00:03:39:07 – 00:03:49:20
Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you for coming on to talk about Titanic, Mark. And before we get started as a screenwriter, can you share how you got interested in the Titanic?

00:03:49:23 – 00:04:15:29
Mark B. Perry
Yes. I am a self-professed ship geek. I am, it’s one of my most passionate hobbies. I’m not an expert, but I know, a little bit about a lot of things as a result of, a lot of research that I’ve done over the years. I love 20th century ocean liners. I love ocean travel. I love the Normandie, the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth, the New Amsterdam of 1938.

00:04:16:01 – 00:04:41:08
Mark B. Perry
To the QM, to the contemporary ocean liner. I’m a big collector of memorabilia, furniture, artwork, China, silverware, that sort of thing. And I’m also on. I’m a founding board member of the SS United States Conservancy, which is a nonprofit that is working to preserve the legacy of my favorite ship, which is the 1950s era ocean liner, the SS United States.

00:04:41:11 – 00:05:04:24
Mark B. Perry
So as I say, I am a ship geek as a hobby, but I am a screenwriter, professional Lee. And to that end, in 1988, I got, before I got my first professional break on the Wonder Years in 1989, I wrote a screenplay with a writing partner, a wonderful writer named Dudley Sanders, and we wrote it.

00:05:04:24 – 00:05:25:29
Mark B. Perry
We sent it to the agent that was representing me at the time. She called on a Sunday and left a message on my answering machine. This was 1988, and she said she had just finished reading it. She was so excited that Monday morning they were going to send this script. Every studio and every producer in town, there was going to be a bidding war.

00:05:26:02 – 00:05:47:28
Mark B. Perry
This was going to be a huge success. Congratulations, kiddo. Monday came. They did. They sent the script everywhere. All over town. Everybody passed and everybody said the same thing. A version of the same thing. This is a great script, but it would be the most expensive movie ever made. And nobody cares about the Titanic.

00:05:48:00 – 00:05:50:00
Dan LeFebvre
Oh.

00:05:50:03 – 00:06:12:25
Mark B. Perry
So. Yeah. True story, true story. So that came about because when I was a kid, I saw a movie called The Last Voyage with Robert Stack, and Dorothy Malone. It was from the early 60s, and in it they actually partially sank an old ocean liner, the Ille de France, which was one of the most famous liners of its era.

00:06:12:27 – 00:06:44:11
Mark B. Perry
And when I saw that as a kid, I was fascinated by the ship. And so I really got interested in the ships. And then, of course, I read Walter Lord’s book, A Night to Remember all about the Titanic disaster. And it wasn’t until the mid 80s when the National Geographic documentary came out about Bob Ballard finding the wreck and the story of the Titanic, that I got re-energized about the story, and I reread A Night to Remember, and there was one passage in there.

00:06:44:13 – 00:07:06:07
Mark B. Perry
It was, I think, about two sentences, and it was. A surviving crew member recounted the story of just after the ship struck the berg, that a passenger came up to him out of nowhere, holding ice in his hands, where he had scooped it up and shaved into the deck, threw it at the officer’s feet, and said as if it had been an ongoing debate.

00:07:06:08 – 00:07:43:17
Mark B. Perry
Will you believe me now? And that’s all Lord wrote was that little exchange. And I thought, that’s really interesting. So the script that we wrote was not a Jack and Rose story. It was, it was a time travel action adventure film set aboard the Titanic. But because we didn’t want to come across as, you know, exploiting a real life tragedy where real people died, we decided that we were going to work really hard to make sure that our version of events was is accurate, as it could possibly be, out of respect for the people who died and the events of that night.

00:07:43:19 – 00:08:03:02
Mark B. Perry
So we scripted the ship breaking in half, which had never been confirmed before or portrayed in any of the films, because it wasn’t really known until Ballard find that found the wreck in two pieces, and you may see the Ravel model behind me. I built that while we were writing the script, and I’m not a model maker.

00:08:03:02 – 00:08:09:29
Mark B. Perry
That funnels are the wrong part, but the the point was we wanted a three dimensional reference as we were plotting out.

00:08:10:01 – 00:08:10:19
Dan LeFebvre
The.

00:08:10:19 – 00:08:37:28
Mark B. Perry
The, the action of our script while the ship was sinking and again, trying to stick as close as we could to the established history. And since we did that, you know, research back then, there was no internet. So we had, you know, we went to the bookstores, we bought everything we could get our hands on. And, so that’s why I, my, my interest has endured in the story of the Titanic.

00:08:38:01 – 00:08:58:04
Mark B. Perry
But when it comes to my love of ships, I’m actually more drawn to the ones that were, that that did what they were designed to do and not the ones that failed. But, so anyway, that’s that’s how I came to know I can hold my own in a cocktail party. If the subject of the Titanic comes out.

00:08:58:06 – 00:09:19:14
Dan LeFebvre
Well, the movie that we are talking about today is 1953. So even before, the timeline of when you were writing your version of the story as well, and here on the podcast, it being based on a true story. Most of the movies that we talk about start with some sort of variation of based on true Story, but the movie that we’re talking about today goes a little bit further than that.

00:09:19:14 – 00:09:43:19
Dan LeFebvre
I think I’m going to quote with the opening text is from the movie. It says all navigational details of this film. Conversations, incidents and general data are taken verbatim from the published reports of inquiries held in 1912 by the Congress of the United States and the British Board of Trade, and while it does only mention the navigation details, it also kind of generically says the general data is.

00:09:43:19 – 00:10:01:02
Dan LeFebvre
So the impression that I get, as I read that when I started watching this movie was that this is trying to be more than based on true story. It’s trying to be as accurate as possible. So as we start our discussion today about 1953, is Titanic. If you were to give it a letter grade for its historical accuracy, what would again.

00:10:01:05 – 00:10:23:21
Mark B. Perry
First of all, I want to preface everything by quoting Walter Lord, who I think is the definitive. He said in his first book, A Night to Remember. It is a rash man indeed who would set himself as final arbiter on all that happened, the incredible night the Titanic went down. So, to be clear, I’m not a rash man, but, historical accuracy of Titanic 53.

00:10:23:23 – 00:10:54:08
Mark B. Perry
This movie was made before, Walter Lord’s book came out. This book was 53. His book came out in 55. And in Lord’s book is considered by many to be the Titanic Bible. And because he was able to interview dozens and dozens of people who survived the sinking who were still alive in the 1950s, though even he admits that it can’t be 100% accurate because of human memory.

00:10:54:15 – 00:11:17:28
Mark B. Perry
Memory eyewitnesses are notoriously fallible, and stories would change. People swore they saw Captain Smith saving a baby, you know, in the water, before he went down. Others swore they saw him on the on the bridge. So this is what I think about this film. I think that they really tried, I think with what they knew at the time, they really tried.

00:11:17:28 – 00:11:41:11
Mark B. Perry
And it wasn’t until five years later when when A Night to Remember the movie came out that was based on, Walter Lord’s book. That was that was much more of a documentary like dramatization of the sinking. But, in this one there, as for Titanic 53, I love this movie because it is. It’s a soap opera.

00:11:41:11 – 00:12:13:16
Mark B. Perry
First it and and it’s a good soap opera. The script won an Academy Award, and, it’s also a soap opera, a disaster movie hybrid. And I think more than based on a true story, we could say it’s inspired by a true event. The focus of this movie is the Sturges family. Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb as Richard and Julia Sturges and it’s it’s how the disaster plays a role in their relationships and not the other way around.

00:12:13:16 – 00:12:39:16
Mark B. Perry
And on that level, I think the movie works really well. So the navigational details may indeed be correct and taken verbatim from the reports that were available. But remember that those hearings were held very quickly after, the the survivors arrived in New York and they didn’t ask all of the questions of the people who were available, and not everybody was testifying.

00:12:39:18 – 00:13:03:00
Mark B. Perry
So they didn’t know as much. In 1953 or 52, when the writers were working on the script. And they didn’t have a lot of photographs of interiors of the ship and things to go. And they did not have the absolute wealth of information that we have now. So in fairness to the film makers, I think that they were making do with what they had in terms of reference.

00:13:03:00 – 00:13:24:21
Mark B. Perry
So as for the general data, that may refer to the timeline of things like, you know, which boat left when, how many people. But this film is not really beholden to historical accuracy, despite its lofty claims at the top. And I think it’s trying to set the stage to say we want to be respectful to the true story.

00:13:24:23 – 00:13:51:07
Mark B. Perry
But and, you know, not unlike what Dudley and I were doing, I do think that they were trying to be respectful and, they just didn’t didn’t have the material research available. There’s also there’s a famous story about the night they were filming in the in the tank on the backlot when they were lowering the lifeboats. And Barbara Stanwyck was in one of the lifeboats, and she started sobbing uncontrollably, not as the character, but as the actress herself.

00:13:51:09 – 00:14:19:01
Mark B. Perry
And it was because she was suddenly overcome with the reality of what they were reenacting in this movie. And from what I’ve heard, that sentiment also, pervaded some of the crew as well. But in the end, they had to answer to Darryl Zanuck, you know, and the accountants at 20th Century Fox. So, you know, they couldn’t throw as much money, certainly as Cameron did to to make his film.

00:14:19:04 – 00:14:51:15
Mark B. Perry
But I think they get a fair amount. Right. The film is often disparaged in Titanic circles, but they don’t always take it in context of the fact they didn’t know as much as we we do now. And I think little things like there’s a there’s a brief moment once, Clifton Webb as, Richard Sturges gets aboard the ship and he’s this pompous, snob, wealthy guy, but he pauses to recognize a stewardess and he calls her by name, and he mentions the ship that he recognizes her from, and that was apparently a very real thing among the wealthy people of the time.

00:14:51:18 – 00:15:23:10
Mark B. Perry
That they they would make a point of knowing the people who waited on them on these ships. But in this movie, there’s no mention of Thomas Andrews being aboard. And of course, he was aboard. He was the ship’s designer. And he played an incredibly important role in, the events of that night. Also, there’s a version of that with Bruce Ismay in this, who was the White Star Line representative, who by all accounts, was pressuring Captain Smith to, you know, go faster, go faster, break the speed record.

00:15:23:12 – 00:15:49:15
Mark B. Perry
He died in the 1930s, so I’m not sure why they felt that they had to fictionalize him. There’s a there’s someone named, Mr. Sanderson who’s a fictional character who’s representing the White Star line at the beginning of the movie, but he disembarks in Cherbourg. Does not even take the maiden voyage. And I think that must have been the 20th Century Fox lawyers being worried about the estates coming after them because Ismay died in the 30s.

00:15:49:17 – 00:16:13:09
Mark B. Perry
Also, the maiden voyage was not sold out as it is depicted in this film, and it’s used as a device for, Clifton Webb to, you know, sort of buy a ticket from a third class passenger. He could have just bought a first class ticket. And, but in the movie, they’re going for drama. And so, you know, he the ship is sold out, but he’s got to get on that ship.

00:16:13:12 – 00:16:37:27
Mark B. Perry
And, you know, he buys a ticket from Mr. Oscar Doom, who’s who’s with his family. And that way, you know, like I said, there’s plenty of room in first class, but the film certainly goes for the more dramatic setup. And that gives the his character a chance to prove that he isn’t entirely a heartless snob when he makes an effort after this ship hits the bird to return to third class, find Mrs. Goodman or children and get them into a lifeboat.

00:16:37:29 – 00:17:01:06
Mark B. Perry
Marnie the character who’s played by Thelma Ritter, is clearly Molly Brown, but again, the lawyers at 20th must have been nervous. Even though Molly Brown died in the 30s and The Unsinkable Molly Brown was still a good seven years away, it wasn’t until the 60s that the play and then the movie was made. So one bit of trivia that I want to share, and I am I’m going to answer your question, by the way.

00:17:01:06 – 00:17:30:04
Mark B. Perry
I’m going to give you my, my rating. But one bit of trivia that I find fascinating is, is is more of a, it’s more of a continuity error, an error than, an historical inaccuracy. And that is the they depict the ship striking the iceberg on its starboard or right side, which is accurate. But then they cut to an underwater shot and they show the hull of the ship being ripped open by the iceberg, and it’s on the port or left side of the ship.

00:17:30:09 – 00:17:52:06
Mark B. Perry
Then they cut to the inside cargo hold where some men are fleeing as the terror is is in real time, going down the side and the water spilling in. And again, based on the the way the ship was moving, that’s also on the on the port or left side of the ship. Then it cuts back to the ship and the ship is again, you know, with the iceberg to starboard.

00:17:52:08 – 00:18:12:02
Mark B. Perry
And all they had to do was flip the negative on those two shots and my theory on that is, I think that the director, John Lesko, realized that by flipping the shots and keeping it accurate, suddenly the ship would be moving right to left when it hit the bird. But it would then be moving right, left to right when it hit the hull.

00:18:12:02 – 00:18:34:20
Mark B. Perry
I know this is a little confusing, but I think he left it that way because that way all of the action is consistent from right to left, both above water and underwater. And only a nerd like me would probably notice something like and then go into a dissertation about it. But anyway, the film depicts an alarm going off, when they’re loading the lifeboats.

00:18:34:20 – 00:18:59:15
Mark B. Perry
That did not happen. They did fire signal, flares. But there was no white siren wailing throughout the loading. The interiors of the ship, they’re more evocative. They’re certainly not reproductions. And again, there were only a handful of photographs available at the time. But I think on the scale of lavishness of of what they’re depicting, I think, you know, they got they get the general ambiance and the orchestra music in this.

00:18:59:15 – 00:19:23:26
Mark B. Perry
The ship’s orchestra is much more 1920s than it is 19 tens. And the dancing that people are doing is, is more 1920s. The Titanic Orchestra was all piano and string instruments. So in terms of historical accuracy, to answer your question, and for the very long winded answer, I give it whatever the razor thin line is between a B and a C minus.

00:19:23:29 – 00:19:48:29
Dan LeFebvre
I really like that you went that you were talking about the historical context of it, because that’s something that, you know, I hear a lot of, a lot of different stories that in history, it’s hard for us now to kind of put yourself, especially going back into ancient times or things like that. But even with this one in particular, too, because we you mentioning James Cameron’s movie 1997 is kind of that’s what everybody thinks of with Titanic.

00:19:49:01 – 00:20:18:01
Dan LeFebvre
And so even, you know, watching this, it’s really hard not to compare this to that movie and, and just assume that, okay, James Cameron’s movie showed it this way. So let’s compare it to that, even though, as you point out, like they didn’t even know a lot of that stuff. And that leads right into my next question, because in Cameron’s 97 movie, we see these lavish sets and obviously a lot more money put into that than the 1953 Titanic movie.

00:20:18:03 – 00:20:26:29
Dan LeFebvre
Do you think the 53 movie did a good job transporting us back to being aboard the Titanic? From a visual perspective.

00:20:27:01 – 00:20:51:26
Mark B. Perry
Does the film visually transport us back to the ship? Does it do a good job? And I’m going to give them props, and that’s an intended pun for the 28ft model. And the exterior shots on deck, all of which were sets, and they’re pretty convincing for the time, especially when you consider this was before CGI. It was before AI and before whatever other eyes are coming down the pike toward us.

00:20:51:28 – 00:21:19:09
Mark B. Perry
But I think it was much easier for audiences in 1953 to suspend disbelief because they hadn’t yet been made completely immune by seeing, anything imaginable rendered on film in a reasonable facsimile of reality, like people flying in anything you might see in a marvel movie. As I said earlier, the interiors of the of the the ship are evocative, and they didn’t have the visual resources for the designs.

00:21:19:11 – 00:21:43:28
Mark B. Perry
We have a context now from all the material at the endless documentaries, the, you know, everything. We have so much visual reference that they just didn’t have in 53. So I cut him some slack in this regard. The sets, I think they captured the lavishness and the scale and the ambiance of, of what a what a liner of that class would have been like back in the day.

00:21:44:01 – 00:22:06:21
Mark B. Perry
But they’re not exact replicas. And the iconic staircase is actually laid out more or less like the actual staircase aboard the ship. The one in, in Titanic 53. But again, the version to beat on that count is Cameron, who was obsessive about getting every rivet on the models of the hull in exactly the right place.

00:22:06:23 – 00:22:27:17
Mark B. Perry
And he had endless amounts of research, including having seen the wreck with his own eyes, diving down to the wreck of, the Titanic. So I, I think for the time period again, all in context, I think they did a pretty good job of putting us aboard a ship in 1912.

00:22:27:19 – 00:22:51:03
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense. Again, it goes I mean, with Cameron’s not only having that extensive research, but also had a little bit of a bigger budget and better technology to work with. So, you know, being able to, to do that, and again, with the 53 movie is black and white too. So, you know, you’re capturing some of those lavish things.

00:22:51:05 – 00:22:55:06
Dan LeFebvre
It’s a little he’s going to suspend belief a little bit more.

00:22:55:08 – 00:23:15:17
Mark B. Perry
They were there was talk about making the film in color in 1953, but then they realized that the models would probably not look as realistic in color, which I think is a good point. And again, you know, for the special effects that were available at the time period, I think they do a serviceable job. I mean, it’s always funny when you cut to the ship sinking in there, clearly.

00:23:15:17 – 00:23:29:19
Mark B. Perry
No people on the deck, but, you know, they they had little motorized lifeboats with the oars moving in in one of the shots. And so, you know, they really tried, they really did try with what they had available at the time.

00:23:29:21 – 00:23:40:24
Dan LeFebvre
I think you mentioned his name. And early in the movie we meet Captain Edward Smith, and this movie seems to make a point of mentioning a flag that Captain Smith had when he was an apprentice on another ship called the Star of Madagascar.

00:23:40:25 – 00:23:42:22
Mark B. Perry
Star of Madagascar.

00:23:42:25 – 00:24:01:23
Dan LeFebvre
When I saw that, it made me curious about why the movie would mention that. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but the impression that I’ve always had is that even back in 1912, the maiden voyage of Titanic was a big deal. And the movie seems to allude to this. So as you talk about, you know, talks about the it was sold out since March, although you already mentioned that that’s not necessarily true.

00:24:01:25 – 00:24:25:12
Dan LeFebvre
But then the only experience that it mentions for Captain Smith is him being this apprentice. So that left me with the impression after watching the movie, that maybe Titanic’s maiden voyage was also Captain Smith’s first time being a ship’s captain, but then that just kind of seems to be a juxtaposition of this big deal. How experienced was Captain Smith prior to taking command of Titanic?

00:24:25:15 – 00:24:50:17
Mark B. Perry
Well, first, I can see how you would take that away from this particular film and the way Smith is depicted. But Smith was actually one of the most experienced captains of, vessels, on the North Atlantic. The star of Madagascar, as far as I can tell, existed only in the same universe where the Titanic’s maiden voyage was sold out.

00:24:50:20 – 00:24:52:18
Dan LeFebvre
So,

00:24:52:21 – 00:25:16:08
Mark B. Perry
I can find no reference to the Star of Madagascar. And I’ve always personally. I mean, I’ve seen this movie a hundred times, and I’ve always found that an odd bit of like, what were the writers trying to convey with. It’s delivered to him on the bridge and he says, run it up the main mast. And, you know, then there’s that moment at the end after the ship is sinking and he’s going down with the ship, and that’s what he looks up and sees.

00:25:16:08 – 00:25:45:09
Mark B. Perry
And I’m like, maybe they were trying to give us some sort of sentimental backstory to humanize him in some way. I mean, we’ll never know because the writers are all dead, and I don’t I don’t know, but it’s an odd beat, but it’s weirdly effective. But I and at the same time, I don’t know what it’s accomplishing. So and if it cast dispersion on Captain Smith’s experience, that’s an unfortunate, upshot of what I think they were trying to do.

00:25:45:11 – 00:26:23:13
Mark B. Perry
But Smith was very experienced. He had over 40 years at sea, as a as a commodore or captain for the White Star Line. And he was their go to whenever they would introduce new ships. And in fact, he had commanded the, he had commanded 17 White Star Line ships in his 40 years, including the maiden voyage of the Titanic’s bigger, older sister, the Olympic, about a year before the Titanic, maiden voyage, wealthy people at the time also very often chose their ship based on the captain, not on the vessel.

00:26:23:15 – 00:26:52:15
Mark B. Perry
And, Captain Smith had his own, groupies who followed him around from ship to ship, which I found to be a very interesting little factoid. But in truth, in some ways, Captain Smith’s abundant experience, I think, may have actually worked against him. On the night of April 14th. And to clarify, I want to read you a famous quote of his.

00:26:52:17 – 00:27:20:19
Mark B. Perry
He once said, I will say that I cannot imagine any condition which could cause a ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that, and I wonder if that played a part in his apparent nonchalance about the ship’s speed, the ice warnings, if he felt that the ship was indeed impervious.

00:27:20:21 – 00:27:45:03
Mark B. Perry
But we don’t know. It’s all speculation at this point, but I do find that interesting that he did apparently say that, and that’s what he believed. And what’s even more poignant, I think, about the Titanic, is that opposed to it being the first time he commanded a ship, it was to be his last. He was going to retire after the maiden voyage once he got back to England.

00:27:45:06 – 00:27:54:01
Mark B. Perry
And to me, that’s a very tragic, bittersweet note to this man who had this long and storied career.

00:27:54:03 – 00:28:18:00
Dan LeFebvre
I wonder if maybe this is just my speculation, as you mentioned, that if this was going to be his last, if the writers of Titanic 53 knew that and then they because the the flag that you know from the Star of Madagascar, it mentions him being an apprentice. So maybe it’s kind of trying to do a bookend like this was, you know, the flag of his first command, his first ship.

00:28:18:08 – 00:28:28:21
Dan LeFebvre
And then this is going to be his last, you know, if he was going to retire after that, that that was maybe I’m just thinking out loud as, you know, as you mentioned, that that’s very interesting.

00:28:28:28 – 00:28:35:09
Mark B. Perry
That may have that I that had not occurred to me, but I think that’s a very, that’s a that’s a solid theory.

00:28:35:12 – 00:28:47:08
Dan LeFebvre
Well, you mentioned their names earlier and you know, the this May storyline throughout the movie follows, Richard Sturgis, his wife Julia, and their two kids, Annette Norman. Do we know if they’re based on real people on Titanic?

00:28:47:11 – 00:29:13:00
Mark B. Perry
Not that I know of, but they are certainly amalgams of, real people, real wealthy people of the time. And certainly real people who were aboard the ship. So I would say kind of yes and no. Now, in the film, Barbara Stanwyck is basically she’s kidnaped her children and she’s tried she wants to save them from, you know, the a life of insufferable snobbery growing up with Clifton Webb.

00:29:13:02 – 00:29:46:10
Mark B. Perry
And there was on the actual Titanic, there was a man aboard who had kidnaped his children in a custody dispute and was taking them to the United States, and the children survived, but the father perished in the the sinking. So it’s possible that, Charles Brackett and Richard Breen and Walter Rice had read about that particular passenger, and that may have been the the inspiration for the inciting incident of Julia kidnaping or taking the kids away from him.

00:29:46:13 – 00:29:49:28
Mark B. Perry
But again, of course, we’ll never know.

00:29:50:01 – 00:30:08:29
Dan LeFebvre
That leads into another tie. And speaking of, Annette, the the daughter in the 53 movie, that’s another tie into the James Cameron 97 one, which is that, you know, a young love story and that one, it’s Annette. And then a young guy named Gifford Rogers from the Purdue tennis team on his way home after playing Oxford during Easter.

00:30:09:01 – 00:30:25:25
Dan LeFebvre
And it’s not exact copy of, you know, the 97 movie with Jack and Rose. But then we it’s it’s hard watching the 53 movie now not to compare it to the 97 movie me like, oh on Titanic, there’s both these love stories. Do we know of any romances like that actually happening on Titanic?

00:30:25:27 – 00:30:54:10
Mark B. Perry
Well, first of all, let me just say this. If you look at Old Hollywood films, so many of them take place at least partly on, some glamorous ocean liner. Doris Day’s first movie wrote, romance on the high seas. Gentlemen prefer blonds. The Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell film, and The Lady Eve, which is one of my favorites, which is a Preston Sturges movie which coincidentally also stars Barbara Stanwyck.

00:30:54:12 – 00:31:17:25
Mark B. Perry
And in it she’s a con artist and she’s seducing Henry Fonda. And there’s a scene where they’re out on deck at night. It’s very romantic, and she says something like, A moonlit deck is a woman’s business office. And so there was a great romance associated with the old steamships and ocean voyages and the idea of shipboard romances has become a trope and a cliche.

00:31:17:28 – 00:31:36:14
Mark B. Perry
Did they happen on the Titanic? I think it’s very likely that they did, because people are people, and when you’re on a ship, there’s a there is a romantic aspect to it. I mean, I’ve crossed the Atlantic on the QE2 and the Queen Mary two and the old France as the Norway, and there is a romance to it.

00:31:36:14 – 00:32:05:22
Mark B. Perry
It’s, it’s it’s a very unique experience. There was a woman aboard the Titanic and her name was, Helen Candy. Candy. And she was traveling alone. And she had she had written a book, about how women can make a living. So I think she was a pioneer of women’s rights and, you know, good for her. She was traveling alone, and she caught the fancy and the attention of a handful of male passengers.

00:32:05:24 – 00:32:30:00
Mark B. Perry
And as Walter Lord describes it, they formed this little coterie of suitors with with miss Candy. And so who knows? You know, if I had to guess, I’d say yes. They’re probably more than one shipboard romance, but the chances are that many of them likely had very unhappy endings. Given what happened to the ship related to this in Cameron’s film.

00:32:30:02 – 00:32:38:17
Mark B. Perry
Leonardo DiCaprio. Jack, he dies because there isn’t room for him on that ginormous piece of wood.

00:32:38:20 – 00:32:42:04
Dan LeFebvre
I think we all saw the MythBusters on that. Yeah.

00:32:42:06 – 00:33:11:29
Mark B. Perry
That saves Kate Winslet. Yeah, there’s a debate about that. But that serves that story really well because that there’s a tragedy at the heart of the tragedy and a personal tragedy at the heart of the tragedy. And I find it interesting that, in 1953, which was closer in time to 1912, that the writers went out of their way to have Gifford, Robert Wagner be a hero.

00:33:12:01 – 00:33:36:16
Mark B. Perry
He’s the one who shimmies down when the lifeboat gets tangled. He’s the one who shimmies down, gets it free, gets it moving again, and then it’s when he’s trying to climb back up to rejoin the men that he loses. His grip, falls into the water. He’s pulled into a lifeboat, he’s unconscious, and that’s how he survives. And that way he’s not depicted as being dishonorable for not staying with the other man aboard the ship.

00:33:36:16 – 00:33:56:02
Mark B. Perry
And it. I think it’s an effective moment, but I also really thought that’s what they’re doing is they’re trying to justify him being able to survive. The Jack and Rose scenario, sadly, is probably closer to real life because so many of the third third class passengers perished.

00:33:56:04 – 00:34:16:19
Dan LeFebvre
That leads right into my next question that I have for you, because, we talked briefly about Richard Sturgis, and in the 53 movie, he buys a third class ticket to get in, and in the 97 movie, Jack wins a third class ticket. And it’s interesting because we don’t really see in both those movies, we see the first class and the third class.

00:34:16:19 – 00:34:34:19
Dan LeFebvre
They don’t really talk too much about a second class, but then both movies seem to imply that you can’t move around very much. In the 53 movie, after Richard gets his ticket, he deliberately moves a sign that says first class passengers, only to go from first. I’m sorry, from third class to first class and the top portion of the ship to where his family is.

00:34:34:22 – 00:34:40:18
Dan LeFebvre
Can you unravel some of the different classes that were aboard Titanic and how their experiences differed?

00:34:40:20 – 00:35:06:18
Mark B. Perry
Yes. This was something we researched quite a bit because in our script, the female sort of love interest, it wasn’t really a love story, but, she was a, an Irish immigrant, single mom who was traveling in steerage or third class, and our protagonist, our time traveling hero. He ends up, finding himself first in first class, but he spends the movie divided between the two.

00:35:06:20 – 00:35:41:21
Mark B. Perry
And we didn’t really get into second class, although Titanic 53. There is a brief sequence where Barbara Stanwyck escorts the defrocked drunken priest, played by Richard based Hart, another fictional character, by the way, down to his state room. And that’s the only time I think we see a second class state room. Then in the there was a 1970s made for TV movie called S.O.S. Titanic with Cloris Leachman and David Warner, and David Warner played a real life character, Lawrence Beasley, who was a survivor of the Titanic who was traveling in second class.

00:35:41:21 – 00:36:15:09
Mark B. Perry
So that film did a little more in second class than other films have historically done. And coincidentally, David Warner, who played Lawrence Beesley, is also in Cameron’s movie, playing Lovejoy, who is, the henchman of, Billy Zane’s character. And so he’s an actor who has the dubious distinction of being on the Titanic twice. But in a historic in a contemporary context, the first class aboard the Titanic was probably more like Claridges Hotel in London, which is considered to be one of the finest, most luxurious in the world.

00:36:15:11 – 00:36:51:08
Mark B. Perry
Or maybe a Four Seasons or a Ritz Carlton. Whatever the passengers wanted was available. They were pampered, like, the patrons on the show, HBO show White Lotus, with one exception that really surprised me. Everyone always talks about how this ship was the pinnacle of luxury, and it may have been for 1912, but it’s only some of the first class suites had private bathroom facilities, and most of the first class had shared bath facilities with other first class passengers.

00:36:51:08 – 00:37:16:01
Mark B. Perry
And to take an actual bath, you had to make a reservation with your cabin steward or stewardess, which I thought that was interesting. I would have assumed that in first class they’re paying that much money. They would have their own bathrooms. But no, second class is more like a marriott or Holiday Inn. It’s still nice, but it’s not quite as opulent as or as luxurious as first.

00:37:16:04 – 00:37:44:05
Mark B. Perry
My late friend, who was a historian and a writer. Her name was Sylvia Stoddard, and she was a Titanic fanatic. And she said that from her research second class aboard the White Star Line’s Titanic was more like first class aboard other liners from other shipping lines of the day. So I that says that says a lot about what first class must have been like.

00:37:44:07 – 00:38:10:07
Mark B. Perry
But the second class cabins had bunk beds, not regular beds, and they too had shared bathroom facilities. All of the second class had shared bathroom facilities. Third class, we’re talking super eight, Best Western, motel six. They were also equipped there. They were equipped with bunk beds. Some of them, I think, had up to 12 or 14.

00:38:10:07 – 00:38:35:10
Mark B. Perry
And so you, you would buy actually space in a bunk. If you were traveling either with you or just your family, and you may have to share quarters. And all of the bathrooms, of course, were shared in third class. And according to two sources, there were only two bathtubs available for third class, one for men, one for women, which I found to be pretty interesting.

00:38:35:12 – 00:39:06:03
Mark B. Perry
That said, people back in the day said that the third class on the Titanic was the best third class accommodations on any vessel at the time. So from what I’ve read about the separations between the classes, it wasn’t as regimented as it’s usually depicted. Yes, there were some physical barriers. There were gates and there were, but there were also chains and signs like we see in Titanic 53, when Clifton Webb lets himself into first class.

00:39:06:05 – 00:39:24:22
Mark B. Perry
It’s hard to imagine, but I think back then they still paid attention to, the honor system. And I hate this expression, but I think people sort of knew their place. And so, you know, they they didn’t break the rules. Yes. As they said, there were gates and there were barriers, and some of them were in fact locked in sort of thing.

00:39:24:22 – 00:39:39:13
Mark B. Perry
But it was not impossible, according to our research. For someone to move from one class to another if they were determined enough and in some cases sneaky enough or rich and entitled.

00:39:39:16 – 00:40:09:19
Dan LeFebvre
Which then makes sense in the 53 movie, how it would be so easy for him to go from third class to first class and just fit in exactly. Well, if we go back to the 53 movie, there are a few different scenes where we see mentions of an iceberg report. The one it focuses on most is a telegraph sent to Captain Smith from the commander of SS Baltic, about an iceberg at latitude 41 degrees 51 North, longitude 49 degrees 52 West.

00:40:09:21 – 00:40:36:21
Dan LeFebvre
And despite this, Captain Smith orders Titanic to go 21 knots. And doing the math on that. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s like 24mph. 39km/h. Going that fast seems to be something that one of the crew in the movie, Mr. Lightoller, is concerned with. So he asked Captain Smith about it, and Smith reassures Lightoller that they’ll be able to see any icebergs in the daylight, and so he’ll personally be on the bridge in the morning to watch out for those.

00:40:36:24 – 00:40:58:17
Dan LeFebvre
And just to help with some of the numbers, I looked up, Titanic’s top speed, and it’s about 23. Not so 26 miles an hour, 43km an hour. So our service speed was 21 knots that we see in the movie. And then, of course, looking at this with the historical context, it’s easy to see why, you know, with what happened, why the speed with the iceberg would have been such a big deal.

00:40:58:19 – 00:41:13:09
Dan LeFebvre
But then the movie seems to suggest that maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal. So with that in mind for how the movie portrays things, how well do you think the movie does explaining the iceberg reports, and then Captain Smith’s orders to maintain titanic speed.

00:41:13:12 – 00:41:41:15
Mark B. Perry
Is a good question. According to Walter Lord, again, the Titanic received at least seven ice warnings from ships like the Baltic, the, the Corona, the America, the Masada. And there may have been more, but the radio operators were very busy sending personal messages for the passengers who were basically playing with this brand new toy, the high tech of its day, the wireless telegraph.

00:41:41:21 – 00:42:13:05
Mark B. Perry
And they were sending personal messages about, oh, we expect to arrive in New York at such and such a time. Please have such and such available. And the it was a source of revenue for the White Star Line. And so the operators were sending outgoing messages, which meant that not some incoming messages. And in fact, in some cases the the, the operators aboard the Titanic told the people sending them messages to shut up and get off the line because they were sending messages through the Cape Race relay to the, the, the United States.

00:42:13:07 – 00:42:35:10
Mark B. Perry
So some of them probably didn’t even get through. And but that said, I’m not sure I, I think in the movie, if I’m recalling right, it’s the Baltic message that the captain flips over and writes the coordinates of the ship. I don’t think that’s true. I think he did receive the Baltic message in real life. Would it have made any difference?

00:42:35:10 – 00:43:13:06
Mark B. Perry
I don’t know, because Captain Smith believed his that ship’s shipbuilding had gone past the, you know, kinds of accidents they had. But this was a night of what ifs. This was a night of if this hadn’t happened, if this hadn’t happened, if this had happened. You know, I heard a theory recently that said that the iceberg, which I had never heard this before and I haven’t researched it, so I may be talking out of turn, but they said that the, the, the iceberg that they hit was actually had broken off and flipped over and was a dark blue on the bottom, and which there was no moon that night, and it made it almost

00:43:13:06 – 00:43:48:21
Mark B. Perry
impossible to see until they were right up on it. Whether or not that’s true, I don’t know. But Smith, by all accounts, was pretty nonchalant about the ice warnings. And again, I think it’s because of his overconfidence in shipbuilding. And being unable to envision any circumstance where a ship like this would actually flounder. So, again, not being the final arbiter of these things, my guess is the movie does a pretty good job in his attitude, if not the actual, facts as they played out aboard the aboard the ship.

00:43:48:23 – 00:43:58:08
Mark B. Perry
And, pretty much what he did, I think is, was supported by, contemporaneous accounts in those hearings and from survivors who were there.

00:43:58:10 – 00:44:23:22
Dan LeFebvre
I had never heard that theory about it, flipping over. But that brings up a good point of something kind of touching on what you were talking about before of, you know, if we don’t even it especially don’t, you know, during the 53 movie, they didn’t even have pictures or that much information there and then even even now, like how how old would you possibly be able to know about a specific iceberg in 1912, whether or not it had slipped over?

00:44:23:29 – 00:44:39:10
Dan LeFebvre
It’s not like there were footage or I mean, it’s that that kind of thing. I know there’s a lot of scientific stuff that people can do. It just blows my mind. But how we can jump to those sort of conclusions that we might know that, oh, there’s one particular iceberg might have flipped over. And that’s why they couldn’t see at that time.

00:44:39:10 – 00:44:48:02
Dan LeFebvre
And it’s like, okay, maybe. But also sometimes I think we just have to be okay never knowing what actually happened.

00:44:48:04 – 00:45:10:25
Mark B. Perry
Well, I think that’s true. And like I said, I preface that that’s I heard that recently and I have not substantiated it, but I thought it was interesting, but it still seems like that didn’t need to be part of the equation. I think if it had just been an iceberg, as it’s portrayed in the Cameron film and the the 53 film, and in a night to remember that just a big white iceberg, coming up out of nowhere.

00:45:10:25 – 00:45:32:14
Mark B. Perry
I mean, there was no moon that night, and it was it was difficult to discern those shapes at at the speed that they were moving and to maneuver properly in time. And, you know, again, you go back to eyewitness accounts. That’s all they had. And in 1953 that they only had what was on the record from people who were there.

00:45:32:16 – 00:46:01:19
Mark B. Perry
And those people weren’t carrying HD and 4K cameras in their pockets. The ship was not being charted by satellites. They weren’t in constant two way communication with other ships. It was a very different time. And so, you know, there’s so much speculations. There’s all the, you know, there’s the crazy conspiracy theory that that ship to to the Olympic and the Titanic were switched for some reason that I don’t think I’ve ever clearly understood.

00:46:01:22 – 00:46:10:03
Mark B. Perry
But, you know, it’s it’s fascinating to me that over 100 years after this happened, we’re still talking about it.

00:46:10:06 – 00:46:34:18
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, human memory is not great. But also to add to that, to everybody who survived had still gone through this extremely traumatic event. And so that’s going to affect memory as well. And just all these different. Yeah. We’re just never going to know all, all the facts.

00:46:34:20 – 00:46:53:27
Mark B. Perry
You know did clearly people can misremember. People can also make things up whether they mean to or not. I mean they might change their story because they didn’t run back to get the little boy who had fallen in the water and they just left them, you know, who knows? You know, we’re fallible.

00:46:54:00 – 00:47:11:00
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, very, very true. Well, if we go back to the movie, we do see we see a little bit, but there’s not a lot of dates and locations displayed out. Right? Like, you know, a lot of movies have had the text on screen, but we get some clues here and there, kind of what the path that the Titanic is taking.

00:47:11:03 – 00:47:27:03
Dan LeFebvre
At the beginning of the movie, for example, there are some signs that were in French. That’s when Richard Sturgis boards the ship, getting his his ticket. And after they start making their way to the open ocean, Richard is having dinner with his family, asks his daughter Annette what day it is, and she says it’s April 13th.

00:47:27:05 – 00:47:46:07
Dan LeFebvre
And then later in the movie, one of the sailors on the ship looks at the clock, making the movie make some notice that the clock is at 11:36 p.m. on April 14th, and that’s just before they see the iceberg in front of them. So based on these little clues that we have, do you think the movie does a pretty good job portraying the dates and places for Titanic’s timeline?

00:47:46:09 – 00:48:15:20
Mark B. Perry
I think they do an excellent job. In this case, the movie seems to be pretty accurate in the timeline. Maybe that’s what they meant by quote unquote general data in the, and, in the opening statement, the Titanic set sail on a Wednesday, which was April 10th, 1912, from Southampton, England. And there she was docked and the passengers boarded by gangway in the traditional fashion that we usually see in the movies.

00:48:15:22 – 00:48:37:00
Mark B. Perry
Interesting factoid. The the loading was done opposite of modern day air travel, and that they put the third class passengers aboard first before the first class and second class passengers boarded. I don’t know why, but apparently that was protocol of the day. Once she was fully loaded, she set sail. She arrived a few hours later in the French port of Cherbourg that you mentioned.

00:48:37:00 – 00:49:02:14
Mark B. Perry
And that’s where Titanic 53 picks her up, basically. Then they take on more passengers who come aboard by tender or those the smallish ferry boats that bring them out to the ship, because the harbor at Cherbourg did not have docking facilities that could accommodate a ship the size of the Titanic. So, incidentally, one of those tenders, the nomadic, survives to this day.

00:49:02:14 – 00:49:36:20
Mark B. Perry
It’s been restored. It’s on. You can visit it in Belfast, Ireland. And it was also designed by Thomas Andrews, who designed the much bigger sister ship, the Titanic. Only the nomadic is still afloat after all these years, unlike, the Titanic. There were while they were in Cherbourg. This is also where, this is where we see Julia and her children boarding, along with, Maud Young and other characters coming out on that tender.

00:49:36:22 – 00:50:10:07
Mark B. Perry
And that’s also where we see, Richard Sturgis, getting aboard by buying his ticket from the U.S. cruise and then sneaking up, and, let’s see. So then there were, passengers who disembarked in Cherbourg. There were about two dozen who left the ship because they had only booked passage to cross the channel. And I imagine they spent the rest of their lives with some pretty interesting cocktail party stories, about having, you know, just narrowly missed doom.

00:50:10:09 – 00:50:33:07
Mark B. Perry
And then from Cherbourg, the ship went to Queenstown, Ireland, which is they’ve changed the name and I’m blanking on what it’s called now, but, that isn’t even shown in Titanic 53. But it did stop in Ireland on Thursday the 11th midday, and then early afternoon it set sail for New York. And of course, infamy.

00:50:33:09 – 00:51:02:00
Mark B. Perry
April 13th would have been the Saturday. And that’s when when Annette says that the next day is when they’re in church on Sunday and they’re singing the hymn. And then by Monday morning, of course, the ship would be lost. And, you know, the story of the investigations and everything would begin. So in terms of accuracy, I think they got this, you know, with excluding things for time’s sake, I think more than anything else.

00:51:02:03 – 00:51:11:20
Mark B. Perry
I think they they did an excellent job. In fact, I’m going to upgrade my rating to a solid B at this point. Okay. Nice. That sizable.

00:51:11:22 – 00:51:30:13
Dan LeFebvre
Oh yes, of course, of course. Well we are at the point then if we go back to the movie, we’re at the point in the timeline where Titanic strikes the iceberg. It’s mere moments after it’s sited. According to the way the movie’s timeline is. And but Captain Smith is not on the bridge when the first actions are taken to avoid the iceberg.

00:51:30:13 – 00:51:46:26
Dan LeFebvre
But we can hear orders like Carter starboard and and full speed astern. Keep the helm hard over, and then movie cuts to the underwater shot that you’re talking about, where you see the, you know, the iceberg actually slicing the hull. And then at this point it cuts to, Captain Smith and he can feel the impact from where he’s on the ship.

00:51:46:26 – 00:52:12:15
Dan LeFebvre
And he rushes to the bridge, and he’s been informed that they picked up a spur. There’s no damage above the waterline, but the for pike is floated to the all top deck. There’s additional damage. After the the bulkhead be. And they’re taking water. And number one, two and three holds number five and six boiler rooms. And in the movie, Captain Smith seems surprised that there’s damage that far aft and asks if they can shore up.

00:52:12:18 – 00:52:29:26
Dan LeFebvre
No, is the reply, and they’ve been cut open like a tin can. And that’s basically a summary of the movie’s version of events. And there’s a lot of nautical terminology in there that, I would hope that you can help, kind of help explain what some of that is, but is that basically what happened?

00:52:29:29 – 00:52:33:00
Mark B. Perry
Well, no.

00:52:33:02 – 00:52:37:02
Dan LeFebvre
I’m sorry. Does that does that bring the grade back down to the B much? Yeah.

00:52:37:05 – 00:52:58:15
Mark B. Perry
No, no, I’m sticking with the B at this point. I, you know, I got a soft spot in my heart for this movie. So is that really what happened again? It’s a rash man indeed. Who knows. But from what we do know, the commands on the bridge. Hard to starboard. Full speed astern. All of that was pretty much exactly right.

00:52:58:15 – 00:53:22:04
Mark B. Perry
And it’s depicted as it’s depicted in the film. And I believe it’s the same thing in Cameron’s film. And that came from testimony at the hearings, because there were officers who survived, who were there, who knew what was going on. Captain Smith in Titanic 53 is sort of having a waxing, sentimental, poetic moment watching the kids sing their school anthem.

00:53:22:04 – 00:53:42:16
Mark B. Perry
And I think they’re in the I don’t know if they’re in the ballroom at the restaurant or where they are. But anyway, he was actually in his cabin, which was next to the wheelhouse on the bridge, and he did feel the impact. But it is very unlikely that the crew had that much information at their disposal, the way it’s portrayed in the film.

00:53:42:18 – 00:54:06:00
Mark B. Perry
In reality, Smith ordered inspections. He’s the one who ordered them to go down and do the inspections. And he also summoned Thomas Thomas Andrews, the ship’s designer, who again, isn’t in this movie conveniently, and I think the writers were taking license to just condense all the shoe leather so that they don’t have to play out every step because they want to get back to.

00:54:06:01 – 00:54:27:15
Mark B. Perry
They just want to set up the stakes that the ship is going to sink. What’s going to happen to the Sturges family? And it it seems unlikely that Smith, given his history, and again, that quote, it seems unlikely that he believed the ship was doomed from the get go and he sent an officer below to inspect the damage.

00:54:27:15 – 00:54:54:04
Mark B. Perry
And he then subsequently learned that the forward compartments were flooding. The mail room was flooding, taking on water fast, and he ordered the ship’s carpenter to go down and shore up the damage as best they could. And when, Smith was told that the ship foundering was a mathematical certainty by Thomas Andrews as the ship’s designer, he would know.

00:54:54:07 – 00:55:23:09
Mark B. Perry
That’s when Smith really knew that this was inevitable. So there were several steps in his process. I think some of it may have been denial, but some of it was also doing what he possibly could to try to buy as much time as he could. And, I just think the film for dramatic purposes condensed all of that because, again, that despite their claim at the beginning, that wasn’t really the focus of this particular film.

00:55:23:12 – 00:55:50:22
Dan LeFebvre
That makes perfect sense and that then these ships and my next question, because according to the movie, after hearing about this, this damage, it’s almost immediate. The Captain Smith just knows that the ship is going to go down. The very one of the very first things we see in the movie is he he orders the Ford pump start, and then he rushes to the wireless telegraph room, where he orders a Cicd to all vessels and then you know, the movie through dialog, very helpfully explains one of the officers or the telegraph operators.

00:55:50:22 – 00:56:14:23
Dan LeFebvre
Like that means a full distress. Yeah, yeah, we’re going down. Basically what Captain Smith says. So do we know I’m assuming then knew that we don’t know if Captain Smith immediately knew that they were going to sink. But then if that’s the case, would it be a fair assessment that that order that the movie points out, that he says, you know, starting the Ford pumps, that that’s basically just trying to delay the inevitable to try and buy time for the lifeboats.

00:56:14:25 – 00:56:36:03
Mark B. Perry
I think it was trying to buy time for the lifeboats. I, based on what I’ve read, what I know about it, you know, which again, it’s all speculation, but, I think, yes, they did have pumps and they could buy some time by pumping out the water, but at some point, you know, they get overwhelmed and the ship goes down.

00:56:36:05 – 00:57:00:10
Mark B. Perry
But I do think he was trying. He was he had so few options. And as soon as Andrews told him, it’s a mathematical certainty, which that’s apparently a direct quote from what he said. But he didn’t survive, of course, so who knows? But, I think once those words were said, then Captain Smith knew he had to do whatever he could possibly do to buy as much time as he could as the ship was going down.

00:57:00:10 – 00:57:06:24
Mark B. Perry
And he also simultaneously said, muster, the passengers, put them off boats, women and children.

00:57:06:27 – 00:57:30:24
Dan LeFebvre
I can only those are the kind of things I can’t wrap my head around. What that receiving that news must be, especially with that quote that you mentioned from Captain Smith. You know, just the assumption that this could never happen. And we all think of, you know, the Titanic is unsinkable and that whole aspect. And then to hear that it’s a mathematical, mathematical certainty that just has to be absolutely devastating.

00:57:30:24 – 00:57:39:11
Dan LeFebvre
I don’t I mean, I don’t know how you what sort of reaction to have to that. I mean, unfortunately we’ll never know. But that’s just it’s chilling.

00:57:39:11 – 00:58:04:08
Mark B. Perry
And I think, the actor who plays Captain Smith in Titanic 53, I think he plays that moment pretty well of the realization. And, you know, oh my God, what do we do? And the captain still today, the captain is responsible for the ship. They they are they are the last word. They are the they are the for good or bad, they’re they get the credit.

00:58:04:09 – 00:58:06:12
Mark B. Perry
They they get the blame.

00:58:06:15 – 00:58:08:18
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. The buck stops here as they say.

00:58:08:24 – 00:58:10:00
Mark B. Perry
Exactly.

00:58:10:02 – 00:58:27:09
Dan LeFebvre
Well, speaking of the the lifeboats at this time in the movie is when we find out that they don’t have enough light plus for everybody, Captain Smith’s orders the women and children in lifeboats because there aren’t enough for the men. Can you share some more historical context about the lifeboats situation on Titanic?

00:58:27:11 – 00:58:40:16
Mark B. Perry
Well, I’m going to say something controversial, which is the Titanic actually had more than a sufficient number of lifeboats. Okay, to meet the outdated regulations of the time.

00:58:40:18 – 00:58:42:00
Dan LeFebvre
Okay.

00:58:42:02 – 00:59:10:25
Mark B. Perry
Ships had grown in size so fast and mankind so arrogant, apparently, that they didn’t want to clutter the recreational space on the boat deck with, quote unquote, non-essential equipment that would block the view for the first class passengers out for a stroll on the boat deck. So there were, 16 boats, 16 wooden boats, and that’s eight on each side of the ship for forward and for aft.

00:59:10:27 – 00:59:32:13
Mark B. Perry
And there between the forward and aft boats, there was about 200ft of open deck, as you see in the film, where the passengers could enjoy the view as the ship was sinking. I don’t mean to make light, but it just so absurd to me that they didn’t take safety so as seriously as we do now.

00:59:32:13 – 00:59:35:04
Mark B. Perry
And one of the reasons we do now is because it happened.

00:59:35:06 – 00:59:40:02
Dan LeFebvre
They’re called lifeboats. I mean, that’s that’s pretty essential. Their life. It’s in the name of lifeboat, like.

00:59:40:06 – 01:00:10:07
Mark B. Perry
Yeah, all of those boats, those 16 boats, the the two in the front were smaller. There were slightly smaller, but they were still the wooden lifeboats. Those satisfied by the regulations of the day. But the Titanic was equipped with four additional collapsible lifeboats which were stowed up on one of the I don’t know what you call that. It’s one of the platforms on the boat deck, and they were lashed there and they had some trouble getting them down, but those exceeded the requirements.

01:00:10:07 – 01:00:35:23
Mark B. Perry
And that’s why I say that the Titanic actually had more than sufficient lifeboats to meet the regulations at the time, because they did have these other, these other collapsible boats that could once the other boats had been lowered from the davits, these collapsible boats could be fit into those davits and lowered away. The some of the passengers were made were aware of the disparity between the number of boats and the number of people aboard.

01:00:35:25 – 01:01:02:15
Mark B. Perry
Others were not. And it is true, according to testimony, that some of the first class gentlemen were let in on this dire news and so they could act accordingly. And as for the haphazard use of the boats, you know, going away with a handful of people, there had been no boat drill, for the ship. It wasn’t done, it wasn’t required.

01:01:02:17 – 01:01:31:11
Mark B. Perry
And even as the passengers were told to muster at their muster stations, which is where they’re supposed to gather to get on their lifeboat, the crew was still telling them that the ship was unsinkable. So imagine yourself. It’s freezing cold out. It’s like 28 degrees freezing cold. You’re standing on a solid ship. There’s there’s lights, there’s heat, there’s jaunty music playing from somewhere aft from the ship’s orchestra.

01:01:31:14 – 01:02:00:01
Mark B. Perry
And then there’s a little wooden boat hanging 70ft above the frigid water. And so a lot of people would not get in those boats. And so some of them went away with a handful of people. So, if I may, I’ll go into some, I’ll go into the weeds with the lifeboats. But, all told, there were, as I said, there were 14 largest boats could accommodate 65 passengers each.

01:02:00:03 – 01:02:16:15
Mark B. Perry
The two smaller cutters at the bow, they were called cutters. They were the wooden boats. They had a capacity of 40 people. And the four collapsible boats could handle 47 people each. And that’s a total capacity of 1180 souls. If all of them had been fully loaded.

01:02:16:17 – 01:02:21:02
Dan LeFebvre
And the movie said, I think there are 2200 overall on the Titanic, just a kind of.

01:02:21:04 – 01:02:53:03
Mark B. Perry
There are around 21, 20, 200. The the the number is still not has never really been certified because there were discrepancies in the passenger list and so forth. But there were, let’s say, 21, 20, 200 aboard the maiden voyage. So even fully loaded, the boats would still have been insufficient for some 900 people who died. And but had they been fully loaded, they would have been able to save close to 500 additional lives than what they were able to save.

01:02:53:05 – 01:02:57:03
Mark B. Perry
But hey, even God himself couldn’t think this ship, right?

01:02:57:06 – 01:03:19:07
Dan LeFebvre
What you mentioned there about how the, the crew was saying that, the ship is unsinkable. That reminds me of something that I saw in the movie where, you know, as as people are being told to line up for the lifeboats. This is movie’s version of events. Everyone’s, you know, donning the life jackets, and the crew is sending up distress flares, but then they’re still selling, telling the passenger there’s no cause for alarm.

01:03:19:12 – 01:03:47:02
Dan LeFebvre
Even as in the movie, we can hear alarms blaring across the ship, which seems pretty like a pretty stark contrast to that. And then there’s, it seems pretty obvious that they’re trying to keep everybody calm, but it doesn’t really take very long in the movie for people to start to realize what’s going on. That movie really focuses on Richard Sturgis in his family, and he tells a man they’re probably going to row out a few hundred yards where they repair the damage.

01:03:47:04 – 01:04:03:16
Dan LeFebvre
His wife, Julia, then thanks him for lying to them, and they try to seem to make up their differences in the final moments that they have. And there are a lot of tears in the movie, with only one exception of a man pretending to be a woman to get on the lifeboats. Most of the men seem to be resigned to their fate.

01:04:03:18 – 01:04:12:13
Dan LeFebvre
Do you think the movie did a pretty accurate job of portraying this tension? And then the realization among the passengers as they boarded the lifeboats?

01:04:12:16 – 01:04:33:05
Mark B. Perry
Again, I think it did capture the drama of the moment. I’m not sure if that captured the accuracy. You know, the the who was where and which person was in which boat. But there are cases that Walter Lord writes about of men reassuring their wives, as Richard does in the movie. And, you know, it’s just a precaution.

01:04:33:05 – 01:04:54:14
Mark B. Perry
And so forth. And while knowing that they themselves were doomed, as Richard Sturgis does in the film and, you know, but that gives him for the soap that and the drama that gives him that great moment with Norman when Norman sadly, tragically gets to, quote unquote, be a man, which is his whole thing in the movie. He wants to wear long pants.

01:04:54:14 – 01:05:18:07
Mark B. Perry
He’s grown up. And so he’s going to become a man, which means he’s going to perish with the other man, the other gentleman aboard the ship. And in terms of the drama and the tears and the fear and the terror, as the reality of it begins to dawn on these people, the goodbyes, the stoicism of the the men and the other people who stayed behind.

01:05:18:07 – 01:05:32:27
Mark B. Perry
I think the film captures the drama of that really well and is and is pretty powerful. But again, if you want to get into the weeds on the actual timeline, you got to look to Mr. Cameron’s opus.

01:05:33:00 – 01:05:57:20
Dan LeFebvre
That yeah, that’s fair. And it does still go back to especially especially in a moment like that, because that’s the moment when there is the most panic. Relying on the witness reports is going to be the most, for lack of a better way to say it, the most inaccurate. I mean, that’s when their most panic is. So that’s when the misremembering, you know, trying to piece together things after the fact.

01:05:57:20 – 01:06:03:24
Dan LeFebvre
I imagine that would be the most difficult element to remember, as things are flashing by so quickly.

