-literate men, how often, and in fact the less literate they were the more they relied on more serious literature. So here is a clip from a movie that came out in 19 -- late '26, early '27 called The Winning of Barbara Worth. And God willing, here we go. Silent movies, by the way, were never silent. When you went to even a small theater in Iowa or if you went to a big theater in New York City, there was always musical accompaniment, but there's Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky and you're about to meet an actor, this is his first feature film, a man named Frank Cooper, who's agent said why don't you name yourself after my little town in Indiana, and thus [inaudible] no, Gary Cooper. And watch the staging of the scene, which was by Henry King, a great director. He told me when he staged this scene he recognized Gary Cooper, was a style of acting. And he said when I did this scene you can see the old style walking off the screen and you're left with that. Now, months after this movie came out Goldwyn has these two huge stars. It was a huge hit this movie. The Jazz Singer opened. Suddenly, we have talking pictures. Ronald Colman, I found in the files, had sent a letter to Sam Goldwyn saying, Sam, these silent movies I think they're not going to last, surely you will not put me in any of them, not with my voice. Ronald Colman, if you don't know, had one of most beautiful voices every in movies. Vilma Banky, unfortunately, spoke only Hungarian [laughter], with a very thick Hungarian accent. So that was the end of the Vilma Banky's career I'm afraid. And in fact, there were only two silent screen stars who went on to have even bigger talking pictures careers, and they are Ronald Coleman and Greta Garbo. Now, Goldwyn's next picture, as he starts to get into talking pictures, his next big picture was his first all talking movie. This came out in 1930. This is a movie called Bulldog Drummond. And I'm going to run this this clip for you, which is kind of wonderful. Oh, I just did something terrible here. Uh-oh, let's see what happens. The scene, as you will see, is really about sound itself. You could now go to the movies and you could hear the gong of a clock. Silence. Now people were hearing sounds from a screen they had never heard before. Microphones were very crude, rudimentary, you couldn't even hear all the dialogue. ^E00:27:52 ^B00:27:59 ^M00:28:00 [ Clanking Sound ] ^M00:28:01 You could hear a spoon drop in a movie theater. This was breathtaking. ^M00:28:14 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:28:34 And there's Ronald Colman. ^M00:28:35 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:28:50 You could go to the movies and hear a man whistle. ^M00:28:54 [ Whistling ] ^M00:29:04 They were making so many movies with people whistling in them in 1929 and 1930, as a gag people were calling them whistlies [phonetic]. And now all the studios are making musicals. I mean, they're really beefing up just to do anything they could to show what you could now do in a motion picture. And indeed it was at this time musicals were starting to get, people were getting sick and tired of musicals, and it was at this moment that Goldwyn decided to make his first movie, his first movie musical that is. And for that he went to New York and he found an actor, whom he turned into the biggest movie star in the world at that time. He made musicals. Any of you have a clue who it was? Well, I'll give you a, there we go, see if you get it. ^M00:30:00 It's a movie called Whoopee. The star was Eddie Cantor. Huge star of radio, screen, [inaudible]. ^M00:30:13 [ Music ] ^M00:31:12 That's all you get of that. You can see [inaudible] super talent this man was though. And he made musicals for Goldwyn for the next 10 years in fact. Now Goldwyn came up with a nice formula. He would alternate between silly musical comedies and, indeed that one, Whoopee, was the first one to employ the talents of a choreographer who had never worked in movies named Busby Berkeley, and he -- and Goldman actually brought about him out to Hollywood and, of course, Busby Berkeley revolutionized the movie musical. Now he would alternate the silly musical comedies with serious drama. And the most -- well Goldwyn was making films based on very important stage plays, such as Sinclair Lewis's Dodsworth. He did another one based on Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis, Dead End, the play by Sidney Kingsley. So there was some very high-minded literature that Goldwyn was really transforming into a very exciting motion pictures. And then in 1939, which is golden year in all of Hollywood history, Sam Goldwyn produced a script that had been kicking around Hollywood for years. And it was kicking around because, well, it was based on what was considered a very serious but a very dark book, and that was Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. And here you have Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier in his first important role. ^M00:32:46 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:33:12 Yes, those are the fabled [inaudible] of Chatsworth, California. This was Goldwyn's favorite movie, and I think there's the reason why. ^M00:33:24 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:34:07 You see, [inaudible] really had the ultimate, American dream story. He made it big in America and then [inaudible] was chipped from Yorkshire to Chatsworth. ^M00:34:18 [ Music ] ^M00:34:43 That's the movie that made Laurence Olivier a movie star in fact. Then -- the reason this movie got made really is that in the late '30s war was starting to ratchet up in Europe, and in fact Franklin Roosevelt put it out there to the moguls of Hollywood, I want to get us into this war and we need to start building spirit for our English cousins. And he asked all the studio moguls if they would make very pro-British films. So this is how films like Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights would begin to flood the market in the late '30s and early '40s. By 1941, of course, we were in the war, into 1942 the government basically said we need propaganda movies in essence, but out of Hollywood. Don't make them obviously propaganda. Make pro-American movies, maybe movies about American heroes. And this was Samuel Goldwyn's contribution, the pride of Yankees, the story of Lou Gerhig and his most famous scene. Gary Cooper of course. ^M00:35:53 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:36:48 For those of you who say Gary Cooper could only say yup, yes that is Babe Ruth as Babe Ruth. ^M00:36:53 [ Cheering ] ^M00:36:59 It's a good scene. Great scene. Once again, Goldwyn keeps going, alternating. He had discovered a new star named Danny Kaye. So he would alternate Danny Kaye musicals with more serious dramas. I'm going to show you a clip of -- well one of Samuel Goldwyn's most celebrated movies, again based on a piece of literature, based on Lillian Hellman's play The Little Fox's. Lillian Hellman, who I obviously got to interview, yeah, she died too before the book came out. Darn. But anyway, she said, and with very good reason and for the scene I'm about to show you, that she thought the film of The Little Foxes played better than any versions of the play could, and it was for this one scene in particular, in which Bette Davis, whom Samuel Goldwyn got out of her iron clad Warner Brothers' contract for this one movie, because of a poker debt Jack Warner had -- just was unable to pay. And he said, is there any way I could -- I could work off this debt. And he said yes, Bette Davis. No, I can't loan out Bette Davis. Well, what if I give you Gary Cooper to play Sergeant York. Okay, so he did and she did and they did and anyway, they made this scene in which Bette Davis plays the most vile, greediest woman who ever lived and her husband holds all holds all the cards. But he is about to die, go and he's got a very weak heart and he needs his heart medicine as you will now see. Now, the thing to look at, and this is an interesting piece of filmmaking, Samuel Goldwyn had developed a cameraman over many years who became, I still think is the greatest cinematographer in movie history, a man named Gregg Toland. He is most famous for being the cameraman on Citizen Kane. But he cut his teeth on 25 Goldwyn pictures before and after he did Citizen Kane. And here you'll see something Toland developed called deep focus, in which by using a certain kind of lens and lighting the two areas of the stage differently, brightening the background and keeping it a little darker in the foreground, you could capture two different playing areas at once. And so here's the scene from Little Foxes that Lillian Hellman thought really clenched it. That's Herbert