01:06:03:27 – 01:06:14:29
Mark B. Perry
Rational thought goes out the window. It’s all about do I jump, do I stay? I mean, I cannot imagine the terror of that situation.

01:06:15:01 – 01:06:33:13
Dan LeFebvre
Well, if we go back to the movie as as the lifeboats lowered and they row away, we the band plays nearer. My God, to the everyone left on board sings along, and the movie cuts to some shots of people in the lifeboats. They can hear the songs being sung as Titanic starts to pitch forward. All of a sudden things accelerate very quickly.

01:06:33:13 – 01:06:53:03
Dan LeFebvre
In the movie, there seems to be some sort of an explosion. The movie doesn’t really mention what’s happening here, but there’s some dialog earlier talked about, the ship being finished once the water hits the boilers. So that’s what I was assuming. The movie’s trying to portray as water hits the boilers is explosion of steam, perhaps, but in the movie we see the ball fully engulfed in the water.

01:06:53:03 – 01:07:10:03
Dan LeFebvre
The water just kind of starts bubbling at the surface. And then there’s this rumbling that knocks everybody off their feet, stops them from singing Near my God to thee. And then within a few seconds, she slips beneath the waters entirely. Do you think the movie did a pretty good job recounting what we know of Titanic’s final moments.

01:07:10:06 – 01:07:41:13
Mark B. Perry
For the time? Once again, I’m going to put everything in this film in context of what they knew at the time. So I think they tried to do a, I, they tried to do a good job, a respectful job of depicting the final moments based on what they knew and with the technology they had available at the time, which was basically models, miniatures and, you know, air canisters so they could blow, you know, the water could bubble as the ship goes down and that sort of thing.

01:07:41:15 – 01:08:01:19
Mark B. Perry
There’s always been lively debate about the whole nearer, my God to thee thing, or whether it was nearer, my God to thee or a popular tune of the time called Autumn, which was a waltz. But the nearer, my God, to thee thing is such a. I don’t know if romantic is the right word to use, but it’s so evocative.

01:08:01:19 – 01:08:22:16
Mark B. Perry
I think it’s kind of become Titanic gospel, if you will. But Walter Lord writes about it in his sequel to A Night to Remember that came out in the 80s, called The Night Lives On. And, in this film, they start playing in Titanic 53. The captain asks them to start playing, and it’s much later in the process.

01:08:22:16 – 01:08:45:10
Mark B. Perry
And in truth, the captain didn’t ask them a while. Wallace Hartley, the band leader. He was the one who instigated it, which is portrayed pretty accurately in the Cameron film. And they were playing light music of the day. They were playing ragtime. They were playing, you know, waltzes. They’re playing popular songs because the whole idea was to take people, take people’s minds off of, you know, what was going on.

01:08:45:10 – 01:09:13:22
Mark B. Perry
And keep everybody calm. Interestingly enough, Nearer My God to Thee was the original title of Titanic 53, until somebody wisely suggested that they change it. But witnesses at the time, again, with the testimony that they had, they basically said they saw the bow going under, and then that accelerated as the water rose, the decks began to slope precariously, making it impossible for people to stand.

01:09:13:22 – 01:09:37:02
Mark B. Perry
And we see all of this in the film. The musicians eventually fell, you know, and the music stopped. The lights went out. Then there was a steady roar. And in the the real witness accounts, there was a steady roar, which was apparently the sound of all the heavy machinery, the dishes, the glassware, the furniture, the pianos, everything breaking loose and hurtling toward the submerged bow.

01:09:37:05 – 01:10:05:04
Mark B. Perry
We only see some of this and 53 it is shown in horrifying, vivid detail in Cameron’s film, the dishes and everything else. As the stern rose in the air and the real, incident, the, the forward funnel detached, fell into the water. It’s depicted in Cameron’s film. They do not show that happening here. It may have been beyond their capable to make that, look realistic.

01:10:05:06 – 01:10:27:06
Mark B. Perry
Then in real life, the ship did go perpendicular, for up to two minutes, according to witnesses. And the noises stopped. And the stern then settled back slightly, then slowly began to slip. It’s picking up speed as it went. Now in Titanic 53, we don’t see it do this, but we see it stay at the angle and.

01:10:27:06 – 01:10:28:28
Dan LeFebvre
Then.

01:10:29:01 – 01:11:03:20
Mark B. Perry
Hang there for a moment and then begin to sink and pick up speed. And that settling back might well have been as the witnesses who saw it. That may well have been the ship actually breaking in two at the time. But we didn’t know that for sure until the wreck was found by Ballard in the 80s. And I find it interesting that of all the people who testified were interviewed, only three swore they saw the ship break in half and all the others said that that did not happen.

01:11:03:22 – 01:11:29:05
Mark B. Perry
And so that goes back to speaking to the reliability of eyewitness testimony. So I think it puts a big caveat on all of this. As for the explosion that’s portrayed in 1953, they were basing that on testimony of one seaman who said that he survived, and he said that he heard an explosion before the ship went down.

01:11:29:07 – 01:11:52:03
Mark B. Perry
But when Ballard found the wreck, there was no evidence of a boiler explosion. There was no evidence of an explosion. There was evidence of the ship having been strained to the point of breaking in half. And but it is possible that the bulkhead, when they were going down the bulkheads finally giving way with all of that pressure, could have made explosive sounds.

01:11:52:06 – 01:12:19:06
Mark B. Perry
And who knows what a huge ship actually sounds like when it literally breaks into. So I think they opted to rely on that one person’s testimony because it makes for drama. It it accelerates the sinking. In the movie it says this happened and that’s why this happened. And that’s how Richard Sturgis dies with his son without ever having shared his true parentage.

01:12:19:06 – 01:12:21:18
Mark B. Perry
Because, again, it’s a soap opera.

01:12:21:20 – 01:12:41:26
Dan LeFebvre
I you make a great point two, of how would we know what that would, what it actually would have sounded like. That goes back to, you know, relying on on witness reports. But even they wouldn’t they you hear this big noise, you wouldn’t be able to identify exactly what that is because there’s all these there’s a lot of noises, I’m sure, that were happening.

01:12:42:03 – 01:12:46:12
Dan LeFebvre
And being able to identify what they were not easy to do.

01:12:46:19 – 01:13:10:12
Mark B. Perry
Yeah, I, I and I give Cameron big props for and his crew and the sound mixers because if you have to imagine that and try to create that, I think they did an exceptional job because that’s a horrifying moment in the Cameron film, which I recently rewatched. And as a research before you, we have our talk today.

01:13:10:15 – 01:13:34:16
Dan LeFebvre
Well, we started our discussion today with the text at the beginning of the movie, so it seems fitting to end in a similar fashion because the movie ends with voiceover. It gives us a few details about the tragedy, and I’m going to quote the voiceover from the end of the movie. Thus, on April 15th, 1912, at oh two 20 hours, as the passengers and crew sang a Welsh hymn, RMS Titanic passed from the British registry.

01:13:34:18 – 01:13:57:28
Dan LeFebvre
712 people in 19 lifeboats survived. I found it interesting that the movie mentioned the number of survivors in lifeboats, but didn’t mention how many souls were lost. So I have a two part question. As we start to wrap up our discussion today. First is the part the movie included in the final voice over accurate. And secondly, can you fill in some of the historical details that the movie doesn’t mention?

01:13:58:00 – 01:14:24:29
Mark B. Perry
By all accounts, there were 712 survivors, and most estimates put the loss of souls at around 1500, which is an interesting omission in this film, because to me. That’s the more horrifying statistic, actually. But again, this number isn’t really known because we don’t actually know how many people were aboard the ship because they weren’t all scanned by computers.

01:14:25:01 – 01:14:44:26
Mark B. Perry
You know, they didn’t have wristbands like they do today. And there were discrepancies in the passenger list. There were people who were on the printed passenger list who did not make the voyage. And same for the crew. So I want to go back to the singing of the hymn, the because you mentioned the Welsh hymn and the movie says Welsh hymn.

01:14:44:26 – 01:15:19:14
Mark B. Perry
Well, as many, many people insist that, you know, the band didn’t play the hymn, because their goal was to calm the passengers and not, you know, serenade the arrival of death or whatever. But if they had actually played or sung nearer, my God, to thee. As Walter Lord points out, the British version has a completely different melody than the American version, and not everybody would have known the song by the same melody, so it would have been a cacophony as opposed to the way it’s depicted in Titanic.

01:15:19:14 – 01:15:43:11
Mark B. Perry
53 years ago, I bought an excellent CD called Titanic. Music is heard on The Fateful Voyage, and it’s by, Ian Whitcomb and his orchestra, and they do authentic recreations of the music from the ship, and they do a performance of this waltz called Autumn. And for me, I like to think that that’s the last tune that the band played.

01:15:43:14 – 01:16:14:09
Mark B. Perry
People may have said prayers, they may have sung hymns. But that’s what I prefer to think, because it’s a very haunting, beautiful melody. Another interesting thing is that two of those four collapsible boats that could have carried however many people I said earlier, they apparently floated away with nobody in them. And, so of the total of 18 boats, the 16 wooden, the two collapsible, that’s all that survived.

01:16:14:12 – 01:16:33:28
Mark B. Perry
But if those other boats floated off and there was a sea full of people flailing, it’s hard to understand why they wouldn’t have done. One of the collapsible, as we’ve seen, was upside down, and the they managed to get aboard it and keep it afloat all night until they were rescued. So it’s hard to imagine why that happened.

01:16:33:28 – 01:17:06:12
Mark B. Perry
And I wonder, actually, if those boats were still lashed to the ship and went down with it. And that’s why there’s no account of those two. Two missing, collapsible boats. And then finally, the Titanic was never advertised as being unsinkable, but was generally referred to that way. And that was repeated enough that people believed that even apparently Captain Smith.

01:17:06:15 – 01:17:40:20
Mark B. Perry
But when you look at the persist, a fascination with this ship, all the TV shows, the documentaries, the coverage of that tragic submersible implosion that happened two years ago, going down to the dive, the wreck, the movies, the operas, the musicals, the books, nonfiction and fiction and on and on. As I said earlier, this was a hundred years ago, but it’s still this tragic confluence of events that happened that night and resulted in everything that it did.

01:17:40:23 – 01:17:58:21
Mark B. Perry
It it still resonates. It’s still it’s still relatable for people and it still fascinates. So it’s and and in that way, as Walter Lord points out, the Titanic herself may not have been unsinkable, but the legacy of the Titanic is certainly unsinkable.

01:17:58:24 – 01:18:17:27
Dan LeFebvre
But you mentioned at the very beginning that you had written your own version before Cameron’s version came out. If, let’s say that you were in charge of a new adaptation of Titanic story, is there anything you would change or anything based on the new information that’s come out since you wrote that originally?

01:18:18:00 – 01:18:22:10
Mark B. Perry
I probably wouldn’t do it.

01:18:22:13 – 01:18:28:25
Dan LeFebvre
Because it would be compared to Cameron’s. And that I mean, that’s that’s because that just seems to be the one that everybody’s like, this is what happened.

01:18:29:02 – 01:19:00:11
Mark B. Perry
Of course. I mean, Cameron, whatever we think of all the Jack and Rose stuff in the film, it made it a blockbuster hit. It’s a movie that I don’t know that I’ve ever met anybody who hasn’t seen it, which is rare. And I think he has set the standard for generations to come. And it’s also known as the studio execs prophetically said to us, this will be the most expensive movie ever made, which at the time it was.

01:19:00:11 – 01:19:30:24
Mark B. Perry
And so they were right. Even ten years before. But, you know, especially a movie where everybody already knows the ending. That said, I do think that the script that Dudley and I wrote at and again, trying to be respectful but still tell an action adventure, time travel movie, I think that it removes one of those obstacles, because in our script, you don’t know what’s going to happen to the ship, because the hero has the moral dilemma of, do I try to save these people?

01:19:30:27 – 01:19:58:06
Mark B. Perry
Or do I let it? Do I let history take its course? And the ship founder and all of the positive, developments that came from the tragedy, like lifeboats for all, and, you know, 24 hour, wireless communications and people receiving wireless as well as sending them on the ships and the safety of life at sea regulations that are constantly being updated.

01:19:58:08 – 01:20:11:19
Mark B. Perry
So a lot of positive things resulted from this horrible tragedy. But, you know, in our movie, you don’t you don’t know what’s going to happen. So, you know, if somebody from Netflix is a fan of your show, maybe they’ll give me a call. I don’t know.

01:20:11:21 – 01:20:33:26
Dan LeFebvre
When you’re talking about the time travel. When I was, have you ever seen, Final Countdown? I think it’s called where they go back in time to, and they have that same sort of discretion, like, do we stop the attack on Pearl Harbor? Do we, do we stop this from happening? I mean, that was the first thing that came to mind when you talk about not even really knowing, are they going to let history play out?

01:20:33:26 – 01:20:41:16
Dan LeFebvre
Is this going to be that same sort of dilemma in the movie that takes an event that we all know what happened, but is it really going to happen this way in this movie?

01:20:41:19 – 01:20:45:01
Mark B. Perry
Right. Well, we wrote our script first.

01:20:45:03 – 01:20:46:00
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, yeah, I.

01:20:46:03 – 01:20:49:27
Mark B. Perry
We didn’t need it made.

01:20:49:29 – 01:20:51:16
Mark B. Perry
But we wrote.

01:20:51:18 – 01:21:08:09
Dan LeFebvre
Fair. Well, I’d love to switch away from the 53 Titanic movie to another story of yours, the your debut novel called and introducing Dexter Gaines. And I’ve got a link to that in some notes for everyone to pick up their own copy. And while they do that, can you share a sneak peek of your book?

01:21:08:12 – 01:21:34:23
Mark B. Perry
Yeah, thanks. I appreciate you asking. In addition to my love for ships, I love old movies. I love old Hollywood, and I. I love historical fiction. And, as a side note, I also love time travel stories, obviously. But, and when I, when I decided to try my hand at fiction, I wanted to myself, time travel back to the twilight of Hollywood’s golden age.

01:21:34:23 – 01:22:00:19
Mark B. Perry
And I’m. This is not a time travel novel. I’m just saying, me as a writer, I wanted to experience it, to put my head in the heads of those characters and that time period. And I wanted specifically to set it in the early 1950s, when TV was a threat to the movie business and when the studio system was beginning to change and be phased out.

01:22:00:21 – 01:22:27:28
Mark B. Perry
And I wanted to tell an unconventional story that starts with one of the most well-known tropes, which is a young person coming to Hollywood to become a star. And, in my case, he’s a young man from Texas with matinee idol good looks and the unfortunate name of Dan Root, and he’s escaping a, troubled past. He arrives in town, he falls in with one of the most powerful couples in Hollywood.

01:22:28:00 – 01:22:52:01
Mark B. Perry
And it’s a hotshot producer at 20th Century Fox who produced Titanic 53. His name is Milford Langdon and his wife, Lillian Sinclair, who’s a glamorous movie star, who’s kind of on the cusp between fame and fade out, as happens to women in this cruel industry. And together, Millie and Lily, they mentor, Dan and transform him into a promising young actor.

01:22:52:01 – 01:23:20:24
Mark B. Perry
And they rechristened him Dexter Gaines. That’s going to be his big movie name. And it becomes an unconventional love story about heartbreak and redemption and sexual awakening. And it’s told as a kind of emotional mystery that set in, two time periods. It’s set in 1994, when he when Dan returns to Hollywood to confront his demons, and the early 1950s, when he, first gets his, first bitter taste of stardom.

01:23:20:26 – 01:23:47:01
Mark B. Perry
And we know from the very beginning of the book these are there are no spoilers here. We know from the very beginning of the book that his time in Hollywood ended up being a spectacular failure that ended in violence and attempted murder. But the story is about this man finding self absolution in the in the ultimate truth that he uncovers from the literal and figurative, ruins of his past.

01:23:47:01 – 01:24:21:15
Mark B. Perry
And I’m happy to say it’s been on one of Amazon’s, bestseller lists since it came out May 6th. And and I, I and the, the critical acclaim, the reviews I’ve gotten so far have been overwhelmingly positive. And I chose the early 50s for a couple of reasons. I wanted a real scene and a real movie that my character, my fictional character Dexter, could have been in when the film was shot and then could have been cut out of before it was released.

01:24:21:18 – 01:24:48:04
Mark B. Perry
And I was watching Titanic 53 for the 800th time, and the scene presented itself to me and I thought, oh, and then I worked backwards from that. And that’s how I, I originally I was going to start the book in 1950, but I shifted it to 1952. So that it could accommodate the maiden voyage of the United States, which is also featured in the book, and some behind the scenes stuff and the making of Titanic.

01:24:48:04 – 01:24:57:06
Mark B. Perry
So if you want to know more about that, I would encourage you to pick up a copy or listen to the wonderful audiobook that was performed by Daniel Henning.

01:24:57:09 – 01:25:01:08
Dan LeFebvre
Fantastic. I’ll make sure to add link that in the show notes. Thanks again so much for your time, Mark.

01:25:01:10 – 01:25:06:19
Mark B. Perry
Thank you. I as you can tell, I’m always happy to shoot the ship as we say.

01:25:07:20 – 01:25:13:04
Mark B. Perry
And this was really fun. Thanks for having me, Dan.

00:04:08:10 – 00:04:26:20
Dan LeFebvre
We have a few movies to talk about today, but before we do that, let’s start by flipping things around a little bit. Normally here on the podcast, we talk about things that filmmakers change from the true story. But I know you’ve been working to get your book called Not a Real Enemy About Your Father urban story told into a movie.

00:04:26:22 – 00:04:43:03
Dan LeFebvre
Of course, we can’t predict the future to know when or if that will happen soon, but let’s hope for the best and say it is turned into a movie. So what’s one key thing that you want to make sure the filmmakers don’t change from the true story in the film adaptation?

00:04:43:06 – 00:05:01:18
Robert Wolf
Well, hopefully all of it, of course. But, that’s the easy answer. My dad’s for escapes or what? For example, my dad was a four time escape artist, and he missed an escape, too. He was fortunate, and he sports enough to go to the wrong train station under communist Hungary. And everybody made that train got arrested, including his, medical school classmate.

00:05:01:18 – 00:05:08:07
Robert Wolf
So all of that. I’d like to be, as accurate as possible as, cinematography. Cinematography.

00:05:08:10 – 00:05:09:02
Dan LeFebvre
Cinematography.

00:05:09:04 – 00:05:29:27
Robert Wolf
Yeah, yeah, as close as possible. Color movie, color in color. Obviously, a lot of the older movies are black and white, like Schindler’s List, which I hope we talk about a little bit more. That movie I just saw the movie and a resonates very, very much so with the story that I’m that we’re telling here. And then his upbringing, you know, it doesn’t have to be a long part of his upbringing.

00:05:30:00 – 00:05:49:23
Robert Wolf
And if I could cast a movie, it’d be Tom Hanks playing my dad and Tom, or that Tom Hanks Tom cruise. Tom Hanks plays one of the nicer, guards in the labor camp, a forced labor camp. A lot of the movie should cover the forced labor camp, the beatings, getting urinated on, getting shot at by Russian planes, all that kind of thing.

00:05:49:23 – 00:06:09:12
Robert Wolf
So there’s a lot of content. And, you know, of course, we wanted as close as possible, but any good producer writer screenplay would, would switch it up a little. I just hope they keep the, you know, as they keep the fidelity as much as possible. I mean obviously you got to make changes to capture an audience and hopefully that would be the case.

00:06:09:16 – 00:06:29:04
Robert Wolf
And you know the other thing is some people say could be a feature film. Some people say a documentary docu drama series. I wouldn’t care as long as they did a good job with it. There’s 40 chapters in our book, so, you could. I don’t think it’d be a 40, 40, show series, but certainly 10 or 15 would be, you know, one season’s worth at least.

00:06:29:04 – 00:06:45:15
Robert Wolf
So it’s always up to the producer, or whoever gets a hold of, the story. The it’s not in a screen stand in a screenplay yet, but, I, I leave that to the I leave that to Hollywood or whatever, discovers whatever we’re doing here. And if they do so it’s a, it’s a wing and a prayer.

00:06:45:15 – 00:07:02:01
Robert Wolf
And I know it’s a such a long shot. It’s easier to get into medical school, which I’m a position. I’m a radiologist, recently retired. It’s easier to get into medical school than to sell a New York Times bestseller. A bigger story and a movie, as we well know, nobody knew Schindler was, you know, 20, 30 years ago and nobody knew who.

00:07:02:01 – 00:07:18:29
Robert Wolf
And Frank was way back in the day. And, the, Life is Beautiful story I never wanted I mean, I never even think about, Italy and the Holocaust until I saw that movie and both of them the second time. Both great movies. And we could talk about those details and how they resonate with what we’re doing.

00:07:19:01 – 00:07:29:01
Robert Wolf
And I’m glad I saw them after I wrote a book regarding the Holocaust and beforehand to what a what a different viewpoint or what a, what a difference that makes.

00:07:29:01 – 00:07:48:26
Dan LeFebvre
Certainly we’re going to we’re going to talk about those for sure. But as we shift into some of the movies that that have been made, there are a lot of movies that are set before and during World War Two. So what I’d love to do is to get your take on some of those and how they compare to your family’s experiences that you talk about in your book.

00:07:48:28 – 00:08:06:05
Dan LeFebvre
And the first movie that I’d like to start with is a classic film, The Sound of Music, and it tells the story of how life changes for the von Trapp family as Nazi Germany annexes Austria in 1938. And as we watch a movie like Sound of Music, it’s possible to see the warning signs when we watch the movie now.

00:08:06:05 – 00:08:26:00
Dan LeFebvre
But of course, anytime we’re watching a movie like that, we’re also looking at it through a historical lens because we already know what’s going to happen from history instead of being there in the moment. And correct me if I’m wrong, but Austria is like less than 100km from where your father grew up in Hungary, so he wasn’t that far from where the annexation unfolded.

00:08:26:03 – 00:08:30:24
Dan LeFebvre
What were things like in that region as Germany annexed Austria?

00:08:30:27 – 00:08:57:20
Robert Wolf
Well, as you know, the fact the rise of fascism almost simultaneously with the Great Depression, the Roaring 20s, were okay in Hungary and throughout the world. We think the war was over. Things were doing well. And meantime, of course, Hitler was it was a building, the military machine that he was, because Germany’s economy was, it was, that’s how they that’s that was their economy was the military, of course, 33 is where fascism was on a rise in 38, 1938.

00:08:57:20 – 00:09:17:28
Robert Wolf
And in Hungary, there were anti-Jewish laws were initiated. So you couldn’t on the radio, you could only go out at certain times. There was, no Jews or dog signs up, of course, Kristallnacht. If, I’m not mistaken, in Germany, Austria was 1938, a very big event. That’s where they started taking force.

00:09:17:28 – 00:09:39:06
Robert Wolf
Laborers, the men, the young men that were wealthy, they started to take them away to forced labor camps and, really didn’t affect Hungary. I mean, the anti-Jewish laws were there. So they were persecuted and shunned, if you will. But the the killings and the, the the the most of it didn’t really, happened in Hungary till 1943, 1944.

00:09:39:09 – 00:10:03:00
Robert Wolf
My dad ended up going to after his first forced labor camp in 1943 and October, and then his parents were taken away to Auschwitz, in 1944. So Poland got hit first, obviously in 1939, Kristallnacht before that, 1938. And then Hungary, a little bit later, what I’m told. And from when I’ve read Hungary had the fastest, the fastest pace of homicide, of genocide of any of them.

00:10:03:00 – 00:10:33:07
Robert Wolf
So, that includes Ukraine and Russia, which they were brutalized and the Polish, 1939 of the refugees went to Hungary. And, the Hungarian government sent the refugees back, unfortunately. And, and it really badly for them. And so this resonates with Poland, with the, with the Schindler idea too, because, a lot of similarities between that and what happened to Hungary, although we’re talking about 1941 versus 1943 and 1944, but it could be the same, the same idea that, you know, a little bit, a little bit different background, different scenario.

00:10:33:07 – 00:10:36:09
Robert Wolf
But, a lot of the common, a lot of common themes.

00:10:36:13 – 00:10:59:15
Dan LeFebvre
Since you mentioned it didn’t really touch Hungary, but it’s touching all these countries around. And I’ve, I’ve never visited Hungary, but I can imagine that the proximity isn’t that far. I mean, there’s borders, you know, it’s technically a different country, but there’s these atrocities that are happening. What was it like for your your father as a child and your your grandparents?

00:10:59:15 – 00:11:04:12
Dan LeFebvre
And when they’re, when they’re seeing, I mean, they had been seeing in the news what’s going on where they.

00:11:04:15 – 00:11:30:29
Robert Wolf
Well, what a great question. Well, you say seeing in the news, we realize that my dad in Hungary and his parents never own a car. They never owned a TV. You bring up a great point. Jews were not allowed to have radios. So. And so they had a radio. He, his dad had enough courage to hide a radio, and they would quietly listen to the BBC, during the uprise of the uprising, with a lot of hope and a lot of prayer that that it end soon and relevant to that.

00:11:31:01 – 00:11:50:08
Robert Wolf
During my dad’s first escape toward. They thought it was the end of Lord, they don’t get much news that the forced labor camp, but they’re in the middle of nowhere, about near the Austria Hungary border. And even though they escaped, the Jews first of four, which some are remarkable, they didn’t know whether to flee to Budapest or stay in Hungary or go to Austria because they didn’t know who’s going to win the war.

00:11:50:11 – 00:12:04:24
Robert Wolf
And, you know, the Nazis won the war and they end up in Austria. They’re dead men. And if there’s a chance in Hungary, not Hungary proper, but the West, turns out it’s not the West. It was Soviet Union. If they win the war, maybe they’re better off in Hungary. It turns out either way, you know, you’re a Jew.

00:12:04:24 – 00:12:28:23
Robert Wolf
You’re screwed. I mean, those men, only 5% of the forced labor survived, in the in that process, including my dad, because he was on the run and hiding at the time. He wasn’t the. The rest of them that survived were treated as prisoners of war. Unfortunately. So 5% of forced labor, they had death marches. And that’s why my my dad and his friend Frank decided to, escape the first time because they thought they were on a death march.

00:12:28:28 – 00:12:59:27
Robert Wolf
And nobody knows about death marches in Europe. They don’t. I mean, historians might know. We all know about Okinawa and, the Pacific, but not a lot of people know. So when they thought you weren’t useful anymore, they killed you. So. And that was true at the Danube, very end of the war. Unlike Schindler, where the guards just go home, I, I’d like to talk about that for a few minutes, too, but, it’s a fantasy that these people, because the, guardians were treated and my mom and dad said that, that, the the Arrow Cross, for example, was like a Hungarian Gestapo and the the White Terror or the Red

00:12:59:27 – 00:13:17:14
Robert Wolf
terror or the the Nazis. The communists, they didn’t treat if you felt like if you’re Jewish, you were still scared of whoever was in charge. And, the Hungarians, the police and the military treated the Jewish people worse than the Nazis themselves. And that’s another thing that resonates with some of these movies, too. Women versus men.

00:13:17:14 – 00:13:26:27
Robert Wolf
Women guards versus Benghazi, pets. A lot of the, you know, a lot of things, humiliation. There are a lot of compare, a lot of things to talk about that are that resonate, big time.

00:13:27:00 – 00:13:48:21
Dan LeFebvre
I love that you mentioned the the radio and the communications there, because that’s something that I think I kind of like what I mentioned before, you know, when we watch a movie, we’re looking at it with a historical lens. So we think of, oh yeah, you can get news from all around there. And in my question I ask, you know, seeing things, but there’s that there has to be that almost added level of fear.

00:13:48:21 – 00:14:06:13
Dan LeFebvre
I would imagine, of not knowing, like, you know, that there’s some bad things going on, but you don’t know the full extent of it. And you then there’s that fear of just not knowing, because then your mind would start to go make things up that, I mean, there were some horrible things, but I, I mean, and it’s something I have a hard time wrap my head around.

00:14:06:14 – 00:14:12:26
Dan LeFebvre
What, like put yourself in the historical context of what that must have been like. It had to have been just terrifying for your for your father.

00:14:12:28 – 00:14:31:13
Robert Wolf
Well, part of the reason. Yeah. No intervention for many, many years, after the war started, it, because the United States had the, for example, had the, had the, the duty to protect its own citizens. So getting involved with the war, it was, was tough communications. I couldn’t say it better. You know, the real cell phones there, no lawyers or no courtrooms.

00:14:31:15 – 00:14:50:23
Robert Wolf
The cops and the. And the military pointing guns. It. Yeah. And fortunately, in this country, we. That’s not happened yet. So there’s one thing. No communication, just the radio, which was illegal. It probably would’ve been shot and killed if they got caught with it. And, and forced labor camps out in the middle of nowhere, even less communication than we had a regular camp in the US growing up, you know?

00:14:50:23 – 00:15:11:04
Robert Wolf
So, word of mouth. So things got a little easier for the men? Not much. But as the their guards got bribed, dental treat, free dental treatments. But, yes, there was a dentist. Obvious, obvious threat to society, killed at Auschwitz and his mom as well. And Deb didn’t find out about two months afterwards. Another miracle, from an eyewitness.

00:15:11:06 – 00:15:29:04
Robert Wolf
And, that’s another point that, the witnesses besides no cell phones, no video, a lot of photographs taken, as we know, the Nazis took many, many photographs. So denying the Holocaust and even communist Hungary just. There’s no way you can’t sell that. But the witness, the witness was the next victim is how it turned out.

00:15:29:04 – 00:15:46:14
Robert Wolf
Like at the Danube walk and death marches. Or as we’ve seen, these mass burial, sites, in Ukraine for example, or in the concentration camps. So the witnesses were literally the next victim. So very, very hard to, to wrap my arms around that. And like you said, very hard to get information again.

00:15:46:20 – 00:16:07:03
Dan LeFebvre
I it’s it’s hard to wrap your head around, but but putting yourself in that context of what that must have been like, I, I love the like in your book when you’re when you’re telling that story, it, it it does a really good job of, of helping to put the, the reader in that place of what that must have been like in there.

00:16:07:07 – 00:16:23:18
Dan LeFebvre
And I’m curious because there are a lot of details of your, your father’s earlier life were those things that he that he told you specifically or were they things that you had to research after the fact? Or how did that part kind of come together for that story as you’re putting all these pieces together?

00:16:23:21 – 00:16:41:21
Robert Wolf
A little bit of both. I can’t imagine the boredom in living in quarters like that packed when with people or even hiding out in your own home, with, you know, yellow stars, yellow armbands, the anxiety, the depression, the fear. I can’t imagine that. And but like you say, you can feel it, like during my dad’s first escape.

00:16:41:21 – 00:17:00:02
Robert Wolf
So, Yeah, my dad. Mom wrote an autobiography. They wrote the his story, from World War one. The of World War one to the end of the Hungarian Revolution. So literally 1916, 19 1718 to the end of the Revolution, 1956. They wrote the story in the 1970s. They they wrote it as though it happened the previous day.

00:17:00:09 – 00:17:17:04
Robert Wolf
Sharp. Chris. And I turned into a biography many, many years later. Growing up, the first half of my life, not so much as I went to college and medical school at a career as a radiologist, family, all of that things. So I didn’t, but I did read the it went from paper and pencil to typewriter to computer to disk.

00:17:17:06 – 00:17:36:04
Robert Wolf
And, when it was a manuscript maybe 30 years ago, I read it once and didn’t think much of it and didn’t remember much except my dad’s first escape. But then when I reread it after my my dad passed and fortunately my mom, a historian friend, handed me the story on the disk, and I turned his autobiography to biography and, just doing that alone.

00:17:36:07 – 00:17:52:25
Robert Wolf
Long story short, I went back to radiology, and that brought me to the book. And, long story short, the stories were so amazing. At least 20 miracles in my dad’s life and hungry for escapes and 20 miracles. I couldn’t leave it on a computer. I couldn’t leave it on a disk. I wanted to share it with the world and,

00:17:52:27 – 00:18:07:18
Robert Wolf
And so I did. And that’s been my that’s been my charge. That’s been my mission the last 6 or 7 years. The book’s been out a little while now, but, that doesn’t stop me from trying to fight antisemitism. So, this is my main thing, the why I’m doing this, and, but, yeah, it’s my own little corner.

00:18:07:18 – 00:18:23:07
Robert Wolf
I need help with that, obviously, but, no, my my mom and dad, they did this as though they knew I would like if you know me, six years ago, and my mom was a Holocaust educator, by the way. My dad, too, but he was an ObGyn, by the way, deliver 10,000 babies in the Detroit area, which is so a form of redemption.

00:18:23:10 – 00:18:41:06
Robert Wolf
That’s the punch line. It doesn’t bring back 6 million and doesn’t beat back 50 million that died in World War two. But at least he brought some life back in jovial and jolly. No PTSD. My mom to they they educated. They were well-rounded people. And the stories like I said, they were crisp and and then they had a lot of friends in the unlike what’s going on in the world now.

00:18:41:06 – 00:19:00:00
Robert Wolf
They had a lot of friends where I grew up in Michigan and throughout the world, from continental Africa, Asia had Indian friends, a muslim, Christian, Jewish, fellow Holocaust survivors. They shared the stories and, and I, I bought into it. I got a little burnout from it. And then, I brought it back to life, at least in my own legacy towards my family.

00:19:00:00 – 00:19:15:00
Robert Wolf
So, I got this app, you know, Superman’s Kryptonite. You just sort of called out to me, you know? It’s summoned me back in me. So. And so I’m doing it, and I. I couldn’t leave this on a disc. I couldn’t leave it on computer. And so that’s why we’re sharing it. But, very well done by my mom and dad, you know.

00:19:15:00 – 00:19:16:09
Robert Wolf
So.

00:19:16:11 – 00:19:43:12
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, well, I’m glad that you are telling that story to to because the world does need to know. And the part that kind of made me think that was when you talking about the the photos and things like the Nazis and the Soviets took. But again, putting yourself in that perspective, a difference from watching a movie today versus versus being there when you like the people that took the photographs to document a lot of that, those wouldn’t be photographs that you’re parents and grandparents would have had access to because they were taken by the people doing a lot of it.

00:19:43:12 – 00:19:53:06
Dan LeFebvre
So it’s not something that they’re going to show. So I was very curious how that story then survives despite trying to be suppressed.

00:19:53:09 – 00:20:12:02
Robert Wolf
Yeah. No, you’re right. I mean, but very, very little, belongings left over, from my dad’s side of the family. My mom saved a lot of photographs, and somehow they were preserved, by my mom. So it was a little less harrowing. My mom was in hiding, you know, with her mom, grandma, uncle, grandfather who’s different, you know, on farms and sometimes in Budapest.

00:20:12:02 – 00:20:35:14
Robert Wolf
So she was able to preserve more things. And as a and she also was into genealogy. And I wish I followed it a little bit more, but I do at least have back to World War one. I can’t go back there beyond that. But no, it’s unimaginable. The fear that my mom must add in hiding to and and the fear my dad must have had every day competing and starving and and doing forced labor for hours from, you know, dawn to dusk.

00:20:35:16 – 00:20:52:07
Robert Wolf
Can’t. I can’t imagine it. So, the reality and also photographs. So the Nazis were they took a lot of photographs. They, they sent them home to their families, let them know what they’re doing. And I have a collection of about 18,000 photos on my phone, and some of them are exceptionally disturbing. The last guy surviving in Vilna.

00:20:52:09 – 00:21:18:00
Robert Wolf
They’re about to kill him, and he’s surrounded by, mostly Nazi, officers. And there’s a gun pointed aside, and he knows he’s next. Reminds a little Schindler to you, but he’s the last survivor. They’re a very disturbing photo. I haven’t shared it because they’ll probably kick me out of X and meta and LinkedIn. If I were, were to, the, you know, the burning synagogue is another one, the smashed in homes, the burning homes, one disturbing one.

00:21:18:05 – 00:21:40:09
Robert Wolf
Well, they’re marching off the Jewish people. And I’m thinking, well, who’s taken a picture of all of this and not helping? You know, and these people lived in fear, of course. Another, disturbing photo. I’ve got some from juror. My dad’s home town. Very, very few, very few available. Another one is Kristallnacht. Whether the business, the glass is all broken up and the lady’s walking by the business smiling, I mean, I.

00:21:40:10 – 00:22:00:02
Robert Wolf
How do you smile when she got what? Are you, Jewish? You’re not smiling. If you’re Christian, you smiling, then, Well, I, I guess I know what party you’re in. You’re in the Nazi party or the Christmas party are very sadistic. Some and Christians were afraid for their lives, too. So the ones that helped the Jewish people or the gays, you know, almost sexual, LGBTQ, disabled, they’re there to be loud.

00:22:00:02 – 00:22:15:03
Robert Wolf
It, including guys like Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg is another one that comes to mind. So a lot going on. I can’t imagine being so remote and, and, secluded from the truth, let alone the news.

00:22:15:06 – 00:22:50:28
Dan LeFebvre
If we shift back to the movies you mentioned life is beautiful, and that’s another movie I want to talk about. That one starts in 1939, just after the annexation of Austria. And it follows the story of how life changes around a Jewish man named Guido before and during the rise of fascism in Italy. And the movie, it starts off with everyday life, but one of the key differences between life is Beautiful and the Sound of Music that we talked about before is that Life Is Beautiful shows how life changes for the main character because he’s an Italian Jewish man, whereas the Von Trapp family in the sound of Music, they’re not so well.

00:22:50:28 – 00:23:12:22
Dan LeFebvre
I, I we see little signs here and there and Sound of Music. We can see the signs in life and beautiful. Life is beautiful. Those signs are clearly the rise of anti-Semitism. They’re going on in Italy now. In particular, there was a scene where Guido pretended to be an inspector of Rome teaching children in school how they are pure Aryan, the superior race.

00:23:12:25 – 00:23:34:00
Dan LeFebvre
He doesn’t have very comical way in the movie, similar to later in the movie, when Guido’s young son just reads a sign in business window that says no Jews or dogs, and Guido makes a joke about there’s just saying. There’s also a drug store nearby saying that I’m not going to let Chinese in with kangaroo. Right. And he’s making a joke out of out of this very serious situation.

00:23:34:03 – 00:23:49:21
Dan LeFebvre
And that storyline in like Life Is Beautiful is a fictional one. Guido is not a real person, but how old do you think life is beautiful? Did showing signs of anti-Semitism slowly growing in everyday life before the outbreak of World War two?

00:23:49:24 – 00:24:06:05
Robert Wolf
Great question. I mean, that’s an our answer, but fantastic movie. Beautifully done. The cinematography is outstanding. I’m glad you mentioned that scene, because to me, that’s the turning point in the movie. The better part of the first half of the movie is about It’s a Beautiful Life. It’s a wonder it’s not It’s a Wonderful Life.

00:24:06:05 – 00:24:27:20
Robert Wolf
That’s a different, fantastic movie, too. But life is beautiful there. He falls in love with this lady. He’s on the bicycle. It’s a lot of humor. I mean, a lot of humor in that movie. Even to the end. And, you know, it’s admirable how he hides the truth from his son throughout, but, yeah, that’s the turning point in the movies when he’s up there talking about the the perfect race or our rewards it.

00:24:27:27 – 00:24:45:01
Robert Wolf
And then the poor, his relatives horse getting painted, I think was green and purple. I forget the color. Maybe green. That’s good. And. Yeah. And and that’s the turning point there. And then all of a sudden, boom, they’re, they’re in prison and they’re going off to, to concentration camps, different some different things.

00:24:45:09 – 00:25:04:29
Robert Wolf
Some of the similarities with my, my parent, they don’t talk about women that much, but both that movie and similar, the, the women, the women guards, especially at Auschwitz and then in these concentration camps were to me more sadistic and more brutal to the prisoners than, than otherwise. Interestingly, a lot of Nazis, the people that were guarding them were the Germans, the Nazis.

00:25:04:29 – 00:25:22:27
Robert Wolf
So where were the Italians? That’s that’s a little bit different than Hungary, I think, because the Hungarians were the ones who keep an eye on the force. Laborers, and child, my dad’s parents were taken from their home. That was, that was a Nazi. Blue striped pajamas. Interesting. It’s a, you know, we don’t know what color stripes they have in general because black and white movie, but it’s blue stripes.

00:25:22:27 – 00:25:39:21
Robert Wolf
But we all know that, you know, outfits in other places, they were, red stripes. So that was, another thing that, that was those was a familiar, but, or different, I should say. I thought, one thing similar with the both of those movies is the language was a little fast for me. It’s in subtitles.

00:25:39:24 – 00:25:56:13
Robert Wolf
Well, I think they just talked a little bit faster. Was a little. Because, you know, we can read fast, but it just won’t have the pace or the how they talk. Maybe at the very beginning, speed it up because it makes the humor, the humor scenes a little more humorous, so to say, so to speak. But, yeah, they kind of slow that down a little bit, too.

00:25:56:15 – 00:26:12:21
Robert Wolf
What else are we? Yeah. I mean, that’s, just a fact. The met the end was unbelievable. The way the they say, do they want or try? They’re playing in a game to win a tank and they won. You know, the kid survives, but he doesn’t. The mom survives. Was a Dora. And, you know, of course you gets shot.

00:26:12:23 – 00:26:31:18
Robert Wolf
He gets shot for warning. The ladies, including his wife, as are being hauled away in a truck. So another thing that may not be realistic is the son and the father in the same bunk. Because the kids were separated, like in Auschwitz and other places, and like a and Schindler, you know, the kids are all the way, in bundles.

00:26:31:18 – 00:26:52:14
Robert Wolf
And boy, are the parents freaking. They’re all running towards the fences and trying to follow the trucks and talk about learned helplessness and senior kids being all the way to who knows where. So that part may not have been as realistic. But yeah, it was such a well-done movie. And, and I don’t know that much about the Italian history in, in World War Two, so that’s that.

00:26:52:14 – 00:27:11:10
Robert Wolf
But comparing what you to the other movie and to what I’ve read and done, and learned about pretty realistic, I mean, in their own way. Obviously not every concentration camps will be the same. Not a forced labor camps going to be the same. The different guards, different, food supply, who knows? Different amounts of sadism.

00:27:11:12 – 00:27:21:00
Robert Wolf
It’s people to take orders and people that delight in torturing others. And that’s so hard to put your arms around to. It’s just. I don’t know how people could be like that at all.

00:27:21:02 – 00:27:41:21
Dan LeFebvre
But you mentioned Schindler’s List, and whenever we think of movies that depict the Holocaust, that’s probably the first one that does come to mind. In that movie, we see what life is like in the Jewish ghetto. Of course, Schindler’s List depicts the ghetto in Krakow, Poland, but your grandparents were forced to move to another Nazi controlled Jewish ghetto in your Hungary.

00:27:41:23 – 00:27:44:15
Dan LeFebvre
I’m probably mispronouncing that, but.

00:27:44:18 – 00:27:49:18
Robert Wolf
My Hungarians not so. They never taught me, so I. It’s fine. That was their shooting around which.

00:27:49:20 – 00:27:57:21
Dan LeFebvre
But based on the research that you did for your book, were there similarities to what we see in Schindler’s List and in the ghetto there, and what your grandparents dealt with?

00:27:57:24 – 00:28:19:27
Robert Wolf
Many, many, many. First, I want to talk about, so many. I mean, unfortunately, the movie was in black and white, but the cinematography in that movie is unbelievable. Like I said, they talk a little fast, especially when they’re talking about people’s names a little fast for me, some of the conversation, but, amazing. Some overlap when when they’re taken to Auschwitz, we don’t know if it’s accidentally or if it’s on purpose.

00:28:20:04 – 00:28:37:05
Robert Wolf
And they put them in the chamber and they think that that’s it. The gas chamber and the relief showers. I can picture my mom, my my grandmother, in the in the gas chamber. And, of course, when they’re on trains, when I visit Holocaust museums, when I do book talks, book lectures, I can’t even go into the I.

00:28:37:05 – 00:29:01:10
Robert Wolf
It’s hard to even look in the train, let alone go in the train just because. Just because that imagery. So, so that resonates. The dramatic irony. I guess I can get that, in a minute, but, the random shooting. Okay, so dramatic irony. I’m going to mention the three things where I well, first of all, the turning point is when they’re horseback riding and they’re randomly shooting all the people in the ghetto, the people that stayed, the people that that tried to hide very, very sad scene.

00:29:01:10 – 00:29:18:21
Robert Wolf
Because every. And you know, another thing that’s not talked about is pets. You know, how many did the pets get left behind and the pets get killed. And we know in, life is beautiful. There’s a little kitten, is strolling around the, the clothes that were stolen. Another thing. And I’m going to go back to the dramatic irony, another thing that resonates.

00:29:18:24 – 00:29:35:21
Robert Wolf
With all of it is the stolen luggage. They bring your goods, leave them here, and they’ll come. They will arrive. Big deception. And when my dad’s parents were all to Auschwitz, it was to be they were going to go to forest or farm, plant flowers, trees. Do you know, do, work on the foliage? That’s what.

00:29:35:21 – 00:29:53:15
Robert Wolf
That’s how they were to see. And they end up going to Auschwitz. So. So three points of dramatic irony, not necessarily related to my, my dad, but one is actually. So when, the, engineer they’re building the they’re constructing the building and the engineer comes up to, I think it’s almond goes, I don’t know if I’m pronouncing or I’m on both.

00:29:53:15 – 00:30:09:27
Robert Wolf
He’s the I think he’s a lieutenant, but he’s the most sadistic guy around. And, she says to me now, the structure is not sound, and we need to do this and maybe even start again. And, what does he say? We are not going to argue with these people. And and then he asks the guy shooter, shooter.

00:30:09:27 – 00:30:28:01
Robert Wolf
And it’s one of the few scenes where somebody gets shot and it’s not him doing it. So amazingly enough. And then the irony is that he decides to he changes his mind and, and decides to, to take it down and start all over again. Another irony was, the the lady that comes to Schindler, I don’t know if that was Helen Hirsch.

00:30:28:04 – 00:30:50:13
Robert Wolf
Helen, her hair, shoes, how to pronounce it. I don’t know if it’s her or the other one, but she comes to Schindler and says, can you get my parents into this? Into the factory here? And he says, you know, he’s practically screaming at her, saying, no, I can’t save everybody this and that and that. And then the guy escapes from the camp and, and just, randomly shoots 25 guys and then just Clarkston.

00:30:50:13 – 00:31:23:23
Robert Wolf
If I’m pronouncing Sharon I love, they really did their best trying to do the correct pronunciation and I think an accurate job. But stern tells Schindler that, you know, 25 people died. So Schindler, goes out of his way to bring in, the lady’s parents, which is which is pretty cool, too. I mean, and, so the other irony and oh, that resonates with my dad in the forced labor camp where, an officer would get drunk and some, some little piece of malfeasance, like somebody chirping a word or or moving in the line, and the guy gets past and he’s,

00:31:23:25 – 00:31:40:18
Robert Wolf
And he’s got the he’s got the gun. And, you threatened to shoot every tense man, in his drunk, in his drunk, state, and, in the end, doesn’t. But imagine the fear. You know, you dad, it can seem like that. And everybody else counting 1 to 1 through ten, you know, every 10th man they’re going to kill.

00:31:40:20 – 00:31:58:01
Robert Wolf
And, And the guy does that, too. He’s got the whole line of the men, and he shoots the guy with the, with the, I don’t remember. It’s a gun shot. I think it was a, shotgun. And then they shoot him in the head and and that, like, that scene is so vivid. The way that was bleeding, it would’ve been even more so in color.

00:31:58:04 – 00:32:16:22
Robert Wolf
But the irony there is the same thing. Just like when he randomly shoots the 25 men and, also the one person, and then he says, who’s, you know, who’s next? And then the kid smart enough to step forward and said, you know, you who did this? Who’s the one who created the malfeasance? And the kid points at the dead guy and probably saved a lot of lives, just by doing that.

00:32:16:22 – 00:32:36:01
Robert Wolf
So that’s more irony. And then and, and comparable with my dad had to go through, you know, random threaten to be killed randomly and thank God, they, they didn’t carry that out. The other piece of irony, which is almost redemption itself, is when, the I think it was the rabbi, was one of the older men making the parts, and his productivity was on the low side that compared it.

00:32:36:01 – 00:32:52:17
Robert Wolf
You know, it took some a minute to make the part, which is where you got so few partially take him out to shoot him and his gun jams and, you know, his backup gun jams, and he gets a gun from his, mother, the fellow officers and or soldiers, I don’t remember. It was an officer. And that gun jams and there’s 15 or 20 clicks.

00:32:52:19 – 00:33:08:03
Robert Wolf
We shoot this guy, and the poor guy’s got his neck going down. He knows he’s going to die any second. It reminds me of that, the Vilna, the Vilna photograph. And then he ends up just sitting with the butt of the gun and and lets him live. Imagine going through that kind of trauma and not having PTSD.

00:33:08:05 – 00:33:23:13
Robert Wolf
It’s amazing. But the irony is, when they hang golf, they have a trouble date. They’ve got him by the rope, but they have trouble checking out those. The step stool underneath him, it takes some at least like a half a minute. They can’t do it in the guy. So that’s a little bit of redemption too. But, more dramatic irony.

00:33:23:13 – 00:33:42:17
Robert Wolf
So I it’s a fantastically bad movie. And and so, so similar in in his point, you know, the trains and the, or the, forced labor and, you know, we see forced labor, of course, in concentration camps to sometimes women, sometimes men. We don’t talk about much about forced labor in, with women in our story.

00:33:42:17 – 00:33:48:08
Robert Wolf
But lately I’ve been taught and enlightened about that part, that part of it as well.

00:33:48:10 – 00:34:06:19
Dan LeFebvre
Something that we don’t see in Schindler’s List much is, is how others in the city reacted to the ghetto being set up and the Nazis moving the Jews into it. How did the civilians in and around Europe react to the Jewish ghetto being established for when your your grandparents were there?

00:34:06:21 – 00:34:23:12
Robert Wolf
Well, once they were in the ghetto, they had no access to the outside world. They had limited food, limited medical supplies and my dad, being a dentist, brought what he had. But it wasn’t enough. And ultimately it was to carry him off to Auschwitz to kill them. Most of them immediately, unfortunately. So I don’t think they had much time to even think about it.

00:34:23:12 – 00:34:48:26
Robert Wolf
But during, I’ll say this, that, but they were shunned. No doubt it was hard to go out shopping without being, bullied or picked on or even mugged. We talk about that in the or the fear of it. And also when my, my dad and his friend Frank were out on leave or whatever it was in town, or in that they were on camp, for one thing they didn’t have, then my dad needed a haircut.

00:34:48:26 – 00:35:06:12
Robert Wolf
And if you remember that scene, the anti-Semitic barber. But, they had the yellow bands was ridiculous hats that they had to wear and yellow bit unarmed paramilitary. And yeah, a couple what beautiful women walk by and they, they, they won’t even look at them. And believe me, the matter, they’re dying to meet A and B with a a warm blooded girl.

00:35:06:12 – 00:35:26:18
Robert Wolf
And it just didn’t happen. You were shunned. So, in its learned helplessness. I mean, people feared for their lives, for sure. And, they did what they were told, and and it’s scary stuff. So, and then. Oh, that remind me of another scene where in Schindler, the young girl, is yelling out, Goodbye Jews, goodbye Jews!

00:35:26:18 – 00:35:44:17
Robert Wolf
And, it’s awful to see that, because I think it reminds me of, what we just talked about. The Christians turning on the Jews. It also reminds me of what’s going on in Gaza at the, these children are being educated to hate Jewish people, hate Israel, hate Americans. And it’s that’s got to stop. That really has to stop.

00:35:44:20 – 00:36:03:18
Dan LeFebvre
There is a scene in in Schindler’s List where we see the Nazis going in there clearing everyone out of the ghetto, to take them to the concentration camps. You talked a little bit about that in the movie. The camps they take them to first is off, and then later in the movie we see Auschwitz, which you mentioned, and we’ll talk about Auschwitz in a moment, because I know your grandparents were there.

00:36:03:18 – 00:36:22:07
Dan LeFebvre
But according to Schindler’s List, seeing the brutality of the Nazi soldiers during the liquidation of the ghetto, that’s what leads Liam Neeson’s version of Oskar Schindler to start working with one of his employees. You mentioned him earlier. Is Doc Stern, Ben Kingsley’s character, to hire more and more Jews to help save them from being murdered by the Nazis.

00:36:22:09 – 00:36:36:13
Dan LeFebvre
Were there any transformational points like this for the civilians in Darfur in Hungary, where they started to change their minds about what they’re seeing? But the brutality of the Nazis, like, we kind of start seeing it happening in Schindler’s List with Oskar Schindler.

00:36:36:16 – 00:36:52:09
Robert Wolf
Well, great point. You know, that’s the turning point of that movie. If I haven’t already mentioned, when they’re horseback riding. Yeah, they’re looking down at that. One thing that resonates, too, is, the humiliation, the the general, the the men, the rabbis, you know, religious with the pious ain’t undercutting it. And they’re cutting their hair and laughing.

00:36:52:15 – 00:37:11:18
Robert Wolf
So that kind of humiliation, was there so humiliation we don’t talk about, as much. I think the Aryans were. And Hungary gets mentioned later that they were bringing in Hungarians, to one of the camps late, later in the movie. And that was true later in time, during at least a couple of years later. But that humiliation really, really resonates.

00:37:11:18 – 00:37:30:24
Robert Wolf
Well, what else is it? Yeah. The marching, the other humiliation is that, Gough has his own personal woman slave that he ends up abusing y’all. She’s. She goes the food and probably sex. Well, there is there is a sex scene or two in there. And of course, at the end he beats her up and but she survives.

00:37:30:27 – 00:37:46:29
Robert Wolf
But he beats her up and it’s drunk or whatever. It’s the wine cellar. I basically remember that scene, but, humiliation is a big thing about it. So, and then, of course, starvation is another one thing that resonates people to didn’t have food to eat. There was no there was no trade. There was nothing coming in. So shunned is the best word.

00:37:46:29 – 00:38:08:15
Robert Wolf
And like we said before, the the witness, the witness was the next victim. I also remember, golf shooting randomly at people that were sitting down and taking a break. So, Oh, and know the dramatic irony. He has a kid cleaning out his bathtub, and he’s trying to put the saddle on his horse. I don’t know if it’s the same kid, but, the guy that the kid that can’t put the kettle on the horse properly.

00:38:08:17 – 00:38:25:12
Robert Wolf
It’s right after Schindler talks about power and the power of the power, if you can forgive. And he remembers that for a while. So he forgives the kid, for the for the saddle. But then when he screws up using the wrong material to clean his bathtub, he ends up shooting him. And, it’s just, What a sadistic guy.

00:38:25:12 – 00:38:40:24
Robert Wolf
I mean, I was a guy who deserved to be executed without, without trial. I mean, so many witnesses. So, Yeah, that whole process, of course, it’s never going to be the same at every camp, but what? People running around in fear that they might get shot or killed, or if they take a break, they’re going to get killed.

00:38:41:02 – 00:38:48:14
Robert Wolf
You can’t. It’s just, some furthermore that what people had to think in their minds and stay strong while they’re doing it.

00:38:48:17 – 00:39:11:18
Dan LeFebvre
That those, those types of things are, like you said, unfathomable. Like it’s I, it’s what I’m trying to unravel. A lot of this. But, you know, in our discussion here, but also there are just some things like we there’s only so much that we can do as we’re talking here in this conversation that just it’s not. It will never be enough.

00:39:11:18 – 00:39:20:03
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, there’s to to to tell the true story of it. I mean, it’s yeah, I’ve tried to have words, but yeah, I can’t even do that.

00:39:20:10 – 00:39:42:08
Robert Wolf
Well, it was talk about Christians. You know, if we had Hamas, we had Hamas tanks and armored armored cars, guns, tanks, then that horrible flag, you know, marched in the streets here and, and, Florida or where you’re from, Oklahoma. God bless, the heartland. We would be thinking different then, it would affect us more then we would have.