Marshall playing her husband. Now watch Bette Davis. There's not a word she speaks. ^M00:39:41 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:40:06 The score to this movie, by the way, was written by Meredith Wilson long before he wrote The Music Man. And look at Bette Davis, oh, doesn't have to speak. And I should tell you, Herbert Marshall, the actor, had a wooden leg so the staggering, well. And they couldn't really film him climb stairs and so William Wyler, the great director, staged the scene so that he would walk off camera, and then his body double would go up the stairs. It's a great scene, great scene. Now America does go to war. America comes home from war. This is a time Hollywood decided not to do anything that had to do with war. Everyone was sick of war movies. This is the moment that Sam Goldwyn, this independent filmmaker going against all those big studios, Paramount, MGM, that kicked him out, Warner Brothers, Universal, all the others, Sam Goldwyn at this moment decides to make his war movie. Actually, he decides to make a postwar movie. He makes the first and the most important and the best postwar movie ever made. It's called The Best Years of Our Lives. It was originally based on a magazine article that Mrs. Goldwyn had read in Time Magazine about the trouble soldiers were having readjusting to civilian life. Goldwin decided there was a movie there. He gave it to an author, MacKinley Kantor, to write a book. And MacKinley Kantor off and wrote a book based on this. Little did Goldwyn know it would come back written in poetry. Goldwyn said I don't know what to do with this, and it wasn't until William Wyler, the great director, Goldwyn's great director, came back from the war severely injured. He had lost much of this hearing. He fell in love with this story, he wanted to tell the story of soldiers coming home, a rather universal story. And this one scene I'm about tell -- show you, I think it's just the greatest single moment in postwar film. And it captures not just the moment in the characters' lives here, but it captured the homecoming moment of every American family, every family around the world when a soldier comes home. And it's Fredric March coming home to his wife, Myrna Loy. Wyler, himself, the director said to me, the key to this scene he thought was Myrna Loy's shoulders. And when you see the scene, keep your eye on her shoulders. There he is coming home to a city like Cincinnati. His wife knows he's coming home soon but she doesn't know when. ^M00:43:18 [ Music ] ^M00:43:32 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:43:50 And Myrna's shoulders drop and she knows he's home. ^M00:43:57 [ Music ] ^M00:44:30 Now if that scene doesn't move you I don't want to know about it. And I don't even want to know you in point of fact. It's just a killer scene. I asked Myrna Loy, I said look, that's the most famous scene in the movie, what were you thinking as an actor as, you know, as your husband is coming home? She said, to be really honest, I was just thinking I can't wait to get in the sack with him [laughter]. Myrna Loy, you're the perfect wife, yeah, exactly right. So now Goldwyn just keeps alternating, alternating, and now you know by the late '40s, early '50s, motion pictures, Hollywood, has to compete against television, they were going through great labor strikes. Just all sorts of adversities in the motion picture business. So, Hollywood had to get bigger, had to get more colorful. The screens had to get wider. The music had to get louder. Musicals had to be the biggest musicals in the world. And it was at this moment Goldwyn picked one of those. He picked Guys and Dolls, and he did this, and I remind you this is based on another piece of literature. This is based on Damon Runyon, writing the Idols of Sarah Brown, one of the most wonderful American musicals ever, ever. And here's a scene from it. The slightly unfortunate thing about Guys and Dolls is, well, it starred Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra. The unfortunate thing is Goldwyn basically gave Sinatra the non-singing role and he gave Marlon Brando, well, I'll let you hear for yourself. He's Marlon Brando. ^M00:46:18 [ Music ] ^M00:46:46 The sound engineer tweaked it by a half tone and that's how we got that. But he made it, and it was a very, very successful musical. You know, even these musicals, if you -- if you look at them compositely, if you look at the 20 musicals Samuel Goldwyn made over the years, if you look at the costumes, if you look at the choreography, if you look at the hairstyles, if you look at the styles of the women's faces, you can see how concepts of beauty even changed over the years. That's how important motion pictures are to the American ethos you see. It is that pervasive, and not just American but all over the world. And here's just -- here's just a glimpse of what I'm talking about, the Goldwyn girls over the years, an idea he ripped off from Ziegfeld, of course. ^M00:47:43 [ Music ] ^M00:47:50 Busby Berkeley quite obviously. ^M00:47:51 [ Music ] ^M00:48:10 It would be hard to do that number today. So you see, by studying one man's life, as a biographer I could really study much more that. I could study the growth of Hollywood. I could study [inaudible] themes, issues in the United States. I could study the human nature. And all this I've just shown you, you know, nine minutes of 10 films, imagine what it was like to look at 80 of these, to have those 150 interviews, to have 500,000 documents of Samuel Goldwyn's to go through, and as a result of that you really get a composite, not just of a life but of our culture. Here's, in essence, what I was dealing with. The first feature film ever made in a place called Hollywood. One of the hugest opera stars ever, the greatest comedian of the silent screen, Mabel Normand, alas or Vilma. Helen Hayes made Arrowsmith, directed by John Ford, Miriam Hopkins did several movies for Goldwyn. Dorothy Lamour wore her sarong for the first time in The Hurricane. Eddie Cantor, of course, [inaudible] huge star, Barbara Stanwyck did Ball of Fire and Stella Dallas. Walter Brennan won three Academy awards as supporting actor. Bob Hope did several war-time comedies, Dead End, [inaudible]. Teresa Wright, William Wyler called her the best crier in Hollywood. David Niven did The Bishop's Wife with Cary Grant and Loretta Young. ^M00:50:00 Virginia Mayo began as a Goldwyn girl and became a star. Walter Houston [assumed spelling] in God's Worth. Natalie Wood people forget began as a child star. Susan Hayward did one movie based on a J. D. Salinger story. Hans Christian Andersen. And Goldwyn's last movie is all big musicals, Guys and Dolls, Hans Christian Andersen, and Porgy and Bess, his last movie. ^M00:50:28 [ Music ] ^M00:50:33 And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Goldwyn age of Hollywood. Thank you very much [applause]. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Well, now I think -- don't go. Yes, do we have questions? See, I left you six minutes of question time if you have them and if they're not too hard [laughter]. Are you [inaudible] yes, and then I hope you'll stick around because we're now -- once we finish a few questions we are going to lead right into the panel on transferring books into movies. Sir? >> I got two [inaudible] questions. One is, of all the great stars that you are showing appeared in Goldwyn movies, which are the greatest that he, under his watch, discovered and developed? >> A. Scott Berg: Which story? >> No, stars. >> A. Scott Berg: Stars. >> Under his watch he discovered and developed as opposed to like borrowing Bette Davis from another thing. Who would you say would be the greatest? >> A. Scott Berg: Well, again, and here's the thing. And, you know, I didn't have enough time to tell you what an [inaudible], what an outsider Samuel Goldwyn was. Because he got kicked out of these other studios, Paramount, MGM, and then The Warners came along and so forth, and [inaudible] Columbia, they really had first grab at all the huge stars. So he had to pick up those that were left aside or, you know, that was it. So the ones, and if I mentioned his biggest stars, they are people like Dana Andrews, you know. >> Because he scouted and developed? >> A. Scott Berg: Exactly. So now he did discover David Niven. And he did discover Gary Cooper. And there's a wonderful little anecdote in the book actually, because I met Sam Goldwyn's secretary from the 1920s, and she had saved a series of letters she had sent to her best friend and she said, you know, what used to happen on the Hollywood studios in the '20s and '30s, cowboys used to just hang outside the studio gates. Goldwyn's secretary used to see this cowboy, who became Gary Cooper, every day and she fell madly in love with him, and who wouldn't, and she kept saying to Mr. Goldwyn, you've got to see this cowboy. You've got to hire him. And he wasn't remotely interested in anything his secretary had to say and finally the director one day heard this, saw the cowboy, and that became Gary Cooper and there he was. And Goldwyn had him under contract for several years until Paramount really grabbed him and made something quite big out of him. >> One other [inaudible] thing, in the context of movie musicals, wouldn't MGM considerably outweigh what Goldwyn had done? Or what's Goldwyn's strength and vis-a-vis MGM or other great -- >> A. Scott Berg: Again, I mean nobody did the musical movie the way MGM did. I mean, that freed unit especially just had the greatest talent of writers, song writers, directors, choreographers, and so forth. They had that wrapped up. That said, Goldwyn had awfully good instincts. And it was he who brought Busby Berkeley out here. It was he who first engaged Florenz Ziegfeld to try his hand at Hollywood. Ziegfeld came out here actually bringing Busby Birkeley with him, and Goldwyn quickly put him off to the side, that is Ziegfeld, and developed his own Goldwyn girls as I mentioned. But it was Goldwyn who not only took a chance on Eddie Cantor, who all the other studios were afraid to hire because they thought he was too ethic, re Jewish. >> Right. >> A. Scott Berg: And they didn't want, you know, too -- anybody overtly Jewish in the movies like that. Goldwyn did the same with Danny Kaye, another huge, huge discovery. And at the end of the day I would say the biggest star Goldwyn discovered and developed was probably Danny Kaye, although Eddie Cantor in the '30s was also really big. >> Okay, well thank you so much. >> A. Scott Berg: You're very welcome. Sir? >> Thank you. What -- it'll be a quick question. What movie technique from that age is -- was so good, because you were telling us a few movie techniques that they use, is so good that they haven't improved upon and they're still using it to this day? Thank you. >> A. Scott Berg: Well, I think, you know, if you have one Goldwyn movie to look at, and I've already tipped my hand here, and it will play a little creaky. It's a black and white movie for one, and it's a long movie. But it is The Best Years of Our Lives. And this movie, I think, will tell you more about America in the 1940's, and it will tell you more about filmmaking than any movie -- well that -- certainly that Goldwyn made, and off the top of my head that anybody was making at that time. It has Gregg Toland's cinematography everywhere. Sometimes it's just mind blowing some of the scenes, Wyler and Gregg Toland staged, very often using deep focus. The actors, it had such -- it had such an air of verisimilitude in this movie, down to the fact that they hired an actor named Harold Russell, who had lost both of his arms in the war, and he won an Academy award actually in, you know, that year for Best Years as did Fredric March, as did the screenwriter, Robert Sherwood, the great Pulitzer prize-winning playwright, who won for best screenplay, as did William Wyler, who always considered Best Years the most important film he ever did. And so I would say if you have one film to look at and the talent will see from Fredric March on down is just overwhelming. And in fact, you will see one performance by Virginia Mayo in it, who plays a girlfriend of somebody, it's actually Dana -- it's Dana Andrews' wife who has been cheating on him while he's been away at war. And when I interviewed Virginia Mayo she said, be sure you get this in your book, that I won William Wyler his Oscar for best director. And I said how do you explain that, Miss Mayo, You only had two or three scenes? She said because everybody went to that movie and said, my God he can do that with Virginia Mayo [laughter]? Thank you very much. >> Anne Hornaday: Scott, thank you so much, that was absolutely wonderful. >> A. Scott Berg: You're very welcome. >> Ann Hornaday: Another round of applause. >> A. Scott Berg: Thank you, thank you. ^M00:57:29 [ Applause ] ^M00:57:34 >> Ann Hornaday: You [inaudible] evening up beautifully. You all know Scott Berg so I will introduce our next two panelists. To my, in the middle, my old friend Lawrence Wright. Larry's most recent book is 13 Days in September, the dramatic story of the struggle for peace. It's a history of the Camp David negotiations, which actually started life as a play called Camp David, which was produced last year at the Arena Stage. >> Lawrence Wright: Here. >> Ann Hornaday: Yeah, exactly right here in Washington. Right around the corner. Of course Larry is also the author of the Pulitzer prize-winning Looming -- The Looming Tower, a history of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. And he wrote Going Clear, The Expose of Scientology that this year became the HBO documentary by Alex Gibney, which is nominated for an Emmy I believe. >> Lawrence Wright: Seven. >> Ann Hornaday: Only seven. So I think an Emmy's going to join the Pulitzer on the shelf. Larry has also written screenplays, original screenplays which we -- I hope we'll get to tonight as has Scott, so both of you have a breadth of experience across adaptations and originals, which I think is really interesting. To my immediate right is Anne-Marie O'Connor who wrote The Lady in Gold, The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. Which, of course, was the story of Maria Altmann's search to bring back the paintings of her family in Austria that been looted by the Nazis, that a lot of know as the movie, Woman in Gold. Thank you for joining us. ^M00:59:14 [ Applause ] ^M00:59:20 Scott, I'm going to with -- one of the daring jewels of your presentation to me was just how abiding Hollywood's fascination with adaptation has been. I was doing kind of a cursory glance at the films coming out between now and the end of the year, which is sort of award season, it's kind of when Hollywood reserves -- it's the time that Hollywood brings out their more high toned awards material, and I counted at least 25 adaptations, and not a fiction. I mean these are usually fact-based, historical biographies. I think lately that's become their way of preselling an audience, of finding, you know. ^M01:00:00 The industry is so dependent on no risk properties, and that's why see so many comic book movies and special effect spectacles, but maybe another way to hedge it's bets is to rely on news stories and histories and biographies to capitalize on the readership and audience for those works. But it's not such a new phenomenon, is it? >> A. Scott Berg: No, and I think it gets back to the fact that whether you making a film, or whether you are writing a poem, or whether you are writing a novel, the writer has the same basic task. There's a contract between the artist and the audience, and that is to tell a good story. >> Ann Hornaday: Yeah. >> A. Scott Berg: And ultimately I think Hollywood producers who do spend most of their resources, time, and money on comic books and sequels of comic books, toward the end of the year, or toward the end of a life decide I want to do something good, something valuable, something important, and here, if there is a book, a high-minded book especially, we know that that is a story that works. And we can sink our teeth into that. And very often the more plot driven a book is the better a movie can be. And very often a film can surpass, I think, the effect that it has on an audience [inaudible] over a book. If it's -- you know, you're telling stories with pictures, with moving pictures. Now also, you know, books provide interesting characters and so forth. The one thing movies cannot do -- what they cannot capture from a book is language. You know, Scott Fitzgerald ends his most famous book, so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. How do you film that? >> Ann Hornaday: Exactly. >> A. Scott Berg: You just can't. But there are a lot of other things can film. But I think it's one reason A. Fitzgerald has never been properly adapted -- >> Ann Hornaday: Right. >> A Scott Berg: For example. >> Ann Hornaday: Because the beauty is the language itself. >> A Scott Berg: Of the language itself. >> Ann Hornaday: I mean it's the writing itself, it's not the plot and the characters. >> A. Scott Berg: Correct. >> Ann Hornaday: Anne-Marie, can you tell us a little bit about your interactions with the producers of Woman in Gold? Did they approach you first to adapt your book? I mean, were you ever [inaudible] of that? >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: Well, I had kind of a typical LA experience. >> Ann Hornaday: Oh, I'm sorry [laughter]. >> A. Scott Berg: Now