00:39:42:10 – 00:40:03:26
Robert Wolf
We’d have a lot more fear. Yeah, but it’s it’s patchy areas. It’s Canada, Australia, parts of the U.S anti-Semitic. So it’s not it’s not directly in our face. But that’s why I’m doing this is so that it doesn’t happen. I mean, that’s why, 99% of us are good people. 99% of us believe in work, family, occasional vacation, religion, and if possible, whatever the freedom to vote, freedom speech.

00:40:03:29 – 00:40:26:01
Robert Wolf
Is that 1% or less that the ruins are for everybody and not just Hamas, you know, Osama bin laden and Saddam Hussein? Hitler, Pol Pot, the list goes on and on. We can counteract with better names Jesus, Moses, Noah, MLK, Gandhi, that. So there’s a nice there’s a balance there. But, we’re still talking about hate and war rather than these other guys.

00:40:26:01 – 00:40:41:27
Robert Wolf
I mean, unless you’re a staunch Christian or Jewish or Muslim, I don’t think a lot I meant for this to happen. Where? I don’t know, I don’t know much about the Muslim religion, but I do have Muslim friends, and they’re peaceful, and, So what’s going. I mean, I can’t get my arms around it. And, the thing about this book.

00:40:42:01 – 00:40:59:15
Robert Wolf
Yeah. And the story is my parents knew that it would be necessary to share it because they didn’t think that the hate and the Jewish scapegoating issue would go away. And each year they’re right, 60, 80 on our years. And the disturbing part is people find different ways to maim and torture, punish, kill each other. And it’s really sad.

00:40:59:15 – 00:41:16:27
Robert Wolf
And I just I can’t feel it because as a radiologist, we’re into preservation of life. The beauty of the human body, the beauty of the anatomy, the cell and all this training to go through it. There’s no room for racism or prejudice in my field. But these people would just. They would think nothing about chopping your head off or killing somebody instantly.

00:41:17:00 – 00:41:37:07
Robert Wolf
No respect for human life. And I can’t wrap my my hands around that. It’s just not that. It’s not what I was built for. And so we educate, we try to spread the word. We do podcasts, we do, book talks, book presentations, TV interviews, in some cases radio. And, we get the point across while sharing good stories, amazing stories throughout.

00:41:37:07 – 00:42:05:13
Dan LeFebvre
A lot of if you go back to Schindler’s List throughout a lot of that movie, it it does recreate the I mentioned your passion and and Auschwitz and where there were hundreds of thousands of people that were murdered. And unfortunately, that number also includes your grandparents, which is a very moving story told in the book. I think a lot of people base their knowledge of concentration camps today on what we see in movies like Schindler’s List.

00:42:05:15 – 00:42:23:23
Dan LeFebvre
But I remember the story of like The Latrine. And in your book, we don’t ever see in the movie Schindler’s List at all. So there’s obviously other things there that we don’t we’re not going to see in the movie. But based on what you know of your grandparents experience, how well do you think Schindler’s List does capturing the horrors of Auschwitz?

00:42:23:26 – 00:42:44:19
Robert Wolf
I think it’s amazing. Like I said, the cinematography is amazing. The storyline and the brutality. We’ll go back to the women guards that were were tougher than one thing that resonates. So, I mean, I don’t like spoiling too meaning, but my my dad’s a miracle. And my dad found out what happened to his parents. An eyewitness who happened to survive Auschwitz and meet, meet up with him in his hometown of Jura.

00:42:44:19 – 00:43:06:28
Robert Wolf
I mean, all of those. That’s a miracle after miracle that that happened. But, Yeah, being in the train reminded me of, my my my grandmother, the grandparents I never met, but my grandmother, was an orphan, a little girl orphan. And they went straight to the chamber. So, and actually, when I did that, when I first did this project, turning it from autobiography to biography, I had to walk away from from the book.

00:43:06:28 – 00:43:25:24
Robert Wolf
I had to walk away from the story for at least a week, ten days, because it profoundly affected me. So, so. And, you know, I hate to say this, but fortunately, she didn’t have to it. Her life didn’t have to linger on for months, months at a time. And where you’re starving and you’re trapped and you were on your forced labor, and you don’t know when your last day is going to be, Schindler.

00:43:25:24 – 00:43:40:00
Robert Wolf
I think they capture all of that pretty well. I mean, everybody’s going to have a different story. But it didn’t go well. And then another thing that resonates is my my grandfather, who was a dentist who told the the, the intake people at the intake that he was a dentist was a doctor, and he might be useful.

00:43:40:06 – 00:43:55:27
Robert Wolf
So they assign him to cleaning latrines, and we don’t see that in Schindler. But we sure see all these kids hiding in Auschwitz, including the one that you get shut out by every other letter, every other kid. And then he’s up, he ends up diving into the feces and he hides in the latrine or whatever you want.

00:43:56:04 – 00:44:07:07
Robert Wolf
It’s disgusting. I mean, I can’t imagine what was the movie with the kid from India who does the same thing. He ends up diving into the, into the feces, and it just, the. Joe, remember that movie?

00:44:07:07 – 00:44:07:24
Dan LeFebvre
Yes.

00:44:07:29 – 00:44:10:07
Robert Wolf
And he’s on jeopardy or something like.

00:44:10:09 – 00:44:11:14
Dan LeFebvre
Slumdog Millionaire.

00:44:11:16 – 00:44:15:27
Robert Wolf
Yes. Very good. Thank you. I knew you were. No, you got a brilliant memory. I can.

00:44:15:27 – 00:44:17:01
Dan LeFebvre
Go on.

00:44:17:03 – 00:44:35:10
Robert Wolf
And that’s the. Yeah. That’s good. I mean, I need more people like you helped me with the message. This is why we’re doing this, too. But, talking about great movies and and a story that could be a movie. At least some people say that, so, so that resonate. Yeah. And then. So these were I went by at least my, my dad’s parents, didn’t have to endure all that.

00:44:35:12 – 00:44:51:20
Robert Wolf
I mean, if you’ve ever fasted just one day without food, it’s tough enough. I can’t imagine week after week, we would bury little food. And, you know, you’ve seen the pictures of the people that are skin and bones. Those that were lucky enough to survive. But, what a what a terrible life. They must have adapted and they had to live then.

00:44:51:22 – 00:44:56:13
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, it goes back to the words don’t really do it justice to to.

00:44:56:15 – 00:45:13:09
Robert Wolf
Not only that that personal. It’s the light. The light. So. So my dad’s father died probably of cholera week from the feces, you know. So that was, but there’s tuberculosis. There’s lice. My dad had a foot infection, when he was in, when he was forced labor camp, and he had lice a couple times. He had hepatitis.

00:45:13:09 – 00:45:30:10
Robert Wolf
He had a bad back. He had a lot going on. And then. And then recently talking about women in forced labor camps. There’s this guy in England, super nice and super dedicated to what we’re doing. He’s turning black and white photos into color photos, and he’s doing a good job, and he’s trying to get financial support for that.

00:45:30:12 – 00:45:48:13
Robert Wolf
But he did a, it was a short it was a short little documentary, maybe 2 or 3 minutes, maybe five, with conversion from black and white to color. And it was the forced labor. The women forced laborers from Hungary. And a lot of them had gangrene. They had gangrenous legs and gangrenous feet. And they actually, they depicted, what their skin look like.

00:45:48:13 – 00:46:12:14
Robert Wolf
And it’s brutal that. So, you know, you’d never think of gangrene. I mean, so a lot of health issues besides the starvation and lack of water to, of course, dehydration and, you know, electrolytes going to be off and, and, muscle mass goes and eventually you die because you’re, you’re malnourished. So I’m sure many, many people died from, I don’t know the exact numbers, but malnourishment, I’m sure, was not just getting shot or put in the gas chambers.

00:46:12:14 – 00:46:33:06
Robert Wolf
Just. Or other sickness, malnourishment, sickness. It’s just too much. It’s too much to think about. It’s 200. It is. And that need doesn’t need to happen. And it also resonates with Gaza. It with what’s the prisoners that are still there? I can’t imagine even if they released them today, the ones that are still alive, just talk about PTSD, talk about trying to overcome that kind of trauma, not knowing when your last day is.

00:46:33:06 – 00:46:38:03
Robert Wolf
Mostly that’s that’s the big thing, the wait and the boredom and, horror fun.

00:46:38:05 – 00:46:49:06
Dan LeFebvre
If we shift back to the movie, there’s, we’re talking about Schindler’s List, and that’s going to be the most popular movie about someone saving Jewish lives during the Holocaust. But it’s not the.

00:46:49:08 – 00:46:56:08
Robert Wolf
The Ten Commandments. Well, I gotta say, that’s a fantastic movie, too. But, I don’t mean. Sorry to interrupt. Yes.

00:46:56:09 – 00:47:01:15
Dan LeFebvre
No no no no no, that’s a that’s a classic a little bit outside the time frame that we’re talking about now.

00:47:01:15 – 00:47:07:18
Robert Wolf
And I’m kidding then Fiddler on the roof was another one. But it was a Rorschach. But, you know, that was a lot of anti-Semitism there too. But go ahead. I’m sorry.

00:47:07:18 – 00:47:41:02
Dan LeFebvre
I know you’re there’s another movie, called walking with the enemy about a Hungarian Jew named Ella Cohen, who he dresses up in an SS uniform to help rescue other Jews. Now, Ella Cohen is another fictional character, but he is based on a real person. Again, with with pronunciation. I believe it’s, Pincus Rosenbaum. He was disguised. He disguised himself in uniforms of the SS, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, which you mentioned earlier, the the Hungarian Lavant and the with the purpose of of saving, I believe hundreds of Jews.

00:47:41:04 – 00:47:51:15
Dan LeFebvre
During your research, did you come across other stories like Oskar Schindler or like Rosenbaum, of people who risked their lives to save the lives of others?

00:47:51:18 – 00:48:11:04
Robert Wolf
Raoul Wallenberg, my my, my dad and his friend Frank had those, passes, those forged papers. And he did, I don’t know, hundreds, thousands of them to help save people. Wallenberg was from Sweden, if I’m not mistaken. And I believe he was Jewish, but fantastic what he did. You going back to Schindler real quick is the way he laments.

00:48:11:04 – 00:48:26:23
Robert Wolf
You know this. Amongst all the murders he did no lamentation. You know. No. No sense of, of of, of mortality, no sense of, what’s the word I’m looking for? It just does. It doesn’t bother. And it doesn’t affect you.

00:48:26:25 – 00:48:29:21
Dan LeFebvre
No sense of decency. I mean, humanity, like Mr..

00:48:29:25 – 00:48:49:17
Robert Wolf
Schindler saving all these people. And he’s still got his car and he’s still got, like, enough jewelry or whatever. Yet on on him, he used his rings and he still your e remorse about. That’s the what I was and will remark you remorse is he elements about how he could have saved another eight or 10 or 12 Jewish people and and they had to console him because of that.

00:48:49:17 – 00:49:19:28
Robert Wolf
He cries, he breaks down. It’s a real it’s a real irony too. So, Yeah, but, but so he helps. So like Wallenberg, probably countless, Christian people, the Christians out, my dad, I mean, he wouldn’t survive without a lot of Christian help. Now, these aren’t famous stories, but being able to go to a casino, and hide in a casino, hide in a, a nunnery or, nursing home, with demented people and and, where else did he, his friend, hiding in a haberdashery and a hatbox, that kind of thing.

00:49:19:28 – 00:49:36:08
Robert Wolf
A lot of Christians help them. And then even after that, during communist Hungary, my my dad was getting, a few shekels sent, from Israel, from my mother’s mother and stepfather at this point, who was a Marky Mark in Israel, a consulate to Hungary. So they’d sneak them a few shekels, to, to this place in Budapest.

00:49:36:08 – 00:49:53:03
Robert Wolf
And my dad, it was a cloak and dagger story, the way my dad had to weave in and out of buildings to sneak to get that money, because he could have been in prison for that, too. So, a lot of people helped Jewish and Christian. Those that could a lot didn’t, again, fear for their lives. Not a lot of famous, well, here’s one actually.

00:49:53:03 – 00:50:14:15
Robert Wolf
Sorry. In communist Hungary, though, it’s not. My parents had an illegal Jewish wedding in 1953. My mom’s uncle, what? He sponsored that in his home. And like I say, it was illegal, and KGB was there, so, and my parents, when my parents, were on their honeymoon, the. He got arrested. He was a surgeon, chief of surgery in a Budapest hospital.

00:50:14:18 – 00:50:30:28
Robert Wolf
And they Waldemar for 13 months tortured him and, try to get him to confess to the to the murder. I think it was Wallenberg, if I’m not mistaken. So. And he wouldn’t he wouldn’t do it. And he was he came back a broken man, and obviously. And then they put him out in some rural clinic or something.

00:50:31:00 – 00:50:55:22
Robert Wolf
He ended up, ironically, in Sweden, where he had a successful career, and, solo daughter Susie, who was the last survivor in my book and just died in Jerusalem. Couple that soon after the attacks. 12 or 7. So she was comatose at the time and long standing on. And so as bad as that was, and it was great busier the year before, at least enough to know, about what was happening in Gaza and Israel.

00:50:55:22 – 00:51:22:01
Robert Wolf
So, all of them rest in peace. But yeah, so there’s famous and there’s not so famous in the autobiography. My dad mentions Mengele, that that is that Mengele greeted his father. But, the research that we this was a lot of research in our book, multiple people, historians, but, Berenbaum, Michael Berenbaum, who was one of the professors who wrote a tremendous, testimonial to other professors, did too.

00:51:22:02 – 00:51:38:06
Robert Wolf
They’re all good. But he mentions that don’t mix up where we’re talking about an Auschwitz because he had been there. He knows the history. And so we we took out Mengele. But, it may well be. And this is speculation that my dad’s father met Mengele, and he was the one that appealed since he was a doctor, too.

00:51:38:08 – 00:51:54:27
Robert Wolf
He was brutal himself, right? I mean, taking our feelings and using, humans as, for experiments and all that. But, if it was him or whoever it was, I guess I can’t call it nice, but got him a week’s worth. Two weeks worth of life, even though that week was miserable. So there are people that,

00:51:54:29 – 00:52:04:00
Robert Wolf
Yeah, the circles there are overlapping circles, for sure. And, as soon as we are done, I’ll probably think a couple more or two, but, you never know. And that’s a great question.

00:52:04:02 – 00:52:23:15
Dan LeFebvre
I think it’s great to know that. I mean, there are the famous one. Oskar Schindler obviously is famous, but he’s famous because of the movie and and the book and the as well. But he wasn’t doing it for fame. And there’s, you know, a lot of these stories, like you’re talking about the they’re not well known now, but that’s not why they were doing it.

00:52:23:15 – 00:52:54:21
Dan LeFebvre
They were doing it to help fellow humans. And I think that’s that in and of itself is a little bit of a light in, you know, in this dark time of history where there’s all this going on. But there are some people that will help. And I I’m happy to hear that. Yes, there were others that even though we might not know their names and whoever’s listening to this may not know their names, but they were still hoping because it was the right thing to do, not because they wanted to get their name, you know, a movie made about them.

00:52:54:26 – 00:53:00:16
Dan LeFebvre
So that we’d be talking about them on a podcast later. But, you know, it’s just the right thing to do.

00:53:00:18 – 00:53:20:26
Robert Wolf
Yeah. No, it’s it’s very palpable. And, you know, you really identify with Schindler and you always have the it’s another ironic thing. You have the swastika. Yeah. The little swastika on a super all the time. But it was, it was this guys, you know, that was it. But you’re right. He just did it out of, the love for human beings and and that that goes for Moses and that goes for Jesus and Gandhi and all these other former leaders.

00:53:20:26 – 00:53:35:03
Robert Wolf
And, of course they got some recognition, of course. But, and another one that comes to mind is Captain Khomeini. If you remember his, he’s the one who got them the forged papers. And, and I believe if I did my memory short, I’m going through my book again. You have to. Every so often. There’s never all the details.

00:53:35:11 – 00:53:54:17
Robert Wolf
But, he might have been Jewish, but since he was a big guy in the military, he had, privileges. So he helped my dad out to more than once, too. So that was another one. You may have been Christian, maybe Jewish, but, I’m glad that my parents didn’t know more famous people because. Or my grandparents, I should say, because, that to me, been more apt to be killed.

00:53:54:19 – 00:54:10:25
Robert Wolf
It didn’t matter anyway. But, if they lived in the out in the middle of nowhere, which Jer was, and it was a, pretty, very populated, industrial town. So, and that was it. They were they were in Transylvania first. And Albert. Julia, if I’m not pronouncing that right, might be I mean, if it was Spanish would be Albert.

00:54:10:27 – 00:54:42:04
Robert Wolf
Julia, I guess, or Julia it might be, but. Albert. Julia. So they they loved Mother Hungary, as do my parents. And, they decided to go back to George. So instead of living Transylvania. So. And that might have been an ill fated decision to my mom and dad. Love mother Hungary, too, by the way, and would have probably stayed if the Americans had taken over rather than the Soviets, because they had had enough with the two wars and, and and countless persecution, illegal weddings, torture, deaths and, deception.

00:54:42:04 – 00:54:58:18
Robert Wolf
You know, their, their colleagues and friends and fellow doctors were trying to get them to convert to the communist ideal. And my parents wouldn’t buy into that. And, and that state, the the Soviets, in their arrogance, called my dad not a real enemy. And that’s what they really were. They love Mother Hungary, but they weren’t going to stay.

00:54:58:21 – 00:55:13:17
Robert Wolf
My mom was a med school, by the way, to winning them. So. And dad was already in okay. And and he had to double down as a trauma surgeon during a revolution. So they’re both frontliners. And after that they said and they were closing the borders and people were leaving in droves. But they managed to get out.

00:55:13:21 – 00:55:19:13
Robert Wolf
That’s my dad’s fourth escape, which is they’re all harrowing, but, memorable for sure.

00:55:19:15 – 00:55:42:17
Dan LeFebvre
Right. Mentioning Hungary and, earlier I mentioned Ben Kingsley and Schindler’s List and that how that movie started in 1939. But Ben Kingsley is in another movie called walking with the enemy, and he plays another person that you mentioned, Regent Horthy, the Hungarian leader. That movie takes place in 1944, when the Germans finally occupy Hungary. And Regent Horthy doesn’t want to let the Nazis take the Jews.

00:55:42:17 – 00:55:58:02
Dan LeFebvre
So he’s trying to sign a deal with the Soviet Union to get the Nazis out of Hungary. But then in a group called Arrow Cross, which you had also mentioned earlier, takes control of Hungary up until the Red Army pushes the Nazis out of the during the siege of Budapest. This is all as far as the movie is concerned.

00:55:58:02 – 00:56:03:09
Dan LeFebvre
But what really happened with Hungarian, Polish artists during World War Two?

00:56:03:11 – 00:56:20:21
Robert Wolf
Oh well, that’s you. And you kind of said it yourself. I mean, you needed a guide. You needed it literally. So Horthy takes over after he was an admirable admiral in World War One. He takes over Hungary again. The Jews feel like he’s he’s not, friendly to the Jews, even though what if what you say is true, that might be the opposite.

00:56:20:21 – 00:56:23:24
Robert Wolf
But, kudos to him for for trying to prevent that.

00:56:23:26 – 00:56:26:25
Dan LeFebvre
Well, I was in the movie. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but that’s the way the movie presents.

00:56:26:25 – 00:56:40:06
Robert Wolf
Oh, yeah. Got to see the movie in and review the book and compare notes. There’s not a lot in the book about there’s a lot of history, but it’s it’s history light. I call it my coauthor, Janice. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here. She’s a fantastic writer, but helped me turn the book and something really special.

00:56:40:06 – 00:56:56:26
Robert Wolf
But, if you were a junior school, they had the red chair. There’s a white chair. You know, you didn’t have communism. It was in then. They’re trying to say communism is no good. They’re beating up people. They’re going door to door. And then, of course, the rise of fascism, the Nazis entering, the, entering Hungary.

00:56:56:26 – 00:57:27:26
Robert Wolf
So the political climate then was you did what the Nazis said or you’re screwed. You know, that was Hungary trying to fight Germany. It was horse horses versus tanks, you know. How does that let me know how that goes for you. Right. And then, finally 1944 or 45, you Arrow cross, tremendously anti-Semitic. In my, I, maybe like a Gestapo or KGB type thing, they were worse to the Jews and they went out of their way opposite of Schindler, where, you know, the last day of the war and all the guards you only day, that’s all the guards.

00:57:27:26 – 00:57:42:24
Robert Wolf
And, in with the, prisoners, the laborers, and, he openly invites them to, to do what they want with them. Kill them or not. Or you can go home to your families, he says, and they all even go, well, that’s not what it was like in Hungary that at the end of the war, they went out of their way to kill as many Hungarians as they could.

00:57:42:27 – 00:58:07:09
Robert Wolf
And we all know about this. The Danube River, 21,000 Jewish people were shot to death, in cold blood, without their clothes on in the winter. December 43rd, January 44th. And, so that’s, it’s complete. Opposite of Schindler and it’s very set. So that’s the politics then. And of course, communism takes over. And, you know, we get the Stalin years and, and they wouldn’t go away.

00:58:07:09 – 00:58:25:20
Robert Wolf
And the irony is, like if the Americans had one or the West, the allies, then I probably wouldn’t be here. And I’d probably been born and raised in Hungary and maybe got lucky enough to go to med school. But they they left for the U.S., so. And then obviously, the Soviet, the Red Army and Soviet stayed on for forever and ever and ever.

00:58:25:23 – 00:58:45:13
Robert Wolf
Maybe now it’s a little bit of a democracy, but I don’t know much about recent Hungarian politics. But what I’ve seen and heard, the, Orban is, is Putin’s puppet. And, I could see him doing land for people. Deal, without dropping out. And let’s listen on. Jared’s never got a break for 80, 100 years, the most the majority of the 20th century was.

00:58:45:20 – 00:59:03:23
Robert Wolf
And the sad thing is, Hungarian Jews were. Well, if we’re going to flash, flash back to before World War one, 1890s, you know, the gay 90s and all that, Hungarian Jews and Jews in Europe were well treated. They were well respected. And and that boy that that climate turned, between world War one, World War two and and beyond with the Communist.

00:59:03:23 – 00:59:21:27
Robert Wolf
So, so Stalin dies in 53. That was good news. Hungarian, because he was really brutal, and I and Hungary in 56, they have their revolution. And, it goes badly for them. And then the hard liners became even more so because they were clamping down on the citizens. They didn’t want people to revolt.

00:59:21:27 – 00:59:37:12
Robert Wolf
And and they almost they didn’t almost win, but they almost got the Soviets out of there. And then just something changed about it. But instead of less, it became more with all the tanks coming in. And, that’s something that my dad said to the were that the men that were driving the tanks were from the Far East.

00:59:37:12 – 00:59:55:04
Robert Wolf
They were from, I don’t think it was Malaysia, maybe Burma. But they thought they were in Egypt. They thought they were in the Sinai, the Sinai War in 56. But they weren’t. They were. They were in Hungary fighting. So, that’s that was an interesting little tidbit. So it’s kind of like, oh, sorry, the North Koreans, you know, going to fight with the Russians kind of sounds like that, right?

00:59:55:04 – 01:00:01:08
Robert Wolf
They, they, you know, they recruit, they recruit people from other countries. Well, World War II was all about that, too.

01:00:01:08 – 01:00:26:05
Dan LeFebvre
But you you mentioned World War One and even before World War One, and that lead right into the last movie that I want to talk to you about, today’s, 1999 film, epic film called sunshine. I know up until now we’ve mostly talked about World War Two, but sunshine focuses on three generations of characters, all played by Ray finds across generations of a family called the Sun Shines, a, Hungarian Jewish family.

01:00:26:11 – 01:00:44:23
Dan LeFebvre
And the movie goes from the end of the 19th century with Hungarian nationalism through World War One, World War Two, and then into the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. And the first generation of the movie we see refines version of ignite, Sun and Shine. He wants to be a judge, but to do that he has to change his last name to something.

01:00:44:23 – 01:01:03:18
Dan LeFebvre
According to the movie is more Hungarian, so he changes it to show where there pressure even before the rise of fascism. Because in the movie this is happening, you know, before World War one and 19th century, was there pressure for Hungarians to hide their Jewish heritage?

01:01:03:20 – 01:01:18:12
Robert Wolf
Yeah. I’m thank you for reminding me of that movie, because I’ve heard of it recently and I didn’t remember the title. So if you don’t mind, please email me that, because that’s something that sounds like. But it’s totally, it’s encountered distinction too. Oh, he was in Schindler. I mean, that that kind of, that kind of wants to be a judge.

01:01:18:18 – 01:01:37:27
Robert Wolf
And he’s an excellent actor, don’t get me wrong. But, and so is the guy that played Schindler, you know, Liam, Liam Neeson, and we back to Ben Kingsley. But yeah, my dad’s parents converted. They converted to Christianity, reluctantly, but they did. And, it was so he could practice dentistry and hide his heritage. And my dad’s mother hated it, and.

01:01:37:27 – 01:01:55:00
Robert Wolf
But they did. So, and I’m sure a lot of other Hungarian Jews did. I mean, I’ve read about it and heard that other Hungarian used it in it, and of course, hiding certain valuables, hiding radios, hiding your religion. That was a part of your heritage. And it’s horrible thing. Now, they weren’t that religious, but for the Orthodox Jew either.

01:01:55:00 – 01:02:14:14
Robert Wolf
Good luck having that up. And, until they got to Auschwitz and you weren’t allowed to practice religion or do anything, they shaved off all your hair, humiliated you, killed you, clowns too. Not just the religious were clowns. But they were fortunate enough to convert back. My. I’m a mr. Cronenberg. My dad’s father’s, his cousin, just turns up.

01:02:14:14 – 01:02:30:21
Robert Wolf
I forget how the circumstances of how they meet, but he’s he’s wealthy, and he helps him open up a private practice, and they’re in their home and, lends the money or whatever. Maybe if ghost money and we don’t really talk about how it’s returned, if at all. But he has to convert. They have to convert back to Judaism.

01:02:30:21 – 01:02:45:13
Robert Wolf
And as soon as they get that news, my dad’s mom’s taking the cross off the wall. And, not that they didn’t like Christians because most of their friends were Christians, no doubt. Because they didn’t always share in with the Jewish people, especially the Orthodox. So, and so they converted back. So it was a big sacrifice for them.

01:02:45:18 – 01:03:02:19
Robert Wolf
I can’t imagine converting to Christianity. I love Christianity, I think it’s great religion and theory. I think, that Christians have had a hard time over the last, you know, thousand, 2000 years in certain cases. The Bible talks about the Spanish Inquisition. We talk about the Crusades. So all of that, both at both ends of it. Right.

01:03:02:19 – 01:03:23:06
Robert Wolf
And also Muslims and Jews as well, too. So, yeah, a lot of sacrifices they had to make, to finally get a life going, finally having my dad, who grows up, not wealthy, but, you know, upper middle, grows up as a spoiled kid, ironically ends up forced labor and gets through that. But, so the 20s were kind of easy on them.

01:03:23:09 – 01:03:37:02
Robert Wolf
But, in between where during, during certain times they had to convert at the either. And then of course, you couldn’t if you didn’t wear your yellow star or a yellow band. In my dad’s case, in the forced labor, you’d be punished or shot for sure. You’ll.

01:03:37:05 – 01:04:00:04
Dan LeFebvre
Well, you might have already answered my my next question on that one, because in sunshine, the next generation is very finds plays the same. He, he plays different characters in each generation. So in the first generation refines, character is ignites, and he’s trying to become a judge. And then the next generation, once the child grows up, they have a younger, you know, different actor playing the younger version, and he grows up.

01:04:00:04 – 01:04:18:27
Dan LeFebvre
And it’s also a great find, you know? But this time he’s Adam Shaw. And in Adam’s timeline, this is during World War two, and he has to convert. He converts to Roman Catholicism because Jews aren’t allowed to join the fencing club, which is what he wants to do. But then in the movie, obviously that doesn’t work. They find out about his Jewish ancestry.

01:04:18:27 – 01:04:31:29
Dan LeFebvre
And so you can’t just convert. It doesn’t doesn’t really work. So would it be with the movie’s concept there be correct that switching religions wouldn’t work as far as the brutality of the Nazis to escape that?

01:04:32:02 – 01:04:51:13
Robert Wolf
Probably not. I mean, I don’t even know how people know who’s Jewish and who is. And I mean, I have no idea what’s happened once the traumas, on the door. I mean, I, you know, I don’t know how they, how they could masterfully and systematically find them all and exterminate them. But, you bring up a good point, because my dad, my dad’s father, was Jewish.

01:04:51:13 – 01:05:13:02
Robert Wolf
He lost a government job as a dentist. They he had to be, first of all, let them do part time. And then they laid him off and they said, you know, no pension, no benefits. And then ultimately laid off. We talked about the sign. No Jews or dogs. That was out there in Hungary, too. So you weren’t allowed to fencing, you know, certain, bars, restaurants, places of worship, places of business.

01:05:13:02 – 01:05:27:14
Robert Wolf
So Jews weren’t allowed to go to. So and that same sign that we, we talk about in, life was beautiful and, also my dad was not allowed to be on the swim team because he was Jewish. And, my dad loved to swim. I was a pretty good swimmer in high school. I guess I got that from my dad.

01:05:27:14 – 01:05:44:23
Robert Wolf
I swam for four years, and, he did breaststroke, me butterfly and freestyle. But anyway, he had he was kicked off the swim team because he was Jewish. So, yeah, ramifications were there. And, very sad. And it’s too bad because his coach liked him and and his friends like them. And they were very sad for him, but there was nothing they could do,

01:05:44:25 – 01:06:02:03
Dan LeFebvre
Those sort of things. Again, it’s hard to wrap my head around because. So what does that have to do with swimming? Like it? Like you’re swimming in a pool in water. I mean, you’re competing in not to not to take away from how serious it can be for competitions and stuff, but it’s it’s still a sport and it’s similar.

01:06:02:03 – 01:06:21:02
Dan LeFebvre
We see the similar sort of thing in, in the movie with sunshine, except it’s fencing. He’s, you know, he’s fencing. He’s like, that’s part of the reason why he ends up he converts is because he’s like, this doesn’t really it doesn’t affect my how good I am at fencing and with my practicing. And I imagine a similar thing for, for swimming like it does, it doesn’t affect that.

01:06:21:02 – 01:06:29:17
Dan LeFebvre
And so it’s, it’s, it goes back to that concept of what as we’re talking about, it, there’s so much more that, you know, it’s just it’s hard to wrap your head around.

01:06:29:18 – 01:06:48:00
Robert Wolf
And so it’s awful now, you know, ironically, the Olympics came up in a recent podcast too, and y can every day be like the Olympics? Yeah. Why can’t we do peace negotiations and tear off negotiations in the hot tub, or over find a nice table with a tablecloth and, you know, nice silverware? The the Olympics, exemplifies that.

01:06:48:00 – 01:07:06:14
Robert Wolf
It’s the one time where for the 2 or 3 weeks that the all these countries get together, they compete, they put all the bibs, all the politics, all the disagreements off you know, back. They leave it on the field or behind them and they compete. And it’s great sportsmanship. And why can’t, why can’t our politicians, why can’t our leaders, do that?

01:07:06:14 – 01:07:24:14
Robert Wolf
I mean, it’s such a such a great lesson. So I love the Olympics, not only because I love sports, but also just that concept of, worldwide, a worldwide peace and, the amicable feeling that you got, and I just love it. I mean, third place, person congratulating the first on the gold medal winner, that kind of thing.

01:07:24:17 – 01:07:44:16
Robert Wolf
Arm in arm in arm, holding our flags. Just the fact, you know, we’re talking about kneeling and and, during, it’s not a big thing lightly, thank God. But kneeling or not respecting the national anthem, my mom and dad would spit in those people. They would be. How dare you? You know, we we were barely allowed to practice what we want in a free country.

01:07:44:16 – 01:08:04:15
Robert Wolf
How dare you do that in this country? And they would, think. I mean, they got to their dad, but they. I got the narrative experience, the the the people kneeling and and not respecting the flag, multi-millionaires, people that are privileged, privileged enough and talented enough, and marketable enough to to be in sports and make lots of money, be very popular.

01:08:04:15 – 01:08:24:06
Robert Wolf
And when they do that, it’s it just doesn’t hurt the snarling. And so those kind of things, that’s what we’re battling here. You know, we got to respect our country and our freedoms, and our luck and realize that what happened to my dad could happen to any one of us. Could be a bad neighbor. Bad local government, federal government, foreign government, natural disaster, bad business deal.

01:08:24:06 – 01:08:39:07
Robert Wolf
Whatever it is could happen to us where we’re on the run not knowing where your next meal is. So not only are we going to sleep, not not knowing if you’re going to get a job or where you will, and you still you’re still, you don’t know. You can’t meet people. You can’t be around people that that spot you and say, oh, there’s a Jew.

01:08:39:07 – 01:08:47:24
Robert Wolf
There’s, Because you hear that. So there’s we talk about the light at the end of the tunnel. Even during escapes, there was no such thing.

01:08:47:27 – 01:09:11:23
Dan LeFebvre
If we go back to sunshine, the last generation in that movie is Adam, son Ivan. And he survives World War two. But then he joins the communists because they seem to be the liberators of the brutality of the Nazis had inflicted in Hungary. But then, as the Hungarian Revolution breaks out in 1956, in the movie we see Ivan, he realizes the communists are brutal and corrupt also.

01:09:12:00 – 01:09:38:14
Dan LeFebvre
And then at the very end of that movie, Ivan learns from an old letter from his great grandfather, who was at the very beginning of the movie. It’s it’s a long movie. But he finds out that in this letter, it’s the goal is not to be accepted by others. And in this letter, as you reads it, Ivan then has the inspiration to change his name from shores back to sunshine to embrace his Jewish ancestry.

01:09:38:16 – 01:09:58:14
Dan LeFebvre
And like a lot of the movie characters that we’ve talked about today, the Shine is high. Family from the movie sunshine are fictional. They’re not real. But of course, the unimaginable hardships that they faced in the movie were real events that generations of of your family faced as well. So just like Ivan took lessons from his family’s past at the end of the movie and build a better life for himself.

01:09:58:14 – 01:10:09:04
Dan LeFebvre
As we kind of start to wrap up our discussion today, if you took a look at your family’s history, what’s one lesson that you’ve learned that people today can apply to create a better future?

01:10:09:06 – 01:10:26:04
Robert Wolf
I have to see that movie sunshine. It sounds. I mean, it sounds like they stole my stole my own story. Now, would you remind me? Because I do want to, but yeah, my, my mom’s uncle, Zoltan was she. He converted. He was a communist because he wanted to. He wanted to survive. And, my mom probably hated it, but he was.

01:10:26:04 – 01:10:43:18
Robert Wolf
It helped him. He was a he was a monkey in the government and in the economic the economic plan after World War two. And, I read some of the notes, those turned up and I it was really and I don’t mean to get off the subject, but it was really poignant and depressing actually saying, well, what what do we do with our, our Jews?

01:10:43:25 – 01:11:03:10
Robert Wolf
And they are mostly farms and factories. I’m not going to talk about military. I’m talking about the civilian Jews because they couldn’t work. They couldn’t be educated. Finally, they let my dad get into medical school, 10%, quota, which is 10% quota, which is amazing that he even got in. But, so but he was a communist, so he, you know, resonates really, really well with whatever.

01:11:03:10 – 01:11:23:24
Robert Wolf
My mom and dad wouldn’t buy into it as we already mentioned, that, like I said, this country is amazing. Accountability is an important. It’s an important message. Don’t point at people. It just, you know, after 911, we had Islamophobia. After the coronavirus epidemic. We had the Asian eight. Now tober seventh. That’s the Jewish people.

01:11:23:24 – 01:11:39:12
Robert Wolf
Well, what do I have to do with Gaza? And October 7th, I support Israel, I support peace, and, that that that unnecessary. You know, you’re wasting your time, with these protests, these kids in Colombia, you don’t know how good you have it. You know, I, I think people would tell the end of Harvard or Columbia or privilege.

01:11:39:12 – 01:12:03:24
Robert Wolf
They would be. And, people that are doing this and and protesting and calling for the death of Israel and America, it’s just there’s no room for it. Not for me, not for you, and not in this country. And so I identify with the peaceful people, try to get a handle around, at least. Finally, they’re curtailing funding for universities everywhere I could in there, I’d be showing them and and suing them and suing them and and doing more talks in the area.

01:12:03:24 – 01:12:20:28
Robert Wolf
I mean, believe me, that’s all I’m doing anyway, but we need to, appreciate what we have. Accountability. And if you’re bored with what you have, you got if you’re complaining, change vectors. If you don’t like your job, change jobs, work part time, write a book. Everybody’s got a story. Write a poem, write an opera. Go to the library.

01:12:20:28 – 01:12:37:28
Robert Wolf
Go to the museum. Spend more time with your family. Give back to the community. It’s not just about food, shelter, clothing. Unlike for my mom and dad and, all the victims, it’s all food, shelter and clothing. But for now, for us, I put a little more into your life, put a more pot, and, love your neighbor, you know, and I don’t I don’t mean to be corny.

01:12:37:28 – 01:12:57:02
Robert Wolf
Bring a neighbor some macaroons or whatever. Invite them for the Seder. Just get to know them better and embrace them. And things. And things. Well, it all starts. Leadership starts from within. You know, you’re not going to be a leader if you’re not a good person. If you’re not. And I don’t mean no Hitler leader because he just led by charisma and, and, all his, his garbage is, propaganda.

01:12:57:04 – 01:13:14:01
Robert Wolf
But, you can lead by example, and it’s never too late to do the right thing. There’s no substitute for experience. I got a lot of, you know, the trend is your friend, you can learn something from every case, as we say in radiology. But as now, I’ve been on both sides of the needle. You can learn something from every person you know.

01:13:14:01 – 01:13:30:13
Robert Wolf
You can learn from every situation. And don’t forget that, don’t be that. That dead shark swim in the water. Just keep on moving. And if you don’t like what you’re doing and don’t don’t watch and complain, do something else. Life is short here. It’s our only commodity. It’s. You know, time is. Our time is our only commodity.

01:13:30:13 – 01:13:41:24
Robert Wolf
It’s not gold or silver stocks, real estate. It’s time. So use it. Use it wisely. Like my dad used to say. Enjoy every moment. And now I understand why.

01:13:41:26 – 01:14:02:10
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, I love that I love that, and that’s one thing as we’ve talked about you just looking back to some of the movies we talked about, the concept that I get is a lot of the things that led to like the atrocities Auschwitz that we talked about. It didn’t jump right to that. It was there were steps that they got there.

01:14:02:13 – 01:14:26:01
Dan LeFebvre
And although we’ve we talked mostly about historical events that took place around World War Two today, a lot of people have compared the current climate here in the United States as I’m recording this, similar to the rise of fascism that resulted in Nazi Germany. And I’m just curious, from your perspective, do you think there’s any truth to those comparisons, or is that kind of overblown just, extremism?

01:14:26:03 – 01:14:44:26
Robert Wolf
That’s such a great question. It’s hard to know. I hope not. That’s why there’s people like me trying to prevent that from happening. Call Congress, call you local government. What are you guys doing about anti-Semitism? I’m still doing it. I hate getting ghosted. That’s a big part of it being rejected. I don’t mind getting rejected like people that are apathetic, but too much apathy is going to be the danger to us.

01:14:44:26 – 01:15:04:25
Robert Wolf
And if the Jewish population doesn’t survive, you know, the LGBTQ, the criticize the Jewish and African-Americans, if you guys are next and and those those that glorify Hitler, you guys were next. You just don’t even realize it. So, now in some ways, yeah, in some countries worse than here. But even in America, in World War two, there was the rise of anti-Semitism.

01:15:04:25 – 01:15:23:16
Robert Wolf
And, fortunately not fascism. But until the guns are pointed at me, I feel relief. As long as the government and the local police are protecting us, then I feel safe. Whatever. If it starts to turn. And we talked about the your armored trucks and tanks going down the streets with the flags. If it ever comes to that, then I’d say, well, no, we’re doomed.

01:15:23:16 – 01:15:45:23
Robert Wolf
But, at least for the short term. But, hopefully that never happens. I can’t see that happening. But you never know. I mean, Australia and Canada, Europe, it’s still going on. So it’s up to the government, the people that are supposed to protect others. As Reagan said, that’s what government’s job is not to and not to, to to take from others or its or to use the people.

01:15:45:23 – 01:15:52:00
Robert Wolf
It’s, it’s I’m paraphrasing, but a government’s job is to protect us. Jewish. Christian doesn’t matter. Muslim.

01:15:52:03 – 01:15:58:26
Dan LeFebvre
We’re all human. We’re all. We’re all. What is it? The JFK quotes, we all share this planet together or something. Something along.

01:15:58:26 – 01:16:17:23
Robert Wolf
Those lines. Exactly. No. It’s true, it’s true. And we’re we’re getting beyond that. Why are the Soviets and the Americans get along in space stations and the moon or whatever, but they can’t get along and Mother Earth, right? I mean, so that’s, it’s another thing like the Olympics. Yeah. It doesn’t even make sense to me. And probably Antarctica and Greenland and everybody is going to set up whatever.

01:16:17:25 – 01:16:33:08
Robert Wolf
And that works for me. You know, it’s so how about annexing Canada? What about that kind of concept? I, you know, people are thinking out of the box lately and maybe I like it, maybe I don’t, but it’s worth a look because things have to change. Canada needs a security alternative to the US. On and on and on.

01:16:33:13 – 01:16:55:13
Robert Wolf
And maybe it’s good economically too, unless it’s come up. And I don’t know that it would be so complicated. And I know our resistance. The natives would be, Mexico. Maybe not so much, but that would be scary for me because I think it’s a it’s got it’s violent areas and etc.. But interestingly, a Jewish woman is the new president of Mexico, so and a Jewish lady is, is the new mayor of Beverly Hills.

01:16:55:13 – 01:17:15:18
Robert Wolf
So, that gives me hope. I think that’s great. I mean, I love California, and if it weren’t so expensive, I maybe I would live there instead of Florida. But, with who knows? And it’s one of the liberal for me, too. But, you know, it’s a great state and, many, many people. So it’s good to see that some people that are in leadership positions are going to be on the side of peace, not just because they’re Jewish.

01:17:15:18 – 01:17:29:03
Robert Wolf
That’s the side of peace. So they get it. They care. That’s another lesson. It’s good to care. It’s important to care if you, you’re doomed if you don’t. So whatever is your own life or the life of others? It’s important.

01:17:29:05 – 01:17:44:00
Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show to chat about all these various movies. I know we’ve mentioned your book called Not a Real Enemy The True Story of the Hungarian Jewish Man’s Fight for freedom. We’ve mentioned a few times throughout our discussion today, but there’s so many things in the book that we didn’t even get a chance to talk about.

01:17:44:00 – 01:18:01:06
Dan LeFebvre
I’m going to add a link to it in the show notes, so anyone watching or listening to this right now can pick up their own copy. As I was reading your book, it really read like a movie and I can’t wait until it is turned into one. And since all movies have teasers and trailers before I let you go, can you share a teaser of your book for everyone watching this?

01:18:01:06 – 01:18:03:06
Dan LeFebvre
Now?

01:18:03:09 – 01:18:23:14
Robert Wolf
Wow. Yeah, yeah, from your mouth to God’s ears. Because, we we’ve been trying to clear some producers. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s a long shot, but a teaser. A man who escapes four times, I can’t imagine one escape. I mean, I’ve been reading books, guys escaping, and they’re not even Jewish. They’re. They’re prisoners of war from Poland or whatever, escaping from thousands of miles away.

01:18:23:16 – 01:18:40:12
Robert Wolf
And that’s like a one big, huge escape. But for escapes, 20 miracles in this book, like you as you know it. Or the way my dad got into medical school, cloak and dagger stories, arguing with armors and soldiers. That’s a scene I’d like to see, and winning the argument, but bluffing his way through it.

01:18:40:15 – 01:19:03:19
Robert Wolf
Of course, his first and last escape. But I think all of them would need to be included. Split second timing. The luck of God. What else? I mean, the fact that my dad was spoiled, but he was also beaten as a kid. It’s another interesting, interesting tidbit. Tidbit? So many, the way the table set, the way the way that you went from, being an upper middle says to starving and how life could change on a dime.

01:19:03:21 – 01:19:24:18
Robert Wolf
So many messages. Resilience, determination, hope, integrity, and ultimately redemption. So it’s it’s loaded. It’s packed with it’s history. It’s an adventure. It’s a biography. And, trials and tribulations. My dad and family and, must read and hopefully, more and more people read it. This is all I do is my charge is fighting anti-Semitism. You help me with that.

01:19:24:18 – 01:19:48:24
Robert Wolf
10% of my, I’m on socials across the board, so please, finally, Robert J. Wolfe, MD, or Google not relented me 10% of my proceeds henceforth and even when I’m gone and my trust are going to the Holocaust Museum in DC. So not only I’m educating in my own little corner, but I’m also contributing. And people that buy the book are contributing to education through the, to the mothership, as I call it, the U.S. Holocaust Museum in DC.

01:19:48:27 – 01:20:06:02
Robert Wolf
I’ve been fortunate enough to be there twice or two to the book signings. I could do that every day, educating kids and families about what’s going on now and then, genocide, etc.. So, it’s a must read. And, I hope that you do enjoy it and reach out to me. I do podcasts and and presentations programs.

01:20:06:02 – 01:20:09:03
Robert Wolf
Please help me fight antisemitism. Can’t do it alone.

01:20:09:05 – 01:20:16:27
Dan LeFebvre
I love education is is the key. Thank you so much for everything you do for educating. Thank you for for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

01:20:17:00 – 01:20:24:22
Robert Wolf
Pleasure. I learned a lot today to.

00:02:26:21 – 00:02:42:11
Dan LeFebvre
Our chat today will be a little different than a usual episode of based on a true story, because we’re not looking at a single movie and we’re not even really looking at a real person from history. But what we are looking at is a very real job, how it’s portrayed onscreen by one of the most popular police officers in the movies.

00:02:42:13 – 00:02:52:16
Dan LeFebvre
So if you were to give the Die Hard franchise a letter, grade for how accurately John McClane shows us what a real police officer’s job is like, I wouldn’t get.

00:02:52:18 – 00:02:59:09
Patrick O’Donnell
I would go D plus to C minus. I think that would be my grade for for John. Yeah, honestly.

00:02:59:09 – 00:03:01:19
Dan LeFebvre
It’s a little higher than I was expecting.

00:03:01:22 – 00:03:03:17
Dan LeFebvre

00:03:03:19 – 00:03:16:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. I’m trying to be very charitable here. It’s. And I like Bruce Willis. I, I love the first Die Hard movie. The rest of them. Yeah, but, hey, that’s Hollywood right there.

00:03:16:16 – 00:03:24:03
Dan LeFebvre
That’s how it goes. And, you know, I guess as with many franchises, it it starts off and then it just kind of starts.

00:03:24:05 – 00:03:44:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. And I was thinking about that this morning, you know, it’s like one, one that pops into my head that was almost a little bit better was Terminator two. I thought I loved the first Terminator, but T2, you know, the way John Cameron filmed that and you know, the stunts and man, it was so over the top for that time period.

00:03:44:16 – 00:03:57:23
Dan LeFebvre
I think that’s one of those things that, it movies like that will stand out more because so many sequels in the franchises just do drop down that when you have one where actually this is better, it stands out that much more.

00:03:57:26 – 00:04:17:11
Patrick O’Donnell
Yes, exactly. Yeah. It’s like now I was thinking about Rocky and I was I loved the Rocky series and the first one, of course, was amazing. Second one was like, yeah, third one, I love Mr. T, so I mean, for comedic value. It was awesome. Yeah. I was like, what do you predict for yo the fight yo clubber.

00:04:17:11 – 00:04:27:00
Patrick O’Donnell
He’s like pain. I predict in the end I was like, oh, I wanted to follow the ground. I was laughing so hard. I’m like, I love this stuff.

00:04:27:02 – 00:04:28:25
Dan LeFebvre
It makes for great entertainment, that’s for sure.

00:04:29:01 – 00:04:30:06
Patrick O’Donnell
It does.

00:04:30:09 – 00:04:54:19
Dan LeFebvre
If we go back to the franchise of Die Hard, John McClane in the first movie is a cop from New York City visiting his estranged wife in Los Angeles. And of course, he happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time when all hell breaks loose. Throughout the movie, there are numerous lines of dialog about how McClane is out of his jurisdiction, but as a cop, McClane still takes it upon himself to do something about the situation unfolding around him.

00:04:54:21 – 00:05:12:04
Dan LeFebvre
Let’s say an off duty police officer is visiting a different city for personal reasons, like we see in the movie, and then they find themselves in the middle of the wrong place at the wrong time. Major crime happening in the movie. How realistic is it for the police officer to take it upon themselves to fight back against the criminals like we see John McClane doing in the movie?

00:05:12:07 – 00:05:29:10
Patrick O’Donnell
Most of the time you’re just going to be a good witness. Yeah, you you’re going to look at everything through cop eyes. You know, it’s like, okay, I’m going to look at you. You know, let’s say I’m in a situation where, like, something is getting robbed. You know, I’m in a grocery store or a bank or something like that.

00:05:29:12 – 00:05:56:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Nine out of ten times, nobody’s going to get shot. Nothing’s going to go too crazy, you know? And most of the time they don’t even have guns. They threaten like a gun or an explosive or whatever. So it’s like, I’m going to be aware of my surroundings. You know, and I’m going to be like, okay, the guy that’s doing all this is a white male about 40 years of age with a beard, mustache, you know, medium build, wearing a gray, not shirt.

00:05:56:16 – 00:06:16:07
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. And glasses. Yeah. That’s where my head is going. Then I’m just like, okay. Is he right or left handed? You know. What’s he holding? Like the bag. What’s he doing most of his stuff with. Is there any piercings tattoos. You know, anything that’s you know, so you’re going to be looking like a cop. You know, that’s what you’re going to be doing.

00:06:16:09 – 00:06:40:03
Patrick O’Donnell
But I will use a caveat. If you think somebody is in imminent danger of getting killed, you’re going to take action. You’re it’s the cop inside of you. Yeah. We can’t help ourselves, you know? So as far as jurisdiction goes, you know, if I’m out in LA, you know, I was out in LA. Oh, man. About 20 years ago, I couldn’t go around, like arresting people or anything like that.

00:06:40:03 – 00:07:00:19
Patrick O’Donnell
You could do a citizen’s arrest, quote unquote. But all you’re doing is opening yourself up to liability, and you know, you’re going to let anything short of an ax murderer get away because you don’t want to get sued later, and then you’re going to get into trouble with your department, etc.. So the chances are very, very, very slim, very slim.

00:07:00:21 – 00:07:14:18
Dan LeFebvre
They start off, if I remember right from that, from the movie, like the first thing that John McClane notices is something going wrong is there’s gunfire. So right away he’s like, okay, somebody’s life might be in danger. And so it kind of switches into that mode, it seems.

00:07:14:21 – 00:07:30:15
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. And, you know, and he’s talking to himself. That’s one thing I did like about that movie was the insurgents. I was like, why didn’t you go in there and try to stop him, John? And then he’s like, well, John, you would be dead right now, John, if you tried doing that, you know, and it’s like, absolutely. You know, that that makes total sense to me.

00:07:30:15 – 00:07:32:27
Patrick O’Donnell
It was like, yep.

00:07:33:00 – 00:07:36:08
Dan LeFebvre
The inner monologue that he speaks out loud so we can understand.

00:07:36:14 – 00:07:39:11
Patrick O’Donnell
So we can hear it. Right? Exactly. Yes.

00:07:39:13 – 00:08:00:00
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. Another key plot point for John McClane in the first Die Hard movie is how he has to fight the local law enforcement, and I don’t mean physically fighting him like he does with the bad guys, but he can’t seem to get anyone to believe what’s happening. For example, when he first calls for help, the dispatch operator scolds him, saying that she’s going to report McClane for using a channel reserved for emergencies.

00:08:00:00 – 00:08:18:06
Dan LeFebvre
So it’s like, what do you think I’m calling for? And then later on, there’s cops that do arrive at Nakatomi Plaza, and the deputy chief of police doesn’t like John McClane because he’s a mouthy cop from New York City. And then, even after the federal agents arrive on the scene, they never seem to listen to any of John McClane warnings from the inside of the building.

00:08:18:12 – 00:08:33:00
Dan LeFebvre
And then that culminates at the end of the movie, when the federal agents actually in the helicopter shooting and they start shooting at McClane on the roof because they think he’s one of the criminals. How well does the movie do, showing the way local law enforcement would react to a crime being reported by an off duty police officer?

00:08:33:00 – 00:08:34:09
Dan LeFebvre
From another scene?

00:08:34:11 – 00:09:00:21
Patrick O’Donnell
That almost never happens. But obviously, you know, you know, like most of the time, is there an out of jurisdiction cop in our city if they’re official business, they’re going to check in hopefully. Yeah. It’s like, hey, you know what? I’m a Chicago cop. I’m coming up to Milwaukee to interview a witness for a homicide. So I’m going to let you know for two reasons.

00:09:00:21 – 00:09:21:21
Patrick O’Donnell
One, it’s the right thing to do. And two, if you go sideways, then at least you know somebody knows where I am and when. If I was like the acting lieutenant, I was a sergeant for 17 years. Once in a blue moon, I got pulled off the street and I’d have to sit behind a desk and run the shift if my boss wasn’t there.

00:09:21:23 – 00:09:41:13
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, I was. I started using whodunit, so I would get a phone call from, you know, hey, I’m from blah, blah, blah city. We’re going to be tracking for a suspect that we have a warrant on. And, you know, it’s not high risk. We’re just going to do a door knock. And my first the first things out of my mouth is like, you want some help?

00:09:41:15 – 00:10:09:11
Patrick O’Donnell
And I would try to get them some help. So there’s usually not always but usually good cooperation. The feds are really bad at that, especially the FBI. They don’t want anybody playing in their sandbox. So unless they need you, then all of a sudden they’re super cooperative. But that’s another story for another day. But yeah, you know, as far as, okay, I’m an out of jurisdiction cop, I’m in your city.

00:10:09:13 – 00:10:25:05
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. Mean in 25 years, I rarely had an off duty cop that was, like, on vacation or visiting their kid or whatever in Milwaukee. All of a sudden get involved in some high stakes arrest it. Almost. It it really doesn’t happen. Yeah.

00:10:25:07 – 00:10:26:20
Dan LeFebvre
That’s why it’s for the movies. Yeah.

00:10:26:20 – 00:10:28:02
Patrick O’Donnell
Sorry, John.

00:10:28:05 – 00:10:30:02
Dan LeFebvre
And.

00:10:30:05 – 00:10:49:10
Dan LeFebvre
Well, if we move to the second movie, Die Hard two, this time, John McClane is an LA police officer who’s waiting for his wife’s plane to land at Washington’s Dulles Airport. And just like the last movie again, he finds himself the wrong place at the wrong time. And at first, now we have airport police involved, and they don’t believe McClane.

00:10:49:11 – 00:11:04:23
Dan LeFebvre
But then, as things start to go from bad to worse, we see McClane actually working with the local law enforcement at the airport. So not only do we have John McClane as an off duty police officer for a different city from a different city for there for personal reasons, but then it’s also happening at an airport where they have their own law enforcement.

00:11:04:23 – 00:11:22:13
Dan LeFebvre
And then on top of that, since Die Hard two came out in 1990, before the TSA was formed in 2001, I felt like things would probably be a little bit different now. But is it likely that a city police officer would collaborate with the TSA or airport police, like we see John McClane doing in the movie?