wait a minute. >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: When the -- when the book came out I was invited over to spend the afternoon with Barbra Streisand and discuss the book. >> A. Scott Berg: That's typical I guess. >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: At great length. >> Ann Hornaday: [inaudible] experience. >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: I got -- I fielded all these calls from producers from DreamWorks, a critically and commercially successful DreamWorks producer, was one of several people who met me one afternoon at a restaurant with staggered appointments, and she said things to me like I have no problem with just putting this on Stephen's [assumed spelling] desk. You know who Stephen is right? Then another producer invited me to his home, sort of projection center and told me at great length about like his sex life during a certain period as his -- as his assistant just sat there chagrined, because he probably had diversity training [laughter]. And the producer told me that everyone he knew was reading 50 Shades of Gray. And, you know, they had to stop -- this was -- these were his words, they had to stop reading for a little while to masturbate. >> Ann Hornaday: Oh for God's sake. >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: And this is a well-known guy, and why didn't I write a book like that. Okay. Then I, of course, I had agents and people who were kind of arranging these things, and so they were telling me well, you know, Brian [inaudible] has your book, I gave it Brian [inaudible]. I gave it to Tom Hanks. I gave it to Roman Polanski. Sherry Lansing is helping to pass your book out in Vienna. She was actually there because her husband was doing a play there. I actually met someone who she had given the book to. So, but then at the end of this, a production that had been signed years before, years before my book came out, by the BBC that had bought some of the rights to some documentaries you probably never heard of and a few of the characters, suddenly emerged with funding with Simon Curtis at the helm. So in fact, I actually never was officially involved in the film. >> Ann Hornaday: Wow. >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: And I say this is a typical Hollywood experience because -- >> Ann Hornaday: Right. >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: This is -- I know so many cases of this just among my friends who've written biographies of [inaudible] or James Brown, or -- that's very common. >> Ann Hornaday: And they don't need -- I mean, was there ever any question that they relied on your book for script development or, I mean? >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: Well, you know, come on, we live in the real world. >> Ann Hornaday: Exactly. >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: I mean, I cringed a few times. Like I would read these interviews with Ryan Reynolds, who for some reason they cast as kind of a dumbed down Randy Schoenberg. I mean, they kind of like wrote it much less smart than Randy Schoenberg is. I guess because they thought as the audiences we identify with it more. But in an interview he said -- he said well, you know, Randy Schoenberg wrote this amazing book and that's what kicked the whole movie off. But Randy's never written a book. >> Ann Hornaday: Right. >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: And then there was like, you know, a couple things that I thought oh, I think that's exclusive to the book and, you know, it took me a long time pin down. But really not that much because the fictionalized so much of the book. >> Ann Hornaday: They did. >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: And they changed so many of the basic facts. And, you know, I had read the reviews when it came out and the critics were very harsh and made it sound a little bit like a train wreck. But I saw the film and I really liked it. I felt like it really worked and they simplified it into something that was -- lacking the complexity of a book which I think in addition to language a book can offer, a lot of complexity, but at the same time it really connected and in a visceral way it really I think connected with the audience. >> Ann Hornaday: Because I cannot imagine having spent so much time with the material that all of you spend on your books. The dislocation you must feel watching it being dramatized. I mean, Larry, in your case I think it's so fascinating that you've chosen to dramatize your material. I mean you've gone ahead and done it. With Camp David and also with My Trip to Al Qaeda. But I want to first [inaudible], at what point did you know that Alex was going to be doing a documentary? Was that after -- was it sort of during your reporting process or after? >> Lawrence Wright: Well, this was a really strange process because I started with the book, The Looming Tower, about, you know, the rise of Al Qaeda and every, you know, every book is generally followed by a book tour. And I really didn't want to do that. And I -- years before I had the idea that I'd like to do a one man show. I had seen Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the Mirror in 1992, and so I decided I would -- instead of going out to the audience I would do a one man show and see if I could get them to come to me. So I do did -- I did this one man show off-Broadway and then I came to the Kennedy Center here. And that's where Alex came to see the show. And we met afterwards. >> Ann Hornaday: I was there. I was at that very performance and the party when you guys met, I remember that moment as a matter of act. >> Lawrence Wright: How about kismet, huh? >> Ann Hornaday: Here we are. >> Lawrence Wright: Yeah, so we met at that party. >> Ann Hornaday: Yes, I remember that. >> Lawrence Wright: And since then we've had a very fruitful, professional relationship and also a great friendship. If you're going to war with something like the Church of Scientology you want somebody like Alex Gibney standing at your side. He's a, you know, as a child his nickname was Tiger and he has lived up to that. He's a -- but he, there were, you know, problems in trying to realize what was in one hand a history of L. Ron Hubbard and the creation of the Church of Scientology. And on the other hand, the current state of the Church of Scientology, which is a very litigious, vindictive organization that owns the copyright on almost everything. And so you need a fierce personality like Alex, who's not afraid of what is called fair use. If you're writing about something that is in the public interest, and in the case of the Church of Scientology they might own some of the footage, they don't have the exclusive use of it. ^M01:10:02 But it might open you up to legal challenges and boy, were we challenged from the very beginning that it started as a profile of Paul Haggis. >> Ann Hornaday: Right. >> Lawrence Wright: The two-time Academy award-winning writer and director and a New Yorker, and then as a book, and then as a documentary, a continual stream of legal challenges that have never resulted in any actual losses, just threats. >> Ann Hornaday: Right, which is a great credit to your reporting and also to Alex, too. Yes. >> A. Scott Berg: I just wanted to interject one point here, and this is something, Ernest Hemingway once asked Max Perkins when he was selling some of work to Hollywood, if it was a bad thing to do that. And Perkins said to him, you know, it will put a movie, if it gets made, no matter what they do to it, will put your work before a much wider audience than you have reached and second, and most important, your book is still your book. A Farewell to Arms, no matter whether you like the Rock Hudson version or whether you like the Helen Hayes, Gary Cooper version, whatever, a Farewell to Arms still sits on the shelf and not a word has been changed in the book itself. >> Ann Hornaday: Right. >> A. Scott Berg: So those are two great advantages that Hollywood does bring to even a classic piece of literature. >> Lawrence Wright: And that's conflictual because this is Ernest Hemingway and he can't compete with the movies. That just seems bizarre to me that, you know, those -- the book is great. >> A. Scott Berg: Yeah. >> Lawrence Wright: And the movies are -- >> Ann Hornaday: Even a mediocre movie can -- >> A. Scott Berg: Well. >> Ann Hornaday: Can outgun a great book. >> Lawrence Wright: But more people will have seen those movies than read -- >> A. Scott Berg: Have read the book. >> Lawrence Wright: And maybe more people will have read the book because of the movies, but -- >> A. Scott Berg: Therein lies the point. >> Lawrence Wright: It's still -- the thing that is so conflictual for a writer