00:11:22:15 – 00:11:47:13
Patrick O’Donnell
Well, like TSA, you know, there are a branch of Homeland Security and they really aren’t cops. The way cops look at TSA is kind of we we look at them as, gee, I mean, there’s some fine, there’s some fine TSA agents and they do a thankless job, and it’s a very important job. But a lot of them, yeah, I shouldn’t say a lot.

00:11:47:15 – 00:12:07:27
Patrick O’Donnell
There are some that are that guy or that gal that has a little bit of power and you could tell, you know, they’re abusing it and, you know, they couldn’t get a job as a quote unquote real cop somewhere. I know I’m hurt some feelings out there. Sorry, but yeah, I mean, there’s a couple of people that I know that are TSA agents.

00:12:07:29 – 00:12:27:15
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, I have one friend that’s a TSA agent that did 30 years as a cop, and he didn’t have a pension where he worked. There was no pension. So he had to go work for the feds. You know, that’s a federal job. And they offered a pension and health insurance until he hits, you know, well, health insurance was the biggie.

00:12:27:19 – 00:12:47:10
Patrick O’Donnell
He had zero health insurance after he retired. And he was like 55. So he got ten years before he’s going to go on Medicare. So he kind of had to do something like that. You know. And he’s not a he’s not a, you know, idiot or anything like that. And then I knew some people that just wanted to do it because they thought it looked cool and, you know, whatever.

00:12:47:10 – 00:13:08:27
Patrick O’Donnell
And they’re doing it as a job and they treat it like that. And hey, yeah, you know, good on them. But cops aren’t going to be, you know, like the airport cuffs. Most of them. Well, all of them are, you know, sworn police officers that have full arrest powers. And if I’m out of jurisdiction. Yeah, I’m John McClane.

00:13:09:00 – 00:13:34:01
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, you’re with whatever is going on. If I was the airport police, I would use that cop as much as possible for Intel of what’s going on. I’d try and get some information and. But I wouldn’t include them in any, like, you know, like, takedowns or any action, because first off, he has no arrest power. So where he’s at, you know, you can’t arrest anyone.

00:13:34:01 – 00:14:02:16
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, he’s he’s drawn to you, citizen running around an airport with a gun. Yeah. It’s like, why are you doing that? Become a judge. You shouldn’t do that. So you know. Yeah, it silly to answer your question. Yeah. I mean, the TSA really wouldn’t be coordinating with that. It would be the cops from the airport. If there is a situation like that and if they have to call in help, they’ll call it help, you know, from other agencies they wouldn’t be relying on anybody.

00:14:02:16 – 00:14:05:08
Patrick O’Donnell
That’s the civilian job. It’s like.

00:14:05:11 – 00:14:34:27
Dan LeFebvre
Okay, you know what? I appreciate you clarifying that because, I mean, the movie did come out before TSA was even a thing. So I just know security has changed so much that when this movie takes place in in the airport, it’s like, well, there’s got to be maybe this extra layer to it, but it sounds like maybe there even wouldn’t be as much different other than, you know, setting aside all the fictional aspect of it, but just from the, you know, the airport security and police officer, it sounds like that that sort of relationship would still be pretty similar to the way it is now.

00:14:34:29 – 00:14:57:00
Patrick O’Donnell
Well, yeah, I did an internship when I was in college with the sheriff’s department in Milwaukee, and they had the airport. They still do. They’re in charge of security for the airport, and they have a little substation there. And you have sheriff’s deputies there, you know, walking around doing whatever. Some and some are plainclothes, some are uniformed, and they take care of business at the airport.

00:14:57:02 – 00:15:19:05
Patrick O’Donnell
And I had a real good, tour and, understanding of the airport when I was an intern. And one of the things that struck out was really stuck in my head with the movie was, you know, the tower is a sacred place. John McClane would not be in the tower, period. I mean, that is like super. Yeah, I mean, that is secure.

00:15:19:07 – 00:15:46:13
Patrick O’Donnell
And the air traffic controllers are in the basement. They’re not upstairs in the tower. They’re all in the basement looking at scopes, you know, looking at their computer screens, doing whatever. And you can’t even say a word. I mean, that is like, that’s hollow ground. They can’t have any distractions for obvious reasons. Yes, for very obvious reasons. And when I retired from being a cop, I got a job with Delta throwing bags.

00:15:46:13 – 00:16:11:06
Patrick O’Donnell
I was, I unloaded and loaded planes at the airport and Waukee, and that gave me a real good understanding to of the security, because almost everything is restricted and you have a badge, you know, it’s just like a ID, you know, either around your arm or a lanyard or whatever, and that gets you into certain areas that you have to get it to, you know, to do your job.

00:16:11:09 – 00:16:31:13
Patrick O’Donnell
But the thing about it is you only go in one person at a time. So you and I are in the concourse and we have to go unload a plane, and we’re by one of the gates, you know, you see the doors where the gate agent, like, enters like a keypad, you know, some numbers into a keypad. And then there’s two layers.

00:16:31:13 – 00:16:53:21
Patrick O’Donnell
You do the keypad and you flash the your little ID thing, and then the little green light goes on and unlocks the door. Well, I can’t just follow you. I have to go through the same ritual. Every person that goes through that restricted area has to do that. So there are layers. There’s so many layers of security when it comes to an airport.

00:16:53:21 – 00:16:55:17
Patrick O’Donnell
Oh my God. So it was which.

00:16:55:17 – 00:16:56:16
Dan LeFebvre
Is probably a good thing.

00:16:56:19 – 00:17:06:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Oh Lord. Yes. You know it’s like but you know, it’s it’s borderline laughable. Well it is laughable what you know, I’m watching that. I’m like, I’ll never, ever, ever.

00:17:06:14 – 00:17:07:15
Dan LeFebvre
He just kind of walks in.

00:17:07:15 – 00:17:12:21
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, yeah. He’s doing. Yeah, yeah. Why not? You know.

00:17:12:24 – 00:17:20:02
Dan LeFebvre
Well, they don’t want to go to the intricacies of the airport security for movies. Be a little more boring.

00:17:20:04 – 00:17:21:28
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. So it would be.

00:17:22:00 – 00:17:41:07
Dan LeFebvre
There is another form of collaboration that we see happening in Die Hard two, when, John McClane uses a connection that he made in the first movie. That’s original Val Johnson’s character, Al Powell. So in Die Hard two, we see McClane calling up Powell to get some information on the new villains outside of official channels. So the movie implies that there was this kind of ongoing connection between McClane and Powell.

00:17:41:12 – 00:17:52:16
Dan LeFebvre
And now law enforcement agencies work together a lot in official capacities. But is it normal for individual police officers to work with other police officers from other precincts that they met in the past, kind of like we see in the movie?

00:17:52:18 – 00:18:14:05
Patrick O’Donnell
Yes. You know, if you work together in the past. Yeah. And, you know, maybe they’re, you know, they text on the regular or they go out for drinks or whatever. You know, you can’t help that. But I will use a caveat. Whenever you run somebody on a computer, you know, like for warrants or their driver’s license or a criminal history, there’s a history of you doing that.

00:18:14:07 – 00:18:37:24
Patrick O’Donnell
You’re logged on as Patrick O’Donnell. You know, Sergeant Patrick O’Donnell was looking to see what, you know, Dan’s criminal history was done. You know, February 17th, you know, 1015 in the morning, everything is recorded. So, you know, you have to be able to explain why you’re doing what you’re doing.

00:18:37:26 – 00:18:39:21
Dan LeFebvre
Again, for good reason, I’m sure.

00:18:39:26 – 00:18:50:15
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s see what my ex wife is up to, all right. Yeah. Well, yeah yeah, yeah. You don’t want to abuse the power. So. Yes. Absolutely.

00:18:50:18 – 00:19:11:28
Dan LeFebvre
Makes make sense. Makes sense. But in Die Hard two, we see another returning character from the first movie. That’s Thornburg. He’s played by William Atherton. Thornburg is the pesky TV reporter who’s always trying to get in the way. So he’s he’s getting a scoop on the story, right? So he’s always getting in the way. So if we’re to believe the first two Die Hard movies, the media can get in the way of cops trying to do their jobs.

00:19:12:03 – 00:19:18:18
Dan LeFebvre
From your experience, have you ever heard of the media a hampering the ability for cops to do their jobs like we see in a movie?

00:19:18:20 – 00:19:39:18
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, we have a tenacious relationship with the press. Sometimes they can be your ally. You know, if you have like, say, a Silver Alert, you know, have some, you know, a senior citizen that has dementia or some cognitive issue. And, you know, right now, you know, I live in Wisconsin and we just got to zero. It’s been below zero.

00:19:39:19 – 00:19:59:05
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, all morning. So if you know, grandma’s out there and she’s just wearing like a windbreaker, you know, we could use the press. It’s like, you know, hey, you know what? Come on down. This is what she looks like. You know, this is the last place she was seen. So you know what? You could use the power of the press for that.

00:19:59:07 – 00:20:17:08
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, they can be your ally most of the time. They’re annoying, you know, most of the time, they’re trying to sneak through the they they go over the line both literally and metaphorically. And I it’s the yellow crime scene tape. They just want to get through it so badly. But if you’re.

00:20:17:09 – 00:20:19:05
Dan LeFebvre
It’s like a race running through break to tape.

00:20:19:12 – 00:20:50:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. But if you’re in a big scene, what happens usually is we’ll corral the media into like a staging area. And most police departments have a Pio. It’s called a, the PIOs, the public information officer, and they are usually the ones that are going to talk to the press. If it’s a real big deal. Sometimes the chief may come out and talk to the press, etc. you know, it all depends on what’s going on.

00:20:50:14 – 00:21:13:29
Patrick O’Donnell
I mean, we had an officer that was shot. Thankfully he’s okay now, but you shot in the chest with a rifle and the mayor came out, the chief came out and they all talk to the press. Now dealing with. Yeah, elected officials of every street, you know, they love being behind the microphone. They love the camera in their face.

00:21:14:02 – 00:21:34:03
Patrick O’Donnell
Us absolutely not. We don’t want anything to do with, you know, a camera in our face, especially at a crime scene because we got stuff we got to do. So it’s. Yeah, it’s more of a pain in the butt than anything else. And one thing that really stood out to me, I was a rookie cop at a pretty high profile homicide.

00:21:34:06 – 00:21:58:00
Patrick O’Donnell
It was a cold Wisconsin night, and there’s this reporter out there and I recognize them from, you know, TV back then. You know, you watch the network TV shows, you know, I mean, the network TV stations for your news. And I’m like, oh my God, that’s, you know, Dan, whatever his last name was. And I come up to I look and I’m like, oh my God, you’re really ugly.

00:21:58:00 – 00:22:17:12
Patrick O’Donnell
Holly. He had like 20 pounds of makeup on his face. I mean, it was caked on thick. It was like Phyllis Diller, for God’s sakes. And I was just like, wow. And I’ve never seen a man before that that wore makeup, but, you know, and I was just like, well, this is an interesting night, all right.

00:22:17:14 – 00:22:20:12
Dan LeFebvre
Before 4K TVs where they could see every point.

00:22:20:13 – 00:22:32:21
Patrick O’Donnell
Oh, yeah. You want to see them on 4K? TV? Yeah. You’d want a tube TV for that guy. It was. It was bad news. Or he had a face for radio. Let’s just say that. Yeah.

00:22:32:23 – 00:22:36:22
Dan LeFebvre
That I was going to say I’ve heard that phrase. Yeah, I hate the face for radio.

00:22:36:25 – 00:22:44:06
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. You know, I had a couple more observations about this, this, diet, if you don’t mind.

00:22:44:08 – 00:22:44:22
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, yeah.

00:22:44:22 – 00:22:53:13
Patrick O’Donnell
For sure. Okay. Starting out with the naked keto, like, the bad guy is doing this, like karate. Kind of like the they’re called. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

00:22:53:13 – 00:22:56:00
Dan LeFebvre
He’s all sweaty. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.

00:22:56:05 – 00:23:19:15
Patrick O’Donnell
Why is that there? I don’t understand it. And like, you know, this is kind of gross. What why is this here. You know, and I’m like, okay. And then John McLean is a lieutenant all of a sudden at LAPD, he’s like anointed. You know, if he was, if he would go to especially back then, you start out as a cop and you know, you’re going to go through all the selection stuff.

00:23:19:22 – 00:23:22:07
Patrick O’Donnell
He wouldn’t be a lieutenant. They don’t care.

00:23:22:08 – 00:23:24:08
Dan LeFebvre
Transfer from New York to LA. I think, you.

00:23:24:15 – 00:23:24:22
Patrick O’Donnell
Know, the.

00:23:24:22 – 00:23:28:17
Dan LeFebvre
Movie implies because his wife was in LA, so he wanted to move closer to be.

00:23:28:18 – 00:23:48:22
Patrick O’Donnell
Correct. There’s no such thing as lateral transfer back then from there. Okay. So he maybe he would be a cop. Maybe, you know, he with the time frame, you probably still be in the academy. You know he’d be nothing. So that was amusing to me then. You know there was a woman with a stun gun on the airplane.

00:23:48:22 – 00:23:52:11
Patrick O’Donnell
I’m like, how the hell did she get that? Through security? Yeah. Yeah.

00:23:52:11 – 00:24:00:17
Dan LeFebvre
Again, that was kind of one of those things of like this. This is before 9/11, right? I mean, things are different, but still, I feel like they still take in that.

00:24:00:19 – 00:24:21:07
Patrick O’Donnell
One thing from working as a baggage guy. We call ourselves baggage. It’s just really throwing the bags around. Yeah. There was an open golf bag on a conveyor belt and I’m like, oh, are you kidding me? Come on. Those golf clubs would be all over the place. I hated golf bags. Well, what? I’d see just a card for those coming at me.

00:24:21:07 – 00:24:42:11
Patrick O’Donnell
I’d be like, oh, they’re so awkward and just. They sucked. And then also, I noticed one of the bad guys in, like, one of the big, shooting scenes, and he starts out with a Glock, and then he ends the scene with a Beretta, and I’m like, how did he do that? Yeah. So my I caught that right away.

00:24:42:11 – 00:24:58:11
Patrick O’Donnell
And I’m like, no, that’s that’s not going to happen. And then probably the final thing with the Army coming in, there’s no way the Army is coming into that. The Army doesn’t the Army doesn’t respond to that. They’re not law enforcement. That’s a totally different thing.

00:24:58:14 – 00:25:13:21
Dan LeFebvre
That’s a really great point. I mean, in the first movie, it’s, I feel like with the second one, it was a lot of the first movie over again and then stepping it up. So like in the first movie, the people coming in were the feds. And then the second movie, it’s like, well, how do we go one step higher?

00:25:13:21 – 00:25:15:20
Dan LeFebvre
It’s the army, right?

00:25:15:22 – 00:25:24:21
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. I’m like, why are yeah, this is making zero sense to me right now. Like, what the hell? Yeah.

00:25:24:23 – 00:25:27:00
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, if you’re going to be fictional, might as well just go. All right.

00:25:27:02 – 00:25:30:19
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. You know what? You’re absolutely right. Absolutely.

00:25:30:21 – 00:25:48:01
Dan LeFebvre
Well, on the third movie, it’s Die Hard with a vengeance. At the beginning of this movie, John McClane is forced to go to Harlem wearing a sandwich board with some very racist phrase that I won’t repeat here, but the movie shows this. That’s it’s the first of a series of things that the bad guy is going to do in the movie.

00:25:48:01 – 00:26:09:22
Dan LeFebvre
It’s Jeremy Irons character, Simon, and he’s forcing McClane to do all of these things. And McClane doesn’t comply with Simon’s demands. Then Simon says he’s going to blow up a bomb in a very public place. Obviously, police officers risk their lives in the line of duty, but how realistic is it for a police officer to comply with the bad guys demands to avoid disaster, like we see John McClane doing in this movie?

00:26:09:25 – 00:26:15:12
Patrick O’Donnell
Almost not. Never. Not very, well, that’s it.

00:26:15:15 – 00:26:18:20
Dan LeFebvre
We don’t know. Go sheet with terrorists is one of the first things that kind of comes to mind.

00:26:18:20 – 00:26:46:03
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, well, and here’s the thing. They never negotiate it. You know, you would get we the police department has negotiators and that’s what would be used. You know, most police departments, y’all were trained in negotiating. And then there are negotiator orders. That’s there. That’s their forte. That’s what they train on and they train us up on that, etc., etc. but in a pinch, I guess, you know, if it was, I didn’t have any other choice.

00:26:46:03 – 00:26:59:22
Patrick O’Donnell
And I knew somebody was going to get blown up. You know, it’s like, yeah, I’ll, I’ll do whatever it takes to do that. And then John McClane was, suspended. He wasn’t even he was on an active duty. Well, you know, remember, that’s true.

00:26:59:24 – 00:27:02:15
Dan LeFebvre
They had to find him like he was all drunk and everything and hung over.

00:27:02:15 – 00:27:03:02
Patrick O’Donnell
And like.

00:27:03:07 – 00:27:04:05
Dan LeFebvre
A headache. Yeah.

00:27:04:07 – 00:27:21:20
Patrick O’Donnell
This is so stupid that they’re just like, okay, if guys. Yeah, in this inspector’s in this van with them before they. They put him out on the street. And, you know, his backup is like ten blocks away. That would not happen. They would have eyes on him. The entire time. They would not. Just like.

00:27:21:20 – 00:27:40:24
Dan LeFebvre
That was really weird. I like I think the movie, you know, the movie tries to explain away why they call McClane, you know, because Simon specifically asked for McClane to find out towards the end of the movie. Why? But, the backup being further away, it’s like that. That seemed really weird, especially in a major city like that.

00:27:40:24 – 00:27:45:09
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, you could be in buildings or there’s so many ways that you can be.

00:27:45:10 – 00:27:57:28
Patrick O’Donnell
There are all kinds of ways we could be close. And, you know, we wouldn’t just throw them to the wolves, you know, knowing that his ass is going to get kicked. You know, it’s like, no, that’s not going to happen.

00:27:58:00 – 00:28:05:12
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. And then hand him a gun to. So, he’s not like he’s going to, you know, get his ass kicked, but, they’re going to take the gun and.

00:28:05:17 – 00:28:05:27
Patrick O’Donnell
Oh, yeah.

00:28:06:01 – 00:28:07:11
Dan LeFebvre
Probably do something worse. Right?

00:28:07:11 – 00:28:27:22
Patrick O’Donnell
I mean, absolutely. Yeah. Know that’s that. I was looking at that and I’m like. And the chief inspector and I don’t think they have chief inspectors in New York, but whatever. And you know, he’s back to being a New York cop again. Yeah. You flip flops around from department to department. Yeah. What the greatest be is New York, you know, just welcomes them back.

00:28:27:22 – 00:28:36:03
Patrick O’Donnell
I was like, oh, we missed you. Come on back down and we’ll make you a detective again without doing anything. You know, it’s like no work. Like that.

00:28:36:05 – 00:28:39:28
Dan LeFebvre
So this will be the third time he’s going through training again, right?

00:28:39:28 – 00:28:55:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Exactly. That’s all. I mean, like, they have, like, this highest ranking person in this, like, surveillance van. That wouldn’t happen. They’d be in their office. We have people for that. You know, that’s that’s what it all boils down to.

00:28:55:16 – 00:29:18:08
Dan LeFebvre
What we find out at the end of Diablo the vengeance that Simon’s plan all along was to make John McClane do all of these things. Basically, it’s a distraction from his real goal robbing billions of dollars worth of gold from the Federal Reserve. And obviously, the movie’s storyline is fictional. But in your experience as a police officer, have you ever had criminals using distractions to try to keep you from noticing the true intentions?

00:29:18:10 – 00:29:39:08
Patrick O’Donnell
Not anything this big, you know, most, you know, yeah. Billions of dollars, right? Yeah, I, I find it humorous that, you know, it’s like you need a new plotline. I mean, come on, you know? Okay, they’re who they’re trying to rob this, you know, whatever. It was like, okay, but it’s been used a few times, but okay, you know, retread that baby.

00:29:39:10 – 00:30:05:17
Patrick O’Donnell
But yeah, of course, the main, bad guy has to have an accent. I don’t know why. Maybe it makes some more villainy or something, but I every other foreigner. Yeah, it has to be something like that. But as far as distractions go. No, I mean, the closest I came was we had, two kids, you know, they’re like 18, 19 years old, detained.

00:30:05:20 – 00:30:29:28
Patrick O’Donnell
It was like some kind of girlfriend calls on the boyfriend, blah, blah, blah, allegations of this. And the other thing. And two of my cops find this guy and his body by a, bus stop maybe about five blocks down. And it’s like we’re just talking to them, and I could tell something is weird. You. I’m like, this kid has ants in his pants.

00:30:30:00 – 00:30:49:24
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, it’s summertime. His eyes are darting all over the place, and he’s just real squirrely. So I’m like, stand up. So I put handcuffs on him and I’m like, you know what? These come off just as easy as, you know. They go on and said, I just don’t trust you right now. And he says, okay. And then, you know, he’d calm down.

00:30:49:26 – 00:31:19:23
Patrick O’Donnell
And my cop is in her squad car running him, you know, for warrants, etc., etc. and he’s like, we’re buy a car dealership visa. Oh man, look at that car over there. So I look like that. And I look back and he’s gone. He’s running like the fastest track star in the Olympics with handcuffs behind his back. And I’m just like, I mean, he’s wearing, like, athletic shorts and a t shirt and, you know, tennis shoes.

00:31:19:25 – 00:31:46:24
Patrick O’Donnell
I’m wearing combat boots and I’ve got about 30 pounds of gear. He’s 18, I’m 53, and I like, oh, yeah. And I weigh 220 without the gear. And this kid maybe weighs a buck 60, and he’s sprinting and I’m like, oh my God, I can’t let this I can’t let this happen. So, you know, the cop tries to chase him with her car, then she runs out of pavement.

00:31:46:24 – 00:32:07:13
Patrick O’Donnell
Then I’m going four wheeling with this guy running after him, and I finally get him. And the only reason I got him was he’s got asthma. And I’m like, oh, thank God for asshole. Yeah. Because he he probably would. I ran me and I’m like, that’d be embarrassing. But he distracted me enough to, you know, and it happened like in half a second.

00:32:07:15 – 00:32:27:18
Patrick O’Donnell
And I felt so stupid. And I’m the boss, you know, I’m just like, But, you know, we scooped him up, got him an ambulance, and he was fine. And it turns out he had a warrant for bank robbery. That’s why he was running. So. Yeah, the feds wanted them. He robbed a bank. So I’m just like, okay, that’s a good pinch.

00:32:27:18 – 00:32:34:19
Patrick O’Donnell
That’s a good arrest. You know? I’ll take it, but I’m just glad I’m just glad I got.

00:32:34:22 – 00:32:39:01
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, I guess there’s there’s a little difference between what we see in the movie. And. Look over there.

00:32:39:03 – 00:33:02:18
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it wasn’t anything like, you know, pre-planned or anything and. Yeah, there’s clues, you know, when they start, like if you have somebody that’s like in like stopped on the street or something like that, that their eyes are darting around, they’re looking for an escape. They’re looking for the, the safest, fastest egress away from you.

00:33:02:21 – 00:33:12:08
Patrick O’Donnell
So I should have been smarter. I I’m a big car guy. I’m like, oh, really? I don’t like to like son of a biscuit. But, there he goes.

00:33:12:10 – 00:33:31:03
Dan LeFebvre
Well, we often see these things in action movies, where people are shooting each other, and this diet is no different from that. Obviously, there’s a ton of Hollywood fiction, but in this movie, there seems to be really no hesitation for him to just shoot off any gun and gets a hand on it really stood out to me.

00:33:31:03 – 00:33:50:15
Dan LeFebvre
There was one scene where John McClane just kind of walks up to one of the dump trucks. He knew the bad guys were in it, so he just starts shooting inside without even verifying that they’re actually who he thought was driving the truck. Of course, it’s a movie, and he was right. They were the bad guys. But can you share what it’s like for a police officer to discharge their weapon, compared to what we see happening in the movie?

00:33:50:18 – 00:34:13:09
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, if you’re shooting at a human, there has to be an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm to yourself or others. That’s like the statue that the that’s the criminal statute. Because if I shoot and kill somebody, say you have a hostage, you know, you have the gun to the, poor person’s. Yeah. Like had that’s.

00:34:13:09 – 00:34:34:27
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. It was in the wrong place at the wrong time. You’re you’re robbing the convenience store, and, you know, I just walk it, you know, kind of thing as a cop, you know? Will I shoot you? Probably depending, you know. But if there’s 2 or 3 innocent people behind, you know, I’m not you. There’s so many things to consider because it’s not just, you know, it’s like.

00:34:34:27 – 00:35:01:27
Patrick O’Donnell
Like I said before, there has to be an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm to yourself or others and great bodily harm is some type of harm that is most likely to cause death. So doesn’t that that kind of thing. So you have to be really cognizant of, okay, do I meet the statute statutory requirements? Because if I shoot you one human being, killing another human being is homicide.

00:35:02:00 – 00:35:24:00
Patrick O’Donnell
Now, if it’s, you know, in the line of duty where you’re preventing, i.e. me getting killed, you know, in self-defense or somebody else that’s justifiable homicide, you’re not going to get criminally charged, but it’s still a homicide and that’s how it gets investigated. But you can’t. So you have things to think about is like, okay, is this statutorily okay?

00:35:24:02 – 00:35:51:21
Patrick O’Donnell
Then you think, okay, am I going to hurt somebody doing this or kill somebody else? You know, it’s, you know, that’s why people are like, why can’t you shoot the gun out of the bad guys hand? You know? ET cetera, etc.. In the most people aren’t that good of a shot. You go for, you know, that’s it’s so silly because, you know, it’s hard to that’s a skill and it’s a diminish some some cops are great shots.

00:35:51:21 – 00:36:12:29
Patrick O’Donnell
Some aren’t so great. We have to qualify every year. And I still do. I have a nature to 18. So I have to go through the same course and I can still I’m a good shot, but, nighttime, I’m chasing somebody. My heart rate and blood pressure are way up. There’s so many things to consider. And, you know, again, you have to consider the risk to civilians.

00:36:13:05 – 00:36:29:23
Patrick O’Donnell
And you have to consider the risk of, blue on blue shooting where you accidentally shoot another cop in, like, crossfire. So you have to be aware of a lot of different stuff before you pull that trigger. And what we would always say is like, you can’t put the you can’t put the bullet back in the gun.

00:36:29:25 – 00:36:34:12
Dan LeFebvre
Very different than what we see with John McClane in the movies, that’s for sure.

00:36:34:15 – 00:36:46:11
Patrick O’Donnell
Well, you’re fucking I’m a huge dirty Harry fan, and it’s like, man, that guy would. I don’t know how many guys you would kill in one episode. You’re in one movie. Excuse me? And I’m just like, oh, look out. Just. Yeah.

00:36:46:14 – 00:37:04:17
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, in the movie with John McClane, he’s. He obviously isn’t putting that much thought into anything. It’s, I mean, not anything, but, you know, when he when he’s shooting, you know, he shoots when he feels he wants to shoot, it’s not really. I’m going to, you know, think about who is driving in that scene. You know what?

00:37:04:17 – 00:37:19:10
Dan LeFebvre
The dump truck he’s not even really putting any thought into before. He just pulls out the gun and just shoots into the door and kills the driver. Right. It’s not I’m going to put this guy in handcuffs or whatever. It’s kill first. I ask questions later.

00:37:19:13 – 00:37:40:00
Patrick O’Donnell
It’s true. Yeah. And the couple of things, you know, to finish up with this, die Hard. Yeah. Samuel Jackson is working with the cop. No, they would use him for information, you know, they would interview him, and that would be the end of it. He wouldn’t be riding around with them. Is like his sidekick, the. That’s not going to happen.

00:37:40:02 – 00:37:40:23
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah.

00:37:40:25 – 00:37:47:06
Dan LeFebvre
I think this movie’s excuse for that was Simon forced them to do it right, which was kind of goes back to the whole doing whatever Simon says.

00:37:47:06 – 00:38:04:23
Patrick O’Donnell
That would not happen. No, because, you know, it’s like, okay, now we’re putting his life in jeopardy. Yeah. He’s, you know, he’s an innocent civilian, you know, that’s trying to help out. Yeah. It’s like, absolutely not. No way. You know? And then, you know, Bruce Willis is trying to get the fire department. So he calls him an officer down.

00:38:04:23 – 00:38:26:12
Patrick O’Donnell
That’s not necessary. And it’s really bad taste to tell you the truth. And then the subway cop, there was a, scene when the subway is drawn down. You know, he’s pointing a gun at a kid for hopping a turnstile and using his phone. And I’m like, well, this is just silly. You wouldn’t do that. I mean, unless you you thought he was armed or something like that.

00:38:26:14 – 00:38:49:25
Patrick O’Donnell
And then I don’t know who outfitted these guys, but like the extras that were cops, they’re wearing their police hats, but they don’t have a cap shield at it. That’s the. It’s like a little badge that goes on the hat. The police hat. We call them cap shields. And like, half of them had those. And I’m like you, they they wouldn’t let you walk out of the precinct house unless you were.

00:38:49:27 – 00:38:52:25
Patrick O’Donnell
You had that capsule that you go through an inspection.

00:38:52:25 – 00:39:01:00
Dan LeFebvre
So what is the I mean, is that, for what is the purpose of of that as to why they wouldn’t be allowed to walk out?

00:39:01:00 – 00:39:08:11
Patrick O’Donnell
Oh, because you have to be in full uniform if you don’t have the capsule on your hat. You’re looking for a uniform, you know? Okay, that’s like I wasn’t sure there was.

00:39:08:14 – 00:39:10:09
Dan LeFebvre
You know, a utilitarian purpose of it.

00:39:10:12 – 00:39:15:04
Patrick O’Donnell
Was more, you know, it’s it’s like having the badge on your outermost garment. If you’re in need, I.

00:39:15:04 – 00:39:15:27
Dan LeFebvre
Gotcha. Okay.

00:39:15:29 – 00:39:20:24
Patrick O’Donnell
That’s a that’s a part of the uniform. You have to have the entire uniform.

00:39:20:26 – 00:39:25:02
Dan LeFebvre
Makes sense, because otherwise you could be the bad guy that, gets shot by John McClane.

00:39:25:05 – 00:39:41:05
Patrick O’Donnell
And then there was the scene where there was a bunch of cops, and maybe half of them had their holsters empty. There were holding on guns. They just didn’t give them one. Not even a pretend one. And I’m just like, come on, guys. Yeah, yeah, I guess. Yeah. They ran out of like, you know, rubber.

00:39:41:10 – 00:40:04:05
Dan LeFebvre
We don’t have a big enough budget. McClane is stealing all the guns. So he’s going back to the movie franchise. Where up to Live Free or Die Hard. And that movie, when the FBI Cyber Security division in Washington, DC is hacked, they call in everybody to help track down some of their top suspects. And that brings John McClane into the picture as he’s tasked with picking up, just in character, Matthew Farrell.

00:40:04:07 – 00:40:15:11
Dan LeFebvre
Immediately when McClane shows up to Farrell’s apartment, he shows him his badge and Farrell thinks the badge is fake. Have you ever encountered a situation like that where someone you were there to help, didn’t think you were a real cop?

00:40:15:13 – 00:40:47:12
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, it’s kind of funny. You know, it’s I spent most of my career in uniform, but every now and then I was tasked with undercover assignments or plainclothes assignments. And it’s amazing how the world looks different to you and how people know. It’s like, oh, so this is how it really works. Because when people see a police car in person, you know, in an officer in uniform, you know, they act this specific way when you’re plainclothes, you know, it’s like, okay, I remember it was like 3:00 in the morning.

00:40:47:12 – 00:41:12:15
Patrick O’Donnell
I was on a plainclothes assignment, and I was monitoring the radio, and I heard a stalker, a call for a stalker outside this girl’s apartment window. And I’m like, oh, this could be fun. So I’m going to use I’m going to use C, which is an undercover car. There’s plainclothes. There’s unmarked cars and undercover cars. An undercover car is I mean, I think I was driving like, a Plymouth.

00:41:12:21 – 00:41:47:16
Patrick O’Donnell
What was this? Oh, Chrysler. Cordoba. I mean, it was old. It was just a jalopy. And y’all, we had, like, beans on the rearview mirror. You know, the. There’s no way anybody could tell that’s a cop car. They know that there’s a cop in there where an unmarked car is usually like a Crown Vic. And now they’re going to be like the explorers, and they don’t have decals on the outside or lights on the outside, but they do have lights and a siren, and they’re fully equipped, like a squad car.

00:41:47:19 – 00:41:54:29
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, I’ve seen those. They they’re not cop car. They’re not painted a cop cars. But you can still tell, you know, that they’re cop cars.

00:41:55:01 – 00:42:13:00
Patrick O’Donnell
You could tell. Yeah, absolutely. And we’re not trying to be undercover with those. We’re just trying to be not as noticeable with those. And it’s amazing how, you know, right away when you see that light bar and you see the decals on the side, you’re like, oh, shit. You know, I was like, okay, you know, and cops would do that too.

00:42:13:00 – 00:42:28:03
Patrick O’Donnell
I, I can’t tell you how many times I’d be going to a call or something. I see red and blue lights behind me. I’m like, oh, what did I do wrong? There’s that incident. Even though I’m going to the same call, I’m like, oh wait, I am the cops. Okay, yeah, I’m okay now. I know, like, all right, yeah, it does happen.

00:42:28:06 – 00:42:55:15
Patrick O’Donnell
But anyways, so I get out, I’m wearing jeans and a t shirt and I’ve got a necklace badge and, you know, it’s just my badge is on, you know, like a necklace thing, a chain and one side is the badge and the other side is my ID, and I’ve got, I’ve got a gun and handcuffs and my radio, and I’m just walking up and this guy is just, like, leering into this girl’s apartment and on the.

00:42:55:15 – 00:43:15:01
Patrick O’Donnell
Hey, dude, what’s up? He said, oh, not much. I’m like, what you up to, dude? And he’s just like, who are you? And I pointed to the badge and he says, well, that ain’t real. I’m like, oh, okay. So then I pulled up my t shirt and you can see my gun in my, handcuffs. And he said, those do look real.

00:43:15:01 – 00:43:35:09
Patrick O’Donnell
I’m like, yeah, they are this, oh. That was kind of okay. Those are real. Yeah. And then at the same time, you know, like two uniform, coppers start walking up and he’s just like, all right, whatever you got me. You know, he he couldn’t let go of the you can’t stop love, I guess. But he just couldn’t let go.

00:43:35:12 – 00:43:46:10
Dan LeFebvre
I’m trying to remember. I think that’s basically what McLean had in this part, too, was that, you know, on the necklace, his badge to to show, very similar situation. It sounds like all the different purpose to be there, of course.

00:43:46:13 – 00:44:04:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Right, right. Yeah. If you know you’re going to be arresting people, you almost all if you’re plainclothes, you almost always have a uniform with you just in case something bells go south. You know, some defense attorneys like, hey, my client just thought it was just some random dude with a gun and a fake badge, you know, blah, blah, blah.

00:44:04:16 – 00:44:11:08
Patrick O’Donnell
So it’s always nice if it’s if you can, to have some guys in uniform.

00:44:11:11 – 00:44:28:15
Dan LeFebvre
That makes that makes a lot of sense. You mentioned earlier with the FBI. And so when we saw that, you know, in the first movie with some federal law enforcement, when this one too, we also see John McClane being called in to help federal law enforcement, is that a common thing for local law enforcement to be called to assist federal agents.

00:44:28:17 – 00:44:53:18
Patrick O’Donnell
All the time? You know, there the ratio of city cops or county cops compared to feds is, yeah, there’s probably like 100 to 1. There isn’t a lot of feds there. Just just numbers. You know, there aren’t many of them. If they are going to arrest somebody, usually they call us and they don’t do a lot of arresting, to tell you the truth.

00:44:53:21 – 00:45:21:00
Patrick O’Donnell
I remember one time I got a call from the dispatcher and she’s like, could you meet the Secret Service and bring a couple of your guys with you at blah blah, blah location? I’m like, oh, wow, this could be cool. So I’m like, yeah, sounds fun. So it’s like 8:00 at night. I meet this guy and he’s just wearing jeans and a t shirt, and he’s got a lot cooler gun than I do, a lot more expensive gun.

00:45:21:02 – 00:45:39:14
Patrick O’Donnell
And he’s got a little back then the next tall, cell phone that, like, shirked. He had a really. He had one of those and he had a BlackBerry. I’m showing my age, and he had a lot nicer equipment than we did. And he says there’s some counterfeiters in this apartment. I’m just. I’m just going to knock on the door.

00:45:39:17 – 00:45:56:18
Patrick O’Donnell
I have a warrant. He said it’s not high risks. They’re not supposed to be armed, but you never know, he said. I just want some uniforms. And I’m like, I totally get it. So we go in there, knocks on the door, Secret Service. And it’s like, no. First he had me do it. Know I’m like, yeah, Milwaukee police.

00:45:56:18 – 00:46:23:04
Patrick O’Donnell
And they open the door for the police. And sure enough, there this is an apartment. They had a computer and a printer and there were literally printing money. It was so bad. It was like. So just like a regular printer. Yeah. And they’re they’re printing money. And I’m just like, wow. Like this. You’re not even trying, man. This this is almost like monopoly money.

00:46:23:07 – 00:46:25:18
Dan LeFebvre
And they didn’t print it off I guess.

00:46:25:18 – 00:46:42:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. And they’re doing it in front of a Secret Service agent. I’m just like, oh, this is awesome. I absolutely love it. Yeah, it was very anticlimactic. I thought it was something really cool. And I’m just like, this is kind of boring. Really. And he said, yeah, it is. He said, you mind coughing them up and taking them downtown?

00:46:42:14 – 00:47:10:00
Patrick O’Donnell
He said, I’ll take it from there. And I’m like, yeah, no problem. So yeah, we know we do help, you know, FBI, Ice, ATF. Yeah. And DEA, they kind of keep to themselves. They do help us. Let’s see. So FBI. Yeah. The FBI is an interesting relationship. You know, we have or at least when I was still there.

00:47:10:00 – 00:47:34:29
Patrick O’Donnell
I’m sure they do. We had a human trafficking, like, task force, and we had 1 or 2 FBI agents assigned to that, and they were with our detectives and police officers from our Sensitive Crimes Division, and they were there more or less, because, again, Washington has a lot more money than we do. They had a lot more resources and they would help us out with stuff.

00:47:35:02 – 00:48:02:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. See, that was one example that bank robberies people think that the FBI responds to like every bank robbery. No they don’t, they don’t. And if you do get an agent, usually it’s like an hour after the fact and they’re taking down like notes about, okay, they’re interested to see, okay, is this like a robbery crew, you know, are they going from city to city or crossing state lines, you know, that kind of thing.

00:48:02:16 – 00:48:17:08
Patrick O’Donnell
So that’s that’s why the FBI is going to be there. Or if it’s a bank robbery and they start popping rounds off and somebody gets shot or God forbid, killed, then the FBI is going to respond. But it’s still our baby. It’s we’re still taking care of the investigation.

00:48:17:11 – 00:48:35:28
Dan LeFebvre
It sounds like, and a in a different situation, but as similar to what you talked about before where like, even when you were undercover, you wanted to have some uniformed cops there for the arrest itself. It sounds like it’s a similar sort of thing with except just, you know, federal agents and then you’re the uniform cop that’s there to, to help.

00:48:36:00 – 00:48:38:15
Patrick O’Donnell
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

00:48:38:18 – 00:48:57:15
Dan LeFebvre
Well, if there is one scene from Live Free or Die Hard that really stands out to me. It’s that scene where John McClane takes his car and he drives it into the helicopter. Obviously a Hollywood stunt, right? But that scene, as they end the sequence where we see McClane doing some pretty masterful driving, and as moviegoers, we just assume he’s capable of doing this because of his training as a police officer.

00:48:57:18 – 00:49:01:09
Dan LeFebvre
And I’m sure your training did not have anything to do with driving cars into helicopters.

00:49:01:15 – 00:49:05:21
Patrick O’Donnell
But here, a little bit after intervention? No, there was none of that going on.

00:49:05:21 – 00:49:10:27
Dan LeFebvre
But what was, what kind of driving training do real police officers get?

00:49:10:29 – 00:49:48:00
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, when you’re in the academy, you go through what’s called evac emergency vehicle operations course, and you’re trained how to, you know, do high speed pursuits, how to do them safely, you know, and they actually took us out to a racetrack here in Milwaukee. And that was a lot of fun. We had mock chases where you would you’re in a squad car and you would chase the instructor and you’d, you’re, you know, you’re chasing, you’re talking on the radio at the same time, you know, and it’s not just like, I don’t know, like a free for all.

00:49:48:00 – 00:50:13:17
Patrick O’Donnell
There’s rules when it comes to chasing cars, you know, it’s like, okay, when you’re when you’re pursuing somebody, if you’re the squad, you have to go, okay, you give your squad name, you have to give your location. You know, it’s like, okay, squad five, I’m northbound on university Drive, the 5400 block, you know, pursuing a, red Toyota Corolla with blah, blah, blah license plate.

00:50:13:19 – 00:50:35:06
Patrick O’Donnell
And the reason, okay, he’s wanted for homicide, all right, as a boss would try was I would let that go a lot further than. Yeah, I’m pursuing him because he blew a stop sign. All right, risk reward. And it’s like, am I going to risk this cop’s life or other civilians, you know, this high speed pursuit for something?

00:50:35:08 – 00:50:56:19
Patrick O’Donnell
Not that, you know, big of a deal, but sometimes not in a lot of time. What I thought wasn’t a big deal all of a sudden, you know, there’s a lot of guns in the car, or they’re wanted for something pretty heinous. You don’t know what you’re chasing. So we get all trained up, you know, they’re behind the science and they will hammer, you know, the rules.

00:50:56:19 – 00:51:40:05
Patrick O’Donnell
You know the department every department has their own rules, and they’re a state statute. You have to you have to drive with due regard. You can’t just go out there, you know, and think you’re, you know, a NASCAR driver or anything like that, or drive and helicopters or whatever. But, you know, when I was new and for quite a chunk of my career, there were no cameras in the squads or body cameras, so it wasn’t critiqued like it was once those things, you know, got up, you know, it’s like I remember being going down city streets at over 100 miles an hour, where if you make one little mistake, you’re dead and you, who’s

00:51:40:05 – 00:51:54:11
Patrick O’Donnell
learn by it was on the job training. Let’s just say that you and some were really good at it, and some cops were really bad at it and shouldn’t be driving cars, I think. But hey, that’s how you get trained up.

00:51:54:13 – 00:52:06:27
Dan LeFebvre
Well, maybe, like you were talking about before, you know, with McClane going from New York and then to LA, back to New York, like he would have to go through the Academy multiple times. He’s just gone through so many times that now he knows how to drive into helicopters.

00:52:06:27 – 00:52:14:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Right? Yeah, it’s very true. Yeah. I guess maybe I was absent that day in the academy when we had to work after intervention training.

00:52:14:14 – 00:52:16:00
Dan LeFebvre
But that day.

00:52:16:02 – 00:52:24:06
Patrick O’Donnell
Yes, I, I must have missed it. Yeah. I didn’t go to that in-service. Whatever. My bad, my bad.

00:52:24:09 – 00:52:45:21
Dan LeFebvre
Well, the last film in the franchise is A Good Day to Die Hard. This time, the franchise pushes the stakes even higher as it brings John McClane into international affairs. The plotline in this movie revolves around his son Jack, who’s in trouble in Russia. But then it turns out Jack is a CIA operative. And so together we see this father son team trying to stop a nuclear weapons heist from this fictional storyline.

00:52:45:21 – 00:52:57:15
Dan LeFebvre
We kind of get the concept of there’s a parent and child who are both in law enforcement working together. How realistic is it for multiple generations and different branches of law enforcement to work together, like we see happening in the movie?

00:52:57:18 – 00:53:23:09
Patrick O’Donnell
There are legacy cops more, you know, like my first partner on the job, her dad was a cop in Milwaukee for years, but they never worked together. Like, especially on a case that’s almost unheard of maybe in small towns or something. That might be the case, but for the most part, no. And most places don’t have hard and fast rules.

00:53:23:09 – 00:53:51:05
Patrick O’Donnell
But I wouldn’t want to be in the same, district or on the same assignment as my kid because I would be overprotective. I would yeah, I, I wouldn’t be thinking of him as a cop. I would I’d be thinking of him, you know? And it’s only natural. I’m a dad, you know, it’s like that instinct is going to kick in first, and you may not do your job efficiently and effectively if you’re thinking like that.

00:53:51:09 – 00:54:01:09
Patrick O’Donnell
But yeah, there’s a ton of legacy cops. Yeah. It’s not unusual. It’s like, oh, you see the nameplate? And I’m like, hey, I know your dad. You know, that kind of thing. It’s like this kind of cool.

00:54:01:11 – 00:54:17:26
Dan LeFebvre
That makes a lot of sense. And I didn’t really think about it this way, but, I’m not sure. Like the Sullivan brothers is, is something that comes up in the military. But, you know, when when that ship sank and just like in World War two, all five brothers were lost. And so I could see it almost being a similar sort of concept, they wanted to separate.

00:54:17:26 – 00:54:40:18
Dan LeFebvre
Then from there on out, the military started separating siblings. I could see it almost being a similar thing to like if you’re there was with your kid. Not only are you not doing your job as well, which means that your life could be an even more danger. Not only your life then, but also your your child’s life. And it just makes everything that much worse, not only for who you’re trying to help, but yourselves as well.

00:54:40:21 – 00:54:48:22
Patrick O’Donnell
Right? Yeah. And your kid might be acting a little differently than they normally would if you’re there. I mean, it’s just human nature.

00:54:48:25 – 00:54:50:13
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, it goes both ways, for sure.

00:54:50:15 – 00:54:51:17
Patrick O’Donnell
Absolutely.

00:54:51:19 – 00:55:11:14
Dan LeFebvre
Well, since the last movie takes place in Russia, we end up with a similar plot point that we saw in the first movie, except in the first, Die Hard. It was New York Cop going to LA when he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This time the wrong place is Russia. So I asked about police officers in different jurisdictions earlier, but now I need to ask about an international jurisdiction.

00:55:11:14 – 00:55:20:24
Dan LeFebvre
So as a police officer, if you’re traveling to another country like John McClane doing in the movie, what would really happen if you found yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time outside of the US?

00:55:20:27 – 00:55:47:21
Patrick O’Donnell
Why? You are truly a fish out of water. You are just John Hughes citizen. You. You have no special powers. There’s no police friendship. There’s no, you know, whatever. You’re just another dude, you know, or another chick. That’s you. You got a whole lot of nothing. And if you’re in Russia, who isn’t exactly our ally, you know, and I’ve heard stories about Russian prisons.

00:55:47:21 – 00:56:10:12
Patrick O’Donnell
I know, like in China, the Chinese police can arrest you and not charge you for up to a year. So you could be rotting in a jail for a year without even getting charged with a crime. And, you know, just there’s no such thing as due process in Russia. You know, the lines between the military and the police in Russia are very, very blurred.

00:56:10:15 – 00:56:21:06
Patrick O’Donnell
It’s it’s, I would not want to be on the business end of an AK 47 with some Russian police officer. Hell, no. I you know, it has all the. You’re.

00:56:21:09 – 00:56:26:19
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, I wouldn’t want to be in the business end of anywhere, anywhere, whoever is holding it, but. Yes, definitely. Yeah.

00:56:26:21 – 00:56:49:25
Patrick O’Donnell
Right. Exactly. But yeah, I just think of gulag, you know, or, you know, something like that. And I’m like, no, thank you. You know, that’s something it’s it should be an international incident. You know, hopefully our embassy would get involved in this even if hopefully they would know, you know, this happened in the you know, the government can help you, that kind of thing.

00:56:49:25 – 00:57:02:24
Patrick O’Donnell
But you know, with all the stuff blowing up and people getting killed and all that, it’s hard to like cover that up. It’s like, okay, the police are going to be coming to this. And I never saw them.

00:57:02:27 – 00:57:12:14
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, that’s true. I was trying to think, if they ever showed up and I don’t. Yeah. Now. No, I mean, I guess that would be an extractor. Yes. MPP so maybe that was.

00:57:12:17 – 00:57:30:04
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, I think I saw a couple of Russian like, squad cars. Maybe they had like the little blue light on top. But other than that, I never saw like cops coming out and like, trying to do cop stuff. They were pretty much they had the run of the whole area there to do all their blowing up and shooting and all that cool stuff.

00:57:30:07 – 00:57:51:19
Dan LeFebvre
It’s almost a complete inverse of the first movie, where there were a lot of cops, and then just the feds came at the very end, but then at the end and movie, it’s like, you know, CIA and. Well, and then John McClane, and, you know, and then all these other, you know, high military or, you know, secret things and then, you know, oh, there’s some kind of cops in the background.

00:57:51:26 – 00:57:57:24
Patrick O’Donnell
Maybe you’re exac, you know, I you’re right. I didn’t think of that. Yeah. It’s like the polar opposite really.

00:57:57:27 – 00:58:10:06
Dan LeFebvre
Since you do offer your services to help screenwriters be more authentic with their stories, if they had hired you for the diehard franchise, what’s one of the primary things that you think needs to change to help the storyline be a little more accurate?

00:58:10:08 – 00:58:30:28
Patrick O’Donnell
Well, you know, I looked at that question. I’m like, it’s so far fetched. I think I would have took an A pass. I, I’m like, how can I, I can’t fix this. It’s so far off the rails that it’s I mean, we talked about, you know, just there’s so much stuff even with like my favorite was the first to die Hard.

00:58:30:28 – 00:58:51:20
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, yeah. He he’s got a gun on a plane. You know how it is. Even back then, even if we’re transporting prisoners, you still have to make all these notifications. And the captain of the airplane can say no, even if you get all these clearances and everything’s hunky dory, you know, you load, you know, you get, you get seated before anybody else in your own.

00:58:51:20 – 00:59:10:25
Patrick O’Donnell
You’re the last one to leave. Obviously, if you have a prisoner and if you’re just armed every 99.9% of the time, you know it has to be stowed in your luggage and there’s all kinds of hoops you have to jump around to have a gun in your luggage, and it’s not gonna be your carry on. It’s going to be in the belly of the plane.

00:59:10:27 – 00:59:29:06
Patrick O’Donnell
And it’s kind of a big deal. I mean, it’s to me, I think it’s a pain in the butt. I don’t even I could, but I don’t I don’t deal with it. It’s just like it’s one more pain in the button. What if my luggage gets lost? I don’t want my gun. Get lost. You know, it’s. No, thanks.

00:59:29:08 – 00:59:31:13
Dan LeFebvre
And think about that. That never happens in the movie.

00:59:31:15 – 00:59:40:08
Patrick O’Donnell
No. Hey. Yeah. Oh, shoot. They lost my luggage. Hey, like I said, I was a baggage handler. This stuff does happen. That’s real.

00:59:40:10 – 00:59:49:13
Dan LeFebvre
Diehard, too. Is just John McClane at the little kiosk waiting for his luggage. That’s. The entire movie’s just waiting.

00:59:49:15 – 00:59:51:15
Patrick O’Donnell
But be funny. I like that.

00:59:51:18 – 01:00:06:09
Dan LeFebvre
There are a lot of people I think are inspired by movies. And, you know, for example, I’ve heard stories of, like, Indiana Jones inspiring people to become archeologists. In your experience, have you ever seen a police officer like John McClane inspire people to become police officers in the real world?

01:00:06:11 – 01:00:10:04
Patrick O’Donnell
Yes. And I would not want to work with them or go on a plane with them.

01:00:10:06 – 01:00:14:06
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, because they want to be John McClane shooting. Yeah, that’s true for sure.

01:00:14:08 – 01:00:35:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Exactly. Yeah. We had some cowboys I worked with, but even the cowboys or cowgirls would have to play by the rules, or they get fired and criminally charged. I mean, there’s only so far you could push the boundaries and. Yeah, I mean, police work in a nutshell, a lot of it’s really boring. Until it is.

01:00:35:16 – 01:00:39:20
Dan LeFebvre
I wouldn’t want John McClane to be in my my district. Yeah.

01:00:39:22 – 01:00:44:18
Patrick O’Donnell
Is absolutely. Well.

01:00:44:21 – 01:01:02:17
Dan LeFebvre
One of the common movie tropes that we see happening in Die Hard in a lot of movies, too, is when the bad guy tells they’re playing just as they’re about to kill the good guy. And this one, for example, in the first movie, Hans tells John McClane the reason he started the fire in Nakatomi Towers, because they’ll keep looking for him unless they think he’s dead.

01:01:02:20 – 01:01:16:11
Dan LeFebvre
I’m guessing that whole idea of the bad guy revealing their plan is something that’s made up for the movies. But then again, sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. Have you ever heard of the bad guys revealing their plan like we see happening time and time again in the movies now?

01:01:16:11 – 01:01:39:07
Patrick O’Donnell
Most criminals I was were really stupid and it was either. And most of this, the criminality that I dealt with was kind of spur of the moment. It wasn’t like a plan hit. It was in the air, like most of the homicides I went to was they started as a fight and they escalated. I mean, yeah, there were like revenge or jealousy.

01:01:39:07 – 01:02:00:22
Patrick O’Donnell
I’ll follow the money, follow the sex. Well, you know, whatever. But for the most part it was like, hey, we’re playing cards. You’re cheating. It gets into a fight, I’m losing. I’m going to grab that knife out of that butcher block, and I’m going to stab you, you know, that kind of thing. Whereas, yeah, I never met a criminal mastermind of any kind.

01:02:00:24 – 01:02:08:14
Patrick O’Donnell
I read that just. Yeah, yeah, there ain’t a whole lot of those running around, thank goodness.

01:02:08:16 – 01:02:11:12
Dan LeFebvre
And John McClane just happens to run into all of them. You know? Right.

01:02:11:18 – 01:02:17:18
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. Darn the luck. And they all have accents and they’re all really scary.

01:02:17:21 – 01:02:35:25
Dan LeFebvre
Well, from the first Die Hard movie is in 1988, and then the last one is in 2013. There’s like a 25 year span and something that we see John McClane seemingly struggling with in those 25 years is technology that, for example, in Die Hard two, McClane asks his wife how she’s calling him, and she’s like, it’s the 90s now.

01:02:35:25 – 01:02:59:28
Dan LeFebvre
So they have phones on the airplane. And 2007 Live Free or Die Hard is all about hackers, and the movie makes it seem like McClane just doesn’t get along with the new technology. And I know your career as a police officer was also 25 years different years from 95 to 2020. Correct me if I’m wrong on that, but, although it’s not the same years as the Die Hard franchise, it’s still 25 years of changing technology.

01:03:00:01 – 01:03:12:13
Dan LeFebvre
Can you share how cops have used or maybe as individual officers have struggled with technology, like we see McClane seeming to do over the course of the movies, and then your own 25 year career?

01:03:12:16 – 01:03:39:18
Patrick O’Donnell
Yes. When I started in 95, we handwrote all of our reports. The only computer in the whole district station was to run people, you know, in their license plates. And there was only one of those, and there was a couple of typewriters. And you handwrote your reports, you use carbon paper, you used white out, green out, pink out, depending on what the report was.

01:03:39:20 – 01:03:57:15
Patrick O’Donnell
So, you know, it was pretty medieval. And I remember I got like out there and I’m like, where the computers. And some day guy was like, what are you talking about, kid? We don’t need those damn computers. And I’m just like, there was two dictionaries in the assembly that most of the pages were, like, missing out of them and stuff.

01:03:57:15 – 01:04:18:09
Patrick O’Donnell
And I’m just like, oh, God, in my handwriting is terrible. So I’m like, oh, this is no bueno. But, you know, I started out with that and the squad cars had no computers, no cameras. There was no body cameras back then. We didn’t have tasers. You know, people didn’t use a Taser like we’re poor. Big cities don’t have big budgets.