is that if you choose the form of writing books, you know, you're choosing a 22, and then if you choose the form of writing for the movies you're choosing a Howitzer. >> Ann Hornaday: Right. >> Lawrence Berg: But that Howitzer rarely fires. >> Ann Hornaday: Right, or at least hits correct, it fires -- >> Lawrence Wright: That's yeah, yeah. >> Ann Hornaday: A bit [inaudible]. >> A. Scott Berg: And you don't have to sell your book to the movies as J. D. Salinger has not. I mean he did once to Sam Goldwyn. >> Ann Hornaday: That's true, you don't have to. >> A. Scott Berg: He sold -- he sold one story called Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut. Sam Goldwyn made a movie out of it that was so terrible that J.D. Salinger said I will never sell anything to Hollywood again. Hollywood has been trying to make Catcher in the Rye for the 50, 60 years. >> Lawrence Wright: Yeah. >> A. Scott Berg: And he just refused to do it. >> Ann Hornaday: Well, I remember interviewing Lawrence Block years ago, who's been one of the most optioned authors probably in history, and he loved development [inaudible] because he would just get, you know, option and they wouldn't make his movies and it was perfect, it was the perfect world. >> Lawrence Wright: Right, there's something to be said -- >> A. Scott Berg: Perfect [inaudible]. >> Ann Hornaday: Yes, exactly, he never had to see his work being violated. But, Scott, you've been with -- in these development processes, not just with genius, I mean that's been gone through so many interesting permutations of actors and directors and people being attached, but also Wilson and Lindberg, too. >> A. Scott Berg: Yes it's -- >> Ann Hornaday: Do you -- do you follow these machinations with great interest or do you just sort of say that's not my business anymore? >> A. Scott Berg: Oh, I follow it with more than interest. I grew up in a Hollywood family. My father was a writer, producer, I have three brothers in show business, and I'm married to a film producer. So I have some knowledge and some interest. I also know a lot about the history of movies, and I know basically how they're put together. So I am very hands-on, and in the case of the three books that are now being adapted in various stages, Max Perkins has [inaudible] and was meant to be coming out this fall. It will probably come out late next spring. That was something -- I'm [inaudible] producer on all three of them so I have had a say both in the scripts and in the casting in the case of genius. >> Ann Hornaday: That's wonderful. >> A. Scott Berg: So I've been -- I care very much. And I do subscribe to both the things Max Perkins' said, I do think it will bring, for example, the story of a book editor to millions of people as opposed to tens of thousands of people that the book did. And the book will still be the book. And I think it will, as Lawrence was suggesting, will draw people to read the book. >> Ann Hornaday: Right. Did you experience an uptick for Lady in Gold, after Woman in Gold? Was it a net positive do you think? >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: I actually wondered -- last December I saw this like sudden spike in sales, and I did a Google search and I realized that the first television ad had played on TV. This was just a television ad. Then when the publicity started with the film it turned into a tsunami and it went on bestseller lists for weeks and weeks and weeks. There was -- it's a wonderful thing to have a film share your book. >> Lawrence Wright: Yeah. >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: With an audience, whether or not you have anything to do with the film [laughter]. >> Ann Hornaday: There you go [laughter]. >> A. Scott Berg: I saw a spike the day it was announced that Leonardo DiCaprio and his production company had optioned Wilson, that -- suggesting he wanted to make a film about Woodrow Wilson and perhaps star in it. Well, suddenly you go Amazon and, you know. Well gee, Wilson, Woodrow Wilson must be the sexiest guy -- >> Ann Hornaday: He's hot, hot, hot, hot. >> A. Scott Berg: Who ever lived in the Whitehouse, you know. >> Ann Hornaday: Anne-Marie, I am very impressed with your reaction to the film and being so accepting of its dramatic license. And, Larry, I wanted to ask you about the movie The Master, The Paul Thomas Anderson film, about this -- obliquely about L. Ron Hubbard. And, again, just having spent so much time with the actual material and the actual people, can you talk to us a little bit about just the experience of watching the stories being distorted or told slant? Do you need to kind of go back to it more than once and, or -- just tell us about that. It sounds like you were more accepting than I thought you might be knowing it so intimately. You're a very open-minded person. >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: Well, you know, I spent years and years getting everything right. >> Ann Hornaday: Right. >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: And making sure all these things were very factual, and even when people repeated to me conversations they had years ago in their recollection, I spent a lot of time verifying that what they said was true. So -- but that's a book and it's, you know, a nonfiction historical book. Hollywood movies take a lot of license. I mean, I remember when Gabriel Garcia Marquez just sort of sold his books Hollywood and said he was going to wash his hands of whatever happened because he realized he didn't have that much control over it. You know, I just think that maybe I didn't really worry so much about it because it wasn't my film but. >> Ann Hornaday: Right. >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: That's just a reality of Hollywood. I think it's wonderful to try to maintain the integrity if you're the writer, but. >> Ann Hornaday: That's a very mature and -- >> Lawrence Wright: Yeah. >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: Well, I lived in LA for a long time and, you know -- >> Ann Hornaday: It's a very sophisticated. >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: Hollywood is sometimes an art form, but it's always a business. >> Ann Hornaday: Exactly, it's an industrial practice. We forget that at our peril. >> Lawrence Wright: Well -- >> Ann Hornaday: What about you Larry? >> Lawrence Wright: I liked The Master. I thought it was a -- if you haven't seen it, Paul Thomas Anderson directed this movie that is clearly based on the life of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. And I think, you know, it was kind of obscure, it didn't do that well, I suppose, but it was -- I think if you knew anything about Hubbard and the church you would have appreciated it more. And as a person that knew a lot about it, I could see the amount of research that he had put in to it. But it's -- you know, it's a completely different thing than I was doing. >> Ann Hornaday: Right. >> Lawrence Wright: And I observe a kind of rigid line but I write fiction, I write movies and plays, but they all tend to be drawn from real events and real people. But I observe a line between my nonfiction books and the articles, which are absolutely as true as I can make them. But when you step into that other form there's a liberation of creative intent, and you are able to fill in blanks that -- with your imagination and change and rearrange historical details, and I think that's part of the art of it. But there's an art in nonfiction writing, too, which is trying to take the real events and the real characters and present them as fully and creatively as you might do in a novel or a film. >> Ann Hornaday: Right. I mean, and of course now we're living -- this is something as a critic for the Washington Post, and I think we got into this a little bit last year, I'm surrounded by fact checkers. You know, I mean my audience, my readers are usually either participants in the events being depicted on screen, or they were first-hand witnesses, do you need some water? >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: Sorry. >> Ann Hornaday: Or they are historians who have spent their lives researching these things. >> Lawrence Wright: Yeah. >> Ann Hornaday: And, man, they don't like it when somebody, you know, even when the wrong Connecticut congressman does, you know, casts the wrong vote in Lincoln. >> A. Scott Berg: Right, you're right. >> Ann Hornaday: You're going to hear about it. ^M01:20:00 >> Lawrence Wright: And I think that -- >> Ann Hornaday: And forget your -- you know, I'd love to talk about your experience with Oliver Stone in terms of, you know -- but, and with social media, and Wikipedia. >> Lawrence Wright: Yeah. >> Ann Hornaday: Now we are now a gotcha culture. And I think there's a contract between a filmmaker and an audience in this -- in these fact-based works, but I also think there's something in common upon the viewer, too, to be a to -- >> Lawrence Wright: Yeah. >> Ann Hornaday: Be able to kind of apprehend this but. >> Lawrence Wright: Well I did -- I worked with Oliver on a project about Manuel Noriega, and it was later made -- >> Ann Hornaday: Your [inaudible]. >> Lawrence Wright: It was -- this was -- speaking of books and of film, this was the weirdest experience because I was writing it is a script, it wound up on Oliver's desk, and I got a call one day. Larry Wright, this is Oliver Stone. I'm standing in a cemetery [laughter]. I should have hung up, you know. But -- >> Ann Hornaday: Typical LA story. >> Lawrence Wright: Yeah. But he loved -- >> Ann Hornaday: Another typical day in LA. >> Lawrence Wright: This script and, you know, we're going to make this great movie and, you know, and it got to the point that he had cast Al Pacino as Noriega, and I called Oliver and I said you are making the move because I'm buying a house and, oh yeah, don't worry about it. I bought the house and then a week later, Larry, I had a bad dream last night [laughter]. >> Ann Hornaday: Oh no. >> Lawrence Wright: What could have happened, you know. Anyway, the movie just blew up and so waited a year and I thought this is a really great story, I'll write it as a novel. So I started writing it as a novel and then another director, Roger Spottiswoode wanted to make it as a movie. And I said no, no, it's a novel. And, but he persuaded me that he would not release the movie until the novel came out. So I finished the novel on the set of the movie. And we were shooting in the Philippines and I -- it was actually for a writer a -- like I had a scene with Noriega's voo-doo doctor, and they had a set of the voo-doo doctor's office so I went in to the set and took notes. >> Ann Hornaday: That's awesome. >> Lawrence Wright: And went -- put it into the novel. >> Ann Hornaday: It's a beautiful circle. >> Lawrence Wright: It's a very expensive way to write a novel but, anyway, that was -- >> A. Scott Berg: Great. >> Ann Hornaday: But no one said you didn't research that novel down to the -- >> Lawrence Wright: That's right. But Oliver -- I grew up in Dallas during the Kennedy assassination. And his movie, JFK, probably did more damage to the historical memory of what actually occurred than any other thing. And I honestly think -- that Oliver is a better and more honest filmmaker now than he was then. His movies more recently, you know, W and The World Trade Center, those are respectful of true history. And -- that -- I respond to that. But I wish he hadn't made JFK the way that he did. >> Ann Hornaday: I also want to encourage people to come up, you know where the mics are, here and here. If you have questions, please come up and I'll see you and oh, we've got one. Yes? >> Yeah, I was just thinking about this, you know, as Mr. Berg was talking earlier and, of course, this kind of ties into Woodrow Wilson and, you know, as a teacher, you know, you're always trying to get something into the brains of the students as efficiently as you can. You only have so much time. You have, you know, a certain amount of testing that has to go on. But my thing is like I see great history sometimes, you know, in cinema, and I think of the movie Glory. I can, you know, as civil war movies go that's probably one of my favorites. >> A. Scott Berg: Me too. >> But I also, you know, there's terrible things -- like I always figure that more kinds are going to respond to Abraham Lincoln The Vampire [inaudible] they're going to respond to the Steven Spielberg movie. And so I'm asking myself, in terms of -- is it a competition in terms of script writing versus -- you know, in terms of selling movies versus the real history, is the history that you can't really depict it the you should because it's not going to look good, you know, as far as cinema? And by the way, I saw the movie Woman in Gold, I haven't read the book, I usually read the books then I see the movie. So now I want to read the book, of course. But I just wonder if you could chime in about what's the challenge there of taking books, translating them into movies and, you know, and then losing the history that we really want the young people to learn of course. >> A. Scott Berg: Well I would chime in and just say, you have to remember that film is, as opposed to a book art by committee. So everybody does have some say, there are some films in which the director, Oliver Stone, because he's been brought up, there's some directors I won't mention because they haven't been brought up, just want things a certain way, they want to make this film because of this reason, because they either have some political axe to grind or just some political point they want to make, or some historical point that they want to see up on the screen that they think is a good message to present even though it may not be historically accurate. So that can be a factor. I know one writer who did least 25 drafts of a historic picture for a director who kept saying no, I want this to happen and the writer just kept saying but it really didn't happen. And it's so wrong, not just to the history, but to the character to do it. And the director just said well then, you know, we'll just have to find another writer won't we. So that often happens too. Then you get an actor who has been studying the character, who comes on the set who says I think the character would have done this. You know, so if it's a big enough start he can start to interject his own -- his own language, and he has a certain amount of sway in what goes into the movie. So I think it's any number of things. Lawrence? >> Lawrence Wright: I'm just thinking about [inaudible]. >> A. Scott Berg: Well. >> Lawrence Wright: A recent example of a film that dived into a historical and with maybe a certain carelessness about historical accuracy that was needless. And I think it damaged the credibility of what is really a very fine movie. >> A. Scott Berg: And I would just add to that that my feeling as I was watching Selma is had they really stuck to the facts it would have been a far more dramatic movie. >> Lawrence Wright: Yeah. >> A. Scott Berg: And by and large the actual history is more dramatic than some screenwriter or directors' invention, and that's -- that is definitely the case with Selma I think. >> Ann Hornaday: I'd like to take one minute, hold your thoughts, can we watch a clip, let's watch a clip from Woman in Gold if you don't mind. Can we queue that up? >> A. Scott Berg: Yeah. >> Ann Hornaday: Scott? >> Lawrence Wright: Oh, this is actually Scientology. >> Ann Hornaday: Oh, okay. Oh, that's alright, that's okay [laughter]. ^M01:27:33 [ Inaudible ] ^M01:29:12 >> Lawrence Wright: So you want me to give you an introduction to the -- >> Ann Hornaday: Yeah. >> Lawrence Wright: Hana Eltringham was L. Ron Hubbard's closest aide. L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology in the '60s, took to the high seas because he was being pursued by process servers and so on and founded a little scientology navy. And so they were out in the high seas and Hana became his most reliable aide. And in the process of scientology you use thing called a E meter that is like a lie detector, and you're trying to discover past lives. ^M01:30:03 And she did discover her past lives, but after a while what brings me up-to-date with her is that she -- you're told that you're infested with these alien beings. And, you know, with your E meter you're supposed to scan your mind and your body to find them and expel them. It's like a, you know, some sort of, you know, getting devils out of your body and she was so distressed she couldn't find anything like that and she finally did, and then began, you know, there are thousands of them and so she went nearly crazy and to the point that she almost jumped off a building. And so if you're going to see the latest Mission Impossible you can imagine Tom Cruz sitting there with his E meter expelling his alien beings of -- nothing personal about Tom Cruz. >> Ann Hornaday: Right. I -- and I will get to your question. Was there material that Alex was able to get on camera that you -- that you didn't have? >> Lawrence Wright: Yeah, Alex was a mag -- a magician about getting stuff, especially historical material, some of it that had never been seen and it's an extremely valuable document just for that reason alone. >> Ann Hornaday: Wonderful. Yes? >> Okay, my question deals with your films being adapted from like since they're nonfiction works, being adapted to the film and like nonfictions, like very specific -- like really cool because