01:04:18:11 – 01:04:51:00
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, we we don’t have the money, you know, so, you know, so we handwrote reports and like I said, there was no squad computers. And slowly that stuff, you know, started coming into fruition. And when we started getting all the computers, etc., I became a sergeant, I was boss. Now the cop on the streets relies on that computer quite a bit, and they have cameras in their squads that automatically turn on when you activate the lights and the siren, you know?

01:04:51:02 – 01:05:11:03
Patrick O’Donnell
And same thing with the body camera. Body cameras came about three years before I retired as a sergeant. I didn’t have to wear one. They didn’t require bosses to wear, so it was something new, etc. I mean, I had a computer in my squad and most of the time I was a beverage holder, you know, or an arborist.

01:05:11:03 – 01:05:28:16
Patrick O’Donnell
That’s the I’d have my arm up either on the computer, like if I was sitting around, you know, smoking a cigar or whatever, like art. I wonder if my cigar fits on that. All right, that’ll work. But but, you know, for the most part, no. And you know, the younger sergeants would make fun of me all the time.

01:05:28:21 – 01:05:55:08
Patrick O’Donnell
Like, you didn’t even turn that thing I did. It did do. I’m like, oh, sure. Didn’t like, I don’t need it. It makes you I mean, they’re they’re great tools, but they also make the cops lazy because you develop an ear for the radio. See, you’re in a district and it’s day shift that might be like 25, 30 cops somewhere in that ballpark.

01:05:55:10 – 01:06:25:27
Patrick O’Donnell
And you keep an ear out for the radio, whereas it’s like, okay, Dan just got sent to a battery, domestic violence actor still on the scene. They send you and your partner now I’m going to keep that in the back of my head because I was like, well, those can turn south pretty quick sometimes. And it sounds like, you know, and the dispatcher says, and there’s sounds of people fighting in the background, okay, initially they’re going to send two squads.

01:06:25:29 – 01:06:47:27
Patrick O’Donnell
I’m going to keep that in the back of my head. Then they’re going to send me to something else. Okay. Even though they sent me to something else, I’m going to keep in the back of my head where you are in case something bad happens. So you develop, in the ears for the radio. And the newer cops don’t have that as well because they’re constantly checking their screen like, we’re okay.

01:06:47:27 – 01:07:05:04
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, Dan is that blah blah, blah. You know, that fraction of a second or 2 or 3 seconds can be a big deal. So I, I was never a huge fan of them. Every now and then I’d power it up if I had to, but for the most part, I just ignored it.

01:07:05:06 – 01:07:24:17
Dan LeFebvre
Were you then being asked to do more and more, just assuming that you could rely on the technology to do some of that for you? I think of, you know, even today, just, you know, a lot of people are doing a lot more things are being asked to do a lot more things in their job because they’re like, oh, well, you can just kind of allow the technology to remember that for you.

01:07:24:19 – 01:07:35:12
Dan LeFebvre
But you’re saying, you know, remembering it in your head, which there’s definitely a benefit to that. But then also I’m wondering if are you being asked to do so much more? Then it becomes hard to remember things.

01:07:35:14 – 01:07:58:21
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, you know that that’s part of it. And, you know, when we did get squad computers, they didn’t have GPS. Now I do believe they have GPS, but I knew the neighborhood that I worked in like the back of my hand. And if I heard, you know, 1234 North Astro Street, I could vision I could visualize it or I’d have a pretty good idea of where it was.

01:07:58:24 – 01:08:21:06
Patrick O’Donnell
The newer kids, they’re not kids or adults, you know, they’re relying on GPS. It kind of makes you dumb, you know? It’s like, you know, they’re they’re looking at a computer screen, whatever. And then another thing, you know, they’re expecting more. It’s like, okay, well, you don’t have to go to the district station to do your reports. You have a squad computer, you can do them on your computer in the car.

01:08:21:09 – 01:08:37:25
Patrick O’Donnell
And it’s like, okay, because I want the cops on the street for visibility sake, too. You know, more cops out there instead of sitting in a district station. But the problem with that is, hey, it’s not safe at all, because where’s your face? Where’s your eyes start?

01:08:37:27 – 01:08:41:03
Dan LeFebvre
Because you’re not looking at. Yeah. You’re not focused on a computer screen.

01:08:41:03 – 01:09:03:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Yep. Absolutely. So I don’t think it’s very safe and it’s really awkward. If you ever try to type with your arms up like this, it’s nothing is. You know, they have all this equipment crammed in this little area and it’s just incredibly uncomfortable. And. Yeah, and nobody wants to sit in the same car for eight hours or 10 hours or 12 hours.

01:09:03:17 – 01:09:08:00
Patrick O’Donnell
You got to get out and stretch your legs. It’s nice to have a change of scenery every now on that.

01:09:08:03 – 01:09:27:03
Dan LeFebvre
I hadn’t thought about that of, you know, if you’re focused on your computer so much that, yeah, I mean, you don’t know what’s going on around you and you’re you always have to have situational. I think even being a citizen, you know, it’s good to have situational awareness, know what’s going on around you. Yeah. Especially when you’re in a car because you don’t know what other people are doing.

01:09:27:03 – 01:09:31:08
Dan LeFebvre
You might be parked, but there might be a crazy, reckless driver out there too. Who knows?

01:09:31:15 – 01:09:56:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You know, we call it head on a swivel where, you know, it’s like you’re constantly scanning for threats and you don’t have to be a cop for that. You know, I’ve dealt with a lot of victims of crimes, obviously, and a lot of them had zero situational awareness. I never saw them coming. Yeah, because your face was buried in your phone or you EarPods, you know, AirPods in, and you you didn’t hear them.

01:09:56:14 – 01:10:18:11
Patrick O’Donnell
You didn’t see them. You you’re in your own little world. You know, people are like, I get a kick out and people are literally walking into each other now because their faces are buried and it’s like, let alone some like, scary dude that’s going to rob you or do something worse. Do you? You you have no idea. And the same thing with cars, you know, like safety tips for cars.

01:10:18:13 – 01:10:41:11
Patrick O’Donnell
I exaggerate how much space I leave between me and the car in front of me. If I’m rolling up to a red light, I’m thinking of escape plans, you know, because I’ve been to so many carjackings and a lot of them happened up at red lights. You know, it’s like, okay, before you know it, you have some guy who’s shoving a gun in your face and, you know, trying to drag you out of your car.

01:10:41:13 – 01:11:02:04
Patrick O’Donnell
Well, first off, it is like, okay, see that sidewalk? I’m going up on the sidewalk. Yeah, I’m going to drive through somebody’s lawn to get out. But if I’m if I don’t leave any space in front of me, then I have nowhere to go. I’m trapped. I hate that feeling of being trapped. I always yeah, I always try to have some kind of escape route.

01:11:02:06 – 01:11:04:09
Dan LeFebvre
Probably not going through the helicopter like John McClane.

01:11:04:15 – 01:11:09:15
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, yeah, that’d be. That is frowned upon. Yeah.

01:11:09:16 – 01:11:11:00
Dan LeFebvre
Not a viable escape.

01:11:11:03 – 01:11:12:03
Patrick O’Donnell
Yes.

01:11:12:06 – 01:11:22:06
Dan LeFebvre
Well, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask for your take on the one question that everyone always debates when it comes to this franchise in your mind, is Die Hard a Christmas movie?

01:11:22:08 – 01:11:38:17
Patrick O’Donnell
Hell, yes. It’s it’s the best Christmas movie. I love Die Hard as a Christmas movie. I play Die Hard every Christmas. And my kids, you know, they’re adults now and they, you know, they’ve got kids are like, you’re going to like, die. And I’m like, oh, hell yeah. I got to play that and it’s Christmas for God’s things.

01:11:38:20 – 01:11:44:12
Dan LeFebvre
Okay, we’re in agreement on that. Yes, I watch it every Christmas as well. Not the entire franchise, but at least one.

01:11:44:14 – 01:11:45:25
Patrick O’Donnell
No. Yeah, the first one for sure.

01:11:45:26 – 01:12:14:17
Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you so much for coming on to chat about the accuracy of a police officer like John McClane on screen. Before I let you go, I have a two part question for you because not only do you have a fantastic podcast called Cops and Writers, where you help authors and screenwriters write more accurate stories, you’ve also written multiple books yourself, including a brand new book called The Good Collar, and I’ll make sure to add a link to in the show notes for everyone to order right now, before I let you go, can you share a little bit more about your inspiration behind starting cops and writers, and maybe give my audience a sneak peek

01:12:14:17 – 01:12:15:17
Dan LeFebvre
into your new book?

01:12:15:19 – 01:12:22:11
Patrick O’Donnell
Sure. The podcast. I started the podcast almost four years ago, as of yesterday, has been four years.

01:12:22:14 – 01:12:23:22
Dan LeFebvre
And I congrats.

01:12:23:24 – 01:12:38:24
Patrick O’Donnell
Thank you. And as you know, it’s a lot of work sometimes for not a whole lot of reward. But you know, you get to meet cool people. I think that’s the best part of it. Some interesting people that you never would have if you didn’t have the podcast.

01:12:38:27 – 01:12:45:12
Dan LeFebvre
And exactly. We wouldn’t have a chance to talk about John McClane driving through helicopters. I keep going back to that one, but why wouldn’t?

01:12:45:13 – 01:13:16:22
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, I mean, yeah, the first. So I started the podcast to promote two books that I just wrote called Cops and Writers and those books were for writers to get their police facts straight, more or less. And I started a Facebook group and I started the podcast to promote my books. Well, before I know it, the Facebook group has 7500 people in it from all over the world, and the podcast grew legs and just took off.

01:13:16:24 – 01:13:29:02
Patrick O’Donnell
And I’m like, I didn’t. And I didn’t at first really mean to do that. You know, all of a sudden it’s like, oh, wow, look at that. People are listening, you know? I mean, you know what it’s like sometimes you think you’re just talking to a microphone and nobody’s listening.

01:13:29:04 – 01:13:36:09
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, for sure. It can be hard sometimes just talking to it, like like you’re talking about, you know, typing on the screen. You just talking to a screen, right? Yeah.

01:13:36:11 – 01:13:56:24
Patrick O’Donnell
Exactly. So you know, and then the as far as, you know, the podcast and everything else, I started out writing other books that had nothing to do with police work and I was going to writers conferences, and I bumped into people and made friendships with people that knew a lot more about this than I do. And they’re like, you should really write a book.

01:13:56:27 – 01:14:18:18
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, helping out, writers, you know, authors and screenwriters. And I’m like, okay, that sounds that sounds like a good idea. And when you go to these conferences, inevitably people are going to be like, oh, you’re that cop guy. And I’m like, I’m not advertising it. I don’t have a t shirt on saying I’m a cop guy or whatever, but and they’re always very respectful.

01:14:18:21 – 01:14:41:11
Patrick O’Donnell
They’re very nice. They’re like, hey, would you need a warrant for this? You know, would my character, would he really do this? Yeah, yeah, she’s a detective. And one would have, you know, blah, blah blah. And I’m like, yeah, I’d be more than happy to help you. So that’s kind of spawned another industry for me where I’ve. Yeah, I’ve, I’ve helped, you know, screenwriters, I’ve helped authors.

01:14:41:11 – 01:15:15:12
Patrick O’Donnell
So it’s been a lot of fun that way. And as far as my newest book, the, The Good Collar, it’s just imagine Dexter, Deathwish and John Wick got together and had a baby. That’s what I love. I love Dexter, I always liked Dexter, and I thought to myself, well, could you think of Dexter? But instead of being the serology, the blood spatter guy, you’d be the police chaplain.

01:15:15:14 – 01:15:43:17
Patrick O’Donnell
That everybody trusts, everybody loves. But he’s got that vigilante thing in them where, you know. Okay, Dan, just, you know, murdered a bunch of orphans. Yeah, and burned the school bus or whatever he did, and he got away on a technicality, and it’s like. So he writes the wrongs and actually the good car, we can circle back to Bruce Willis because he did a remake of Charles Bronson’s Death Wish.

01:15:43:19 – 01:15:45:00
Dan LeFebvre
That’s true. He did, didn’t he? Yeah.

01:15:45:01 – 01:16:01:02
Patrick O’Donnell
Yes. That was you. He played a Chicago E.R. doc and his wife and daughter. I think the wife got killed and the daughter was, like, brutalized in their own home. And he gets a gun and he turns into this, like, Doctor vigilante.

01:16:01:05 – 01:16:06:22
Dan LeFebvre
Well, that sounds like we have a lot of, potential future episodes to talk about, for sure.

01:16:06:25 – 01:16:10:01
Patrick O’Donnell
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

01:16:10:04 – 01:16:12:12
Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you again so much for your time, Patrick.

01:16:12:15 – 01:16:20:01
Patrick O’Donnell
Thank you. Dan.

00:02:26:21 – 00:02:42:11
Dan LeFebvre
Our chat today will be a little different than a usual episode of based on a true story, because we’re not looking at a single movie and we’re not even really looking at a real person from history. But what we are looking at is a very real job, how it’s portrayed onscreen by one of the most popular police officers in the movies.

00:02:42:13 – 00:02:52:16
Dan LeFebvre
So if you were to give the Die Hard franchise a letter, grade for how accurately John McClane shows us what a real police officer’s job is like, I wouldn’t get.

00:02:52:18 – 00:02:59:09
Patrick O’Donnell
I would go D plus to C minus. I think that would be my grade for for John. Yeah, honestly.

00:02:59:09 – 00:03:01:19
Dan LeFebvre
It’s a little higher than I was expecting.

00:03:01:22 – 00:03:03:17
Dan LeFebvre

00:03:03:19 – 00:03:16:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. I’m trying to be very charitable here. It’s. And I like Bruce Willis. I, I love the first Die Hard movie. The rest of them. Yeah, but, hey, that’s Hollywood right there.

00:03:16:16 – 00:03:24:03
Dan LeFebvre
That’s how it goes. And, you know, I guess as with many franchises, it it starts off and then it just kind of starts.

00:03:24:05 – 00:03:44:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. And I was thinking about that this morning, you know, it’s like one, one that pops into my head that was almost a little bit better was Terminator two. I thought I loved the first Terminator, but T2, you know, the way John Cameron filmed that and you know, the stunts and man, it was so over the top for that time period.

00:03:44:16 – 00:03:57:23
Dan LeFebvre
I think that’s one of those things that, it movies like that will stand out more because so many sequels in the franchises just do drop down that when you have one where actually this is better, it stands out that much more.

00:03:57:26 – 00:04:17:11
Patrick O’Donnell
Yes, exactly. Yeah. It’s like now I was thinking about Rocky and I was I loved the Rocky series and the first one, of course, was amazing. Second one was like, yeah, third one, I love Mr. T, so I mean, for comedic value. It was awesome. Yeah. I was like, what do you predict for yo the fight yo clubber.

00:04:17:11 – 00:04:27:00
Patrick O’Donnell
He’s like pain. I predict in the end I was like, oh, I wanted to follow the ground. I was laughing so hard. I’m like, I love this stuff.

00:04:27:02 – 00:04:28:25
Dan LeFebvre
It makes for great entertainment, that’s for sure.

00:04:29:01 – 00:04:30:06
Patrick O’Donnell
It does.

00:04:30:09 – 00:04:54:19
Dan LeFebvre
If we go back to the franchise of Die Hard, John McClane in the first movie is a cop from New York City visiting his estranged wife in Los Angeles. And of course, he happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time when all hell breaks loose. Throughout the movie, there are numerous lines of dialog about how McClane is out of his jurisdiction, but as a cop, McClane still takes it upon himself to do something about the situation unfolding around him.

00:04:54:21 – 00:05:12:04
Dan LeFebvre
Let’s say an off duty police officer is visiting a different city for personal reasons, like we see in the movie, and then they find themselves in the middle of the wrong place at the wrong time. Major crime happening in the movie. How realistic is it for the police officer to take it upon themselves to fight back against the criminals like we see John McClane doing in the movie?

00:05:12:07 – 00:05:29:10
Patrick O’Donnell
Most of the time you’re just going to be a good witness. Yeah, you you’re going to look at everything through cop eyes. You know, it’s like, okay, I’m going to look at you. You know, let’s say I’m in a situation where, like, something is getting robbed. You know, I’m in a grocery store or a bank or something like that.

00:05:29:12 – 00:05:56:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Nine out of ten times, nobody’s going to get shot. Nothing’s going to go too crazy, you know? And most of the time they don’t even have guns. They threaten like a gun or an explosive or whatever. So it’s like, I’m going to be aware of my surroundings. You know, and I’m going to be like, okay, the guy that’s doing all this is a white male about 40 years of age with a beard, mustache, you know, medium build, wearing a gray, not shirt.

00:05:56:16 – 00:06:16:07
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. And glasses. Yeah. That’s where my head is going. Then I’m just like, okay. Is he right or left handed? You know. What’s he holding? Like the bag. What’s he doing most of his stuff with. Is there any piercings tattoos. You know, anything that’s you know, so you’re going to be looking like a cop. You know, that’s what you’re going to be doing.

00:06:16:09 – 00:06:40:03
Patrick O’Donnell
But I will use a caveat. If you think somebody is in imminent danger of getting killed, you’re going to take action. You’re it’s the cop inside of you. Yeah. We can’t help ourselves, you know? So as far as jurisdiction goes, you know, if I’m out in LA, you know, I was out in LA. Oh, man. About 20 years ago, I couldn’t go around, like arresting people or anything like that.

00:06:40:03 – 00:07:00:19
Patrick O’Donnell
You could do a citizen’s arrest, quote unquote. But all you’re doing is opening yourself up to liability, and you know, you’re going to let anything short of an ax murderer get away because you don’t want to get sued later, and then you’re going to get into trouble with your department, etc.. So the chances are very, very, very slim, very slim.

00:07:00:21 – 00:07:14:18
Dan LeFebvre
They start off, if I remember right from that, from the movie, like the first thing that John McClane notices is something going wrong is there’s gunfire. So right away he’s like, okay, somebody’s life might be in danger. And so it kind of switches into that mode, it seems.

00:07:14:21 – 00:07:30:15
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. And, you know, and he’s talking to himself. That’s one thing I did like about that movie was the insurgents. I was like, why didn’t you go in there and try to stop him, John? And then he’s like, well, John, you would be dead right now, John, if you tried doing that, you know, and it’s like, absolutely. You know, that that makes total sense to me.

00:07:30:15 – 00:07:32:27
Patrick O’Donnell
It was like, yep.

00:07:33:00 – 00:07:36:08
Dan LeFebvre
The inner monologue that he speaks out loud so we can understand.

00:07:36:14 – 00:07:39:11
Patrick O’Donnell
So we can hear it. Right? Exactly. Yes.

00:07:39:13 – 00:08:00:00
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. Another key plot point for John McClane in the first Die Hard movie is how he has to fight the local law enforcement, and I don’t mean physically fighting him like he does with the bad guys, but he can’t seem to get anyone to believe what’s happening. For example, when he first calls for help, the dispatch operator scolds him, saying that she’s going to report McClane for using a channel reserved for emergencies.

00:08:00:00 – 00:08:18:06
Dan LeFebvre
So it’s like, what do you think I’m calling for? And then later on, there’s cops that do arrive at Nakatomi Plaza, and the deputy chief of police doesn’t like John McClane because he’s a mouthy cop from New York City. And then, even after the federal agents arrive on the scene, they never seem to listen to any of John McClane warnings from the inside of the building.

00:08:18:12 – 00:08:33:00
Dan LeFebvre
And then that culminates at the end of the movie, when the federal agents actually in the helicopter shooting and they start shooting at McClane on the roof because they think he’s one of the criminals. How well does the movie do, showing the way local law enforcement would react to a crime being reported by an off duty police officer?

00:08:33:00 – 00:08:34:09
Dan LeFebvre
From another scene?

00:08:34:11 – 00:09:00:21
Patrick O’Donnell
That almost never happens. But obviously, you know, you know, like most of the time, is there an out of jurisdiction cop in our city if they’re official business, they’re going to check in hopefully. Yeah. It’s like, hey, you know what? I’m a Chicago cop. I’m coming up to Milwaukee to interview a witness for a homicide. So I’m going to let you know for two reasons.

00:09:00:21 – 00:09:21:21
Patrick O’Donnell
One, it’s the right thing to do. And two, if you go sideways, then at least you know somebody knows where I am and when. If I was like the acting lieutenant, I was a sergeant for 17 years. Once in a blue moon, I got pulled off the street and I’d have to sit behind a desk and run the shift if my boss wasn’t there.

00:09:21:23 – 00:09:41:13
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, I was. I started using whodunit, so I would get a phone call from, you know, hey, I’m from blah, blah, blah city. We’re going to be tracking for a suspect that we have a warrant on. And, you know, it’s not high risk. We’re just going to do a door knock. And my first the first things out of my mouth is like, you want some help?

00:09:41:15 – 00:10:09:11
Patrick O’Donnell
And I would try to get them some help. So there’s usually not always but usually good cooperation. The feds are really bad at that, especially the FBI. They don’t want anybody playing in their sandbox. So unless they need you, then all of a sudden they’re super cooperative. But that’s another story for another day. But yeah, you know, as far as, okay, I’m an out of jurisdiction cop, I’m in your city.

00:10:09:13 – 00:10:25:05
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. Mean in 25 years, I rarely had an off duty cop that was, like, on vacation or visiting their kid or whatever in Milwaukee. All of a sudden get involved in some high stakes arrest it. Almost. It it really doesn’t happen. Yeah.

00:10:25:07 – 00:10:26:20
Dan LeFebvre
That’s why it’s for the movies. Yeah.

00:10:26:20 – 00:10:28:02
Patrick O’Donnell
Sorry, John.

00:10:28:05 – 00:10:30:02
Dan LeFebvre
And.

00:10:30:05 – 00:10:49:10
Dan LeFebvre
Well, if we move to the second movie, Die Hard two, this time, John McClane is an LA police officer who’s waiting for his wife’s plane to land at Washington’s Dulles Airport. And just like the last movie again, he finds himself the wrong place at the wrong time. And at first, now we have airport police involved, and they don’t believe McClane.

00:10:49:11 – 00:11:04:23
Dan LeFebvre
But then, as things start to go from bad to worse, we see McClane actually working with the local law enforcement at the airport. So not only do we have John McClane as an off duty police officer for a different city from a different city for there for personal reasons, but then it’s also happening at an airport where they have their own law enforcement.

00:11:04:23 – 00:11:22:13
Dan LeFebvre
And then on top of that, since Die Hard two came out in 1990, before the TSA was formed in 2001, I felt like things would probably be a little bit different now. But is it likely that a city police officer would collaborate with the TSA or airport police, like we see John McClane doing in the movie?

00:11:22:15 – 00:11:47:13
Patrick O’Donnell
Well, like TSA, you know, there are a branch of Homeland Security and they really aren’t cops. The way cops look at TSA is kind of we we look at them as, gee, I mean, there’s some fine, there’s some fine TSA agents and they do a thankless job, and it’s a very important job. But a lot of them, yeah, I shouldn’t say a lot.

00:11:47:15 – 00:12:07:27
Patrick O’Donnell
There are some that are that guy or that gal that has a little bit of power and you could tell, you know, they’re abusing it and, you know, they couldn’t get a job as a quote unquote real cop somewhere. I know I’m hurt some feelings out there. Sorry, but yeah, I mean, there’s a couple of people that I know that are TSA agents.

00:12:07:29 – 00:12:27:15
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, I have one friend that’s a TSA agent that did 30 years as a cop, and he didn’t have a pension where he worked. There was no pension. So he had to go work for the feds. You know, that’s a federal job. And they offered a pension and health insurance until he hits, you know, well, health insurance was the biggie.

00:12:27:19 – 00:12:47:10
Patrick O’Donnell
He had zero health insurance after he retired. And he was like 55. So he got ten years before he’s going to go on Medicare. So he kind of had to do something like that. You know. And he’s not a he’s not a, you know, idiot or anything like that. And then I knew some people that just wanted to do it because they thought it looked cool and, you know, whatever.

00:12:47:10 – 00:13:08:27
Patrick O’Donnell
And they’re doing it as a job and they treat it like that. And hey, yeah, you know, good on them. But cops aren’t going to be, you know, like the airport cuffs. Most of them. Well, all of them are, you know, sworn police officers that have full arrest powers. And if I’m out of jurisdiction. Yeah, I’m John McClane.

00:13:09:00 – 00:13:34:01
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, you’re with whatever is going on. If I was the airport police, I would use that cop as much as possible for Intel of what’s going on. I’d try and get some information and. But I wouldn’t include them in any, like, you know, like, takedowns or any action, because first off, he has no arrest power. So where he’s at, you know, you can’t arrest anyone.

00:13:34:01 – 00:14:02:16
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, he’s he’s drawn to you, citizen running around an airport with a gun. Yeah. It’s like, why are you doing that? Become a judge. You shouldn’t do that. So you know. Yeah, it silly to answer your question. Yeah. I mean, the TSA really wouldn’t be coordinating with that. It would be the cops from the airport. If there is a situation like that and if they have to call in help, they’ll call it help, you know, from other agencies they wouldn’t be relying on anybody.

00:14:02:16 – 00:14:05:08
Patrick O’Donnell
That’s the civilian job. It’s like.

00:14:05:11 – 00:14:34:27
Dan LeFebvre
Okay, you know what? I appreciate you clarifying that because, I mean, the movie did come out before TSA was even a thing. So I just know security has changed so much that when this movie takes place in in the airport, it’s like, well, there’s got to be maybe this extra layer to it, but it sounds like maybe there even wouldn’t be as much different other than, you know, setting aside all the fictional aspect of it, but just from the, you know, the airport security and police officer, it sounds like that that sort of relationship would still be pretty similar to the way it is now.

00:14:34:29 – 00:14:57:00
Patrick O’Donnell
Well, yeah, I did an internship when I was in college with the sheriff’s department in Milwaukee, and they had the airport. They still do. They’re in charge of security for the airport, and they have a little substation there. And you have sheriff’s deputies there, you know, walking around doing whatever. Some and some are plainclothes, some are uniformed, and they take care of business at the airport.

00:14:57:02 – 00:15:19:05
Patrick O’Donnell
And I had a real good, tour and, understanding of the airport when I was an intern. And one of the things that struck out was really stuck in my head with the movie was, you know, the tower is a sacred place. John McClane would not be in the tower, period. I mean, that is like super. Yeah, I mean, that is secure.

00:15:19:07 – 00:15:46:13
Patrick O’Donnell
And the air traffic controllers are in the basement. They’re not upstairs in the tower. They’re all in the basement looking at scopes, you know, looking at their computer screens, doing whatever. And you can’t even say a word. I mean, that is like, that’s hollow ground. They can’t have any distractions for obvious reasons. Yes, for very obvious reasons. And when I retired from being a cop, I got a job with Delta throwing bags.

00:15:46:13 – 00:16:11:06
Patrick O’Donnell
I was, I unloaded and loaded planes at the airport and Waukee, and that gave me a real good understanding to of the security, because almost everything is restricted and you have a badge, you know, it’s just like a ID, you know, either around your arm or a lanyard or whatever, and that gets you into certain areas that you have to get it to, you know, to do your job.

00:16:11:09 – 00:16:31:13
Patrick O’Donnell
But the thing about it is you only go in one person at a time. So you and I are in the concourse and we have to go unload a plane, and we’re by one of the gates, you know, you see the doors where the gate agent, like, enters like a keypad, you know, some numbers into a keypad. And then there’s two layers.

00:16:31:13 – 00:16:53:21
Patrick O’Donnell
You do the keypad and you flash the your little ID thing, and then the little green light goes on and unlocks the door. Well, I can’t just follow you. I have to go through the same ritual. Every person that goes through that restricted area has to do that. So there are layers. There’s so many layers of security when it comes to an airport.

00:16:53:21 – 00:16:55:17
Patrick O’Donnell
Oh my God. So it was which.

00:16:55:17 – 00:16:56:16
Dan LeFebvre
Is probably a good thing.

00:16:56:19 – 00:17:06:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Oh Lord. Yes. You know it’s like but you know, it’s it’s borderline laughable. Well it is laughable what you know, I’m watching that. I’m like, I’ll never, ever, ever.

00:17:06:14 – 00:17:07:15
Dan LeFebvre
He just kind of walks in.

00:17:07:15 – 00:17:12:21
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, yeah. He’s doing. Yeah, yeah. Why not? You know.

00:17:12:24 – 00:17:20:02
Dan LeFebvre
Well, they don’t want to go to the intricacies of the airport security for movies. Be a little more boring.

00:17:20:04 – 00:17:21:28
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. So it would be.

00:17:22:00 – 00:17:41:07
Dan LeFebvre
There is another form of collaboration that we see happening in Die Hard two, when, John McClane uses a connection that he made in the first movie. That’s original Val Johnson’s character, Al Powell. So in Die Hard two, we see McClane calling up Powell to get some information on the new villains outside of official channels. So the movie implies that there was this kind of ongoing connection between McClane and Powell.

00:17:41:12 – 00:17:52:16
Dan LeFebvre
And now law enforcement agencies work together a lot in official capacities. But is it normal for individual police officers to work with other police officers from other precincts that they met in the past, kind of like we see in the movie?

00:17:52:18 – 00:18:14:05
Patrick O’Donnell
Yes. You know, if you work together in the past. Yeah. And, you know, maybe they’re, you know, they text on the regular or they go out for drinks or whatever. You know, you can’t help that. But I will use a caveat. Whenever you run somebody on a computer, you know, like for warrants or their driver’s license or a criminal history, there’s a history of you doing that.

00:18:14:07 – 00:18:37:24
Patrick O’Donnell
You’re logged on as Patrick O’Donnell. You know, Sergeant Patrick O’Donnell was looking to see what, you know, Dan’s criminal history was done. You know, February 17th, you know, 1015 in the morning, everything is recorded. So, you know, you have to be able to explain why you’re doing what you’re doing.

00:18:37:26 – 00:18:39:21
Dan LeFebvre
Again, for good reason, I’m sure.

00:18:39:26 – 00:18:50:15
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s see what my ex wife is up to, all right. Yeah. Well, yeah yeah, yeah. You don’t want to abuse the power. So. Yes. Absolutely.

00:18:50:18 – 00:19:11:28
Dan LeFebvre
Makes make sense. Makes sense. But in Die Hard two, we see another returning character from the first movie. That’s Thornburg. He’s played by William Atherton. Thornburg is the pesky TV reporter who’s always trying to get in the way. So he’s he’s getting a scoop on the story, right? So he’s always getting in the way. So if we’re to believe the first two Die Hard movies, the media can get in the way of cops trying to do their jobs.

00:19:12:03 – 00:19:18:18
Dan LeFebvre
From your experience, have you ever heard of the media a hampering the ability for cops to do their jobs like we see in a movie?

00:19:18:20 – 00:19:39:18
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, we have a tenacious relationship with the press. Sometimes they can be your ally. You know, if you have like, say, a Silver Alert, you know, have some, you know, a senior citizen that has dementia or some cognitive issue. And, you know, right now, you know, I live in Wisconsin and we just got to zero. It’s been below zero.

00:19:39:19 – 00:19:59:05
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, all morning. So if you know, grandma’s out there and she’s just wearing like a windbreaker, you know, we could use the press. It’s like, you know, hey, you know what? Come on down. This is what she looks like. You know, this is the last place she was seen. So you know what? You could use the power of the press for that.

00:19:59:07 – 00:20:17:08
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, they can be your ally most of the time. They’re annoying, you know, most of the time, they’re trying to sneak through the they they go over the line both literally and metaphorically. And I it’s the yellow crime scene tape. They just want to get through it so badly. But if you’re.

00:20:17:09 – 00:20:19:05
Dan LeFebvre
It’s like a race running through break to tape.

00:20:19:12 – 00:20:50:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. But if you’re in a big scene, what happens usually is we’ll corral the media into like a staging area. And most police departments have a Pio. It’s called a, the PIOs, the public information officer, and they are usually the ones that are going to talk to the press. If it’s a real big deal. Sometimes the chief may come out and talk to the press, etc. you know, it all depends on what’s going on.

00:20:50:14 – 00:21:13:29
Patrick O’Donnell
I mean, we had an officer that was shot. Thankfully he’s okay now, but you shot in the chest with a rifle and the mayor came out, the chief came out and they all talk to the press. Now dealing with. Yeah, elected officials of every street, you know, they love being behind the microphone. They love the camera in their face.

00:21:14:02 – 00:21:34:03
Patrick O’Donnell
Us absolutely not. We don’t want anything to do with, you know, a camera in our face, especially at a crime scene because we got stuff we got to do. So it’s. Yeah, it’s more of a pain in the butt than anything else. And one thing that really stood out to me, I was a rookie cop at a pretty high profile homicide.

00:21:34:06 – 00:21:58:00
Patrick O’Donnell
It was a cold Wisconsin night, and there’s this reporter out there and I recognize them from, you know, TV back then. You know, you watch the network TV shows, you know, I mean, the network TV stations for your news. And I’m like, oh my God, that’s, you know, Dan, whatever his last name was. And I come up to I look and I’m like, oh my God, you’re really ugly.

00:21:58:00 – 00:22:17:12
Patrick O’Donnell
Holly. He had like 20 pounds of makeup on his face. I mean, it was caked on thick. It was like Phyllis Diller, for God’s sakes. And I was just like, wow. And I’ve never seen a man before that that wore makeup, but, you know, and I was just like, well, this is an interesting night, all right.

00:22:17:14 – 00:22:20:12
Dan LeFebvre
Before 4K TVs where they could see every point.

00:22:20:13 – 00:22:32:21
Patrick O’Donnell
Oh, yeah. You want to see them on 4K? TV? Yeah. You’d want a tube TV for that guy. It was. It was bad news. Or he had a face for radio. Let’s just say that. Yeah.

00:22:32:23 – 00:22:36:22
Dan LeFebvre
That I was going to say I’ve heard that phrase. Yeah, I hate the face for radio.

00:22:36:25 – 00:22:44:06
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. You know, I had a couple more observations about this, this, diet, if you don’t mind.

00:22:44:08 – 00:22:44:22
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, yeah.

00:22:44:22 – 00:22:53:13
Patrick O’Donnell
For sure. Okay. Starting out with the naked keto, like, the bad guy is doing this, like karate. Kind of like the they’re called. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

00:22:53:13 – 00:22:56:00
Dan LeFebvre
He’s all sweaty. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.

00:22:56:05 – 00:23:19:15
Patrick O’Donnell
Why is that there? I don’t understand it. And like, you know, this is kind of gross. What why is this here. You know, and I’m like, okay. And then John McLean is a lieutenant all of a sudden at LAPD, he’s like anointed. You know, if he was, if he would go to especially back then, you start out as a cop and you know, you’re going to go through all the selection stuff.

00:23:19:22 – 00:23:22:07
Patrick O’Donnell
He wouldn’t be a lieutenant. They don’t care.

00:23:22:08 – 00:23:24:08
Dan LeFebvre
Transfer from New York to LA. I think, you.

00:23:24:15 – 00:23:24:22
Patrick O’Donnell
Know, the.

00:23:24:22 – 00:23:28:17
Dan LeFebvre
Movie implies because his wife was in LA, so he wanted to move closer to be.

00:23:28:18 – 00:23:48:22
Patrick O’Donnell
Correct. There’s no such thing as lateral transfer back then from there. Okay. So he maybe he would be a cop. Maybe, you know, he with the time frame, you probably still be in the academy. You know he’d be nothing. So that was amusing to me then. You know there was a woman with a stun gun on the airplane.

00:23:48:22 – 00:23:52:11
Patrick O’Donnell
I’m like, how the hell did she get that? Through security? Yeah. Yeah.

00:23:52:11 – 00:24:00:17
Dan LeFebvre
Again, that was kind of one of those things of like this. This is before 9/11, right? I mean, things are different, but still, I feel like they still take in that.

00:24:00:19 – 00:24:21:07
Patrick O’Donnell
One thing from working as a baggage guy. We call ourselves baggage. It’s just really throwing the bags around. Yeah. There was an open golf bag on a conveyor belt and I’m like, oh, are you kidding me? Come on. Those golf clubs would be all over the place. I hated golf bags. Well, what? I’d see just a card for those coming at me.

00:24:21:07 – 00:24:42:11
Patrick O’Donnell
I’d be like, oh, they’re so awkward and just. They sucked. And then also, I noticed one of the bad guys in, like, one of the big, shooting scenes, and he starts out with a Glock, and then he ends the scene with a Beretta, and I’m like, how did he do that? Yeah. So my I caught that right away.

00:24:42:11 – 00:24:58:11
Patrick O’Donnell
And I’m like, no, that’s that’s not going to happen. And then probably the final thing with the Army coming in, there’s no way the Army is coming into that. The Army doesn’t the Army doesn’t respond to that. They’re not law enforcement. That’s a totally different thing.

00:24:58:14 – 00:25:13:21
Dan LeFebvre
That’s a really great point. I mean, in the first movie, it’s, I feel like with the second one, it was a lot of the first movie over again and then stepping it up. So like in the first movie, the people coming in were the feds. And then the second movie, it’s like, well, how do we go one step higher?

00:25:13:21 – 00:25:15:20
Dan LeFebvre
It’s the army, right?

00:25:15:22 – 00:25:24:21
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. I’m like, why are yeah, this is making zero sense to me right now. Like, what the hell? Yeah.

00:25:24:23 – 00:25:27:00
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, if you’re going to be fictional, might as well just go. All right.

00:25:27:02 – 00:25:30:19
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. You know what? You’re absolutely right. Absolutely.

00:25:30:21 – 00:25:48:01
Dan LeFebvre
Well, on the third movie, it’s Die Hard with a vengeance. At the beginning of this movie, John McClane is forced to go to Harlem wearing a sandwich board with some very racist phrase that I won’t repeat here, but the movie shows this. That’s it’s the first of a series of things that the bad guy is going to do in the movie.

00:25:48:01 – 00:26:09:22
Dan LeFebvre
It’s Jeremy Irons character, Simon, and he’s forcing McClane to do all of these things. And McClane doesn’t comply with Simon’s demands. Then Simon says he’s going to blow up a bomb in a very public place. Obviously, police officers risk their lives in the line of duty, but how realistic is it for a police officer to comply with the bad guys demands to avoid disaster, like we see John McClane doing in this movie?

00:26:09:25 – 00:26:15:12
Patrick O’Donnell
Almost not. Never. Not very, well, that’s it.

00:26:15:15 – 00:26:18:20
Dan LeFebvre
We don’t know. Go sheet with terrorists is one of the first things that kind of comes to mind.

00:26:18:20 – 00:26:46:03
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, well, and here’s the thing. They never negotiate it. You know, you would get we the police department has negotiators and that’s what would be used. You know, most police departments, y’all were trained in negotiating. And then there are negotiator orders. That’s there. That’s their forte. That’s what they train on and they train us up on that, etc., etc. but in a pinch, I guess, you know, if it was, I didn’t have any other choice.

00:26:46:03 – 00:26:59:22
Patrick O’Donnell
And I knew somebody was going to get blown up. You know, it’s like, yeah, I’ll, I’ll do whatever it takes to do that. And then John McClane was, suspended. He wasn’t even he was on an active duty. Well, you know, remember, that’s true.

00:26:59:24 – 00:27:02:15
Dan LeFebvre
They had to find him like he was all drunk and everything and hung over.

00:27:02:15 – 00:27:03:02
Patrick O’Donnell
And like.

00:27:03:07 – 00:27:04:05
Dan LeFebvre
A headache. Yeah.

00:27:04:07 – 00:27:21:20
Patrick O’Donnell
This is so stupid that they’re just like, okay, if guys. Yeah, in this inspector’s in this van with them before they. They put him out on the street. And, you know, his backup is like ten blocks away. That would not happen. They would have eyes on him. The entire time. They would not. Just like.

00:27:21:20 – 00:27:40:24
Dan LeFebvre
That was really weird. I like I think the movie, you know, the movie tries to explain away why they call McClane, you know, because Simon specifically asked for McClane to find out towards the end of the movie. Why? But, the backup being further away, it’s like that. That seemed really weird, especially in a major city like that.

00:27:40:24 – 00:27:45:09
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, you could be in buildings or there’s so many ways that you can be.

00:27:45:10 – 00:27:57:28
Patrick O’Donnell
There are all kinds of ways we could be close. And, you know, we wouldn’t just throw them to the wolves, you know, knowing that his ass is going to get kicked. You know, it’s like, no, that’s not going to happen.

00:27:58:00 – 00:28:05:12
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. And then hand him a gun to. So, he’s not like he’s going to, you know, get his ass kicked, but, they’re going to take the gun and.

00:28:05:17 – 00:28:05:27
Patrick O’Donnell
Oh, yeah.

00:28:06:01 – 00:28:07:11
Dan LeFebvre
Probably do something worse. Right?

00:28:07:11 – 00:28:27:22
Patrick O’Donnell
I mean, absolutely. Yeah. Know that’s that. I was looking at that and I’m like. And the chief inspector and I don’t think they have chief inspectors in New York, but whatever. And you know, he’s back to being a New York cop again. Yeah. You flip flops around from department to department. Yeah. What the greatest be is New York, you know, just welcomes them back.

00:28:27:22 – 00:28:36:03
Patrick O’Donnell
I was like, oh, we missed you. Come on back down and we’ll make you a detective again without doing anything. You know, it’s like no work. Like that.

00:28:36:05 – 00:28:39:28
Dan LeFebvre
So this will be the third time he’s going through training again, right?

00:28:39:28 – 00:28:55:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Exactly. That’s all. I mean, like, they have, like, this highest ranking person in this, like, surveillance van. That wouldn’t happen. They’d be in their office. We have people for that. You know, that’s that’s what it all boils down to.

00:28:55:16 – 00:29:18:08
Dan LeFebvre
What we find out at the end of Diablo the vengeance that Simon’s plan all along was to make John McClane do all of these things. Basically, it’s a distraction from his real goal robbing billions of dollars worth of gold from the Federal Reserve. And obviously, the movie’s storyline is fictional. But in your experience as a police officer, have you ever had criminals using distractions to try to keep you from noticing the true intentions?

00:29:18:10 – 00:29:39:08
Patrick O’Donnell
Not anything this big, you know, most, you know, yeah. Billions of dollars, right? Yeah, I, I find it humorous that, you know, it’s like you need a new plotline. I mean, come on, you know? Okay, they’re who they’re trying to rob this, you know, whatever. It was like, okay, but it’s been used a few times, but okay, you know, retread that baby.

00:29:39:10 – 00:30:05:17
Patrick O’Donnell
But yeah, of course, the main, bad guy has to have an accent. I don’t know why. Maybe it makes some more villainy or something, but I every other foreigner. Yeah, it has to be something like that. But as far as distractions go. No, I mean, the closest I came was we had, two kids, you know, they’re like 18, 19 years old, detained.

00:30:05:20 – 00:30:29:28
Patrick O’Donnell
It was like some kind of girlfriend calls on the boyfriend, blah, blah, blah, allegations of this. And the other thing. And two of my cops find this guy and his body by a, bus stop maybe about five blocks down. And it’s like we’re just talking to them, and I could tell something is weird. You. I’m like, this kid has ants in his pants.

00:30:30:00 – 00:30:49:24
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, it’s summertime. His eyes are darting all over the place, and he’s just real squirrely. So I’m like, stand up. So I put handcuffs on him and I’m like, you know what? These come off just as easy as, you know. They go on and said, I just don’t trust you right now. And he says, okay. And then, you know, he’d calm down.

00:30:49:26 – 00:31:19:23
Patrick O’Donnell
And my cop is in her squad car running him, you know, for warrants, etc., etc. and he’s like, we’re buy a car dealership visa. Oh man, look at that car over there. So I look like that. And I look back and he’s gone. He’s running like the fastest track star in the Olympics with handcuffs behind his back. And I’m just like, I mean, he’s wearing, like, athletic shorts and a t shirt and, you know, tennis shoes.

00:31:19:25 – 00:31:46:24
Patrick O’Donnell
I’m wearing combat boots and I’ve got about 30 pounds of gear. He’s 18, I’m 53, and I like, oh, yeah. And I weigh 220 without the gear. And this kid maybe weighs a buck 60, and he’s sprinting and I’m like, oh my God, I can’t let this I can’t let this happen. So, you know, the cop tries to chase him with her car, then she runs out of pavement.

00:31:46:24 – 00:32:07:13
Patrick O’Donnell
Then I’m going four wheeling with this guy running after him, and I finally get him. And the only reason I got him was he’s got asthma. And I’m like, oh, thank God for asshole. Yeah. Because he he probably would. I ran me and I’m like, that’d be embarrassing. But he distracted me enough to, you know, and it happened like in half a second.

00:32:07:15 – 00:32:27:18
Patrick O’Donnell
And I felt so stupid. And I’m the boss, you know, I’m just like, But, you know, we scooped him up, got him an ambulance, and he was fine. And it turns out he had a warrant for bank robbery. That’s why he was running. So. Yeah, the feds wanted them. He robbed a bank. So I’m just like, okay, that’s a good pinch.

00:32:27:18 – 00:32:34:19
Patrick O’Donnell
That’s a good arrest. You know? I’ll take it, but I’m just glad I’m just glad I got.

00:32:34:22 – 00:32:39:01
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, I guess there’s there’s a little difference between what we see in the movie. And. Look over there.

00:32:39:03 – 00:33:02:18
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it wasn’t anything like, you know, pre-planned or anything and. Yeah, there’s clues, you know, when they start, like if you have somebody that’s like in like stopped on the street or something like that, that their eyes are darting around, they’re looking for an escape. They’re looking for the, the safest, fastest egress away from you.

00:33:02:21 – 00:33:12:08
Patrick O’Donnell
So I should have been smarter. I I’m a big car guy. I’m like, oh, really? I don’t like to like son of a biscuit. But, there he goes.

00:33:12:10 – 00:33:31:03
Dan LeFebvre
Well, we often see these things in action movies, where people are shooting each other, and this diet is no different from that. Obviously, there’s a ton of Hollywood fiction, but in this movie, there seems to be really no hesitation for him to just shoot off any gun and gets a hand on it really stood out to me.

00:33:31:03 – 00:33:50:15
Dan LeFebvre
There was one scene where John McClane just kind of walks up to one of the dump trucks. He knew the bad guys were in it, so he just starts shooting inside without even verifying that they’re actually who he thought was driving the truck. Of course, it’s a movie, and he was right. They were the bad guys. But can you share what it’s like for a police officer to discharge their weapon, compared to what we see happening in the movie?

00:33:50:18 – 00:34:13:09
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, if you’re shooting at a human, there has to be an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm to yourself or others. That’s like the statue that the that’s the criminal statute. Because if I shoot and kill somebody, say you have a hostage, you know, you have the gun to the, poor person’s. Yeah. Like had that’s.

00:34:13:09 – 00:34:34:27
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. It was in the wrong place at the wrong time. You’re you’re robbing the convenience store, and, you know, I just walk it, you know, kind of thing as a cop, you know? Will I shoot you? Probably depending, you know. But if there’s 2 or 3 innocent people behind, you know, I’m not you. There’s so many things to consider because it’s not just, you know, it’s like.

00:34:34:27 – 00:35:01:27
Patrick O’Donnell
Like I said before, there has to be an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm to yourself or others and great bodily harm is some type of harm that is most likely to cause death. So doesn’t that that kind of thing. So you have to be really cognizant of, okay, do I meet the statute statutory requirements? Because if I shoot you one human being, killing another human being is homicide.

00:35:02:00 – 00:35:24:00
Patrick O’Donnell
Now, if it’s, you know, in the line of duty where you’re preventing, i.e. me getting killed, you know, in self-defense or somebody else that’s justifiable homicide, you’re not going to get criminally charged, but it’s still a homicide and that’s how it gets investigated. But you can’t. So you have things to think about is like, okay, is this statutorily okay?

00:35:24:02 – 00:35:51:21
Patrick O’Donnell
Then you think, okay, am I going to hurt somebody doing this or kill somebody else? You know, it’s, you know, that’s why people are like, why can’t you shoot the gun out of the bad guys hand? You know? ET cetera, etc.. In the most people aren’t that good of a shot. You go for, you know, that’s it’s so silly because, you know, it’s hard to that’s a skill and it’s a diminish some some cops are great shots.

00:35:51:21 – 00:36:12:29
Patrick O’Donnell
Some aren’t so great. We have to qualify every year. And I still do. I have a nature to 18. So I have to go through the same course and I can still I’m a good shot, but, nighttime, I’m chasing somebody. My heart rate and blood pressure are way up. There’s so many things to consider. And, you know, again, you have to consider the risk to civilians.

00:36:13:05 – 00:36:29:23
Patrick O’Donnell
And you have to consider the risk of, blue on blue shooting where you accidentally shoot another cop in, like, crossfire. So you have to be aware of a lot of different stuff before you pull that trigger. And what we would always say is like, you can’t put the you can’t put the bullet back in the gun.

00:36:29:25 – 00:36:34:12
Dan LeFebvre
Very different than what we see with John McClane in the movies, that’s for sure.

00:36:34:15 – 00:36:46:11
Patrick O’Donnell
Well, you’re fucking I’m a huge dirty Harry fan, and it’s like, man, that guy would. I don’t know how many guys you would kill in one episode. You’re in one movie. Excuse me? And I’m just like, oh, look out. Just. Yeah.

00:36:46:14 – 00:37:04:17
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, in the movie with John McClane, he’s. He obviously isn’t putting that much thought into anything. It’s, I mean, not anything, but, you know, when he when he’s shooting, you know, he shoots when he feels he wants to shoot, it’s not really. I’m going to, you know, think about who is driving in that scene. You know what?

00:37:04:17 – 00:37:19:10
Dan LeFebvre
The dump truck he’s not even really putting any thought into before. He just pulls out the gun and just shoots into the door and kills the driver. Right. It’s not I’m going to put this guy in handcuffs or whatever. It’s kill first. I ask questions later.

00:37:19:13 – 00:37:40:00
Patrick O’Donnell
It’s true. Yeah. And the couple of things, you know, to finish up with this, die Hard. Yeah. Samuel Jackson is working with the cop. No, they would use him for information, you know, they would interview him, and that would be the end of it. He wouldn’t be riding around with them. Is like his sidekick, the. That’s not going to happen.

00:37:40:02 – 00:37:40:23
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah.

00:37:40:25 – 00:37:47:06
Dan LeFebvre
I think this movie’s excuse for that was Simon forced them to do it right, which was kind of goes back to the whole doing whatever Simon says.

00:37:47:06 – 00:38:04:23
Patrick O’Donnell
That would not happen. No, because, you know, it’s like, okay, now we’re putting his life in jeopardy. Yeah. He’s, you know, he’s an innocent civilian, you know, that’s trying to help out. Yeah. It’s like, absolutely not. No way. You know? And then, you know, Bruce Willis is trying to get the fire department. So he calls him an officer down.

00:38:04:23 – 00:38:26:12
Patrick O’Donnell
That’s not necessary. And it’s really bad taste to tell you the truth. And then the subway cop, there was a, scene when the subway is drawn down. You know, he’s pointing a gun at a kid for hopping a turnstile and using his phone. And I’m like, well, this is just silly. You wouldn’t do that. I mean, unless you you thought he was armed or something like that.

00:38:26:14 – 00:38:49:25
Patrick O’Donnell
And then I don’t know who outfitted these guys, but like the extras that were cops, they’re wearing their police hats, but they don’t have a cap shield at it. That’s the. It’s like a little badge that goes on the hat. The police hat. We call them cap shields. And like, half of them had those. And I’m like you, they they wouldn’t let you walk out of the precinct house unless you were.

00:38:49:27 – 00:38:52:25
Patrick O’Donnell
You had that capsule that you go through an inspection.

00:38:52:25 – 00:39:01:00
Dan LeFebvre
So what is the I mean, is that, for what is the purpose of of that as to why they wouldn’t be allowed to walk out?

00:39:01:00 – 00:39:08:11
Patrick O’Donnell
Oh, because you have to be in full uniform if you don’t have the capsule on your hat. You’re looking for a uniform, you know? Okay, that’s like I wasn’t sure there was.

00:39:08:14 – 00:39:10:09
Dan LeFebvre
You know, a utilitarian purpose of it.

00:39:10:12 – 00:39:15:04
Patrick O’Donnell
Was more, you know, it’s it’s like having the badge on your outermost garment. If you’re in need, I.

00:39:15:04 – 00:39:15:27
Dan LeFebvre
Gotcha. Okay.

00:39:15:29 – 00:39:20:24
Patrick O’Donnell
That’s a that’s a part of the uniform. You have to have the entire uniform.

00:39:20:26 – 00:39:25:02
Dan LeFebvre
Makes sense, because otherwise you could be the bad guy that, gets shot by John McClane.

00:39:25:05 – 00:39:41:05
Patrick O’Donnell
And then there was the scene where there was a bunch of cops, and maybe half of them had their holsters empty. There were holding on guns. They just didn’t give them one. Not even a pretend one. And I’m just like, come on, guys. Yeah, yeah, I guess. Yeah. They ran out of like, you know, rubber.

00:39:41:10 – 00:40:04:05
Dan LeFebvre
We don’t have a big enough budget. McClane is stealing all the guns. So he’s going back to the movie franchise. Where up to Live Free or Die Hard. And that movie, when the FBI Cyber Security division in Washington, DC is hacked, they call in everybody to help track down some of their top suspects. And that brings John McClane into the picture as he’s tasked with picking up, just in character, Matthew Farrell.

00:40:04:07 – 00:40:15:11
Dan LeFebvre
Immediately when McClane shows up to Farrell’s apartment, he shows him his badge and Farrell thinks the badge is fake. Have you ever encountered a situation like that where someone you were there to help, didn’t think you were a real cop?

00:40:15:13 – 00:40:47:12
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, it’s kind of funny. You know, it’s I spent most of my career in uniform, but every now and then I was tasked with undercover assignments or plainclothes assignments. And it’s amazing how the world looks different to you and how people know. It’s like, oh, so this is how it really works. Because when people see a police car in person, you know, in an officer in uniform, you know, they act this specific way when you’re plainclothes, you know, it’s like, okay, I remember it was like 3:00 in the morning.

00:40:47:12 – 00:41:12:15
Patrick O’Donnell
I was on a plainclothes assignment, and I was monitoring the radio, and I heard a stalker, a call for a stalker outside this girl’s apartment window. And I’m like, oh, this could be fun. So I’m going to use I’m going to use C, which is an undercover car. There’s plainclothes. There’s unmarked cars and undercover cars. An undercover car is I mean, I think I was driving like, a Plymouth.

00:41:12:21 – 00:41:47:16
Patrick O’Donnell
What was this? Oh, Chrysler. Cordoba. I mean, it was old. It was just a jalopy. And y’all, we had, like, beans on the rearview mirror. You know, the. There’s no way anybody could tell that’s a cop car. They know that there’s a cop in there where an unmarked car is usually like a Crown Vic. And now they’re going to be like the explorers, and they don’t have decals on the outside or lights on the outside, but they do have lights and a siren, and they’re fully equipped, like a squad car.

00:41:47:19 – 00:41:54:29
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, I’ve seen those. They they’re not cop car. They’re not painted a cop cars. But you can still tell, you know, that they’re cop cars.

00:41:55:01 – 00:42:13:00
Patrick O’Donnell
You could tell. Yeah, absolutely. And we’re not trying to be undercover with those. We’re just trying to be not as noticeable with those. And it’s amazing how, you know, right away when you see that light bar and you see the decals on the side, you’re like, oh, shit. You know, I was like, okay, you know, and cops would do that too.

00:42:13:00 – 00:42:28:03
Patrick O’Donnell
I, I can’t tell you how many times I’d be going to a call or something. I see red and blue lights behind me. I’m like, oh, what did I do wrong? There’s that incident. Even though I’m going to the same call, I’m like, oh wait, I am the cops. Okay, yeah, I’m okay now. I know, like, all right, yeah, it does happen.