it can go one of -- like it can go nonfiction to the film or it could go fiction. And like my first exposures of fictionalized nonfiction was like with Jarhead and then again with The Men Who Stare at Goats. So -- and like I know like after watching interviews that like both those authors wanted their stuff to be fictionalized to get a broader message out. Do you have -- like when you wrote your stuff and then it was being adapted to film, did you you have ideas like if you wanted to go nonfiction or like fictionalized when it went to film? >> Lawrence Wright: Well, you know, you -- when you write a nonfiction work you're taking a real step when you're entrusting it to a filmmaker to make it true to the spirit of what you've written. I did a book called Remembering Satan, it was about the recovered memory, hysteria, that swept through this country in the -- in the early '80s, and a terrible television movie was made from it. The -- and so since then, you know, I've had this documentary, which is a different matter. It's, you know, it's really based on what is true. I'm now, I'm going to, you know, based on my Camp David play and my book I'm going to write an HBO movie about it. And I recently wrote an article for The New Yorker about about five hostages held by Isis that -- also, once again, a Washington connection, David Bradley, who is the publisher of The Atlantic, was this heroic figure in trying to help the five families negotiate their children out of the control of Isis and, unfortunately, four of them were killed. But one of them was -- he succeeded in getting away. And so we're talking about making that into a movie. >> Ann Hornaday: A dramatic. >> Lawrence Wright: A dramatic film. >> Ann Hornaday: Dramatized. >> Lawrence Wright: And I'm -- I think it's a good thing to memorialize the lives of these children, who were such heroic figures. There, you know, I'm so deeply touched by their sacrifice. They went into a frightening, probably the most dangerous place in the world, to help, either to report or to provide aid to people that needed it. And how many people would risk their lives to help other people in such terrible situations, and what an awful end to their lives. And I think that they should be remembered. It's one thing to write such an article in The New Yorker, and it -- I was very gratified by the response. But -- and it seemed to affect government policy, but a movie would have far greater effect. And I -- at a point in my career now, fortunately, where I can be an executive producer and that, I can -- I can contribute, I think, to the narrative of how this story is told. >> Ann Hornaday: And then what are your rules for the -- this gets back to that dramatic license question, I mean do you -- have to established some sort of easily identifiable rules of the road for when to take dramatic license and how? Like Lincoln must be tall, you know that. >> Lawrence Wright: It's -- I think you can -- you can rearrange time, you can collapsed characters. But it is hard for me to be too specific, but I think you know if it's true to the spirit. >> Ann Hornaday: Yeah. >> Lawrence Wright: And -- >> Ann Hornaday: [inaudible] definition. >> Lawrence Wright: Yeah, well, yeah, you know it when you see it. And so I think a movie in order to command an audience, it has to be exciting, it has to have dramatic moments, and you know that going in, that this is all going to be a part of it. And also is a fictionalized recreation so you imagine the characters as they must have been, or as you think they might have been. >> All right. >> Ann Hornaday: I don't see, I'm sorry, am I missing -- I'm not missing anyone over here. Okay, good. >> Yeah, just a couple of quick questions. I'm curious, you -- everyone has mentioned that, for example, if you are a writer of his -- of a historical novel where actually the events occurred, what about the of pursuing independent film industry? I don't know whether or not the -- just the nature of the film industry is such that you don't have that option, but I -- sometimes I wonder about the relationship between someone who wants to have their novel or their book adhered to historical accuracy, could they -- do they have the option of pursuing independent film? >> Lawrence Wright: You mean making it themselves or? >> No, working with somebody, collaborating with someone, a producer or an executive who would basically commit to the authenticity of the document, of the book itself. The other question I have just quickly, is The Algerian, I know that it was written and produced by Giovanni Zelko, it was at least here in Washington, I'm just curious, do you know where the distribution of that movie happens to be at this point? >> Ann Hornaday: I do not. I'm sorry, I do not. >> Okay. What about my first question? >> Lawrence Wright: I think you're lucky to have anybody interested in your work, you know, in Hollywood. And if it's an independent producer, as in the case of this article that I just spoke about, or a studio, you know which other studios were interested, you want to go to work with people that you trust and whose taste you can rely upon. And that is a huge factor in making a decision whether this is, you know, a giant studio or an independent producer. >> Ann Hornaday: Scott, do you negotiate for that -- you're a producer on all of your projects. Is that something that you -- that's nonnegotiable? >> A. Scott Berg: Yes, although I would say this, that because the big studios today are making fewer movies than they ever did, and those they are making are basically comic book movies or sequels to comic book movies, or sequel, yeah, well, you got it. So that being the case, as Lawrence was saying, I mean yes, you'd be grateful to have an independent filmmaker or independent consortium of financiers who will come together and they are the ones who are attracted most to more serious material these days. And indeed, now the world has turned to cable television and various other outlets on the internet and so forth to finance movies. You know, you've now got -- you've now got internet companies now making original material. So I think people who have books who want them translated into films are grateful to have anybody who is interested in doing it. Do you stand a little more of the chance with an independent filmmaker, yes, I believe you do just because the studios that do the comic book movies really won't take a chance on that, and if they do they're going to try to make your serious book more like a comic book, I think. I mean here and there there are going to be concessions. So I think that's definitely a factor. I was going to add one more note, which is related to all of this actually, which is especially for those of us who write nonfiction, you cannot copyright a fact. And so when Steven Spielberg wants to make a film about Lincoln, he doesn't in fact need [inaudible] wonderful biography of Lincoln. He could have made a movie about Lincoln without her book, but in fact that gave him an imprimatur, gave him a very good researcher to turn to, somebody he could send his screenwriter to to ask any question that the screenwriter might have. ^M01:40:11 So you get a lot of that, you see, when you -- when you option a book. But make no mistake about it, if Steven Spielberg wants to do his version of Lincoln or when they make Selma, if the director wants to do her version of it, that's her his privilege to do so. They don't need written material for that. >> Ann Hornaday: Let's take a look at another clip from I'm hoping this will be Woman in Gold. >> A. Scott Berg: Yes, that is. Oh, thanks. You're very kind. ^M01:40:45 [ Inaudible ] ^M01:42:45 [ Applause ] ^M01:42:50 >> Ann Hornaday: So this is the most [inaudible] question, but was that -- did that comport with your version of events, or your understanding of her visit to that? >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: Well -- >> Ann Hornaday: Or it doesn't matter? >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: To break it down, it's wonderful that it memorialized [inaudible] the investigative journalist who uncovered these thefts and also the war record of Kurt Waldheim. Maria never felt close to Adele, Adele was a very intimidating person and Adele didn't cuddle her like she does in the film, but that makes Adele a more approachable and sympathetic person, but I do think that Helen Mirren -- I don't think she ever met Maria Altmann, she pulled off the gravitas. She's not Maria Altmann, Marie Altmann was an incredible, charismatic, wickedly funny person and presence, but she does convey that gravitas and presence and sort of sense of occasion in a person that Maria had. And so in -- I feel like they succeeded even though the details