00:42:28:06 – 00:42:55:15
Patrick O’Donnell
But anyways, so I get out, I’m wearing jeans and a t shirt and I’ve got a necklace badge and, you know, it’s just my badge is on, you know, like a necklace thing, a chain and one side is the badge and the other side is my ID, and I’ve got, I’ve got a gun and handcuffs and my radio, and I’m just walking up and this guy is just, like, leering into this girl’s apartment and on the.

00:42:55:15 – 00:43:15:01
Patrick O’Donnell
Hey, dude, what’s up? He said, oh, not much. I’m like, what you up to, dude? And he’s just like, who are you? And I pointed to the badge and he says, well, that ain’t real. I’m like, oh, okay. So then I pulled up my t shirt and you can see my gun in my, handcuffs. And he said, those do look real.

00:43:15:01 – 00:43:35:09
Patrick O’Donnell
I’m like, yeah, they are this, oh. That was kind of okay. Those are real. Yeah. And then at the same time, you know, like two uniform, coppers start walking up and he’s just like, all right, whatever you got me. You know, he he couldn’t let go of the you can’t stop love, I guess. But he just couldn’t let go.

00:43:35:12 – 00:43:46:10
Dan LeFebvre
I’m trying to remember. I think that’s basically what McLean had in this part, too, was that, you know, on the necklace, his badge to to show, very similar situation. It sounds like all the different purpose to be there, of course.

00:43:46:13 – 00:44:04:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Right, right. Yeah. If you know you’re going to be arresting people, you almost all if you’re plainclothes, you almost always have a uniform with you just in case something bells go south. You know, some defense attorneys like, hey, my client just thought it was just some random dude with a gun and a fake badge, you know, blah, blah, blah.

00:44:04:16 – 00:44:11:08
Patrick O’Donnell
So it’s always nice if it’s if you can, to have some guys in uniform.

00:44:11:11 – 00:44:28:15
Dan LeFebvre
That makes that makes a lot of sense. You mentioned earlier with the FBI. And so when we saw that, you know, in the first movie with some federal law enforcement, when this one too, we also see John McClane being called in to help federal law enforcement, is that a common thing for local law enforcement to be called to assist federal agents.

00:44:28:17 – 00:44:53:18
Patrick O’Donnell
All the time? You know, there the ratio of city cops or county cops compared to feds is, yeah, there’s probably like 100 to 1. There isn’t a lot of feds there. Just just numbers. You know, there aren’t many of them. If they are going to arrest somebody, usually they call us and they don’t do a lot of arresting, to tell you the truth.

00:44:53:21 – 00:45:21:00
Patrick O’Donnell
I remember one time I got a call from the dispatcher and she’s like, could you meet the Secret Service and bring a couple of your guys with you at blah blah, blah location? I’m like, oh, wow, this could be cool. So I’m like, yeah, sounds fun. So it’s like 8:00 at night. I meet this guy and he’s just wearing jeans and a t shirt, and he’s got a lot cooler gun than I do, a lot more expensive gun.

00:45:21:02 – 00:45:39:14
Patrick O’Donnell
And he’s got a little back then the next tall, cell phone that, like, shirked. He had a really. He had one of those and he had a BlackBerry. I’m showing my age, and he had a lot nicer equipment than we did. And he says there’s some counterfeiters in this apartment. I’m just. I’m just going to knock on the door.

00:45:39:17 – 00:45:56:18
Patrick O’Donnell
I have a warrant. He said it’s not high risks. They’re not supposed to be armed, but you never know, he said. I just want some uniforms. And I’m like, I totally get it. So we go in there, knocks on the door, Secret Service. And it’s like, no. First he had me do it. Know I’m like, yeah, Milwaukee police.

00:45:56:18 – 00:46:23:04
Patrick O’Donnell
And they open the door for the police. And sure enough, there this is an apartment. They had a computer and a printer and there were literally printing money. It was so bad. It was like. So just like a regular printer. Yeah. And they’re they’re printing money. And I’m just like, wow. Like this. You’re not even trying, man. This this is almost like monopoly money.

00:46:23:07 – 00:46:25:18
Dan LeFebvre
And they didn’t print it off I guess.

00:46:25:18 – 00:46:42:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. And they’re doing it in front of a Secret Service agent. I’m just like, oh, this is awesome. I absolutely love it. Yeah, it was very anticlimactic. I thought it was something really cool. And I’m just like, this is kind of boring. Really. And he said, yeah, it is. He said, you mind coughing them up and taking them downtown?

00:46:42:14 – 00:47:10:00
Patrick O’Donnell
He said, I’ll take it from there. And I’m like, yeah, no problem. So yeah, we know we do help, you know, FBI, Ice, ATF. Yeah. And DEA, they kind of keep to themselves. They do help us. Let’s see. So FBI. Yeah. The FBI is an interesting relationship. You know, we have or at least when I was still there.

00:47:10:00 – 00:47:34:29
Patrick O’Donnell
I’m sure they do. We had a human trafficking, like, task force, and we had 1 or 2 FBI agents assigned to that, and they were with our detectives and police officers from our Sensitive Crimes Division, and they were there more or less, because, again, Washington has a lot more money than we do. They had a lot more resources and they would help us out with stuff.

00:47:35:02 – 00:48:02:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. See, that was one example that bank robberies people think that the FBI responds to like every bank robbery. No they don’t, they don’t. And if you do get an agent, usually it’s like an hour after the fact and they’re taking down like notes about, okay, they’re interested to see, okay, is this like a robbery crew, you know, are they going from city to city or crossing state lines, you know, that kind of thing.

00:48:02:16 – 00:48:17:08
Patrick O’Donnell
So that’s that’s why the FBI is going to be there. Or if it’s a bank robbery and they start popping rounds off and somebody gets shot or God forbid, killed, then the FBI is going to respond. But it’s still our baby. It’s we’re still taking care of the investigation.

00:48:17:11 – 00:48:35:28
Dan LeFebvre
It sounds like, and a in a different situation, but as similar to what you talked about before where like, even when you were undercover, you wanted to have some uniformed cops there for the arrest itself. It sounds like it’s a similar sort of thing with except just, you know, federal agents and then you’re the uniform cop that’s there to, to help.

00:48:36:00 – 00:48:38:15
Patrick O’Donnell
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

00:48:38:18 – 00:48:57:15
Dan LeFebvre
Well, if there is one scene from Live Free or Die Hard that really stands out to me. It’s that scene where John McClane takes his car and he drives it into the helicopter. Obviously a Hollywood stunt, right? But that scene, as they end the sequence where we see McClane doing some pretty masterful driving, and as moviegoers, we just assume he’s capable of doing this because of his training as a police officer.

00:48:57:18 – 00:49:01:09
Dan LeFebvre
And I’m sure your training did not have anything to do with driving cars into helicopters.

00:49:01:15 – 00:49:05:21
Patrick O’Donnell
But here, a little bit after intervention? No, there was none of that going on.

00:49:05:21 – 00:49:10:27
Dan LeFebvre
But what was, what kind of driving training do real police officers get?

00:49:10:29 – 00:49:48:00
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, when you’re in the academy, you go through what’s called evac emergency vehicle operations course, and you’re trained how to, you know, do high speed pursuits, how to do them safely, you know, and they actually took us out to a racetrack here in Milwaukee. And that was a lot of fun. We had mock chases where you would you’re in a squad car and you would chase the instructor and you’d, you’re, you know, you’re chasing, you’re talking on the radio at the same time, you know, and it’s not just like, I don’t know, like a free for all.

00:49:48:00 – 00:50:13:17
Patrick O’Donnell
There’s rules when it comes to chasing cars, you know, it’s like, okay, when you’re when you’re pursuing somebody, if you’re the squad, you have to go, okay, you give your squad name, you have to give your location. You know, it’s like, okay, squad five, I’m northbound on university Drive, the 5400 block, you know, pursuing a, red Toyota Corolla with blah, blah, blah license plate.

00:50:13:19 – 00:50:35:06
Patrick O’Donnell
And the reason, okay, he’s wanted for homicide, all right, as a boss would try was I would let that go a lot further than. Yeah, I’m pursuing him because he blew a stop sign. All right, risk reward. And it’s like, am I going to risk this cop’s life or other civilians, you know, this high speed pursuit for something?

00:50:35:08 – 00:50:56:19
Patrick O’Donnell
Not that, you know, big of a deal, but sometimes not in a lot of time. What I thought wasn’t a big deal all of a sudden, you know, there’s a lot of guns in the car, or they’re wanted for something pretty heinous. You don’t know what you’re chasing. So we get all trained up, you know, they’re behind the science and they will hammer, you know, the rules.

00:50:56:19 – 00:51:40:05
Patrick O’Donnell
You know the department every department has their own rules, and they’re a state statute. You have to you have to drive with due regard. You can’t just go out there, you know, and think you’re, you know, a NASCAR driver or anything like that, or drive and helicopters or whatever. But, you know, when I was new and for quite a chunk of my career, there were no cameras in the squads or body cameras, so it wasn’t critiqued like it was once those things, you know, got up, you know, it’s like I remember being going down city streets at over 100 miles an hour, where if you make one little mistake, you’re dead and you, who’s

00:51:40:05 – 00:51:54:11
Patrick O’Donnell
learn by it was on the job training. Let’s just say that you and some were really good at it, and some cops were really bad at it and shouldn’t be driving cars, I think. But hey, that’s how you get trained up.

00:51:54:13 – 00:52:06:27
Dan LeFebvre
Well, maybe, like you were talking about before, you know, with McClane going from New York and then to LA, back to New York, like he would have to go through the Academy multiple times. He’s just gone through so many times that now he knows how to drive into helicopters.

00:52:06:27 – 00:52:14:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Right? Yeah, it’s very true. Yeah. I guess maybe I was absent that day in the academy when we had to work after intervention training.

00:52:14:14 – 00:52:16:00
Dan LeFebvre
But that day.

00:52:16:02 – 00:52:24:06
Patrick O’Donnell
Yes, I, I must have missed it. Yeah. I didn’t go to that in-service. Whatever. My bad, my bad.

00:52:24:09 – 00:52:45:21
Dan LeFebvre
Well, the last film in the franchise is A Good Day to Die Hard. This time, the franchise pushes the stakes even higher as it brings John McClane into international affairs. The plotline in this movie revolves around his son Jack, who’s in trouble in Russia. But then it turns out Jack is a CIA operative. And so together we see this father son team trying to stop a nuclear weapons heist from this fictional storyline.

00:52:45:21 – 00:52:57:15
Dan LeFebvre
We kind of get the concept of there’s a parent and child who are both in law enforcement working together. How realistic is it for multiple generations and different branches of law enforcement to work together, like we see happening in the movie?

00:52:57:18 – 00:53:23:09
Patrick O’Donnell
There are legacy cops more, you know, like my first partner on the job, her dad was a cop in Milwaukee for years, but they never worked together. Like, especially on a case that’s almost unheard of maybe in small towns or something. That might be the case, but for the most part, no. And most places don’t have hard and fast rules.

00:53:23:09 – 00:53:51:05
Patrick O’Donnell
But I wouldn’t want to be in the same, district or on the same assignment as my kid because I would be overprotective. I would yeah, I, I wouldn’t be thinking of him as a cop. I would I’d be thinking of him, you know? And it’s only natural. I’m a dad, you know, it’s like that instinct is going to kick in first, and you may not do your job efficiently and effectively if you’re thinking like that.

00:53:51:09 – 00:54:01:09
Patrick O’Donnell
But yeah, there’s a ton of legacy cops. Yeah. It’s not unusual. It’s like, oh, you see the nameplate? And I’m like, hey, I know your dad. You know, that kind of thing. It’s like this kind of cool.

00:54:01:11 – 00:54:17:26
Dan LeFebvre
That makes a lot of sense. And I didn’t really think about it this way, but, I’m not sure. Like the Sullivan brothers is, is something that comes up in the military. But, you know, when when that ship sank and just like in World War two, all five brothers were lost. And so I could see it almost being a similar sort of concept, they wanted to separate.

00:54:17:26 – 00:54:40:18
Dan LeFebvre
Then from there on out, the military started separating siblings. I could see it almost being a similar thing to like if you’re there was with your kid. Not only are you not doing your job as well, which means that your life could be an even more danger. Not only your life then, but also your your child’s life. And it just makes everything that much worse, not only for who you’re trying to help, but yourselves as well.

00:54:40:21 – 00:54:48:22
Patrick O’Donnell
Right? Yeah. And your kid might be acting a little differently than they normally would if you’re there. I mean, it’s just human nature.

00:54:48:25 – 00:54:50:13
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, it goes both ways, for sure.

00:54:50:15 – 00:54:51:17
Patrick O’Donnell
Absolutely.

00:54:51:19 – 00:55:11:14
Dan LeFebvre
Well, since the last movie takes place in Russia, we end up with a similar plot point that we saw in the first movie, except in the first, Die Hard. It was New York Cop going to LA when he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This time the wrong place is Russia. So I asked about police officers in different jurisdictions earlier, but now I need to ask about an international jurisdiction.

00:55:11:14 – 00:55:20:24
Dan LeFebvre
So as a police officer, if you’re traveling to another country like John McClane doing in the movie, what would really happen if you found yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time outside of the US?

00:55:20:27 – 00:55:47:21
Patrick O’Donnell
Why? You are truly a fish out of water. You are just John Hughes citizen. You. You have no special powers. There’s no police friendship. There’s no, you know, whatever. You’re just another dude, you know, or another chick. That’s you. You got a whole lot of nothing. And if you’re in Russia, who isn’t exactly our ally, you know, and I’ve heard stories about Russian prisons.

00:55:47:21 – 00:56:10:12
Patrick O’Donnell
I know, like in China, the Chinese police can arrest you and not charge you for up to a year. So you could be rotting in a jail for a year without even getting charged with a crime. And, you know, just there’s no such thing as due process in Russia. You know, the lines between the military and the police in Russia are very, very blurred.

00:56:10:15 – 00:56:21:06
Patrick O’Donnell
It’s it’s, I would not want to be on the business end of an AK 47 with some Russian police officer. Hell, no. I you know, it has all the. You’re.

00:56:21:09 – 00:56:26:19
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, I wouldn’t want to be in the business end of anywhere, anywhere, whoever is holding it, but. Yes, definitely. Yeah.

00:56:26:21 – 00:56:49:25
Patrick O’Donnell
Right. Exactly. But yeah, I just think of gulag, you know, or, you know, something like that. And I’m like, no, thank you. You know, that’s something it’s it should be an international incident. You know, hopefully our embassy would get involved in this even if hopefully they would know, you know, this happened in the you know, the government can help you, that kind of thing.

00:56:49:25 – 00:57:02:24
Patrick O’Donnell
But you know, with all the stuff blowing up and people getting killed and all that, it’s hard to like cover that up. It’s like, okay, the police are going to be coming to this. And I never saw them.

00:57:02:27 – 00:57:12:14
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, that’s true. I was trying to think, if they ever showed up and I don’t. Yeah. Now. No, I mean, I guess that would be an extractor. Yes. MPP so maybe that was.

00:57:12:17 – 00:57:30:04
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, I think I saw a couple of Russian like, squad cars. Maybe they had like the little blue light on top. But other than that, I never saw like cops coming out and like, trying to do cop stuff. They were pretty much they had the run of the whole area there to do all their blowing up and shooting and all that cool stuff.

00:57:30:07 – 00:57:51:19
Dan LeFebvre
It’s almost a complete inverse of the first movie, where there were a lot of cops, and then just the feds came at the very end, but then at the end and movie, it’s like, you know, CIA and. Well, and then John McClane, and, you know, and then all these other, you know, high military or, you know, secret things and then, you know, oh, there’s some kind of cops in the background.

00:57:51:26 – 00:57:57:24
Patrick O’Donnell
Maybe you’re exac, you know, I you’re right. I didn’t think of that. Yeah. It’s like the polar opposite really.

00:57:57:27 – 00:58:10:06
Dan LeFebvre
Since you do offer your services to help screenwriters be more authentic with their stories, if they had hired you for the diehard franchise, what’s one of the primary things that you think needs to change to help the storyline be a little more accurate?

00:58:10:08 – 00:58:30:28
Patrick O’Donnell
Well, you know, I looked at that question. I’m like, it’s so far fetched. I think I would have took an A pass. I, I’m like, how can I, I can’t fix this. It’s so far off the rails that it’s I mean, we talked about, you know, just there’s so much stuff even with like my favorite was the first to die Hard.

00:58:30:28 – 00:58:51:20
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, yeah. He he’s got a gun on a plane. You know how it is. Even back then, even if we’re transporting prisoners, you still have to make all these notifications. And the captain of the airplane can say no, even if you get all these clearances and everything’s hunky dory, you know, you load, you know, you get, you get seated before anybody else in your own.

00:58:51:20 – 00:59:10:25
Patrick O’Donnell
You’re the last one to leave. Obviously, if you have a prisoner and if you’re just armed every 99.9% of the time, you know it has to be stowed in your luggage and there’s all kinds of hoops you have to jump around to have a gun in your luggage, and it’s not gonna be your carry on. It’s going to be in the belly of the plane.

00:59:10:27 – 00:59:29:06
Patrick O’Donnell
And it’s kind of a big deal. I mean, it’s to me, I think it’s a pain in the butt. I don’t even I could, but I don’t I don’t deal with it. It’s just like it’s one more pain in the button. What if my luggage gets lost? I don’t want my gun. Get lost. You know, it’s. No, thanks.

00:59:29:08 – 00:59:31:13
Dan LeFebvre
And think about that. That never happens in the movie.

00:59:31:15 – 00:59:40:08
Patrick O’Donnell
No. Hey. Yeah. Oh, shoot. They lost my luggage. Hey, like I said, I was a baggage handler. This stuff does happen. That’s real.

00:59:40:10 – 00:59:49:13
Dan LeFebvre
Diehard, too. Is just John McClane at the little kiosk waiting for his luggage. That’s. The entire movie’s just waiting.

00:59:49:15 – 00:59:51:15
Patrick O’Donnell
But be funny. I like that.

00:59:51:18 – 01:00:06:09
Dan LeFebvre
There are a lot of people I think are inspired by movies. And, you know, for example, I’ve heard stories of, like, Indiana Jones inspiring people to become archeologists. In your experience, have you ever seen a police officer like John McClane inspire people to become police officers in the real world?

01:00:06:11 – 01:00:10:04
Patrick O’Donnell
Yes. And I would not want to work with them or go on a plane with them.

01:00:10:06 – 01:00:14:06
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, because they want to be John McClane shooting. Yeah, that’s true for sure.

01:00:14:08 – 01:00:35:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Exactly. Yeah. We had some cowboys I worked with, but even the cowboys or cowgirls would have to play by the rules, or they get fired and criminally charged. I mean, there’s only so far you could push the boundaries and. Yeah, I mean, police work in a nutshell, a lot of it’s really boring. Until it is.

01:00:35:16 – 01:00:39:20
Dan LeFebvre
I wouldn’t want John McClane to be in my my district. Yeah.

01:00:39:22 – 01:00:44:18
Patrick O’Donnell
Is absolutely. Well.

01:00:44:21 – 01:01:02:17
Dan LeFebvre
One of the common movie tropes that we see happening in Die Hard in a lot of movies, too, is when the bad guy tells they’re playing just as they’re about to kill the good guy. And this one, for example, in the first movie, Hans tells John McClane the reason he started the fire in Nakatomi Towers, because they’ll keep looking for him unless they think he’s dead.

01:01:02:20 – 01:01:16:11
Dan LeFebvre
I’m guessing that whole idea of the bad guy revealing their plan is something that’s made up for the movies. But then again, sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. Have you ever heard of the bad guys revealing their plan like we see happening time and time again in the movies now?

01:01:16:11 – 01:01:39:07
Patrick O’Donnell
Most criminals I was were really stupid and it was either. And most of this, the criminality that I dealt with was kind of spur of the moment. It wasn’t like a plan hit. It was in the air, like most of the homicides I went to was they started as a fight and they escalated. I mean, yeah, there were like revenge or jealousy.

01:01:39:07 – 01:02:00:22
Patrick O’Donnell
I’ll follow the money, follow the sex. Well, you know, whatever. But for the most part it was like, hey, we’re playing cards. You’re cheating. It gets into a fight, I’m losing. I’m going to grab that knife out of that butcher block, and I’m going to stab you, you know, that kind of thing. Whereas, yeah, I never met a criminal mastermind of any kind.

01:02:00:24 – 01:02:08:14
Patrick O’Donnell
I read that just. Yeah, yeah, there ain’t a whole lot of those running around, thank goodness.

01:02:08:16 – 01:02:11:12
Dan LeFebvre
And John McClane just happens to run into all of them. You know? Right.

01:02:11:18 – 01:02:17:18
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah. Darn the luck. And they all have accents and they’re all really scary.

01:02:17:21 – 01:02:35:25
Dan LeFebvre
Well, from the first Die Hard movie is in 1988, and then the last one is in 2013. There’s like a 25 year span and something that we see John McClane seemingly struggling with in those 25 years is technology that, for example, in Die Hard two, McClane asks his wife how she’s calling him, and she’s like, it’s the 90s now.

01:02:35:25 – 01:02:59:28
Dan LeFebvre
So they have phones on the airplane. And 2007 Live Free or Die Hard is all about hackers, and the movie makes it seem like McClane just doesn’t get along with the new technology. And I know your career as a police officer was also 25 years different years from 95 to 2020. Correct me if I’m wrong on that, but, although it’s not the same years as the Die Hard franchise, it’s still 25 years of changing technology.

01:03:00:01 – 01:03:12:13
Dan LeFebvre
Can you share how cops have used or maybe as individual officers have struggled with technology, like we see McClane seeming to do over the course of the movies, and then your own 25 year career?

01:03:12:16 – 01:03:39:18
Patrick O’Donnell
Yes. When I started in 95, we handwrote all of our reports. The only computer in the whole district station was to run people, you know, in their license plates. And there was only one of those, and there was a couple of typewriters. And you handwrote your reports, you use carbon paper, you used white out, green out, pink out, depending on what the report was.

01:03:39:20 – 01:03:57:15
Patrick O’Donnell
So, you know, it was pretty medieval. And I remember I got like out there and I’m like, where the computers. And some day guy was like, what are you talking about, kid? We don’t need those damn computers. And I’m just like, there was two dictionaries in the assembly that most of the pages were, like, missing out of them and stuff.

01:03:57:15 – 01:04:18:09
Patrick O’Donnell
And I’m just like, oh, God, in my handwriting is terrible. So I’m like, oh, this is no bueno. But, you know, I started out with that and the squad cars had no computers, no cameras. There was no body cameras back then. We didn’t have tasers. You know, people didn’t use a Taser like we’re poor. Big cities don’t have big budgets.

01:04:18:11 – 01:04:51:00
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, we we don’t have the money, you know, so, you know, so we handwrote reports and like I said, there was no squad computers. And slowly that stuff, you know, started coming into fruition. And when we started getting all the computers, etc., I became a sergeant, I was boss. Now the cop on the streets relies on that computer quite a bit, and they have cameras in their squads that automatically turn on when you activate the lights and the siren, you know?

01:04:51:02 – 01:05:11:03
Patrick O’Donnell
And same thing with the body camera. Body cameras came about three years before I retired as a sergeant. I didn’t have to wear one. They didn’t require bosses to wear, so it was something new, etc. I mean, I had a computer in my squad and most of the time I was a beverage holder, you know, or an arborist.

01:05:11:03 – 01:05:28:16
Patrick O’Donnell
That’s the I’d have my arm up either on the computer, like if I was sitting around, you know, smoking a cigar or whatever, like art. I wonder if my cigar fits on that. All right, that’ll work. But but, you know, for the most part, no. And you know, the younger sergeants would make fun of me all the time.

01:05:28:21 – 01:05:55:08
Patrick O’Donnell
Like, you didn’t even turn that thing I did. It did do. I’m like, oh, sure. Didn’t like, I don’t need it. It makes you I mean, they’re they’re great tools, but they also make the cops lazy because you develop an ear for the radio. See, you’re in a district and it’s day shift that might be like 25, 30 cops somewhere in that ballpark.

01:05:55:10 – 01:06:25:27
Patrick O’Donnell
And you keep an ear out for the radio, whereas it’s like, okay, Dan just got sent to a battery, domestic violence actor still on the scene. They send you and your partner now I’m going to keep that in the back of my head because I was like, well, those can turn south pretty quick sometimes. And it sounds like, you know, and the dispatcher says, and there’s sounds of people fighting in the background, okay, initially they’re going to send two squads.

01:06:25:29 – 01:06:47:27
Patrick O’Donnell
I’m going to keep that in the back of my head. Then they’re going to send me to something else. Okay. Even though they sent me to something else, I’m going to keep in the back of my head where you are in case something bad happens. So you develop, in the ears for the radio. And the newer cops don’t have that as well because they’re constantly checking their screen like, we’re okay.

01:06:47:27 – 01:07:05:04
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, Dan is that blah blah, blah. You know, that fraction of a second or 2 or 3 seconds can be a big deal. So I, I was never a huge fan of them. Every now and then I’d power it up if I had to, but for the most part, I just ignored it.

01:07:05:06 – 01:07:24:17
Dan LeFebvre
Were you then being asked to do more and more, just assuming that you could rely on the technology to do some of that for you? I think of, you know, even today, just, you know, a lot of people are doing a lot more things are being asked to do a lot more things in their job because they’re like, oh, well, you can just kind of allow the technology to remember that for you.

01:07:24:19 – 01:07:35:12
Dan LeFebvre
But you’re saying, you know, remembering it in your head, which there’s definitely a benefit to that. But then also I’m wondering if are you being asked to do so much more? Then it becomes hard to remember things.

01:07:35:14 – 01:07:58:21
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, you know that that’s part of it. And, you know, when we did get squad computers, they didn’t have GPS. Now I do believe they have GPS, but I knew the neighborhood that I worked in like the back of my hand. And if I heard, you know, 1234 North Astro Street, I could vision I could visualize it or I’d have a pretty good idea of where it was.

01:07:58:24 – 01:08:21:06
Patrick O’Donnell
The newer kids, they’re not kids or adults, you know, they’re relying on GPS. It kind of makes you dumb, you know? It’s like, you know, they’re they’re looking at a computer screen, whatever. And then another thing, you know, they’re expecting more. It’s like, okay, well, you don’t have to go to the district station to do your reports. You have a squad computer, you can do them on your computer in the car.

01:08:21:09 – 01:08:37:25
Patrick O’Donnell
And it’s like, okay, because I want the cops on the street for visibility sake, too. You know, more cops out there instead of sitting in a district station. But the problem with that is, hey, it’s not safe at all, because where’s your face? Where’s your eyes start?

01:08:37:27 – 01:08:41:03
Dan LeFebvre
Because you’re not looking at. Yeah. You’re not focused on a computer screen.

01:08:41:03 – 01:09:03:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Yep. Absolutely. So I don’t think it’s very safe and it’s really awkward. If you ever try to type with your arms up like this, it’s nothing is. You know, they have all this equipment crammed in this little area and it’s just incredibly uncomfortable. And. Yeah, and nobody wants to sit in the same car for eight hours or 10 hours or 12 hours.

01:09:03:17 – 01:09:08:00
Patrick O’Donnell
You got to get out and stretch your legs. It’s nice to have a change of scenery every now on that.

01:09:08:03 – 01:09:27:03
Dan LeFebvre
I hadn’t thought about that of, you know, if you’re focused on your computer so much that, yeah, I mean, you don’t know what’s going on around you and you’re you always have to have situational. I think even being a citizen, you know, it’s good to have situational awareness, know what’s going on around you. Yeah. Especially when you’re in a car because you don’t know what other people are doing.

01:09:27:03 – 01:09:31:08
Dan LeFebvre
You might be parked, but there might be a crazy, reckless driver out there too. Who knows?

01:09:31:15 – 01:09:56:14
Patrick O’Donnell
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You know, we call it head on a swivel where, you know, it’s like you’re constantly scanning for threats and you don’t have to be a cop for that. You know, I’ve dealt with a lot of victims of crimes, obviously, and a lot of them had zero situational awareness. I never saw them coming. Yeah, because your face was buried in your phone or you EarPods, you know, AirPods in, and you you didn’t hear them.

01:09:56:14 – 01:10:18:11
Patrick O’Donnell
You didn’t see them. You you’re in your own little world. You know, people are like, I get a kick out and people are literally walking into each other now because their faces are buried and it’s like, let alone some like, scary dude that’s going to rob you or do something worse. Do you? You you have no idea. And the same thing with cars, you know, like safety tips for cars.

01:10:18:13 – 01:10:41:11
Patrick O’Donnell
I exaggerate how much space I leave between me and the car in front of me. If I’m rolling up to a red light, I’m thinking of escape plans, you know, because I’ve been to so many carjackings and a lot of them happened up at red lights. You know, it’s like, okay, before you know it, you have some guy who’s shoving a gun in your face and, you know, trying to drag you out of your car.

01:10:41:13 – 01:11:02:04
Patrick O’Donnell
Well, first off, it is like, okay, see that sidewalk? I’m going up on the sidewalk. Yeah, I’m going to drive through somebody’s lawn to get out. But if I’m if I don’t leave any space in front of me, then I have nowhere to go. I’m trapped. I hate that feeling of being trapped. I always yeah, I always try to have some kind of escape route.

01:11:02:06 – 01:11:04:09
Dan LeFebvre
Probably not going through the helicopter like John McClane.

01:11:04:15 – 01:11:09:15
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, yeah, that’d be. That is frowned upon. Yeah.

01:11:09:16 – 01:11:11:00
Dan LeFebvre
Not a viable escape.

01:11:11:03 – 01:11:12:03
Patrick O’Donnell
Yes.

01:11:12:06 – 01:11:22:06
Dan LeFebvre
Well, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask for your take on the one question that everyone always debates when it comes to this franchise in your mind, is Die Hard a Christmas movie?

01:11:22:08 – 01:11:38:17
Patrick O’Donnell
Hell, yes. It’s it’s the best Christmas movie. I love Die Hard as a Christmas movie. I play Die Hard every Christmas. And my kids, you know, they’re adults now and they, you know, they’ve got kids are like, you’re going to like, die. And I’m like, oh, hell yeah. I got to play that and it’s Christmas for God’s things.

01:11:38:20 – 01:11:44:12
Dan LeFebvre
Okay, we’re in agreement on that. Yes, I watch it every Christmas as well. Not the entire franchise, but at least one.

01:11:44:14 – 01:11:45:25
Patrick O’Donnell
No. Yeah, the first one for sure.

01:11:45:26 – 01:12:14:17
Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you so much for coming on to chat about the accuracy of a police officer like John McClane on screen. Before I let you go, I have a two part question for you because not only do you have a fantastic podcast called Cops and Writers, where you help authors and screenwriters write more accurate stories, you’ve also written multiple books yourself, including a brand new book called The Good Collar, and I’ll make sure to add a link to in the show notes for everyone to order right now, before I let you go, can you share a little bit more about your inspiration behind starting cops and writers, and maybe give my audience a sneak peek

01:12:14:17 – 01:12:15:17
Dan LeFebvre
into your new book?

01:12:15:19 – 01:12:22:11
Patrick O’Donnell
Sure. The podcast. I started the podcast almost four years ago, as of yesterday, has been four years.

01:12:22:14 – 01:12:23:22
Dan LeFebvre
And I congrats.

01:12:23:24 – 01:12:38:24
Patrick O’Donnell
Thank you. And as you know, it’s a lot of work sometimes for not a whole lot of reward. But you know, you get to meet cool people. I think that’s the best part of it. Some interesting people that you never would have if you didn’t have the podcast.

01:12:38:27 – 01:12:45:12
Dan LeFebvre
And exactly. We wouldn’t have a chance to talk about John McClane driving through helicopters. I keep going back to that one, but why wouldn’t?

01:12:45:13 – 01:13:16:22
Patrick O’Donnell
Yeah, I mean, yeah, the first. So I started the podcast to promote two books that I just wrote called Cops and Writers and those books were for writers to get their police facts straight, more or less. And I started a Facebook group and I started the podcast to promote my books. Well, before I know it, the Facebook group has 7500 people in it from all over the world, and the podcast grew legs and just took off.

01:13:16:24 – 01:13:29:02
Patrick O’Donnell
And I’m like, I didn’t. And I didn’t at first really mean to do that. You know, all of a sudden it’s like, oh, wow, look at that. People are listening, you know? I mean, you know what it’s like sometimes you think you’re just talking to a microphone and nobody’s listening.

01:13:29:04 – 01:13:36:09
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, for sure. It can be hard sometimes just talking to it, like like you’re talking about, you know, typing on the screen. You just talking to a screen, right? Yeah.

01:13:36:11 – 01:13:56:24
Patrick O’Donnell
Exactly. So you know, and then the as far as, you know, the podcast and everything else, I started out writing other books that had nothing to do with police work and I was going to writers conferences, and I bumped into people and made friendships with people that knew a lot more about this than I do. And they’re like, you should really write a book.

01:13:56:27 – 01:14:18:18
Patrick O’Donnell
You know, helping out, writers, you know, authors and screenwriters. And I’m like, okay, that sounds that sounds like a good idea. And when you go to these conferences, inevitably people are going to be like, oh, you’re that cop guy. And I’m like, I’m not advertising it. I don’t have a t shirt on saying I’m a cop guy or whatever, but and they’re always very respectful.

01:14:18:21 – 01:14:41:11
Patrick O’Donnell
They’re very nice. They’re like, hey, would you need a warrant for this? You know, would my character, would he really do this? Yeah, yeah, she’s a detective. And one would have, you know, blah, blah blah. And I’m like, yeah, I’d be more than happy to help you. So that’s kind of spawned another industry for me where I’ve. Yeah, I’ve, I’ve helped, you know, screenwriters, I’ve helped authors.

01:14:41:11 – 01:15:15:12
Patrick O’Donnell
So it’s been a lot of fun that way. And as far as my newest book, the, The Good Collar, it’s just imagine Dexter, Deathwish and John Wick got together and had a baby. That’s what I love. I love Dexter, I always liked Dexter, and I thought to myself, well, could you think of Dexter? But instead of being the serology, the blood spatter guy, you’d be the police chaplain.

01:15:15:14 – 01:15:43:17
Patrick O’Donnell
That everybody trusts, everybody loves. But he’s got that vigilante thing in them where, you know. Okay, Dan, just, you know, murdered a bunch of orphans. Yeah, and burned the school bus or whatever he did, and he got away on a technicality, and it’s like. So he writes the wrongs and actually the good car, we can circle back to Bruce Willis because he did a remake of Charles Bronson’s Death Wish.

01:15:43:19 – 01:15:45:00
Dan LeFebvre
That’s true. He did, didn’t he? Yeah.

01:15:45:01 – 01:16:01:02
Patrick O’Donnell
Yes. That was you. He played a Chicago E.R. doc and his wife and daughter. I think the wife got killed and the daughter was, like, brutalized in their own home. And he gets a gun and he turns into this, like, Doctor vigilante.

01:16:01:05 – 01:16:06:22
Dan LeFebvre
Well, that sounds like we have a lot of, potential future episodes to talk about, for sure.

01:16:06:25 – 01:16:10:01
Patrick O’Donnell
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

01:16:10:04 – 01:16:12:12
Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you again so much for your time, Patrick.

01:16:12:15 – 01:16:20:01
Patrick O’Donnell
Thank you. Dan.

00:03:43:04 – 00:04:02:21
Dan LeFebvre
Before we look at some of the details of the movie, I always like to kick things off with an overall letter grade. Now, our movie today adds a little extra challenge since it’s ancient history, and that often means there’s a mix of myth and legends as well. What letter grade would you give 2004 as Troy for its historical accuracy?

00:04:02:23 – 00:04:28:04
Neil Laird
I mean, it’s a tricky one, and we’ve talked before in other podcast, and it’s easier when you’re looking at something it happens and not in the full light of history, certainly in history and the Trojan War, as we would talk about is numbers on this, though we know there’s a Troy and other things. So I would say on that level, looking at how it’s based, we say how it is, based on Homer and the story we know.

00:04:28:06 – 00:04:38:25
Neil Laird
I probably give it a C. We’d make a lot, take a lot of liberties, which we’ll get into. Again, we’re not talking about history. We’re talking about are they sticking to the source material?

00:04:38:28 – 00:05:06:19
Dan LeFebvre
Not the beginning of the movie. We see two princes of Troy named Paris and Hector visiting King Menelaus of Sparta to solidify a peace between Troy and Sparta. That piece is short lived in the movie, when parents falls for the Queen of Sparta, Helen, and brings her back to Troy with him, that understandably enrages her husband, the King of Sparta, who happens to be the brother of a Greek power hungry warlord named Agamemnon.

00:05:06:21 – 00:05:21:21
Dan LeFebvre
So that’s basically the Cassius belly that Agamemnon needs to attack Troy. Which the movie also seems to suggest is something he’s always wanted to do anyway. How much of this justification for war between the Greeks and Trojans really happened?

00:05:21:23 – 00:05:45:05
Neil Laird
Well, here’s an interesting, you know, answer to that, because some of that is based on Bronze Age life, and they get that right. Most of the stuff that you talked about didn’t happen at all in Homer. There’s this thing about the Iliad for those who haven’t read it, even though we think about the Iliad as the Trojan years of Trojan War that ends with Achilles death and and the Trojan horse and all that.

00:05:45:08 – 00:06:08:27
Neil Laird
None of that happens in the book. What happens in the book is about the last 50 days of a ten year siege. So when we open up, it’s already the 10th year. Trojans are already frustrated and tired, and they want to go back to Greece. And the Trojans are looking down and thumbing their nose. So all this stuff we talk about is really that great drama between Achilles and Hector and Agamemnon.

00:06:08:27 – 00:06:30:17
Neil Laird
Everything. So we don’t know what spurred on the war. Other than two sources, one is in the Odyssey, if you would call it a sequel, or I suppose the world’s first sequel is about Odysseus getting coming home after the war, also being lost for ten years, and then finally getting back to Ithaca and trying to get Penelope back and all of that.

00:06:30:19 – 00:06:56:29
Neil Laird
And it’s only there we get some information about how Achilles died if we talk about and also about how Paris and Helen shacked up and why. And the little he says with just a few lines is that there was some sort of of meeting in, Mycenae where Agamemnon, the, the king lived, and Paris and Hector were there, and then Helen left with Paris.

00:06:57:01 – 00:07:20:14
Neil Laird
We don’t know. Under duress. We don’t know she fell in love. Most sources suggest that, she actually went willingly. Homer is very ambivalent about it. Helen is barely a character in the play, which is interesting, even though she’s the one that launches a thousand ships. She’s rather passive, so, you know, she knows she loves, Paris. Or if she was dragged off and she’s trying to get out.

00:07:20:16 – 00:07:49:01
Neil Laird
She’s very, very much in the shadows. But conversely, how they describe Agamemnon and how they describe all the tribes of, of, of Greece is quite fascinating as a historian, as someone who loves history. That’s pretty close to how Bronze Age life was. It was very much a series of city states and the Bronze Age, you know, for those who don’t know, it was 2 or 300 years, maybe a bit longer, when bronze was obviously the key weapon.

00:07:49:04 – 00:08:15:14
Neil Laird
And that’s when you had these great empires like the Hittites, the Egyptians, the Mycenaeans, the Phoenicians. It all collapsed around 1100 BC, and Troy was part of that. So we think that the Trojan War happened probably around that around 1180 BC. Towards the end of the Bronze Age. But the way they all basically function at the time was dealing with each other, making pact with each other, and then breaking those pact and then going after each other.

00:08:15:19 – 00:08:41:20
Neil Laird
Troy was a very big city at the time. It was the gateway to the East. Mycenae was one of the biggest cities on the Greek mainland, so it’s highly likely they wanted to form some sort of pact, some sort of economic pact. And if Agamemnon’s modus operandi was to bring down, you know, the greatest empire there, then he had his he had his reasoning in Menelaus, his brother being slighted when his wife is taken.

00:08:41:25 – 00:08:54:29
Neil Laird
So although that’s all liberties taken by the film, by Wolfgang Petersen in the film and whoever wrote it, it is very true to life of what Bronze Age culture could have been. Do it.

00:08:55:01 – 00:09:15:02
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Well, it sounds like basically they’re just taking a few lines of text and then turning an entire movie into a few lines. So obviously a lot is going to be filled in and fictional, but that leads into something else I’ve always been curious about when it comes to ancient texts and such. Do we just assume that they didn’t have fiction writers back then, that everything that they wrote actually happened?

00:09:15:09 – 00:09:20:04
Dan LeFebvre
And when we think of movies today, there’s so many movies that are strictly for entertainment purposes.

00:09:20:12 – 00:09:37:00
Neil Laird
And in a way it’s more that in the Amazon, they say the first historian is Herodotus, and he doesn’t come around to the fourth century BCE. So people didn’t give a toss about the facts back of the day. If you look at mythology of mythologies, the Greek gods and all that stuff, they’re all crazy. They’re all they’re all fantastical.

00:09:37:07 – 00:10:03:01
Neil Laird
People did not pick up a book for veracity. They did pick up, and it did get a gut check on what life was like. So while there was no novel per se, Homer or Homer is called an epic poet. And he’s, you know, he’s he’s, ascribed to these two great pieces. But, of course, remember, in the Greek time, few years later, after Troy, you have, all of the Greek playwrights, the, Sophocles and Eurydice and all those kind of people.

00:10:03:01 – 00:10:20:09
Neil Laird
And those are all fiction. So people very much love to escape into the world of fiction, more so than fact historians and even then was a word yet. So I think when people sat there under a tree listening to Homer tell the Iliad, and it was almost all oral, which is why things changed. They weren’t looking for facts.

00:10:20:09 – 00:10:26:22
Neil Laird
They weren’t saying, wait a minute. Last time you told me that was in life, and it’s 1080.

00:10:26:24 – 00:10:30:21
Dan LeFebvre
And no historical letter grade for for them.

00:10:30:24 – 00:10:35:11
Neil Laird
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exact. You know, in these books, man. Tell me a day. Oh, that’s a good one.

00:10:35:13 – 00:11:01:06
Dan LeFebvre
Well, a couple other key figures in the movie on the Greek side are King Odysseus of Ethical, you mentioned. And then the greatest warrior in the world, Achilles. At Agamemnon’s bidding, Odysseus convinces Achilles and his elite fighting force called the Myrmidons to fight for Greece against the Trojans. And it’s not until later in the movie that we find out Odysseus is doing Agamemnon’s bidding, basically out of fear.

00:11:01:08 – 00:11:11:09
Dan LeFebvre
If he doesn’t, then Agamemnon is going to destroy Ithaca. Does the movie do a good job showing the way Odysseus and Achilles fit into the story?

00:11:11:12 – 00:11:32:15
Neil Laird
No they don’t. They do a pretty dodgy, representation. And again I say again, we talk about the film itself. I think one of the great strengths of the film that I enjoy was Brian Cox’s performance as Agamemnon. He’s this bullish little pug of a man going around. He’s funny, he’s enjoyable, and you know, you like him being a villain in The Iliad.

00:11:32:17 – 00:11:55:02
Neil Laird
He, Agamemnon, is very much full of himself, and he’s very much, full of bravado and makes mistakes, some key ones, which is the crux of the book. But he’s also a hero. He’s still one of the greatest heroes of the day. In fact, I remember when there’s one scene where Hector is asked, you can fight anybody. On a one on one, you know who who would you fight?

00:11:55:03 – 00:12:19:16
Neil Laird
He goes, well, I won’t fight Achilles, Odysseus or Agamemnon. They’re all better than me. So even in the Iliad, Agamemnon is killing men by the dozens. By the thousands. He is a he is definitely a formidable foe. He’s not quite the buffoon, the blustering buffoon that he is in the film. And there’s no there’s no suggestion in the book that Odysseus is his patsy.

00:12:19:16 – 00:12:40:09
Neil Laird
Now, Odysseus, you know, again, he has the great sequel comes up. And if you and I just we read the Odyssey just a few weeks ago, and reminded how many stupid mistakes Odysseus makes, he was often his own worst enemy. But in the Iliad he is not some sort of like patsy for Agamemnon. He very much wants the war to end.

00:12:40:11 – 00:13:05:04
Neil Laird
He wants to get the bloody hell home. And the only way to do that after ten years is to get to to get Achilles, who they cannot win without to rejoin the war. So he is doing Agamemnon’s bidding because he wants to go bloody hell, back to Penelope and he’s sick of it all. So that is kind of whitewashed in the film, and it makes it more like Agamemnon is sort of this big warlord that everybody else sort of like, you know, kowtowed to.

00:13:05:06 – 00:13:07:26
Neil Laird
That’s not quite the way it is in the book.

00:13:07:28 – 00:13:41:01
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Well, that might answer my next question, because that’s I was watching the movie. Something that really seemed odd to me was how clear it was that Odysseus and particular Achilles really don’t like Agamemnon. That’s why Agamemnon doesn’t go to Achilles himself, because, as the movie says, there’s only one man he’ll listen to. But all I could think of was, if Achilles is the best warrior and he and Odysseus and maybe all of these other Greek provinces conquered by Agamemnon really don’t like Agamemnon, why don’t Achilles and Odysseus lead a revolt against Agamemnon instead of fighting Troy?

00:13:41:03 – 00:13:50:01
Dan LeFebvre
Is there anything from history that helps fill in some more context around why so many who didn’t like Agamemnon would still fight for him?

00:13:50:03 – 00:14:11:18
Neil Laird
Because at the end of the day, this is the age of heroes. And when people listened to the play, it was all no, no one, you know, you know, no one’s going to go home. You know, no one is going to go with their tail between their legs and go back. So Odysseus and all the others, Nestor and all the other people, the Ajax, all these other people that are in there, none of them want to disappear.

00:14:11:18 – 00:14:37:11
Neil Laird
None of them. None of them want to end the war. They want to win the war, but they don’t want it. So despite his bluster, they’re still there. They’re on Agamemnon’s side because they want the same thing. They’re all fighting for the same thing, and they’re all heroes. Keep in mind, this is mythology. So everybody is, you know, painted in a way where they’re making great sacrifices and they’re doing it for posterity and that kind of stuff.

00:14:37:14 – 00:14:59:26
Neil Laird
So writing roughshod over the King and then going around him wouldn’t be something that a Greek warrior would do. The Greeks were together. They were a unified force, you know. That said, the key tension in the the both the I keep talking about the book, but of course, the film too is the tension between Achilles and Agamemnon, which is very personal.

00:14:59:26 – 00:15:26:21
Neil Laird
It’s all over a woman, and it’s all like two thin skinned men who can’t get on with it. Thousands die because these two people have these petty problems. So Agamemnon definitely comes across if there’s any villain in the book, like the film, and I think the film wisely chose him as a villain, it is Agamemnon because he sets the whole, slaughter of the Greeks and sets the whole tragedy in motion.

00:15:26:23 – 00:15:49:27
Neil Laird
He he’s too proud to apologize to Achilles after he slighted him. So those are all very personal things. So I think I just see us in the other just kind of want to stay clear of it. It’s going to get back to war. So I don’t think, you know, going around the king who’s who’s the leader of men is this keep call in the book would be the way to do that in a Greek play.

00:15:49:29 – 00:16:12:13
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. That makes a lot more sense because in the movie, it just kind of seems like, Achilles is in the center of it all. And whatever side he’s on, he’s going to win. So why would he bother to fight for somebody he doesn’t even like when he, you know, he can turn the tides as the greatest warrior of all to fight against Agamemnon if he wanted to, whoever, whatever side he’s on is going to win.

00:16:12:16 – 00:16:30:01
Neil Laird
And it’s true. And he is. And certainly in the play, too, they talk about how he’s a fleet footed greatest warrior of all time. He can kill a thousand with one slice. So, you know, and we buddy, you know, the, the, the whole weak army starts to die because he decides to sit the war out of. That’s how important one guy’s.

00:16:30:05 – 00:16:54:06
Neil Laird
So he certainly could take over for Agamemnon. But there’s also in terms of, you know, the one thing, the one thing the film did and it’s got a lot of controversy from, I guess, people who know the place. So well or the poem so well is that got rid of the gods, and I understand why they do. But the one thing that you get when you read Homer that is not in the films is the gods are always meddling.

00:16:54:09 – 00:17:23:01
Neil Laird
So someone is always whispering, you know, Athena is always whispering in and, and, Agamemnon’s ears do this, do that. So they’re all being spurred on by the gods and and of course, the others don’t want to piss the god off by going against their favorite. So you have that key element where all of this is the reason all of these people are the gift of men is because they have help from Mount Olympus and, you know, want to piss off Mount Olympus.

00:17:23:03 – 00:17:26:16
Neil Laird
So you just kind of ride it out.

00:17:26:18 – 00:17:46:24
Dan LeFebvre
You don’t want to piss off Mount Olympus, I like that. Well, back in the movie, the Greeks launched their attack, sending a thousand ships bearing 50,000 soldiers to Troy. The battle begins with Achilles and his Myrmidons landing on the beaches of Troy first, and he leads them in slaughtering the defending Trojan archers. Then they move on to the nearby temple to Apollo.

00:17:47:02 – 00:18:10:29
Dan LeFebvre
Their Achilles kills all the priests and desecrate the temple itself by cutting off the head of a statue and telling his men they’re free to take whatever treasure they want. Hector’s soldiers arrive, but they’re all killed as well, and there are only two Trojans who survive this initial battle. One is Hector, who Achilles lets go free because he says it’s too early in the day for killing Princess.

00:18:11:02 – 00:18:20:06
Dan LeFebvre
And the other is Hector’s cousin Perseus, which Achilles takes as a captive. Is that how the Battle of Troy really began?

00:18:20:08 – 00:18:37:11
Neil Laird
None of that. None of that happened. In fact, I think it’s one of the weakest scenes in the film. I can only imagine they put that in there to show Brad Pitt, you know, being strong willed to get a battle scene early on to show he almost a Troy, all muscled up, annoyed up. And he’s taken charge. Okay.

00:18:37:16 – 00:19:01:09
Neil Laird
You know, remind you again, the Iliad opens in year ten. So they’re already been entrenched in the muddy, you know, camps for ten years. But even then, it’s a very curious and I think a very, very weak sequence because a historically, it’s it’s a mess. Those are, those are Greeks, the Egyptian statues in the back there, basing them more on Egyptian myths rather than anything Greeks.

00:19:01:09 – 00:19:23:21
Neil Laird
And they’re, they’re borrowing from Abydos and, and Abu Simbel and a lot of Egyptian and messing it up with some of the Syrian stuff. They’re making it up by making it look a little Greek, but it’s very much an Egyptian motif, which is totally wrong there. And then also the whole thing just seems so crude for Achilles to come in and start killing the gods and killing the priest and everything.

00:19:23:23 – 00:19:44:02
Neil Laird
It feels like it was done by committee to show an action sequence early in the film, and it does nothing to advance the plot. None of that is is in the book. Achilles and Hector don’t meet until they’re one on one. You know, out front there’s there’s a scene that there’s no sense of that. So no. So actually none of that is accurate.

00:19:44:04 – 00:20:02:21
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Well, maybe it’s like you’re saying doing an action sequence right up front, for entertainment purposes. But also they just mentioned Achilles being the greatest warrior. And so they have to show him being the greatest warrior. And they also point out that in the movie, at least, they point out that clearing the beaches is this great feat.

00:20:02:21 – 00:20:05:16
Dan LeFebvre
And Achilles is basically able to do that by himself.

00:20:05:19 – 00:20:25:04
Neil Laird
That’s true. It’s a good point because you got to show if he is the greatest warrior. We got to see why early on we can’t just talk about it. But of course, all he kills is a bunch of priests in one temple. It’s not exactly the most impressive, win of all time. That’s the whole thing is is a very curious sequence that just rang hollow to me.

00:20:25:06 – 00:20:45:18
Dan LeFebvre
That’s a very, very good point. Well, after that vicious start to the battle on the beaches, Paris offers to end the war in the movie before it goes any further, he wants to fight King Menelaus of Sparta in this one on one battle for Helen. And in this fight, Menelaus gets the advantage of Paris, who then turns to his brother Hector for help.

00:20:45:20 – 00:21:04:27
Dan LeFebvre
Menelaus is about to kill Paris when Hector ends up killing Menelaus, and this just enrages Agamemnon and the Greeks, who then launch a full scale attack on Troy. But according to the movie, they’re driven back and forced to retire to their camp on the beaches. Did this battle between Paris and Menelaus actually happen?

00:21:04:29 – 00:21:30:25
Neil Laird
It did, but not. It doesn’t end the way it does in the film. And another very curious change they make. And again, I think because the filmmaker is just another doing a one off, they’re not they’re not talking about Gregory cos they’re going to be around forever. They’re making one. They’re done. So the beginning starts the way it does in the book where, where Paris, and Menelaos fight.

00:21:30:27 – 00:21:55:08
Neil Laird
And what’s interesting in the book is it’s also makes Paris out to be sort of like the dweeb he is, because he’s very much mismatched by Menelaos. And, what happens there is Menelaos is about to kill him, and I forget which goddess it is, comes and saves them and cocoons them so he doesn’t die. He doesn’t call underneath his brother’s, legs.

00:21:55:08 – 00:22:16:00
Neil Laird
But he’s he is about to be killed by Menelaos, and he survives. That’s how it ends. Menelaos does not die. In fact, Menelaos goes on and he goes back, and he’s a big character in the Odyssey. He goes back to his, his family and his wife and his Greek kingdom, and he has Helen in his arms. Helen goes back with them.

00:22:16:06 – 00:22:38:25
Neil Laird
So when the Odyssey, when Odysseus popped by to say hello, he’s there with Helen and she’s like, you know, mixing up drinks for them is kind of like just popping by. Menelaos does not die. There’s a very curious thing that they did to kill him off. And I guess it is because the characters to it, to a film audience in 2004 don’t have quite the resonance they do to a Greek scholar or something.

00:22:38:25 – 00:22:57:17
Neil Laird
So it’s like a Greek people and they make him very much. He is kind of a crass character in Homer too, so they they kind of get that right where he’s not exactly. He’s he’s not like his brother. He’s a brute. And while he’s strong, he’s not bright at all. He’s definitely a hothead, if you don’t mind. Is probably seeing him die.

00:22:57:23 – 00:23:05:17
Neil Laird
He’s a good person to kill off, but, he is not killed off the way he is. He is, in the book by Hector.

00:23:05:20 – 00:23:11:14
Dan LeFebvre
Okay, okay. It just seems a tad bit different than what we see in the movie.

00:23:11:16 – 00:23:13:22
Neil Laird
But.

00:23:13:24 – 00:23:38:26
Dan LeFebvre
According to the movie, a relationship starts to form between Achilles and the Trojan priestess Perseus. That’s how they pronounce it in the movie that he captured Achilles seems tired of fighting for Agamemnon, so he orders his men to stay while Agamemnon goes to battle. But then, while Achilles is in his tent with Perseus, Achilles belove cousin Patrick List wears Achilles armor and leads the Myrmidons into battle.

00:23:38:27 – 00:23:57:17
Dan LeFebvre
They think it’s Achilles that they’re following, and then when these soldiers fight their way to Hector, Hector ends up killing the man they all think is Achilles until taking off his helmet, and it’s revealed that it’s Patrick was. So that’s how the movie shows Achilles ending up recommitting to the fight against the Trojans to avenge his cousin’s death.

00:23:57:19 – 00:24:00:08
Dan LeFebvre
How much of that is based on real history?

00:24:00:10 – 00:24:17:14
Neil Laird
That is a very, very key point in the book, and that’s very close to what happens. The emotional core of the book is just that. It is it is, and and they say brass, brass. This is different ways of saying it. But essentially the whole plot of the Iliad in nutshell is in the 10th year of the war.

00:24:17:21 – 00:24:39:11
Neil Laird
They’re sitting around, they’re trying to bring down Troy. And one way to do that is to do a bunch of raids and attack the villages and fill up the, the gates with, refugees and then take a bunch of war brides and then, you know, have their way with them. Brass actually comes in that she’s not related in any way to anyone inside the, Troy that is, Achilles.

00:24:39:13 – 00:25:02:25
Neil Laird
War booty from from a recent raid that happens off camera. And, at the same time, Agamemnon gets his own. I forget her name. What is it? Christmas? Or I forgot to say it. And, her father come by and and he’s he’s a priest of Apollo and says, give her back. And he says, as we joke, and I’m going to kill you if you don’t leave right now, I need I need my daughter back.

00:25:02:25 – 00:25:32:24
Neil Laird
I will give you everything I own. Just give me my daughter back. So she’s the daughter of a priestess, not a priestess herself. Agamemnon. And his bluster sends him out, says, I will kill you if you don’t leave now. And as he leaves, he curses them and says, you will regret this. And they do so as soon as the priest leaves, he he calls out to Apollo, who sends a plague down and wipes out half of the Trojans or half of the Greeks, and kills them until his daughters return.

00:25:32:27 – 00:25:56:06
Neil Laird
Agamemnon refuses for a while and then eventually says, oh, you know what? I’ll give her back. I’ll take I’ll take Achilles war bride instead. So he takes braces, brass as as his, as his concubine instead. And that pisses Achilles off so much. He sits out the war, he stops and that’s when things go to shit. So basically, that is all of the unity is really about these.

00:25:56:12 – 00:26:29:10
Neil Laird
These two men and these two women and and these women are pretty powerless. Unfortunately, in the book. But because his, his war bride or his war booty with her car has been taken away, Achilles refuses to fight and they start to suffer a they come and they beg him and they beg him. And it’s only when Patrick class who and in my book and in many other, in many other, historians believe it was, was, Achilles real lover.

00:26:29:12 – 00:26:49:29
Neil Laird
He’s his fucking cousin, but also his same sex lover and they say, well, we have to get them out there if you will not fight. How can we get the Greeks to go out there and fight as if you are? They need to believe you’re with them. So he and Patrick Kless form a, you know, major decision.

00:26:49:29 – 00:27:13:15
Neil Laird
You go out there, you wear my armor, and they think it’s me and they will win. And I still won’t fight because he’s that. He’s because he’s a petulant child, too. Unfortunately, Patrick isn’t as strong as them, and he goes on and gets slaughtered by Hector. So all of that happens. And then then, then when Achilles finds out that his beloved has been killed by Hector, he rejoins the war effort.

00:27:13:15 – 00:27:16:05
Neil Laird
And then Troy falls.

00:27:16:07 – 00:27:22:26
Dan LeFebvre
So many people killed just because of these yes egos.

00:27:22:28 – 00:27:43:04
Neil Laird
It all comes down. These two, these two arrogant men who just refuse to think about anybody but themselves. First, Agamemnon let thousands die because of a plague. Because he won’t give up some random chemical. You got ten women in his tent, and then Achilles watches all his brethren die because they took away this woman who he barely has any relationship with.

00:27:43:06 – 00:28:00:21
Neil Laird
If they’re in love, Homer doesn’t suggest it as much more love, even in Homer between him and Patrick, less than it is in him and her. So it’s a very it’s a very it’s a very strange thing that he just sits out the war and lets thousands and thousands of people he grew up with die because of one woman.

00:28:00:24 – 00:28:24:24
Dan LeFebvre
It almost sounds similar to what we were talking about before, with Agamemnon using the slide against Menelaus as an excuse to do something he already wanted to do attacking Troy. It sounds like maybe Achilles might be doing a similar thing, and using just this minor slight against a woman that maybe he didn’t even really care that much about to do something he didn’t want to do anyway, which is set out to fight.

00:28:24:24 – 00:28:29:11
Dan LeFebvre
Or, you know, he didn’t want to fight, so he’s just going to do that anyway.

00:28:29:13 – 00:28:50:19
Neil Laird
Well, there was there’s one other. And again, the Greek, the Greek writers wouldn’t say this because I think the age of the other hero wouldn’t allow it. But some other people have interpreted his sitting out the war memory as a very early scene in the film where Julie Christie as as his mom, comes and says, if you go to Troy, you will die.

00:28:50:21 – 00:29:14:28
Neil Laird
It is, you go to try, you will live forever, but you will die. Or you can not go to Troy. You will be anonymous and you will have a full life. So? So some have speculated maybe when the reason he sits it out as he realizes, why do I want to die? I’d rather anonymity and live like a human being, then be a hero and then die at age 18 or whatever the hell he is.

00:29:15:00 – 00:29:51:08
Neil Laird
You know that that is not in Homer, but certainly there is. The book is shot through with this idea of everyone becoming immortal. So just by him being there, he will die just by him partaking, because everything is written by the gods. So you could argue that maybe one of the reasons he did it, if you’re if you’re adding some elements and maybe you human but necessary in the Homer original is that he’s sitting it out again because he’s decided that, you know, living forever isn’t worth it.

00:29:51:09 – 00:30:21:10
Neil Laird
There’s a wonderful scene in the Odyssey where, Odysseus is looking. Has he go to Hades? I forget the reason why he goes to Hades, looking for his way home or something. And he meets all the people who died after the war, including Agamemnon and, Achilles. And Achilles says quite famously, I’d rather be a beggar to some man up above than the king of the gods down below.

00:30:21:12 – 00:30:45:01
Neil Laird
And it’s. And then that basically said he’s regretting dying. So when he’s in Hades, when you basically you live forever, but you’re no longer human. He regrets that he would rather be up above being a nobody than down below and being a hero forever. So that is something is very much a theme throughout all of Homer. This idea of destiny, this idea of fate, fate is really what it is.

00:30:45:03 – 00:30:58:02
Neil Laird
And he is fated to die. And if he had one chance to do what it would have been then by sitting at the war. It isn’t until his lover is taken from him that he realizes he has to see his fate through.

00:30:58:05 – 00:31:21:10
Dan LeFebvre
I could see that too. You mentioned this scene in the movie with his mother where he’s, you know, talking about living in immortality. But, you know, in that moment before the fighting actually begins, especially being that young, you might think, oh, this is such a great thing, you know, living in immortality. And then once the fighting begins, you might have a change of heart.

00:31:21:12 – 00:31:26:03
Neil Laird
And keep in mind for what, at the end of the day, they’re all fighting so one guy can get his wife back.

00:31:26:08 – 00:31:30:21
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. And yeah, not even fighting for yourself. You’re fighting for somebody else? Yeah.

00:31:30:24 – 00:31:52:10
Neil Laird
So there’s a bunch of boorish, brutish men that really should just get over it, you know, that he’ll go over and spend ten years and die. And certainly there’s a lot of sequences in the end, home or where people are already sick and they want to go home, and it’s very unpleasant. They’re living in rain among rats and and pestilence, and they’re living in the boats and tents along the shore.

00:31:52:17 – 00:32:06:24
Neil Laird
And, you know, it’s is an ugly existence. They’re away from home. They’re all dreaming about their wives and their families. Most of them don’t make it. So certainly it’s not a rosy picture, what life is like and what war is like in the Bronze Age.

00:32:06:27 – 00:32:31:13
Dan LeFebvre
Well, if we can go back to the movie as soon as Achilles finds out his cousin has been killed, he races to the Trojan city walls and yells for Hector to face him in one on one combat. Hector complies and goes out to face Achilles, and it’s a valiant fight between two great warriors. But Achilles is the better warrior, so he kills Hector and then drags Hector’s body from his chariot in front of the city walls for all the Trojans to watch.

00:32:31:15 – 00:32:37:25
Dan LeFebvre
Do we know if this fight between two legendary warriors happened? The way we see it in the movie.

00:32:37:27 – 00:33:05:12
Neil Laird
It happens that way in the book. They got that right and you call right or wrong again, it’s not. They have to be gospel when it comes to interpreting a 3000 year old. You take liberties that they want, I suppose much, you know, but that is very much what happens. There’s a very strong sequence in the chapter in the book, and by that point it’s very interesting because what what Homer does is he has created sympathies on both sides.

00:33:05:19 – 00:33:25:02
Neil Laird
Hector is a man of honor. And they kind of they kind of do that in the film. They make they make, Paris much more of a dweeb, which maybe he is. But certainly Hector, in both the film and in the poem, is very much the strongest man in Troy, and he is obviously meant to take over from King Prime, his father.

00:33:25:09 – 00:33:46:12
Neil Laird
So his loss would be a great thing. So it is a it is not an evenly match because Achilles is Achilles, but Hector is a very strong and formidable opponent, and he has a lot of people on his side who respect that. So, you know, it is probably the one of the most powerful scenes in the play, or an example in the, the poem.

00:33:46:12 – 00:33:50:25
Neil Laird
Because because you have sympathies on both sides. You really care about the characters.

00:33:50:28 – 00:34:08:05
Dan LeFebvre
Well, that leads you to another question I want to ask about at this point in the movie, because at this point, we’ve seen a few one on one fights, right? And the movie starts with Agamemnon calling on Achilles to fight the Thessalonians champion a guy named boy Grace. Then later, there’s that one and one fight between Paris and Menelaus that we already talked about.

00:34:08:11 – 00:34:17:21
Dan LeFebvre
And now there’s this one on one fight between Achilles and Hector. Historically speaking, were these one on one fights that we see sprinkled throughout the movie? What they common.

00:34:17:23 – 00:34:40:19
Neil Laird
Historically know was certainly in ancient literature. They’re a trait. They were much a trope, like any book you read today. Like any rom romantic comedy, whatever has their own tropes, an ancient ancient story had their troubles and one on one because it’s mano a mano. The first one in the film doesn’t happen at all. Where, Achilles fights whoever that character is, I think it’s only fictional.

00:34:40:22 – 00:35:01:11
Neil Laird
And then you think about it, probably the most famous 1 or 1 fight and all literature, certainly if you read your Bible growing up is David and Goliath. So you have that one that’s already then that’s probably what that was based on. They probably would steal it from that. But then you also have, even in the very obscure Egyptian text called The Tale of Sin, you’re about a guy who leaves Egypt and tries to come back to die.

00:35:01:18 – 00:35:26:18
Neil Laird
He has a one on one battle with an Egyptian, warrior to get in Romulus in the in the Roman legend fights, this warrior name Akron to to bring supremacy, to bring the tribes of Rome together is a trope. And it’s all about kind of like it shows the prowess of one man up against the best and winning.

00:35:26:20 – 00:35:41:27
Neil Laird
So certainly. And you have two of them in the Iliad. And the first one, of course, goes against Hector, and he kind of becomes a, a slobbering dweeb. But the other one is a very emotional crux of the entire, story arc, where you take the two biggest characters and bring them together.

00:35:42:00 – 00:36:08:11
Dan LeFebvre
I could see that, and we even see that in movies, too. If you think about it, you know, you think of these movies with the huge epic battles of thousands and thousands on either side. It’s really hard to honestly care about these huge, just numbers of people on either side. And so you focus in on just a few people on either side, whether it’s ensemble or, you know, composite characters or just these one on ones.

00:36:08:12 – 00:36:13:10
Dan LeFebvre
And so I could see if that’s the case in movies, that would be the same thing in writing two.

00:36:13:13 – 00:36:30:01
Neil Laird
You read The Iliad and, and I recommend everybody. Sure. Because there’s some beautiful stuff in there and it can be very dramatic. There’s a slog to where they go on and on and talk about somebody killing somebody, killing somebody from a small town in eastern Turkey. You don’t know who they are. And it’s boring because yet no emotional connection with them.

00:36:30:03 – 00:36:53:14
Neil Laird
Like any Marvel movie, it’s when the hero fights the villain is that when you think of the classic end of good, the bad and the ugly, where the good, the bad and the ugly have a Mexican standoff and a bunch of close ups and all their eyeballs back and forth. That’s what you want at the end. You want all the noise to go away, and you would have come down on the most primal, which is it’s mano a mano fight to the finish.

00:36:53:17 – 00:37:03:04
Neil Laird
Look me in the eye. And that’s certainly something that goes all the way back to again, David and Goliath and these ancient texts that still resonate today.

00:37:03:07 – 00:37:26:10
Dan LeFebvre
Well, back in the movies storyline, after Hector is killed, the Trojan king Priam sneaks into the Greek camp to ask Achilles for Hector’s body. They remain enemies. The movie makes it clear, but Achilles seems to have respect for both Hector and Priam, so he grants the request. He turns over the body and offers a 12 day peace because, according to the movie, the Funeral Games lasts for 12 days.

00:37:26:10 – 00:37:38:15
Dan LeFebvre
That’s both an Achilles country as well as Priam’s, and so there’s a peace for 12 days. Was there really a 12 day piece during the Trojan War for the funeral of Hector, like we see in the movie?

00:37:38:17 – 00:37:57:17
Neil Laird
What’s interesting is that’s also how the book ends. The book ends right there. That is the last scene of the Iliad, and I think it’s probably the best scene of the movie, too. It helps the a Peter O’Toole in there who can act up a storm. Right. And everybody else have these veterans in there that just by walking in the room, you’re interested in them because they have such presence.

00:37:57:19 – 00:38:03:26
Neil Laird
You know, I wish there was a more prime and maybe less of of, who’s the cipher of the played pairs.

00:38:03:28 – 00:38:08:07
Dan LeFebvre
Orlando Bloom, Legolas from Lord of the rings. Yeah.

00:38:08:10 – 00:38:26:23
Neil Laird
Let’s move forward more. O’Toole would have been my review. That’s very much how it ends. And is also, it finally shows Achilles breaking down because he’s brooding and angry. The entire he can’t get over Patrick Bliss’s death. So, you know, find. And then that’s why he kills Hector. But this man comes to him and I think it’s the best line in the film.

00:38:26:23 – 00:38:45:27
Neil Laird
I forget how it is. It’s kind of I’m paraphrasing again, but it’s something like, Achilles says, if I do this for you, you’re still my enemy tomorrow. And O’Toole’s character, Prime says, you’re still my enemy tonight, but we can still be human or something like that. It’s what so wonderful scene. And I wish there was more of that emotion in the film.

00:38:45:27 – 00:39:09:16
Neil Laird
I think that reminds you of the Achilles. Could have been a real character, as opposed to this sort of pin up, you know, greased up muscle boy. So I think that that suggests to what the film could have been. But yes, there’s very much how the book ends. And in terms of the 12 days, whether that was a whether that was, typical in Bronze Age culture, I don’t know, but that is what they say in the Iliad.

00:39:09:16 – 00:39:26:22
Neil Laird
It is 12 days. And the book ends with Prime getting up, thanking him, taking his boy’s body. And then there’s a paragraph after. Then what? You you hear them burning, you watch them burning Hector’s body and people watching it. And that’s how the book ends.

00:39:26:24 – 00:39:54:27
Dan LeFebvre
Oh, okay. Well, the movie keeps going, so we’ll keep going to, It’s not too much of a surprise at this point in the movie that Agamemnon is just furious when he finds out that Achilles agreed to a 12 day piece without his approval. But then again, the movie also points out that Troy was built to withstand a ten year siege, so it’s not like they can do a lot to get past the city walls anyway, at that point is the movie’s claim of Troy’s city walls being built to withstand a ten year siege.

00:39:54:27 – 00:39:56:27
Dan LeFebvre
Historically accurate.

00:39:57:00 – 00:40:15:11
Neil Laird
I mean, ten years seems outrageous for any kind of war, certainly any war that took place back then. Again, it’s kind of like, you know, 40 days and 40 nights and all these kind of cliches. You Alexander’s 40 thieves. There are some numbers that just fit. And ten year, it’d be a nice long chunk of time where people get a bit miffed.

00:40:15:13 – 00:40:43:19
Neil Laird
So there was no true. I mean, certainly some cities can withstand with withstand sieges forever. Others will fall straight away depending on duplicity or or a crack in the in the wall. So it’s hard to know what the Troy, prime was like. Now, you know, they have found, you know, as we were talking earlier, Troy, we do know Troy exists because, archeology just named Schliemann, found in the 1880s, is some turkey, and you can go there.

00:40:43:19 – 00:41:03:09
Neil Laird
Today is a very disappointing site because it’s all denuded and ripped apart. There’s nothing except for really cheesy, wooden horse in the car park, which is 1970s y, like some Turkish filmmaker making a TV movie. It’s even got a little window. It looks like something out laugh. You know, it’s so cheesy. Got big knobs on it, the stairs going up.

00:41:03:11 – 00:41:28:02
Neil Laird
It is not is not the authentic thing. But Troy stood for a thousand years at some point of Troy up 8000 years now. What level was the Trojan War at? Was probably somewhere in the lower third, maybe like the fourth or fifth layer. They have different strata and I forget right now which one it is. So Troy itself lasted a very long time and Troy was rebuilt after, prime time.

00:41:28:05 – 00:41:51:26
Neil Laird
So it’s, it’s we don’t know how strong it was then. There’s there’s actually Roman ruins there too. So it’s still around in Roman times, so to say that it can withstand a siege X years long, I think is impossible to say. And of course, they saw that. Anyways, with the Trojan horse through duplicity, by getting those doors open, which is one of the most, it’s hard to believe anybody falling for that ever happened in ancient times.

00:41:51:26 – 00:42:01:27
Neil Laird
It’s like, oh, he’s a enormous, enormous wooden horse outside my door. Let’s bring it inside the gates that we’d kept closed for a decade.

00:42:01:29 – 00:42:20:17
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, we still have people filing for Trojan horses today with computer viruses. But that leads right into my next question. Because if we head back to the movie, we’re at the point where we see perhaps the most famous part of the war, the Trojan Horse. The movie shows this idea coming to Odysseus as he’s watching one of his soldiers carve a wooden horse for his son back home.

00:42:20:23 – 00:42:40:20
Dan LeFebvre
And then after the 12 day funeral for Hector, the Trojans come out and they find the Greeks are no longer on the beaches. Instead, they just find some dead bodies with what they think is the plague. That’s something that the Trojan priest there says is retribution from Apollo for the way the Greeks desecrated the temple, alluding to the attack on the beach that Achilles did.

00:42:40:20 – 00:43:00:09
Dan LeFebvre
We talked about earlier when they first landed, when the Greeks first landed. And then they also find this huge wooden horse which they think was built by the Greeks as an offering for Poseidon to grant the Greeks a safe return home. That same priest convinces King Priam to take the horse to their own temple of Poseidon, and that brings the horse within the city walls.

00:43:00:09 – 00:43:14:19
Dan LeFebvre
And then that night, Odysseus, Achilles, and maybe a dozen or so Greeks sneak out of the horse, kill the sleeping guards, and open the city gates for the waiting Greek army. Does the movie accurately portray what we know of the Trojan horse now?

00:43:14:19 – 00:43:35:13
Neil Laird
I mean, again, we don’t even know if the Trojan War happened. And and so you’re asking, asking my reporting on a thesis that’s already flawed. It’s hard to imagine a Trojan War happening, isn’t it? Something torn from met. And it was quite interesting. Otho is definitely the most famous thing from the Trojan War. That and maybe the heel.

00:43:35:15 – 00:44:03:08
Neil Laird
It only gets about 3 or 4 lines. Not in the Iliad, but in the Odyssey, which is asking Odysseus and one of his islands where he’s stuck. How did you get away? And he chose them over like a, like a lamb or whatever. What happened? It’s like a paragraph long. It is a cliff note. So it’s very interesting that, it becomes the most famous name for it because it’s so dramatic and so cinematic and it’s it’s a great ending.

00:44:03:08 – 00:44:22:08
Neil Laird
It’s a great ending on no matter how ridiculous it is. And as you described it, is as how it’s described in the Odyssey. That pretty much is how they do it. I don’t know if it’s a plague. They say they leave, but they wake up and the Greeks all hide behind a, a, promontory out in the bay.

00:44:22:08 – 00:44:39:25
Neil Laird
All the ships, and they act like they’ve left. And they left. They’ve left this, wooden horse behind. Not for the Greek for for Apollo to say, you know, sorry. We’ve been mucking up the earth and mucking about with things. And when we’re out of here and Prime thinks that it’s for them, and he takes it in and they sneak out.

00:44:39:27 – 00:45:06:11
Neil Laird
So yes, that happens as described, in the Odyssey. Did it happen in real life? I think I could hazard or no. We know we don’t know any of these people existed. You know, Neeleman also claimed he found a, the city of Agamemnon. He calls it Agamemnon’s mask in central, Greece. My senior. But we don’t know if it’s Agamemnon.

00:45:06:11 – 00:45:19:16
Neil Laird
He very much wanted to be Agamemnon. These are mythological characters that might have been based on fact. But they were heroes. They were. They were, you know, touched by gods. So they could be as real as Apollo and Athena and all the others.

00:45:19:18 – 00:45:35:00
Dan LeFebvre
Sounds a lot like to, you know, characters like King Arthur and Robin Hood. You know, these stories that there might be fragments of truth here and there, but they’re just built upon for thousands of years that it’s really hard to separate fact from fiction, or how much of it is actually fact at all.

00:45:35:03 – 00:45:54:13
Neil Laird
It could have been an amalgamation of several different people, and they could have been totally invented again, the Trojan War. So, I mean, if you look at the ruins of Troy, it was destroyed many times and burnt, and they think they found the or when Troy of Priam’s Priam’s Troy collapsed. But we don’t know how or why and all those kind of things.

00:45:54:13 – 00:46:04:15
Neil Laird
So it’s impossible to say it happened because of a ten year war of the Greeks. Or it was just spurred by because someone had a space heater out overnight.

00:46:04:17 – 00:46:11:05
Dan LeFebvre
It was the Trojan horse you’re talking about with the window. You know, the sun going through the glass and everything, causing the fire to ignite.

00:46:11:07 – 00:46:14:18
Neil Laird
Anything could have,

00:46:14:21 – 00:46:37:06
Dan LeFebvre
Well, at the very end of the movie, we see the Greek soldiers within the city walls. And once they’re inside, it’s all over for Troy. The city is burning. When Achilles searches for Perseus, she ends up killing Agamemnon when he tries to take her captive. But then Achilles kills the Greek guards to rescue her. And then Paris shows up and he hits Achilles in his heel with an arrow.

00:46:37:08 – 00:46:57:02
Dan LeFebvre
Achilles gets up and Paris ends up hitting Achilles with four more arrows in the chest, but Achilles isn’t quite dead yet. He manages to pull the arrows out of himself, and then Paris and Perseus follow the path that Hector, his wife in drama, shows them out of the city into the island deeper in the island where the Greeks won’t follow.

00:46:57:04 – 00:47:12:09
Dan LeFebvre
And then once they leave, we see a bunch of Greek soldiers showing up to find Achilles die, and the only arrow left because he pulled the others out of his chest. The only one left is the one stuck in his heel. How much of the way the movie ends holds up to historical scrutiny?

00:47:12:16 – 00:47:38:18
Neil Laird
None of that happens except for Paris does kill Achilles with an arrow to the. And I think it is off. It is off camera as well, or off the page. And again, this is from the Odyssey, not from the Iliad, I think. I think maybe when he does, I think when Odysseus goes to Hades and he’s talking to his dead friends, that’s when Achilles tells them, oh, I was I was duped by that little snot, and he killed me.

00:47:38:21 – 00:47:52:08
Neil Laird
But everything else it was didn’t happen. And then, particularly Agamemnon does not die there. Agamemnon is killed, I think, by brass who who kills him in the film.

00:47:52:10 – 00:48:02:16
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, yeah. It’s Perseus. Yeah. Because Agamemnon was going to take her as his own prize. And then she had, like a dagger head, and she ends up pulling it out and stabbing him. Yeah.

00:48:02:19 – 00:48:24:04
Neil Laird
Yeah. And that when he lives and he goes back to, Mycenae. And of course, it’s a very famous great play about that, where he’s killed by his wife and her lover. She’s with someone else for the last ten years. So when he comes back, he’s coldness tub, I believe, by his own wife and. And his wife’s new lover.

00:48:24:04 – 00:48:28:27
Neil Laird
So he goes all the way back to his homeland, only to die that ignoble death.

00:48:28:29 – 00:48:44:28
Dan LeFebvre
I guess I shouldn’t laugh at somebody dying, but, you know, we think of this guy is responsible for how many thousands of deaths because of his own ego. And just the way all the deaths caused. And then he goes back and dies that way, kind of gets what’s coming to you.

00:48:45:00 – 00:49:04:07
Neil Laird
And it is like it happened that way. APT. We’re just kind of like, you know, slipping on a banana. Pause. You’ve taken on the whole world. But all those characters go on to have sort of sequels. Again, as I mentioned, a lot of them show up in The Odyssey, but but other plays are mentioned about some of the survivors after the fact.

00:49:04:07 – 00:49:26:02
Neil Laird
Now Helen disappears from history. Perseus disappears from this. You all the women, women tend to do that. Achilles is dead. Except for his cameo in Hades. Odysseus goes back and becomes a hero, but Priam and even now Prime dies. We assume Priam dies. I think in the book he’s killed by Agamemnon. Doesn’t happen in the book.

00:49:26:09 – 00:49:29:04
Neil Laird
So we can only imagine if a city falls. So does the King.

00:49:29:06 – 00:49:34:29
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, he kind of got the idea of, you know, the captain going down with the ship was the impression I got from the film.

00:49:35:02 – 00:50:02:26
Neil Laird
And the reasoning that you have on. There’s people leaving at the end sneaking out. Paris wasn’t among them. We don’t know if he left, but there was a very famous, Roman play by Virgil called The Animate. And that is basically trying to connect themselves to the Greeks and saying they are the descendants of the famous Greeks. But one could be the one comes to us and starts the Romans, you know, so a hero from Troy.

00:50:03:01 – 00:50:18:13
Neil Laird
So basically when them leaving, that’s pretty much how the army begins. It begins. It begins with them, with with them leaving and picking up the story from the fall of Troy. So that’s sort of setting up for if there was a sequel would have been that the Roman version of what happens next?

00:50:18:16 – 00:50:26:06
Dan LeFebvre
Okay, maybe that’s where King Arthur comes into it, because I know there’s, thought that he might have actually been a Roman centurion. Then led to the the myths that we know now.

00:50:26:08 – 00:50:31:09
Neil Laird
Yeah. If anybody wants to be Roman because they were the top dog for so long.

00:50:31:11 – 00:50:47:20
Dan LeFebvre
Well, the movie does talk about it being like 30, 200 years ago. And you talked a little bit here and there about the Trojan ruins and then talked about some other ruins that obviously you’ve been to as well. Do you think the movie does a good job transporting us back in time 30, 200 years?

00:50:47:22 – 00:51:10:24
Neil Laird
You know, it’s funny, because I’m writing a book about Troy. I talked to some archeologist who’ve dug there, and they put me on to a book. I think it was by Michael Woods, who is an archeologist. An old book back in the 80s. Did a bunch of BBC docs you might have seen back in the day, British Guy, and they said, we all, kind of look at him as being the perfect example.

00:51:11:00 – 00:51:32:02
Neil Laird
He created mock ups of what Troy might have looked like, and the filmmakers must have got that same book because it looked a lot like that. So I think the sets are quite nice, I think, except for mixing up the gods. As I mentioned the first scene, and anytime you see ancient history, those of us who were snobs with that and I’m no archeologist story and I’m a filmmaker and a novelist, do spend a lot of time with those people.

00:51:32:05 – 00:51:50:00
Neil Laird
You see a bit of a Hittite, a bit of Egyptian, a bit of a Phoenician, whatever is cool looking, winged, all the Syrian winged bulls, you know, next, next up ball and all this stuff it all makes are exotically ancient. But I thought in terms of how the walls looked and how the city looked, it captured it quite a nicely.

00:51:50:00 – 00:51:54:21
Neil Laird
It transported me. I wasn’t sort of like sniffing my nose at it.

00:51:54:23 – 00:51:57:10
Dan LeFebvre
It’s whatever looks good on camera, right?

00:51:57:12 – 00:52:03:20
Neil Laird
Yeah, it has epic. It has to look epic. And I think they did that. Yeah.

00:52:03:22 – 00:52:21:04
Dan LeFebvre
Well, you mentioned you’re writing a book and this is just been a lot of fun to dig into the myths, legends and history behind Troy. Now, before I let you go, I think anyone who is a fan of historical stories that we talked about today would love to read your historical novels. So can you share a little bit more about those?

00:52:21:09 – 00:52:29:24
Dan LeFebvre
For anyone watching the video version of this, I am holding up Prime Time Pompeii. But you also have prime time travelers. And could there be a prime time Troy on the way?

00:52:30:00 – 00:52:33:14
Neil Laird
Maybe.

00:52:33:17 – 00:52:59:06
Neil Laird
Yeah, it’s a series and it’s not hard. You know, I have a TV producer by trade. I’ve been to the last 30 years making historical documentaries for BBC, National Geographic right now, working for the History Channel. So I work for all of them. And my bailiwick has always been history archeology. And I’ve been to some 70 countries and, you know, after traveling and all, doing all these footnoted scripts, that it were all the, all the facts had to be exact, like we’re talking about right now.

00:52:59:09 – 00:53:14:26
Neil Laird
I’m doing exactly the same thing the filmmakers are trying to do, and I’m making shit up. And I wanted to have some fun with what I know. So Prime Time Travelers is about a TV crew, kind of, you know, fairly cheesy, ancient aliens, like TV crew who find order to the past and it allows them to tour the ancient past.

00:53:14:26 – 00:53:33:22
Neil Laird
Hopefully to win an Emmy, and they get sucked into the great events of ancient times. The first book is them going back to ancient Egypt during the times of Ramses the Great, and they have to find a mummy in the Duat, which is the 12 hours of hell, before the sun rises. So I get all the mythology of Egypt.

00:53:33:22 – 00:53:57:01
Neil Laird
I was able to bring in there and recreate ancient Egypt in that the New Kingdom under Ramses the second book, they time travel back to Pompeii and the eve of Pompeii. With that, with a snooty, TV host, you know, along with that, you just can’t wait to die. And I won’t do it anyway. Yeah, well, let say let’s just say, you know, things happen.

00:53:57:03 – 00:54:19:21
Neil Laird
And when I mean, in the third book, which I’m writing right now, prime time Troy, they go back to ancient Troy, with the invite of Achilles, and they set up there is exactly what I’m talking about before Achilles realizes, oh, you people can change history. You can make documentaries, make people live for forever without being in a without being in an epic poem.

00:54:19:28 – 00:54:26:13
Neil Laird
I don’t want to die. And I will give you a ringside seat to Troy if you figure out how to let me live.

00:54:26:15 – 00:54:34:06
Dan LeFebvre
Okay? And that’s like living forever. Like, literally living forever or like living forever throughout legend.

00:54:34:08 – 00:54:50:25
Neil Laird
So he wants. He wants it. He wants to become a human being used to go for Patrick and live a life of happy the Patrick list. So. But but he’s also, you know, a hero of the book and he basically wants them see if you if anyone can change the past the time travel TV producers can because you’ve done it twice now so that the hope and see it.

00:54:50:25 – 00:55:14:14
Neil Laird
Of course he’s got a few tricks up his sleeve, but you can’t quite trust him. So basically all these books are in a way to kind of have fun with the past, with mythology, with history, don’t screw with time and all that stuff. But I also it’s I just want to be able to take all this stuff I know about the ancient world around Greece and Egypt and just get people excited about it was not a heavy treatise on,

00:55:14:16 – 00:55:31:07
Neil Laird
And, you know, you don’t have to read Homer. My book is you get a reading, Homer, let’s just say. And it’s fun, it’s comedic. So obviously it’s if you skewers television as much as anything else. So it definitely is a lighthearted way of time traveling to, very violent, distant times.

00:55:31:09 – 00:55:43:28
Dan LeFebvre
I imagine maybe thousands thousand years from now, you know, people will take just a few lines from your book and make another movie similar to what they did with Troy and with Homer’s writings from thousands of years ago.

00:55:44:01 – 00:55:51:27
Neil Laird
Or, oh, this is the only thing he survived. And I assume that time travel was real and that the gods are really a bunch of TV producers. The cameras.

00:55:51:27 – 00:55:54:07
Dan LeFebvre
Yes, yes.

00:55:54:09 – 00:56:09:12
Neil Laird
Yes, the incidents of history are amazing. It’s I love like what survives and what doesn’t. And that’s all sometimes we know about entire culture because one papyri, you know, was, was, was, you know, saved underneath a falling pillar. So that’s all we know about an entire culture.

00:56:09:14 – 00:56:25:18
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. I sometimes it’s just luck. Right. Well, I make sure to add a link to all your books in the show notes. So that we can increase the chances of it living forever. Thank you again so much for your time, Neal.

Dan LeFebvre  02:21

Before we look at some of the details in the movie, if you were to give Maria an overall letter grade for its historical accuracy, what would it get?

Sophia Lambton  02:31

I would give it a G. So it’s going off the scale of customary grades here.

Dan LeFebvre  02:38

Doesn’t even count as a traditional letter grade. The opening scene of the movie is Maria’s death, but it’s also how it ends. And then most of the movie itself is the final week of her life, and we get flashbacks of Maria’s earlier life here and there that will throughout the movie that we’ll talk about. But let’s start today by filling in some of the historical context, because since the movie is focusing on that final week of her life, we don’t really get a lot of who Maria Callas was. So for listeners who aren’t familiar with who Maria Callas was, can you feel in some more historical context that we don’t see up until the timeline of the movie starts,

Sophia Lambton  03:18

Maria Callas was a Greek American soprano. She was born to Greek parents in Manhattan on the second of December 1923 she had pretty negligent parents. They were quite first of all, they just didn’t love their daughters, especially the mother, Evangelia. But the father George was also not great. He He had trouble sustaining contact with his daughters through the years, and at one point, when callous and he actually did an interview together, he couldn’t remember he got the dates of both daughters birthdays wrong in public. In an interview, he was a pharmacist, they were not well off. When callous was 13 years old, Evangelia decided to take her and her sister, yanti, who was known in America as Jackie, and generally as Jackie to Athens, Marie Kals, began performing very, very early. She was actually, according to her cousin Mary annexy, she was actually singing whilst playing with a ball, even at the age of three, and by the age of five, she was parading around the living room with a with her other cousins, shawl singing the habanero, or just fitted Dan Yeah, from the opera mignon, which isn’t even that popular in opera. She actually began entering radio contests at the age of think it was 12 and, well, I’ll, I’ll share more on that later. But she had quite a difficult time during the war in Athens, not just the war that we know of, but also the Greek civil war between communists and allies of the British, which was actually bloodier in Athens than World War Two. She came back to New York in 19. 45 trying to make a career, and reunited with her father, whom she hadn’t seen in eight years. But that didn’t help her much, so she went to Rona in June 1947 and little by little, she both made a career, but she also met her husband, Giovanni Battista minigini, a man 28 years her senior, who was not at all attractive, but she was not really she didn’t have a big interest in men or romance, per se, so she did love him. He was a father figure to her, and she she saw him as a nurturing man. He also became her manager, but in his over greed, he actually inadvertently calls for a bad reputation, because he demanded too much from opera houses. Demanded too much pay from opera houses, you know, spread rumors about other soprano she would never have spread herself anyway. They began to have marital problems because he kept insisting she’s seeing more and more at a time when she was really having very severe vocal problems. And finally, I’ll get to this more detail later on. But finally, he admitted he had invested their money in forgeries as paintings. And she said, Well, I’d like to take over my own career. And he said, No, that’s not going to happen. And he left her. He left her coincidentally, truly, coincidentally, as a time when she was when they were both socializing with the Greek shipping magnate, Aristotle Onassis. And later on, later on, she began a relationship with Onassis that lasted for actually, it didn’t last much longer than eight and a half years. But throughout that time, having got I forgot to mention so she was building her career. Obviously, that what made her absolutely unparalleled was the fact that she could sculpt her voice. She could sculpt the tamper of her voice to really incarnate a character to the point that you sometimes don’t even recognize the voice. So you’re hearing a Japanese, 15 year old Japanese Geisha in the voice of a 3031, year old, a Greek American soprano who, by that point, was living in Italy, she took insane artistic risks that other singers generally do not take, because it’s it’s perilous for the voice, and her vocal decline is not exactly a mystery, but there were multiple factors going into it, various health problems, and that was the main plight of her life. Later on, actually, she she dumped Aristotle and asked us three months before he, quite famously, married Jacqueline Kennedy. During those three months after she dumped him, he kept trying to get her back, but she wouldn’t take his calls. He sent her bouquets. She you know, she just, she was actually traveling around the United States and Mexico, and was not answering his calls, but she did not know he was going to marry Jack Mackenzie, and was obviously hurt when he did later on. She knowing that she had this terrible vocal decline. I will have a mention that she never retired, and we’ll get to that point further on in the podcast, she never retired, so her career was never suspended or ended. But there were periods when she sang less because she was going through various health problems and that was impacting her voice. And she tried a film career. So she tried. She played the role of Medea in Pierpaolo pozzolini, Medea in 19 it was shot in 1969 came out in 1970 in the US. She tried being an opera director in Turin, where she and her tenor partner, Giuseppe DiStefano, who actually later, or actually around that time, in 1972 was already her lover, they tried staging Verdi’s events, but that didn’t fit her either. And she also tried giving master classes at the Julia School of New York series, master classes from October 71 to February 1972 which are all recorded and all on YouTube, and they’re tremendous fun. And this was later on, much later on. This inspired a play by Terence McNally called master class, which was on Broadway. It got Zoe Caldwell Tony, I believe it’s actually a very fictitious play, but the master classes themselves were fascinating. However, she found she didn’t really like teaching that much. She did have a big comeback tour with Giuseppe Miss Efrain from 73 to 74 when her voice was ready in a very, very bad way, and she considered many projects later on before Well, her health just kept getting worse, but also her voice just was not recoverable for various reasons. However, she was considering projects and practicing, rehearsing for projects up to her death. This film is apparently focusing on the last week of her life, but it’s very misleading even about that, because there have been various portrayals and perceptions of Mary camps being this terrible recluse at the end of her life. And yes, it is true that she did not go out as often she had. She was very, very unhappy, apart from the fact that Onassis, by that point, had died, because people tend to center her sadness on this, but also her dear friend, the film director, lucchinov. Ganti, who had staged her in opera, had also passed away not long after Onassis her dear friend Pier Paolo Pasolini, who had directed her only film, ROM role, had been brutally murdered at I don’t remember what age he was about. Her rating was about 5152 she had gone through various losses. She couldn’t understand why she couldn’t recover her voice. So it’s not just that, oh on US has died and then she didn’t eat the house. That’s absolutely not true. In the last week of her life, she met up with Princess Grace. So Grace Kelly, who had who then became Princess Grace, she had lunch with her and the conductor Franco manino, a longtime friend of hers, reminisced about the past. She was also going to meet with the French choreographer Maurice Baja to discuss a potential project, some kind of film about singing with him. She actually was on the phone with a woman I interviewed, Bettina Brentano, who was still only a kid then, I think, 18 years old, so just about an adult. And she told Bettina, they Betina told her. They told me often, because Bettina was going to undergo an appendectomy. But by the afternoon, Mary calles had died, and she was also planning, according to George Moore, the president of the Metropolitan Opera Association, she was planning to visit him in Sotogrande, Spain. So it is not the case that she alienated herself from everybody and shunned everybody and said, No, I’m not going to talk to anybody. The head’s true, but the ending of her life was very sad. It was obviously quite premature, because she died at 53 but she was still very determined to Pierce, persevere and to survive.

Dan LeFebvre  11:33

Wow, yeah, it seems sounds like she had so much more to her than obviously we see in the movie, because we don’t really see much of her actual life in in the movie, it just kind of focuses on the end there, but the talking about the strain that it had on her voice, and just just the performances and opera that taking chances like that, but then getting into acting and teaching and all these other things too, was that something that was uncommon at the time, that she was doing things and then just almost mentioning her husband pushing her to do that was, was she being pushed to do more and more things that were strenuous and putting even more strain on her?

Sophia Lambton  12:13

Well, that’s a really good question. Dan, actually, because her career became very young, she sang, she was, I told I mentioned everything radio conscious. I think 11 was the first one. She was 11 when she entered the first one. She made her she sang her first role at the age of 15. Later on, she would say, my mother pushed me. But we also know that she herself was a performance geek from a very young age. She was very determined to succeed. She would say, reflecting back on her teenage years that she would work, she would work toward performing because she went, she actually attended two conservatories, the National Conservatory in Athens and the Athens Conservatoire, but she didn’t graduate from either one because she didn’t attend the mandatory harmony classes, as she thought the teacher was bad and she failed to examine music history. But she was a geek when it came to performance, and she would work from 10am to 8pm every single day. And she would reflect, reflect on it, saying, but you know, you would ask, well, didn’t I want to go out? Well, no, I had no interest in going out. I that was what she was. She wanted to she would say, the poet speaks of the mind’s eye. There is the mind’s ear. There is so much you can do even without a piano. And she would talk about rehearsing operas in her head, just on the bus in Athens during the war. So she she pushed herself harder than anybody else. Now, in terms of her vocal strain, that’s the whole giant topic, whether she pushed herself so hard that she handed is a difficult question. Is also the subject of her weight loss, which could have had an effect, but primarily what caused vocal decline was damage to the stomach muscles, which ruined her support, the support of her vocal apparatus, because her vocal cords were always fine. And she went to various kind of doctors, laryngologists, lung doctors, you know, she went to see all the specialists. And it wasn’t her ailment, in terms of her vocal decline. That wasn’t anything, uh, visible. It wasn’t something you could identify and say, Oh, so this happened, but she did get uh, several hernias, including one which she said was in the diaphragm, which would have also, uh, apparently it pushes out through the diaphragm, and she said it, she herself said it damaged her stomach muscles in terms of, was she being pushed to do things her husband when they were together, she was at the peak of her career, really the peak of her career. We’re talking 5758 59 Yeah, he wanted her to do things she didn’t want to do. He also tried to get her to sing when she felt unwell, so when she had the flu or bronchitis, and she did push herself through that, but she was also pushing herself through that because the media was giving her an unfair reputation as a diva, which was partly because her husband was demanding higher salaries, kind of to her, not to her knowledge. So she kind of left him in charge of all that, and didn’t want to. Have much to do with also because she had various arguments with Opera House managers, because she wanted everything to be perfect, not for herself, but for the composers. She always used to say, I am a servant of the composers. She was very self Lovick. She never thought she was giving enough, but she herself wrote an article for a French newspaper called out with just the arts, basically in 1958 saying, I will not, I cannot stand by and see opera being treated in a shabby or second rate way. So it was never about making life easier for her. It was about making life, making the world of opera as best as it could be when her husband did, and we’ll get on to this later on, when her husband did want her to do projects that she didn’t want to do, like film, for instance, he wanted her to be in. She was offered the role, the leading lady role in Carl Foreman’s The Guns of Navarone. I think Carl Forman was produced with that which eventually starred Gregory Peck and Irene papas. She was offered the leading role in the German film called the Prima Donna. She was offered some kind of gig singing in a cabaret at Las Vegas, and that’s when she told her husband, no, this isn’t me. I sing opera. I don’t want to do some stuff. And she and she didn’t, in terms of the master classes and directing evasive Giuliani in Turin and starring in Medea, those were more. Those were her trying to find herself in other ventures, and she tried, she really committed to them, but she never felt quite at ease in any one of the three. But that’s a later callus that doesn’t have anything to do with her husband, because those ventures started in 1969 she split from her husband in 1959

Dan LeFebvre  16:38

if we go back to the movie, kind of throughout the movie we see a character named mandrax. He’s played by Cody Schmidt McKee, and he’s interviewing her throughout the movie. But it doesn’t really take long, as was watching the movie, to figure out that he’s not a real person. Mandrax is the name of a drug that she’s taking quite a lot. There’s a one scene in the movie where we see Maria’s Butler, frucci, oh, keeping tabs on how many she’s taking, and it seems like she’s taking at least four pills a day, along with some other medications. The movie doesn’t really talk about why she’s taking it and some of these other medications, so I thought maybe she was perhaps ill. You kind of talked a little bit about some of the vocal decline in that. But then there’s towards the end of the movie, not to get ahead of our timeline here, but begrudgingly, she gets some blood work done, and a doctor flat out tells her that she tries to sing the extra stress and medications that she’ll need to get through that will kill her. So can you unravel this whole mandrax thing that we see in the movie and how it played into if there was an illness that Maria had?

Sophia Lambton  17:36

Oh gosh. Well, first of all, she did not have any kind of substance abuse disorder at all. She was not addicted to pills. She did take a pills called mandrax to sleep. She had terrible insomnia problems. And on two occasions in her life, it is true that on two occasions in her life, she accidentally took too many so and it was hard to wake her up. So that was on the 17th of February, 74 when she was supposed to sing at Carnegie Hall, and four years, almost four years before that, on the 25th of May, 1970 but those were accidents caused by the fact that Maria Callas was, to be honest, quite an ignorant person when it came to anything except mutual sorry, music, music and culture at large. She her entire schooling. Her entire schooling, except for music, finished at the when she was 13 years old. Wow, she did not graduate high school. She went from her mother taking her from New York, from middle school to enlisting at a Conservatoire, being asked by her mother to lie and say she was 17, you know. And she also did not have close relationships with her parents. Her sister, that was a tricky relationship. So nobody. There was no guidance to say other than the fact that in those days, you know people, her generation typically do not know much about pharma, pharmacological things in general, you know tablets or anything else. But there was also no guidance to tell her about this. So there were two occasions when she took too many but she did not have a disorder. She was not addicted. She was not dependent on these tablets. It is true that in the last couple of years of her life, she really, really had problems sleeping, and she did ask her sister Jackie to send them from Greece because they were not on the market. But I don’t understand why that’s such a big deal when they were, for instance, they were, they were not on the market in Paris where she lived. That’s true, but they were on the US market until 1983 so we’re not talking about some forbidden, you know, forbidden, taboo drug. Here she was, however, yeah, so I will mention, also in the film, it’s, it’s completely fictional, because the doctor mentions her liver. And Marie Kellis did have many health problems. I never heard about anything wrong with her liver from her or anybody else. Ironically, I actually remember there’s at one point she says, Onassis liver is okay, but there was never anything about her liver. She had so many problems throughout her life. She was such an unwell woman for. First of all, and most of all, she had, or you could say, lethally, low blood pressure, because eventually she died of a heart attack, but was mostly spurred on by her blood pressure. But she pushed herself and pushed herself, and at one point in May 1965 performed Norma, which is one of the most difficult operas for any soprano, when her blood pressure was 70 over 50, so she would just push herself and push herself. She had had an underactive thyroid in her youth. She had eczema, she had acne, she she had such low blood pressure she could drink 10 espressos a day. She had allergies to antibiotics, which meant that when she in 1958 when she had she had an, I won’t say what it was, because it was an embarrassing for her. It would have been an embarrassing gastro, gastroin, gastrointestinal, yes, gastrointestinal thing that caused it made her have an operation. She couldn’t have painkillers after them because she was allergic to the painkillers. But she performed il Perata, which is one of Opera’s most difficult operas ever. The next day, when she got on a plane, her legs would be swollen in this film, at some point, Angelina Jolie’s character Maria, says her legs went purple. Don’t know where that came from. Her legs never went purple, but her legs would be swollen because her circulation wasn’t that great, which is what happens to people with low blood pressure. She would suffer from terrible migraines. She had allergies to various herbs, including garlic. She would have anemia in about 1970 I think she had cerebral anemia, which is a particular kind of anemia. She would be diagnosed with exhaustion at various points in her life. She had jaundice at various points in her life, and also at various points in her life, she got laryngitis, bronchitis, pharyngitis, trachetitis, which all disturbed her performances, because obviously they have an effect on your voice when she did finally die. This happened shortly after she had complained to her doctor that she felt pain on the left side of her back, which was obviously a precursor to a heart attack, but he he attributed it to flu and rheumatism. It is, however, also true that she had been diagnosed with dermatomyositis, which is an autoimmune disorder by a doctor called Mario Joker. So Marco jocovid. So I remember his name is Joko. That’s it. Marco Mario. Okay, sorry, I don’t remember for this moment that was an autoimmune disorder. And he then later speculated much, much later in about 2002 so decades after her death, he said maybe that caused a vocal decline, but the median prognosis for somebody with that disease is about 12 years, 12.3 years, for someone receiving treatment and her vocal decline. You can speculate when it began, but it was already very present. By 1957 she died in 1977 so I don’t think she had dermatomyositis, untreated and survived for 20 years, but that caused a violet tinge on her neck and wars on her hands. So she did have very many ailments, obviously. I mean, I say obviously, obviously. I’m not a doctor. She also didn’t have a post mortem, but she had a heart attack. She collapsed in front of you. Mentioned her button of filcho. She collapsed in front of him and her maid, Bruna, who was also fictionalized in this film, they were there when she died. She clapped. She had a heart attack. She died in terms of, was her singing killing her? I wouldn’t go that far for sure. And she was never told by any doctor, if you sing, you will die. She was, however, advised against singing because of her exhaustion at various points, and she often did it anywhere because she feared terribly. She feared being villainized by the media and being described as a diva who refuse to go on stage. Because, instead of saying no, I mean, I know the media have to exaggerate and have to have clickbait headlines. And Callis, by the way, understood that too, she would say, I know, you know, they have to fill their pages, and they have their job, and I have mine. But instead of saying, recalci goes on stage despite having blood pressure of 70, over 50 or, you know, despite being very ill, they, they would say every time she had to cancel or suspend a performance, Marie Council does again. She’s a diva. She’s unruly, uh, they were not interested in reporting on her health at all. Um, so, yeah, that’s, that’s a story that’s just a little bit of her medical history, correct

Dan LeFebvre  24:21

me if I’m wrong. But with that, and then what you’re talking about earlier, with with her husband kind of being almost like a manager for handling all the business side, but then also with her not having a lot of schooling and focusing more on just the creative would it be correct to say that she she trusted, say her husband or or others, for a lot of that diagnosis, and she was that really just focused on pushing herself creatively, and then whatever the consequences were, she not being a doctor herself, just kind of trusted whoever was giving her advice at the time, whether it be her husband or doctors or. Wherever that may be,

Sophia Lambton  25:00

I would say that’s pretty much correct. But, yeah, she was a workaholic, and she really ran herself ragged. But even in July 1957 when she was diagnosed with exhaustion, and the doctor said, you really should cancel the next performances of La sonambola, she didn’t. She didn’t. She had previously asked for four instead of five. And there was then a scandal, because the manager, I can’t remember, who was organizing it, didn’t understand that she was going to sing the fifth one. So instead of the media saying there was a mix up between her husband, her manager, and it was, it was a La Scala production, but it was performing in Edinburgh and saying that there was a mix up between my guinea husband and it wasn’t getting Getty. Someone else was organizing it anyway. Do you remember the the guy? The name of the guy organizing this round was an ambulance. The media said, Oh, there she is off again, canceling performance because she’s such a big celebrity, and she thinks she has, she thinks she’s entitled to, and of all of all adjectives, Maria Carlos was not at all entitled. On the contrary, she was. She could be quite self loathing, and she endlessly tore herself to pieces feeling she hadn’t given enough.

Dan LeFebvre  26:12

Yeah, yeah. But that passion that she, I mean, you don’t get to that level without loving what you’re doing. And she obviously loved it. And you’re saying, you know, the hours that she practiced even, even as a child to get there, I mean, and then being a workaholic, you’re just gonna run yourself to that, to your own detriment, even, I think we see that happen a lot with with a lot of people, yeah,

Sophia Lambton  26:34

yeah. I mean, rehearsals until 3am and then to continue, you know, a record that was only 40 minutes long. Took her 40 hours to record and add another for another record. She spent 12 hours on, no, sorry, she spent three hours recording 12 bars of an aria because she didn’t like the way it was coming out. Wow,

Dan LeFebvre  26:57

wow. Well, I have a feeling I might know the answer to this next one. But in the movie, mandrax is not the only hallucination that we see her having. We see orchestras and choruses in various places that she’s going, but then not you mentioned her sister. And near the end of the movie, she gets to her sister comes to visit, and she grasps onto her sister arm to see if she’s even really there. Do we know if Maria saw hallucinations, like we see happening in the movie?

Sophia Lambton  27:27

No, Maria did not see hallucinations, except for when she was four years old, shortly after she got knocked over by a car. She kind of dramatized this when I don’t know how well she remembered it, but she remembered it as I was in hospital for three weeks because I got knocked over by a car, and I saw in my head hallucinations about music, which were fascinating and stimulating. But I don’t know how much of that was true. That was adult Maria, remembering four year old Maria, but other other than when she was four years old, she never reported hallucinations. She did have insomnia, and she did wake up quite late by the last two years of her life or so, so typically waking up midday or one o’clock. But no, she did not suffer from hallucino. Because, what I mean, why would she have suffered from because she would, that’s the thing. It’s bizarre. Mandrax was prescribed primarily as at least for her, it was a sleeping pill, right? And she didn’t have a substance abuse disorder, but she took them to sleep. I don’t know how this movie continues. Can insinuate she was taking them four times a day when she wasn’t asleep for the full day. You know, she takes

Dan LeFebvre  28:29

it right before she goes out. You wouldn’t take a sleeping pill right before you’re going out.

Sophia Lambton  28:35

Oh, by the way, I also forgot to mention that she had glaucoma. She had to take eye drops every at one point is every half hour. Maybe later on, it was every hour, but yeah, she was also going blind for some reason. This, this movie which wants to be so dramatic and serious, doesn’t touch on that, but it makes up hallucinations when she actually was losing the ability to see. Having already been severely myopic her whole life, she was very short sighted when she was on stage, she couldn’t really see anything. But she preferred it that way, because that way she felt she was on her own world. So she wouldn’t put in contact lenses. At one point, she accidentally left them in. So she would wear contact lenses in the daytime, and at one point she actually lent she accidentally left them in a torsca in Paris in 1960 this would have probably been 1965 and then she told her friend, Michelle glords, who was produced at EMI France, the record company EMI France, which is now Warner Music, she told him, I was completely overturned. I saw my colleagues, I saw the props, I saw the audience members scratching their heads. I was she said I was literally overturned. And I was shocked. And you know, she was horrified, because she felt so exposed. Because, other than that, she would come on stage before every before, well, yeah, during rehearsal, she would create a mental map of all the props in her head, because she had to know where everything was not, so as not to bump into everything, bump into anything. At one point, actually, her friend Stelios galatapos, who’s a music critic. Who then actually wrote one of the, one of the better books about her, quite a quite a good book about her. Remembered she was playing Medea, and she lost the dagger, the dagger she was using to kill her children. She lost it at some point, and she had to feel for it. And the way she felt for it was remembering where that the sound of the metal falling had landed by ear. I mean, that’s

Dan LeFebvre  30:22

impressive. I mean, just being able to remember all of that for each performance, because I’m sure you know, the stages in around the world that she’s performing are going to be different every time, and I don’t have that kind of memory either, wow. Well, if we go back to the if we go back to the movie. You already talked about some of this, but the way that the movie shows her being forced to stop singing, she we don’t see it happening, but she visits this theater to privately practice. There’s only one guy there who’s playing piano for he’s never really named in the movie. By looking at the cast listing, it’s Steven ashfield’s character, Jeffrey Tate, and Maria tells him that her last performance was in Japan about four and a half years before the time of the movie, she got a hernia. Her legs turned purple as you talked about it not happening, and everything swelled up. We don’t see that happening, but then we do see a scene with Maria burning her theater dresses at her home in Milan, which movie seems to suggest was a symbolic gesture of marking the end of her career. How well does the movie do telling the end of her career, although, as you mentioned earlier, her career never really seemed to end. So I feel like I already answered that one.