are not, you know, completely matching with reality. >> Ann Hornaday: Yes? >> Well actually I had a question that's very relevant now with what you were saying. I was just wondering, why do you think you were left out of the process the way it happened, or why did the Hollywood story that you described happened, was it because Hollywood is just that way, was it because you were female? Because you don't see a lot of female producers or directors. So why do you think it went that way where you were left out of the process? >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: You know, I don't have any real theories on this, and as I say, it's really common with nonfiction books for something like this to happen. I think probably the most decisive thing was that the -- they had -- the BBC had been developing this for quite a long time before the book came out. So I think they were already kind of far along and there were actually some conversations with my agent -- that they talked to my agent at one point and never came together, and I did hear some theories from -- I knew a producer actually on the -- on this production. >> What were the theories? >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: And the theory that -- what he said to me was that they had all -- they were already fairly far along on their project. And agents wanted more than they were willing to pay for something that was already that developed. >> So that's why they didn't bring you on as a consultant or anything? >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: Well I don't, as I say, this is just a little bit what I -- that -- what I heard but I didn't -- I don't have a decisive theory on this. >> Well you're wonderful for being so great about it. >> Ann Hornaday: You are, you're very gracious. Yes? >> Thank you for the very informative film presentation and also this discussion. I was at one of these last year that was very informative, too, because I hadn't thought of the connection between a book and a film. In my own family there's been a couple connections with the discussions tonight. Danny Kaye performed as a 16 year old in The Catskills. >> A. Scott Berg: Catskills, yeah. >> And my cousin's husband's family owned the White Row Inn, and he wrote -- Johnny wrote about -- John Weiner wrote about it in The New York Times to explain that. The other was, other cousins wrote [inaudible] wrote Hurry Sundown and they sold the option to [inaudible] and they were not happy with the result, but they could not do anything about it because they had sold it to [inaudible] and he had control. Her -- their son was explaining at a family reunion that situation, but he also acknowledged that once his parents had sold the option they had no control over it. But they disliked the film a lot. >> Ann Hornaday: And there it is. Thank you. >> A. Scott Berg: Again, it goes from the personal ownership of an author to once it's film it's a committee that is -- and everybody has a vote there. Some have more votes than others but it's no longer just the author's material. >> Thank you very much for all of your great work. Anne-Marie, I have a question that obviously strikes of celebrity curiosity, what was it like meeting with Streisand and what is memorable about -- that sticks out in your mind about meeting with her, because she's kind of a secretive figure and we only get it through approved journalism and that's it. And so you were dealing with her directly and she's discussing a book of yours that she read and some interest in. What was the interchange like? >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: Well, we were at her house in Malibu [inaudible]. And, you know, one thing that struck me was how smart she was, because she obviously read a lot, and she had actually owned a Klimt portrait at one point, but it wasn't one of the stolen ones, but it was a significant Klimt portrait and she bought it for very little and sold it for, as she said, I thought that was a lot of money in those days but now it would be worth tens of millions. So that was kind of interesting. But she asked really interesting questions, like she asked if Alma Mahler was promiscuous, Gustav Mahler's wife, and I gave sort of my standard reply, which is that basically she was a lot less promiscuous than the men of her age, certainly less promiscuous than Klimt, and she had better taste. I mean, she was actually very picky about who she had affairs with. So we had exchanges like that and, you know, when you write a book or tell a story, it takes such a long time that you have chosen this because you feel a tremendous amount passion about this story. And in my case I felt like there was an untold story that needed to be told. And I felt like she shared the passion for those elements. She has a lot of interest in sort of ethnic -- untold ethnic Jewish stories, but she was also very gracious. After few hours I left, and months later I got an e-mail from her assistant in Jerusalem asking if I wanted to be a VIP at her concert in Israel, as she was coming [inaudible] and I said well sure. But just, you know, it very gracious of her. >> Well thank you. And -- >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: So that was my impression. >> In the middle of it were you going holy maceral, this is Barbra Streisand? ^M01:50:00 Or you were just two people discussing material? >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: It was just both -- just two of us. >> Thank you. >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: In her house, yeah. >> Ann Hornaday: We don't have much time left. So if we can -- I think we can get through all the questions if we keep them really, really quick. I'm going to go over there and then to you three and then we'll wrap it up. >> Okay, I just would like some feedback from you guys, your perspective on this experience I've had. There's a few times there's a movie coming out on like a classic book or something I've wanted to read, so that week I'll read the book and then that weekend I see the movie. And the few times that's happened I found myself regretting that I've done that because in my memory it blends together. So like Into the Woods is coming out, I know I want to see that movie and read the book. But if I do one I want to wait a couple months before I see the other. So do you have a preference for how your audience takes in, if there's the book and the movie coming out, to spread them out or what's been your feedback just to that experience as writers of the book and involved in the movie process? >> Ann Hornaday: That's a good question. >> A. Scott Berg: Well, I would just say that I think they are two different experiences and you should treat them as such. And I mean, I think -- I mean I would prefer you read the book first just so you -- >> Ann Hornaday: Early and often. >> A. Scott Berg: I'm just -- yeah [laughter]. What can I say? But that way it could also be interesting for you as an audience to see what the filmmakers did with it. And I just think it might be easier and more interesting to see how that got developed or mis-developed. But again, each of the media does what it does. It reaches it's -- or tries to reach its audience. So I think if you -- if you hold that in your mind you can have a satisfactory experience with both. >> Lawrence Wright: You know, it's odd because I -- when you were talking I was reflecting on how disappointed I was in the movie's version of The Hobbit. Because when I read The Hobbit, I was in -- I had ideas about who these people were and then they -- those are not hobbits. You know, I -- and it -- there's one thing about the experience of reading imaginative literature is that it inflames your own imagination and you are in that world and you are creating it in your own mind. And in a movie it's explicit. You're not asked to imagine it. You're asked to absorb it. And so if you are still in the spell of the imaginary world that you read about, I would not suggest that you go have the pinprick of the movie, but you might wait until that experience has dimmed out a little bit. >> Ann Hornaday: Agreed. I've just been told we don't have as much time as I thought. So I'm very -- I apologize to our friends over here. But I want to thank all of you for coming. I want to thank our wonderful panelists [applause]. And I want to thank the Library of Congress for hosting the National Book Festival and presenting this panel. It's been another wonderful evening. Thank you all. >> A. Scott Berg: Well done. >> Ann Hornaday: Thank you. >> Lawrence Wright: Scott [inaudible]. >> Anne-Marie O'Connor: I'm having an asthma meltdown. ^E01:53:14 ^B01:53:23 This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov. ^E01:53:30