Sophia Lambton  31:34

Yeah, it’s, this is all very mixed up, because it’s not based it’s it’s taken various elements out of context that have nothing to do with so there’s her vocal decline, and then there’s a whole costume burning thing. So it’s true that she burned her costumes, but it had nothing to do with her vocal decline, and it had nothing to do with the progression, or, on the contrary, the devolution of her career. So Rhea Callis had a very interesting career until 1953 until about the spring of 1953 she was a very, very heavy woman. I don’t know. Did you? Did you know this? Dan, so she was very, very overweight from about the age of 18, 1718, because she wasn’t an overweight teenager at all. Rather, she wasn’t overweight young teenager child. But she then gained a lot of weight, and so she was a very, very heavy woman. And then in about spring of 1953 she realized that she couldn’t carry on that way, because firstly, was just she found it, you know, she was not a very well woman in general, and she found logging around her weight difficult. And she also needed the chin for expression. She was singing the role of Medea in Florence in 1953 conducted by Leonard Bernstein, whom she had personally recruited, having heard him on the radio, and she needed the chin for expression, so she decided to lose weight, and she lost about 95 pounds in the span of 18 months. So that’s a lot, and that’s why there’s been a lot of deliberation. Did that affect her voice? That’s a whole other topic. But just going through her perspective of things when she was overweight, that was also very early on in her career, and she was starring in really tacky opera houses where, I mean, when she was in Sicily, in Palermo, I think it was, maybe it was a Catania, I don’t know, but when she was in Sicily, the opera house actually called her two hours before the performance to remind her she had a performance, and she was so she was outraged by the idea that she had to be reminded she would write to her husband. Can you believe it? This is how well organized they are that apparently their other singers don’t remember their singing tonight. So khaki opera houses, very cheap productions, including very cheap costume, she said, stank of sweat, insinuating that they hadn’t even been washed after their previous wear by the previous hanger. Yeah. The director Lucchino Visconti, who was is most more famous for his films the leopard and Death in Venice, was also an opera director because of her. He actually said, I staged opera for callous, not because of callous, he said for callous. And the first time he saw her was in Wagner’s Parsifal. And he said she was wearing something that looked like a bra and a pillbox hat on her head that kept falling on her nose as she sang. So this was a period of her career, very early on, when she was relegated to wearing tacky stuff. Eventually, she actually asked her husband, menegas mother to supply some costumes, and she would eventually bring some of her own costumes, because she did not like what she was being given when she burnt costumes. It was not the costume shown in this movie, at least, at least what they were implying. She burnt the costumes from what she knew as her overweight period, her tacky period, her I haven’t developed as an artist yet, period. And she talked about Efrain in a French interview in 1965 which is where they got this information from. She said. That the past that I didn’t like that is to say it was before the birth. My birth artistically. So once tastes change, the body changes, one changes artistically. And I’ve read the screenplay of this movie because it came out before the film itself. It was published a deadline, and in the screenplay, it said among it had tags on the costumes, and it included Anna Bolena by Don it SETI. She would never have burnt the Anna Bolena costume because that was a Latino Visconti reduction. That was a gorgeous dress, and she I mean, so this refers to costumes from a completely different era, costumes from a completely different part of her career, where she looked different, she felt different, and she also sang differently. So that’s a whole other topic. But in the early part of her career, she was not as tailored, and she would be over dramatic. She would do vulgar things with the voice, and then she she really wanted to to worship and honor the music, and she tried to doing she really wanted to devote us up to doing exactly what the score required, and not what she would call pyrotechnics. So not fireworks, not, you know, adding a high note just so the audience would be impressed. That’s the costume burning thing. In terms of her vocal decline, that’s a very different subject. So she noticed it as early as about August 1954 when she was recording Verdi’s La forsa del distino in Milan, and she later that night at beefy restaurant, which is the restaurant at La Scala. It’s since been renamed, but it was traditionally known as beefy. She asked the prana, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, who was also the wife of EMI records producer Walter Lech, to touch her diaphragm, and she performed a high a. She said, Elizabeth, can you ask? Can you teach me how to perform this high a so it doesn’t wobble, because Walter, her husband, Walter, the EMI producer who was overseeing the record la Ford del distino, Walter says mine make him seasick. So even as early as that, when she had lost weight, well, shall we say, about a year that she started to lose she had started to lose weight about a year and a half before. So this was shortly after she lost weight. And that problem became more and more and more prevalent as she got older. But I’m saying older. I mean the first time, you know, in August 1954 this was a 30 year old woman. So she was not old, she wasn’t even middle aged. She was still very young. By january 19, sorry, by March 1959, she was really, really struggling. And the 10 of Ferruccio talevini, who sang with her on her second record of Lucia de Lama more, said she kept singing the same E flat and she kept cracking it when they were recording the the opera she was she tried and tried and she kept cracking the E flat, the top E flat, and she would soon start seeing less and less because of that. Simultaneously, she had been having problems with opera houses, partly on account of her husband, partly on account of the high standards she expected of them. And she had actually said, way back in September 58 she had said, in about a year’s time, I will probably retire, or at least I will sing a lot less because I don’t understand, I don’t understand the purpose of singing in conditions that are not, you know, conditions that are not optimal. She meant the various opera houses that she said wouldn’t, wouldn’t give her enough rehearsals, not just her, but wouldn’t give the company enough rehearsals. She specifically spoke of the met in New York, saying, I’m not the only one dissatisfied with the way they work. You know, for instance, not having enough rehearsals. For instance, introducing me to my baritone and La Traviata a few hours before we have to go on stage to perform it. Giuseppe de Stefano doesn’t sing there. Elizabeth Schwartzkopf doesn’t sing there, and Eileen Farrell doesn’t sing there. So, you know, I’m not the only one dissatisfied. It’s just that the media lights on to me. And then so she was having vocal promissory on 1959 that happened to coincide with the time when her husband left her and she later paired off with an asses. She also had sinusitis, which she said was very bad, because it was like she said, the pus dripped onto my vocal cords and blocked the sound chambers, and I felt like a deaf man who shouts because he can’t hear himself anymore. And she had several hernias, and one of them, she said she she had, well, she had an operation for the sinusitis in December, 1961 she had an operation for the hernia in january 1963 but then she got another hernia. At the same time, she was having terrible problems with blood pressure, because she felt so stressed that by this time when she would perform, her blood pressure would just tank hours before the performance. So at one point, as I mentioned earlier, she had to give a norma with a blood pressure of 70 over 50, and her friend Stella tapos said she could barely walk on stage, but she was going through it because she didn’t want media to say, callus abandons performance. Yeah. Yeah, no, it’s bizarre. It’s really bizarre because actually, even from a tabloid perspective, they could have said callous almost kills herself trying to sing, right? Callus almost faints. But instead of that, it was all about, oh, callus is being a diva. Or in that, you know, in that case, there was some dramatization of her fans in the audience that there were anti callous people or pro callus people, and it was all about their feud.

Sophia Lambton  40:25

But she quite soon realized, by 1964 she was saying that the first hernia, she said, it knocked me out so much I damaged the muscles of my abdomen, which naturally drained my strength and affected my singing apparatus, to which the abdomen and diaphragm are as much apart as the vocal cords. So she had hoped the operation would improve things. Immediately following her operation, in january 1963 she had a tape recorder, and she was listening to herself obsessively, but that didn’t improve things. On the contrary, she got another diaphragm. Sorry, another diaphragm. What? She got another hernia, which was in the diaphragm. She got another hernia, which was in the diaphragm. And by the time her concert tour, which took place, not in this movie, they said, four and a half years, or something, her last performance as part of her concert tour, which was her last performance ever, was in November 74 so it was only two years and 10 months before she died. It was not four and a half years. She was in terrible pain after that because she said, Probably I’m working my diaphragm more and better and it starts kicking. Also, after that performance, she had labyrinth, it’s which is an infection of a labyrinth in the inner ear. She said, I couldn’t stand straight or sit straight for 12 hours, or see or see for nearly 12 hours. So I don’t know why. In this film, they made up something about purple legs. Weird. Because, to be honest, even if they wanted to be ultra dramatic, they could have used this stuff. A lot of it isn’t new to my book, either. It’s it’s been out there for a while. This information,

Dan LeFebvre  42:03

I think it kind of tells a gives an idea of how accurate a movie is when in that in that case, like, she’s telling the story, we don’t even see it on screen. But even saying four and a half years, as opposed to a couple years, like, it’s so easy to change that dialog and make it just a little bit more accurate, but for some reason, they don’t do that. And I mean, unfortunately, there’s movies that do that.

Sophia Lambton  42:29

But bizarrely, in the screenplay, it talks about 19 June, 1959 and it says it introduced the husband, many Guinea, and it says in the screenplay, a man in his 40s, and by that time, he would have been 63, years old. Bizarre, quite bizarre. I don’t get it to say the least, yeah. Well, if

Dan LeFebvre  42:53

we circle back to like when she was telling that story, she was telling it to the Jeffrey Tate character. And there’s another thing I found interesting, because Maria in that specifically says he is not a repetitier. But correct me, if I’m wrong, he actually was, and you had an opportunity to interview him before he passed in 2017 so can you share a little bit more about the real Jeffrey Tate that we don’t get in the movie?

Sophia Lambton  43:19

Yeah, I was really surprised that a film about Marie cows would include a fictional Jeffrey Tate, because Jeffrey Tate worked with her for six weeks of all the collaborators with whom she worked, he worked with her perhaps the least even. I mean, even in her last years. I assume they did that, because first he was English, so they didn’t need to get a French person, you know, I mean, her main vocal, vocal coach then was Janine Rice, who is a lovely, lovely French lady who might my first interviewee, who’s also gone. Now she’s passed away, but I presume they didn’t want to use her, because that would have been a French woman speaking English with with a French accent, even though they spoke French in real life, because calla spoke French, Italian English on Italian, English on Greek. But Jeffrey Tate I in advance of this film, I listened to my interview of him again because I hadn’t in ages. I interviewed him in january 2014, he was a repetitor. He works for the Royal House here in London. He was recruited to work with her, even though Italian music and Italian opera in general wasn’t his specialty. He preferred German music so leader and and operas by Wagner. I think he also preferred Baroque music so callous his favorites of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi were not his specialty, but she was considering singing Cavalier rusticana at the Royal Opera House. Now this was in March 1976 it had nothing to do with the last week or even the last month or even the last year of her life. They only worked together for four to six weeks. He said he was very, very shy with her, and I have to say that when I saw his portrayal in this film, I felt really sorry, not just. For callous, who’s obviously being I don’t know what is going on, because that’s got nothing to do with her. But for Jeffrey Tate, this conductor, he later became a conductor for Jeffrey Tate, whose partner is still alive, as far as I know, and the bizarre realm in which Jeffrey Tate, who came as a very young, very shy, repertor, very scary, scared of this big, you know, big name of callous being portrayed as thomp, I would say, quite arrogant character. They did warm to each other, meaning, he felt free with her. So eventually he said I could treat her as any other normal singer. He I could say Maria, that was flat. Try that again. She was very determined to work hard. He called her extremely nice. Um, he they, he said they didn’t talk about because I deliberately listened to my truth him. They’d never talked about personal stuff. She’s, I mean, occasionally she might mention analysis, but she never said anything specific. And I, I really pushed him on this, you know, are you sure she didn’t say anything specifically on Onassis or Pasolini? You know? And he said, No, no, she we didn’t know each other long enough for that to even occur. We stopped mainly to the mezzo repertoire because her voice was in a really bad way then. And he said she was never harsh, never difficult. He called her again about five to six months after their initial collaboration, asking if she wanted to resume, and she said that she would be back in touch or probably later on. He said, When I called, when I ran her up again, she was extremely nice. So they, typically, they would only work together up in a theater, which was the teaser. Once a week she was allowed access to that theater because the manager, char Dan, had given her access, probably because she had contacts in EMI. Otherwise they worked in her apartment. But it wasn’t as dramatic as as it’s portrayed. And also I still find it weird that he was even, that even a fictional version of him was included in the film.

Dan LeFebvre  47:07

And the way you mentioned it, like they didn’t talk about personal stuff, but in the movie, the impression that I got, I don’t remember the exact line of dialog, but she meant mentioned something about about him, and immediately the Jeffrey Tate character knows who she’s talking about, which implies to me that they have this whole kind of personal connection and background like that she knows that, or he knows that she’s talking about Onassis and all you know, it’s like they start to get very personal very quickly in those discussions in the movie, which implies there’s this whole backstory that wasn’t there in real life. Um,

Sophia Lambton  47:41

well, it was only then so far as everybody who had heard of Marie callus by that point associated her with onas. But I do want to say because obviously I have seen the movie, and it’s definitely not the first instance of a portrayal of Marie callus as saying, oh, Onassis forbade me to sing. That is not only incorrect, but it’s kind of the opposite of the truth. Because when she first began, I would say her friendship with Manassas, because she wasn’t together with him for a while, primarily because, as I mentioned earlier, she really wasn’t interested in romance. She wasn’t a very sexual being. And that’s a whole other subject. But I mean, there are nine separate sources, including callous herself, who attest to the who say something suggests that, strongly suggestive of of the fact that she wasn’t really that much intersex. So when people portray the callous analysis relationship as this big affair, it’s not true. First of all, not because Marie Callis was such a good person. And, I mean, she was, she tried her best to be a good person. But I’m saying it’s not true primarily because she just, she wasn’t interested in that, in that kind of thing. I mean, you know, when she met Onassis, she she later would, remember, I was rather indifferent to him. She wasn’t looking to have an adult an adulterous affair. She wasn’t looking to leave her husband. And even though she and many were having difficulties, she actually what she tried to salvage that marriage. But anyway, going back to Onassis for the moment, he was working with her to try to get her some role at the Monte Carlo opera so she could sing there wherever she wanted. He eventually tried to found a Marie Callis television production company with his friend who Roberto Arias, who was the ambassador, the British ambassador to Panama, also the husband of ballerina Margo Fontaine. But for some reason he was good in finance. So that’s why NASA approached him, because Anas could see Carlos was going through terrible strain, both vocal strain, but also psychological strain as a result of the vocal strain, and he thought performing in a pre recorded environment would be less stressful for her, but she didn’t like that. She always preferred life stage. She didn’t really, she didn’t really like pre recorded anything that much. And Onassis also, it has been multiple times alleged that Onassis did not want her to star in a film of Tosca, but that’s actually the opposite. He was the one working harder than she was on that because she didn’t like the idea of starring in Tosca, but he communicated with Jack Warner of Warner Brothers, so I. Found a letter of him, of his to Jack Warner, that had actually not it’s never been published before, and he communicated with Spyro scurris, the chairman of 20th Century Fox, trying to incentivize callous to do a film of Tosca later on, when their relationship soured. That happened at a time when both he was having terrible bad luck in his business. So he had lost all his stocks in the associated de van de mer, which is this big, big conglomerate in Monaco, which is where he was mostly based. At least his business was based at the time thing. And also his airline, Olympic airways, was making terrible, terrible losses. And actually, council would remember to her friend Surya, who wrote a diary entry about this, he would she would say, he’s so nervous. He’s so frat he, she said, fragile, unstable man. I tell him go and see a doctor about your nerves. He says, It’s not the business of a doctor. And she would complain about that to her friend Leo Lerman as well. She would say, He’s so stubborn, I would tell him he needs to see a doctor because he’s so anxious. He has anxiety. He can’t say I have anxiety. So, you know, you had a situation where they’ve been together already for I mean, I think things were especially going bad, and by the spring of 67 so they’d been together for at least seven and a half, well, about seven years, depending on where you begin to count their relationship. But over seven years, and his career is in the pits, her career is in the pits, and obviously they’re very, very insecure, so she eventually dumped him, because they were tired of each other, and she herself remembered in reference to the relationship, familiarity breeds contempt. He did not forbid her from singing. But what I will admit is that after they split, as you know, three months later, he married Jacqueline Kennedy. She was very hurt, despite the fact that he had tried to call her many, many times, and she had not taken his calls. So I’m not sure how he had told her if she was blanking him all the time, but no, I understand she was hurt. Obviously she was blindsided by this, but she she used a lot of the performative energy she wasn’t using on stage because of her vocal decline, in very long rants about Onassis and some stuff about their arguments was true. Yeah, obviously they in their spots, they said some unpleasant things to each other, but other times she would say stuff like, here we only ever had his friends on the yacht, not my friends. And that was totally untrue, because she had had her best friend of a time, John nawatsu There, the conductor Herbert von Karajan, who actually said he was best friends with Onassis than callus and Onassis actually they had had a spat about Lucia dinamimore and Onassis had actually reconciled them after they hadn’t spoken to each other for a while, and Princess Grace had always been callous friend and Frank, as efrali Callis had friend had been on on the Christina, and so had the conductor, Josh Kretz, one of her favorite conductors, who had rehearsed with her there using the Steinway and Asus had had commissioned to withstand dump the Steinway piano that he had had commissions so the callous could practice on his yacht, withstanding the dump. And I spoke to his step niece, Marilena Patroni colas, who was about 16 the time when she was spending time on the Christina. And she remembered, generally, most people who knew callous of time remembered her practicing on the Christina. Both Marilena, his step niece, and also his and callous physiotherapist COVID espanidou, told me how much Onassis liked castaiva. Told me he liked Bucha. It is true that he wasn’t a big opera fan, but it is completely untrue to say he forbade me from singing because he didn’t do that. Why would he have done that? That’s crazy.

Dan LeFebvre  53:34

Yeah, mentioning him forbidding her to sing, that leads to another question that I have for you about something that’s portrayed in the movie, because in the movie there, it’s implying that her career is over, but she’s still trying to get it back into singing. There’s, I think, a line where she mentioned that her mother made her sing, and then Onassis forbade her to sing, and now she’s finally singing for herself so, but she also mentioned that she wasn’t going to perform for anybody. So the impression that I got just watching the movie was she still wanted to sing, because it was just so deeply ingrained into who she was that maybe she felt lost without being able to sing. Is it true that she was still trying to sing, even if it was not to ever perform on stage?

Sophia Lambton  54:19

Yeah, she sang all the time. And if there’s you know, I have tried resisting speculation about her vocal decline. I do want to resist speculation because, other than the fact that her stomach muscles were damaged, we can’t really say why that was, but I still think she worked too hard, if anything, for her. Have got her own health for the blood pressure that was really low. She herself said, when I’m alone with a score, that’s where I find my true self. But how can one bring paradise to Earth? That’s why I’m also obligated to live another life. So in terms of her mother making her sing, I did touch on that briefly earlier. Her, yes, it’s true. Her mother pushed her from a very from callus, very early years. But Carlos also pushed herself. And then once she was really completely, you know, enslaved to music, she pushed herself really, really, really hard. Late in her life, she did contribute herself a bit because she didn’t know what or whom to blame for her decline. So sometimes she would say, Oh, my mother made me sing. And at other times she would say, manegini made me sing. And you know, I guess you can say that was kind of true, but she was the one making her, making herself sing more than anybody else. So you can’t really attribute all of that to her mother or to maneu. And when she was with an Assa, she was singing less because of her vocal decline. And she there were times when she may have tried to convince herself that at least she had Onassis. And, you know, maybe she’s trying to see this other side of life and in love and relationships. But she was bored. She would she would get bored because, you know, late is 1970 after 1970 so she had left an asset in July 68 and in a 1970 interview, she says, what is there in life if you don’t work, you can only live on work by work, through work, without work. There are only a few sensations, and you can’t live off them. And it’s true, she was really having an identity crisis without the opportunity of performing. Yet she was considering engagements all the time. She was considering them all the time. She would get nervous so throughout all the years, and she was considering engagements, including in 1963 she was considering she was going to do Macbeth, but she didn’t. She was going to do Trevor Tory, but she didn’t. Sorry, Macbeth, I think she was going to do in 59 but she’d be at Macbeth was going to be 59 and then there’s a room about 63 she’s going to do Trevor Tory in 63 but she didn’t. I found correspondence between her and her manager signed a golden ski at the Victoria and Albert news. And Albert Museum here in London, which had bizarrely never been uncovered. Which is quite funny, because he was saying the Victoria Albert Museum is a quite major institution. And gorlinski really detailed what she was considering doing at various points. And there was so much that hadn’t been in the public eye, so she was considering an American tour in 1963 but she was so nervous that at first she’d say, Okay, let’s postpone it, because I’m not ready. And then it would be, well, I know we were going to start in New York with the tour, but can we start in Philadelphia or Washington? Because there’d be, there’ll be too much, but the nerves will be too much in New York, because there’ll be all this publicity in New York. So let’s start at a less, you know, less prestigious city, less visited city, and then eventually would get canceled. So if we actually go to her final performance in November 74 she did consider many things after that, because she stopped at that point. I mentioned she had LeBron. She had terrible pain from her hernia, and she she was diagnosed with labyrinth. It’s an infection of the inner ear. But her partner both actually at that point in life and in the concert tour, Giuseppe Di Stefano continued with the accompanist Robert Sutherland. They went on to perform in Australia. When she returned to Paris, she was going to do Tosca with him. She was planning it for a very long time, but eventually she sang the second act in front of her friend, the costume designer Umberto tirelli The teata del opera in Rome in May or June, 75 she saw he wasn’t very impressed, and she thought, I’m I’m not up for this. There was a rumor she was going to sing with the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra in LA in January, 76 and then in March 76 Jeffrey Tate visited her to practice for a potential Cavalier ruscana at the Royal Opera House. She never did. She was practicing with her vocal coach, Janine rice, the role of Charlotte in basnes vertell. She was hoping to do a recording of this opera she had never fully performed before. She recorded, it’s a letter Aria. It’s an air delet a letter ARIA for a compilation album. But she had never recorded the full opera Verde, and she really wanted to do that. She was working on that two days before her death, and her vocal coach, Janine Weiss, traveled to New York for some work, I think, with Herbert von carrion, carrying luggage full of scores, full of opera scores. And when she arrived at the airport, a porter took the luggage and said, Oh, you’ve got a really heavy suitcase. Are you in fashion? Because he thought maybe she was carrying fur coats, I guess, or something, or outfits. She said, No, I’m an opera you know, these are schools. And he said, Oh, did you know a very famous opera singer died today? And she was she said, No, who was that? And she and he said, Marie Callis and Janine rice learnt about the death of her friend and student from a porter at an airport. You know, people really shocked, because, as I mentioned earlier, yes, she was definitely less social than she hadn’t previously. She was definitely extremely dismal. And Jeffrey Tate did tell me that her attitude, although she he said he did want to precise. She didn’t run people down. She ran the whole world down. So she had that, you know, attitude of an older person. Everything’s changed. Nothing is good anymore. But she didn’t, she didn’t run people down. She didn’t say, oh, remember him. He was terrible. She didn’t do that. He said she had. She felt like a 79 or 80 year old woman. In how completely dispirited she felt, but she was in touch with various people up to the day of her death, so she did not close herself up away from everybody else. She was singing. She wanted to sing and but her most horrifying thing was how her voice just got worse and worse, despite her continuous attempts to improve it.

Dan LeFebvre  1:00:27

Yeah, yeah. Well, like you said, like the I think what’s life without work? I mean, I feel like that’s a any, anybody who is a workaholic, and you know, focus is so hard, and you have to do that, to get to the level that she was. But I think that’s it’s it’s normal to to do that, and then with on top of all the all these medical things that you know, she’s just still pushing herself, despite that, I can see how it can be very it’s got to be so disheartening, because you you remember the way you were, but your body just isn’t able to do that anymore, and so you just want to keep pushing harder and keep practicing and keep doing that. But it sounds like that was her body failing her in ways like that, even though she’s, you know, keep pushing. Yeah. Well, a moment ago, I mentioned with Maria feeling lost, but in the movie, there are some flashbacks that we get that give another indication that maybe there’s something else that makes her feel lost, beyond the ability to perform on stage. And specifically, there is a flashback that we see with a room with Maria, her sister and her mother. There’s two soldiers that enter the room wearing Nazi uniforms, Maria and her sister are forced to sing for the soldiers they pay her mother for that private performance. And in the movie, Maria mentions that’s where it all began. And I’m assuming that that’s talking about kind of her mother forcing her to sing, and that kind of career starting, there was that a moment where she started performing first.

Sophia Lambton  1:02:04

No, not at all, not at all. She started performing first when her mother entered her into radio contest back in New York, and she didn’t win any of them, but she got some kind of compensatory prize. I don’t think, I don’t think she actually said if it was second prize or third prize. She won a Bulava with wristwatch because Jack Benny. Do you know Jack Benny? Yeah, Jack Benny was one of the judges, right? Well, Jack Benny was in the judges, and he apparently voted for her, but, but not many of the others did. So he she won some kind of runner up prize, and she never forgot that Jack Benny had been partly responsible for her winning a bit of a wristwatch at a radio contest when she was 11 years old. But the first role she sang she sang at the age of 15, and that was Dan Tutsi Cana. That’s the same opera that she was hoping to sing when practicing with Jeffrey Tade in 1976 she made her professional debut on July 4, 1938 in a celebration of the American Independence Day in Athens. And she, back then, would have been 14, yeah. July 38 she was 14 Yeah. She signed her first professional contract with a National Theater the age of 16, and she was given just a swarm of chain for performances. By the age of 18, she was seeing Tosca in a professional production. So she spent the war earning, you can’t really call it money. She was pretty much earning food as a result of performance. She now evangelio was, it is true, she was a very unsympathetic, negligent woman. She wasn’t really much of a parent at all. Later on, she had various psychological problems. She wanted her daughters to get money any which way. That’s true, but she did not ask them to prostitute themselves at all. I mean, how could she even have what she did, what she would say? Well, you know, socialize with the soldiers, meaning, go get food, not not become I mean, obviously we’re looking at a very extreme context when a lot of people did things so they would never have done ordinarily for their own survival. But thankfully, callous did not have to sleep with anybody to get money or food. The only thing she ever mentioned about her mother trying to set her and Jackie up in that context was that her mother made her go out with a German soldier, and Carlos was so anguish, she started crying, and the German soldier took pity on her and gave her, I think, some spaghetti anyway, or some of some food. Other than that, I’d like to mention what she actually did do in the war, other than performing. And I mean, she really became a team player during wartime. I’m sure she was one before, but that really war time is obviously a very, very extreme, especially in Athens, first during World War Two, then during their civil war, she would hike for miles and miles, not hike, but walk rather. Maybe she did hike as well. I don’t know. I would imagine. Well, Athens is quite hilly, but anyway, what I mean is she would walk for. Miles and miles to get cabbage leaves and tomatoes for herself or her family for her colleagues, she would barter the complimentary opera ticket she had at the National Theater, both hers and her colleagues for food for herself and for the company. She persuaded some kind of anti Nazi to sign a food warrant for the company, because they were being paid in food, but they were being paid something like less than a meal a day. So she went through a very, very hard time, but she did not have any kind of childhood trauma from any kind of sexual abuse, thankfully, thankfully, because I think her childhood was hard enough. No, I I’m pretty sure she was a virgin up to, actually, when she met manygini, which would have been much later, when she was 20. I mean, I’m, I can’t for sure say when Cal’s lost a virginity, but she it wasn’t in Athens. And also, as I mentioned earlier, yeah, she wasn’t particularly interested in sex. And she was actually 18 years old, the first time she had she heard of how babies were born, meaning the first time she realized what reproduction is, as in, she found out because no one had told her. No one had told her. This is Athens wartime. There isn’t a TV. She’s not going to hear about stuff on the radio at that point, you know who’s going to tell her? She could only have learned on her own experience and had. The flirtation she had with men at that time didn’t really amount to much, so all three men who were in close proximity to her. There was a Greek businessman, tech is cigars. There’s a British soldier, Ray Morgan, and there was a doctor called elusive testus. He was more like a father figure. All three men commented, not to me, because they they died. I think all of them, maybe Ray Morgan is still alive, but they told the boba for Nicholas, but Salus the omidys, back in the late 90s, mid to late 90s, how she really didn’t have much interest in physical intimacy. She did she perform for the Germans? Well, she she performed for the Germans because the whole company was performing in front of the Germans. But she and Jackie never performed. I never, I don’t remember ever reading about her and Jackie singing together. Now, Jackie didn’t want to be an opera sing. That’s true. And to begin with, evangelio was trying to push Jackie into a career, but when Evan Jenny understood that Maria was the real singer, she kind of forgot all about Jackie’s abilities. Jackie, meanwhile, was doing perfectly fine, not perfectly fine. That’s badly put. Jackie was okay, relatively because she had hooked up with a guy called Milton empiricus, who really helped both Jackie and Maria and the whole family in terms of food provisions and supplies during the war. I don’t remember why, but he had some connections, so that helped so she didn’t have to go out and prostitute herself. And that’s that’s just a big fabrication that’s based on the fact that, yeah, at one point, Maria mentioned, my mother asked me to go out with a German Sultan, but not to, I don’t think even evangelio would have specified sleep with a German soldier. I don’t think she would have even said that. Um, so, I mean, there is an interesting moment from the period when the was the Greek, like, who was the Greek Air Force, or they were asked, yeah. Members of the Greek Air Force asked Evangelia and Jackie Henri, who all lived in the same apartment on petition Street, to hide two British members of the Air Force, John Atkinson and some man called Robert. And they did. And then at some point, when Italian soldiers barged in, they wanted to inspect the apartment, and in order to distract them, Maria sat down and played on the piano and started to sing to distract them from the search. So there were definitely really horrible moments. There were definitely close calls, but, and she did say, she did say they were very, very sad war years, and it was hard for her to talk to them, but she also said I was in no way harassed by the Germans. She said this in an interview to the German magazine de spigo in 1957 think 57 she said I was in no way harassed by the Germans, even though I had an American passport. And at another point she said, Well, it was hard, but hardship does one good. Now, of course, she went through very difficult times. She went through harder times during the civil war in Athens. Now, the Civil War was between homes. Get this wrong, the National Liberation Army, the National Liberation Front, sorry, the National Liberation Front and the Greek People’s Liberation Army. The National Liberation Front was a resistance group. The Greek People’s Liberation Army was a group of communists. So the Greek People’s Liberation Army were the communists known as the reds, the National Liberation Front, when they were known as the whites, and they were supported by the British, by the Allied Forces. She lived in the red zone, so the danger zone, and then she began work at the British headquarters, where she was in charge of distributing secret mail. And they were in the white zone, so she had to make this very dangerous journey every day to work to earn some money. Meanwhile, Jackie got a job translating film titles from Greek into English. I assume vice versa. So they were, they were very, very difficult years for them. But cars also continued performing. She sang Fidelio. Uh, in Greek. Isn’t Greek. I’m blanking here. It couldn’t have been in German, because she never sang in German. I’m pretty sure it was in Greek, um, and she sang Tosca. And at one point in July 43 she actually double booked herself, by accident. She had a concert, and then she had a Tosca. So she had, she sang arias from Han or Rossini and your son, Milan Chela, from Chile’s Adrian le COVID, at a theater on in the customers through she sang at the customers through theater. Then she ran through wartime Athens to clafuna square to enter as Tosca just in time for when Tosca enters opera. Boss, listening will know this, Mario, Mario, Mario. And she got there just in time. So not at the start of the opera, but at toss was entrance. So yes, they were very, very painful years. But I don’t think she suffered from childhood trauma from that. I think if anything, she felt obviously she was forever traumatized by the fact that her mother didn’t love her. That was horrible. And those problems persisted into her later life, she had troubles with her sister as well, and even her father let her down eventually. And this was all terrible, and that was why, you know, I mentioned at the start, I think, or earlier on, she married a man who was 28 years a senior. He was not attractive, he was quite overweight, he was bald. He didn’t like opera either. He actually fell asleep sitting at her studio recording of Norma in 1954 one of the most famous records ever, including her signature, Aria Casta Diva, which today, I think, is used, still used in the Jean Paul Gaultier ad and he fell asleep. But she needed a father figure, and in her pursuit of a career. Obviously, she had traveled, you know, she went from Athens back to New York and then to Italy. She didn’t know that many people. She didn’t have a best friend, her mother. She was still in touch with her mother when she came to Italy. She was still trying to, you know, trying to preserve that relationship, but she always had doubts about her mother’s love, and she marries this guy who ends up actually being terrible for her and terrible for her and terrible for her reputation

Dan LeFebvre  1:12:04

as well. Yeah. Well, speaking of her family, that we do see little bits and pieces with her family in the movie, with her mother, like I mentioned that flashback, we only really see her in the negative flashback. So the impression I get with Maria’s relationship with her mother was not a good one. I think there’s a line of dialog in the movie where she talks about remembering the day that she finally told her mother to off, but she’s still in contact with her sister, because we see her in the movie and then the only mention of her father. There’s a scene where she’s talking with JFK and her father, or JFK talks about the father she never had. Do you think the movie did a decent job portraying the relationship between Maria and her family.

Sophia Lambton  1:12:44

Well, first of all, I’d like to say that Maria Kellis would never tell anybody to f off, because she was a goody goody who actually couldn’t stand cursing. She couldn’t stand cursing. And when, when the director, Lucchino Visconti, would swear during the rehearsals, it turned her stomach, because that’s what Houseman menaghini said. And in this regard, I think this regard, I think he was, he was probably telling the truth. Also, Richard Burton mentioned in his diary how, because Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were friends with her, she was at their place, and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and his niece Caroline, were playing Gin Rummy, uh, Elizabeth Taylor said at one point and callous was aghast. And according to Richard Burton, she said, Oh no, I’ve never heard such words. Never heard such things. And he and Elizabeth Taylor were very surprised that she was so surprised herself. So I really dislike that, because she would have hated that. And you know, there’s been a lot of Fictional portrayals of her, there’s been, there have been a lot of inaccurate biographies, but very few have actually portrayed her as being somebody who curses. Because everyone, not everyone, of course, not everyone. But very many people know that that was not the case. So with Evangelia, there are three, obviously. Do you have three members of her nuclear family? You have Evangelia, her mother? Oh, Evangelia was a very difficult person. It wasn’t clear in the movie at all why there was a discordance between them. Um, so Evangelia, obviously, as I’ve said, really wanted to milk callous, also Jackie, but more, most of all, callus, because she was the one with the talent. Financially. Evangelio was an entrepreneurial woman. She wanted her daughter to be making lots of money, and she wanted her share of that money. Um, money. So they had difficulties, because evangelio would say, Oh, I have no money. Give me money. Carlos would give her money. And then Carl would find $1,000 under her mattress, which, at the time was a really huge amount of money. In 1950 you know, massive amounts of money, really. And not only that, it wasn’t just that evangelio was kind of black beating her. So she’d say, I’m going to tell you a secret about your father, because obviously Evangelia and George have even separated one very acromis terms. She was saying nasty things about George. She eventually wrote such a horrible letter that callus didn’t even want to share it with her husband, many Guinea. This was in about October 1950 when callous would have been 26 Greeks. She didn’t even want to share with Nagini. It was obviously written in Greek, and many Gini didn’t speak Greek or English, so he had that Greek letter translated into a talent, and she was so hurt by the many Guinea she couldn’t even reply. And many Gini replied. He wrote an Italian took his own letter to a Greek translator, and he said the letter was malicious, vindictive and offensive cannot be written. Those things cannot be written by good mother. So basically, she would just make really she would say really horrible things. I think the only thing in the movie, I believe this was said that actually was accurate, was that evangelist did at one point say, I brought you into the world to sustain me and your sister, so to financially maintain me and your sister, she did say something along those lines. At one point, callus just could not suffer that relationship, so she broke off contact. But she did actually financially support Evangelii and her sister Jackie, on and off until her death, because the because Evangelia was didn’t want to work when she did try working out, I need to try various things. She was trying to use the callous name as much as possible to make money. She went on the balls talk show, I think, talking about how, what an in grade her daughter was, she told lies to the press. And at one point, Keller said, at one point, the government, the New York, I think, Department of, I don’t remember what taxation now can be taxation, the New York Department of something, contacted Maria and said, your mother, you know, don’t have any money, so she had to send money over. But that was really painful. It was really painful relationship, because she understood quite not too early on, but she understood she was not particularly loved. Um, neither was Jackie, really. But going on to George for the moment, the father, who I don’t think was her father, mentioned in this fictional movie at all

Dan LeFebvre  1:17:01

the only, the only mention that I that I not by name, but JFK mentions a father who wasn’t there because he has all these CIA agents that found out about Maria. But that’s the only mention that I I remember in the movie. Totally

Sophia Lambton  1:17:15

bizarre, because Maria counts banning you. Met him. Met John F Kennedy once, and that was at the Madison Square Garden birthday celebration. Met him once publicly. It’s just an entirely fictional thing in this film. JFK would never have spoken on a personal level to Maria, not on that level. At least they barely knew

Dan LeFebvre  1:17:32

it seems, truly seems par for the course for this movie so far to make up fictional things.

Sophia Lambton  1:17:35

Yeah, but the going this far, I didn’t understand. I thought maybe it was trying to be a tongue in cheek thing or something. But why on earth John of Kent? Why on earth John F Kennedy, who had to be, to be to put in Marley, had bigger fish to fry, as we say in the UK, than concerning himself with Murray Callis life. But anyway, George the father was more kind of indolent and not really bothering. So he cared on some level for the girls, but he took long business trips, and he actually openly said that he preferred it that way, because he could be away from their mother. As I mentioned, evangelist took Maria and Jackie to Athens when Maria was 13, she wouldn’t see George until she would be 21 back in New York, and she did sustain a relationship with him. He came to see her sing several times in January, 1959 he saw her sing. He came to see him epidurals at the epidurals festival in August 1960 so they were on good terms. But then eventually he got ill, and she was happy to she was happy to foot his medical bills. But at some point his next wife, he married, he remarried. He remarried, a woman called Alexandra, Papa John and her family started bothering Rhea for money. And then Rhea started hearing from other people that George was going around Athens saying his daughter, his famous singer, daughter, was supporting him. And that really, really hurt her. So she cut herself from that. She cut herself off from that as well. There was just a lot of pain. I’m not saying maybe, maybe she could have made more than effort with her father, but having heard an issue with him, myself for the high Garden Show for NBC, high garden show from 1957 when he gets growth his daughter’s birthday is wrong. I don’t think you know being, I don’t think being on very good terms with him when he was demanding money as well, reminding Maria of her mother when she thought she could trust him, she actually ended up saying he has betrayed me even, perhaps even worse than my mother, because I think she was accustomed to who her mother was, but she’d been on such good terms with her father for years, he’d come to her performances, and Now it turns out he’s also bitching about her to other people. She was really hurt by that. Jackie is a bit her sister Jackie, that relationship is a bit more nebulous in that. The thing is, she tried to make contact with her sister Jackie, but Jackie was kind of on Evangelii side. And, you know, but we need money, and you’re making money. It’s. So she did sustain contact with her at a time when she wasn’t in contact with Jackie, the last time she sorry the other way, at a time when she wasn’t in contact with her mother, evangelio, she was still in contact with Jackie, on and off. The last time she ever saw her sister Jackie was in september 1960 so it was a long time before her death. It was 17 years before death. It is not entirely certain if it was september 1960 or 1961 because Jackie herself mistakenly referred to callous performances of Norma and Medea at Epidaurus taking place in the same summer, when they took place in different summers, 60 and 61 so I don’t know if it was September 60 or September 61 but it was one of those years, 16 to 17 years before her death, that was the last time they met face to face. She later no before that, she had way before that, November 1950 she had written to her godfather. As for my sister, I’ve tried to do my best, but that has only brought me insults. I don’t know what exactly she meant by that, but obviously it was difficult with Jackie as well. And then I get a very poor impression of Jackie from her own book, which is very nasty in that there’s a lot of bitterness about, you know, I wanted to be a singer too. If my life had been different, I would have been a great singer, like callous two. Jackie couldn’t, could sing a little bit she, there’s a recording of her, maybe still on YouTube. She gave an interview to a Marie callous fan club that was recorded in 1992 on videotape, and it was on YouTube. I don’t know if it still is. It probably is so and that during that interview, she played a recording herself singing in her youth. She did not have a great voice. She was never going to make a great, great career as an opera singer. She might have, if she had wanted, she might have made a bit of money singing at various, you know, restaurant venues, but this was not the voice of a great singer, so she had a lot of resentment against Maria. They were back in touch. After they were back in they came back into contact when George, the father, died in December 1972 so this would have been four years, nine months before Council’s death. And then they were on and off in contact, on the phone a little bit, and it is true that callus asked her to send mandrax pills from Athens because they were no longer in the mark on the market in France because she needed them to sleep. But there was nothing as dramatic as portrayed in the film. They never did meet up anytime after 60 or 61

Dan LeFebvre  1:22:17

okay, I’m sensing a kind of a trend with a lot of Maria’s relationships between her mother, who is saying things, you know, you mentioned going on a talk show and saying things about her, her father, even her first husband, you know, the manager who was saying things, did she have somebody that she could rely on throughout her life at all? It seems like everybody’s almost using her and trying to get money out of her, or whatever their purposes are, and then slandering her behind her back. Yeah,

Sophia Lambton  1:22:49

you make a really good point. Unfortunately, that really feels like the case. I haven’t even mentioned her longtime best friend, Joanna lomazzi, who wrote a series of articles in 1961 for an Italian magazine called La setsimana income about callous private life. Now, these articles are very useful to me because they came from the period, and I think she wasn’t lying, but she was outing the private life of her best friend for money. Wait, you know which was which was terrible. And then she was very surprised that after that, callus wasn’t much in contact with her, although she did actually write to her several years later. Yeah, so on one hand, callus was very unfortunate when it came to a lot of people, that’s true, but she had some good friends. They were just not, they were not part of her closest, most intimate circle. I mean, she had a lot of good colleagues. When I was interviewing various people, they said such lovely things. Janine Rice was just amazing. She was such a dear, dear woman. When I interviewed Fabrizio Milano, who is still an opera director, he was the assistant to her when she and Giuseppe Stefano stage ver dive siciliani in Turin in 1970 three. At the end, after I interviewed, when I was leaving, he said, I really hope you write your book Sophia, because she was just such a wonderful woman and and I said, I know, I know. So she did have people who cared about her, but in terms of her closest relationships, yeah, yeah, she had bad luck. I will say, though, Onassis, in this regard, was by far the best person she had in her life. Because let me tell you about the things Onassis didn’t do analysis, didn’t love about her to the press at all, and at one point he actually said, because they had, they had a lawsuit against someone else who unfortunately let them down, rather the other way. Their dear friend panagivgoti sued them from a misunderstanding because he and Onassis had had bought Ray callus, a freighter, a ship called the artemision in 1965 and he and Anastas had an argument over how many shares he owned, versus Onassis owned, versus callous owned a. Eventually he sued, callous analysis, and then they and then, I always get confused about this, because, to be honest, is such a boring story. But anyway, there was they won, that lost, or they sued. No sorry, they had to sue him because he wasn’t handing over his shares. And it was afraid, and it was, it was a sorry story. Uh, but analysis during this lawsuit in in a London court said madam callus is not a vehicle for me to drive. She has her own brakes and her own brains. Uh, it’s very sad that it’s very sad that the media has portrayed him as believing the opposite. Um, he I mean, they stayed friends until the end. They did. They did not resume. It’s been what, it’s been quite widely reported, that they resume the romantic relationship after he married Jack and Kennedy. That is not true. He tried with her, but she wasn’t having it. As I mentioned before, she was not a very sexual woman. So I and also, by that time, you know, she was 40, so Okay, she wasn’t that old. She was 40. She was 44 when they split up. Okay, but as I mentioned, she wasn’t a very sexual woman. I don’t think she was going to have a sexual relationship with Manassas when he was married to Japanese I think she was tired of that relationship. I think she said it herself, many attributes contempt, and she did it also say to Stella Scott topless, uh, my relationship with NASA. So my affair with the NASA was, you know, did not end well, but my friendship with him was a great success. So they were much better when they were on the phone to each other. And, you know, these very independent individuals. I would also like to mention, because this never gets mentioned, they did not live together, which means that about half of the year they were kind of in a long distance relationship. So you’re talking about two individuals very focused on their careers. It’s quite a boring relationship, to be honest. And I say this as someone who I I’m also a novelist. I have a lifelong absolute fascination in relationships. I’ve made it my mission to seek out the most fascinating romantic relationships out there. This is not one of them at all. So I, when I went into my research years and years ago, I thought it was more interesting. No, no. Anyway, he they were in contact until his death, even though she was with Giuseppe Stefano. So he was quite Yeah, okay, it is true, he did cheat on her. He had various flings during the relationship, but she knew about that, and she also, in retrospect, talked about, okay, well, that was the way he was. She was, you know, she did not get broken by this. She was not broken by that. What others did is was far worse than anything Onassis did to her. There’s,

Dan LeFebvre  1:27:43

there’s a point in the movie where she kind of mentioned, I think it’s on when Onassis is on his deathbed, he calls her in and she talks about how when he married Jackie Kennedy, that he she wasn’t heartbroken, but she had her pride hurt. Do you think the movie did a good job portraying the relationship between Maria and Onassis.

Sophia Lambton  1:28:04

Well, I couldn’t I know, because any, any movie that alleges Onassis forbade her to sing is already completely overturning the representation of that relationship. Also any movie that has a fictional Maria Callas saying I did not want to go on the cruise because I knew, I knew what would happen. You know, in that melodramatic soap opera, soap opera kind of worse than Douglas Sirk, kind of tone, that isn’t what happened. Because, actually, she didn’t want to go because she didn’t want to go on the cruise. Her husband wanted them to go on the cruise because he thought they would make advantageous business contacts on the cruise. It was all about, oh, yeah, we need to meet. People need to network. I mean, I don’t think the term networking wasn’t used back then, but that would have that was what he would have said today. This was a time when he was making her sing, even though she was ill. And yeah, on that cruise in July to August, 59 Carl, Foreman producer, came and wanted to do, wanted her to do guns and Navarre, and she didn’t want to do it. A German producer came and want, no, I didn’t think a German producer came. But many Guinea was considering an offer from a German producer, producer for her to start as the leading lady in the Prima Donna, a German film that was going to be distributed by some big distributor called Gloria FinFET. Her fee would be 200 million lira, which is around $320,000 then, so about 303,300,000 today, or something, he would tell her land, land is what matters. And she did not agree with him at the same time, yes, Onassis was flirting with her. Of course he was flirting with her. She was beautiful one. She’s a beautiful woman. He liked women. We know that. Yeah, he liked women. I don’t think he had a big plan to seduce her, to be honest, because I don’t think he really was the kind who fell desperately in love like that, at least that quickly. I. Um, he was flirting with her me. Probably he was hoping that she would she and her husband would separate, but she had no idea. And um, eventually they disembarked that cruise on the 11th of August, 1959 for two weeks, she tried to assuage many Guinea’s resentment, because he was now saying, You’re cheating on me, or she wasn’t, and he, but he was primarily really angry. What has, what has spurred his anger about that which was untrue, what had, what had strengthened his suspicion was the fact that she was saying, I want to be my own manager. I want to manage my career after she had discovered he had invested primarily her money, because he was only her manager at this point. So she was making the earnings. You know, he was a manager. She was making the money. He had abandoned his own business, which was a brick making factory that had 12 plants across Italy. He had abandoned that. He was a family business. He had left it to his brothers. He had 11 brothers, and he had abandoned that. It was 11 brothers, 11 siblings. So I’d always get it up anyway. He was one of 12, one of 12 siblings. He’d left it to his brothers to become her manager, and now she was saying, I want to be my manager. He was really pissed off at this. Really pissed off. And furthermore, he didn’t remember. He didn’t speak English, he didn’t speak Greek, he didn’t speak French, and NASA spoke all of those languages, plus some others. He didn’t know what marinas was saying. He could tell that the other guests on the ship, including Churchill and his daughter and his granddaughter, were gossiping, saying, oh, counselor NASA, you know, really getting on? Well, that really enraged him, and eventually he started a rumor that they were having an affair, and he actually created a fake diary. He took letterheaded paper from their apartment in Milan and just wrote random dates on it in pen. And, you know, as though it could be a diary writing total untruths on it. And in July, 1960 CALS wrote a letter to her legal separation lawyer Augusto Calis calcini, which I found. I should also add, the reason why I say legal separation lawyer is because Italy did not have divorce at that time, divorce would be illegal in Italy until the end of 1970 In fact, one of the very first divorces granted. In fact, I believe the first divorce granted in Brescia, in the region of Brescia, was Maria Callas divorce finally, long after she had dumped Onassis, she finally could get divorced from many Guinea up to that point, they were legally separated, which means that the assets were divided between them. She would always say, Oh, he he went. She would put it differently, so I’m not exactly sure what the arrangement was, but in one letter, she’d say, mengini got half of my money, and another one, she’d say he got two thirds of my money. So he obviously got more than he was entitled to. But yeah, I was saying in a letter, 31st of July, 1960 she writes to her legal separation lawyer Augusto Carlos, or Augusto calzi cascalchini, saying, can you tell me again? His lawyer BME to tell him to put a muzzle on and stop lying to the press with that made up story about Onassis. She underlines, made up in Italian itstoria, invent data. And she underlines invent data, meaning he is telling the press on NASA and I have were having an affair. Now by that by that time, she and analysis were in a relationship, but they hadn’t been having an affair back then, which is why she’s saying Madoff story about analysis. She says, If he doesn’t, next time I meet with him, I will take a tape recorder to the meeting to get proof that he is lying. So, you know, talk about having nothing to hide in that regard, I think that the Cal Sanas relationship was primarily founded on two very strong individuals, self made individuals of Greek descent. I don’t think that was very important for Maria, because Maria had been born in America. She ended up dying in France, and actually her her primary language changed throughout the years. So, you know, it was typically English. But then I think she found Italian easier by the time she lived in Italy for a while, and then when she was in France, French really became her first language. So she did not really relate that closely to her Greek roots. She didn’t even speak Greek well until she had been living in Atlas for a while. So I don’t think Evangelion George even spoke Greek that much to her and Jackie when they were growing up in their early years. But Onassis really admired mariekes. He loved hearing about how she had, you know, walked for miles to get cabbage leaves and tomatoes for her colleagues in wartime. He himself was a very, very tenacious, strong man. He had freed his father from a Turkish prison. I think that the year, I think, yeah, 1923 the Henri cows, was born before she was born, Onassis was a 16 year old man, uh, bribing a Turkish official so he could sneak into the prison where his father was imprisoned because Turkey had captured Smyrna, which is where Onassis was born. Smyrna is now is near in Turkey, but back then, I presume it belonged to Paris or Cyprus. Sorry, my history is not great, but anyway, his father was in Turkish prison. And he snuck him out. He freed his sisters. I don’t remember the political details, but he was a very tenacious, strong man. Um, they didn’t marry because she, first of all, was married. This isn’t really mentioned enough. She was married now in March 1966 she went to the Greek Embassy in Paris because Greece had passed a law invalidating all marriages of Greek citizens from 1945 onwards, and that would make her a single woman, According to Greek law, but if she wanted to return to Italy to perform or even for a rehearsal or for a meeting with a friend, yep, so let’s say if she’d married Onassis, she would still be charged with bigamy in Italy. So she could have married Onassis and risk and never, never turned to Italy again. That would have been very difficult, considering most of her career had taken place there. And even though she was in having a vocal decline, she was come to Italy quite frequently. Her dressmaker, Biki, lived in Italy. A lot of her friends lived in Italy. And I, and I presume she wanted and she would perform there again, actually in her concert tour, but actually only in a pub, in private little performance, because she was so scared of the Italian press. Um, but she also, she did consider marrying him. They do consider marriage, but they would have arguments, and eventually she ended up saying, well actually, during the relationship, she told a journalist, once you’re married, the man takes you for granted, and I do not want to be told what to do. My own instincts and conviction, my own instinct and convictions tell me what I should or should not do. These convictions may be right or wrong, but they are mine, and I have the courage to stand up for what I believe. So, yeah, they didn’t marry but I think that’s good. I don’t think they would have been a good married couple.

Dan LeFebvre  1:36:48

Well, it sounds like too I mean, like you were saying, since a lot of it was long distance and they were both focused on their careers, that maybe marriage just didn’t make sense. But they could still have, I mean, if she saw him as a still a good friend, then, you know, that’s what was important to her.

Sophia Lambton  1:37:10

Yeah. I mean, they were lovers for sure, during Yeah, you know, I don’t, obviously, I can’t tell you the first time I slept together, I, I don’t have that information, but I imagine it would have been about the spring of 1960 knowing how slow and and also something that I hope listeners, I hope Khalistan to understand. When menage, he dumped her, she was shocked beyond belief. She had been with him for 12 years. He had been the only really close person a lot. He had defended her when things were tough with her mother, he had defended her before all prepper house managers that were tough, you know, it’s true, but he had actually managed to soil her reputation, willingly or not, as a result of trying to drive up publicity. So the callous ticket sales would be higher prices, so callous would get a higher salary, so he would get his own car, you know. But, um, she saw him as the only person in her life, bringing with the end, close person. She was utterly horrified, and she’s wrote on the same day. She wrote that letter to Augusto goddess. Can she in search for July 1960 wrote to Herbert Weinstock, I think, yeah, who was a music critic and a friend of hers, saying, I have been, I have spent the time licking my wounds, not caused by any third party, meaning, you know, it’s not to do with on assets. I have been heard meaning by my husband. And she would write about that a lot to friends. She told her friends a lot about that. But no, they were eventually, of course, eventually, they were lovers for a time, but she dumped him, and the Jacqueline Kennedy marriage was a business thing for him, which, in return, in turn, to Jacqueline Kennedy, assured protection, obviously, financial resources, privacy, because there was a Christine of those Onassis Island, Scorpios, which she needed. So that was a business deal, basically not, I don’t know if you can call it a business deal, but it was a quid pro quo arrangement that was not founded on love.

Dan LeFebvre  1:39:09

That makes sense. I think there’s a in the movie Onassis says something like, you find yourself not doing anything one day and you get married, or something like that. When he talks about Jackie, which implied to me that it was not not for love the way it seemed to be between Maria and Onassis, like they seemed like they actually cared about each other.

Sophia Lambton  1:39:29

Oh, yeah. No, I will. I will, however, admit that Onassis had considered this marriage to Jack and Kenny for a while, probably, probably as early as during his relationship with Marie cows, but she did help dump him first. Okay, so we don’t know what would have happened if they had stayed together. I doubt he would have married Jack and Kennedy one day if they had been in a relationship. Okay? He knew what he was doing. It was very I guess it was quite arranged, pre arranged. It were premeditated things. So that’s, you know, the movie. Quote sounds like something more random. It wasn’t random. He had to further his interests his stock. I’m not a specialist in narcissist stock. I wanted to know what all of this was from Rick House’s perspective. You know what happened to his stock? I don’t know or care particularly, but I do know that obviously that marriage was a shock to her. She was hurt by it. She didn’t learn about it from the newspapers, or at least that’s not what her hairdresser, Frederic somoli later told a reporter years after her death, he said he was with her when she first heard about it on the radio. I think she may have used the term newspapers more loosely to apply to the media, or she may have heard about the newspapers before the radio, and then just burst into tears hearing it again. I don’t know, but she was the middle of, she was preparing for a photo shoot with her stylist, Frederic simoli, in Paris, when she heard about it, and, yeah, she also obviously devastated, and obviously she was being humiliated publicly because she was, you know, this is she was not living in an Instagram time. Even if she had been, I doubt she had. I doubt she would have been the kind of celebrity to post on Instagram. So, you know, Ari and I partiston, I parted ways yesterday. This is not who Mary was. So people did not know that she had dumped him, except for her friends. In fact, actually written. Burton wrote it in his diary, and his diaries have been published, and other friends knew, but the public did not know. So of course, the headline was, and unfortunately, the headline still is on NASA’s dumps callous for Jap and kemby, which was not true.

Dan LeFebvre  1:41:35

It sounds like going back to some of the media and the way they portrayed her, with her performances and her health and things like that, they were going they, I think you said it best, not clickbait back then, but same sort of, you know, titles and things like that to try to gain readership and stuff like that. And unfortunately, it seems like that was not in favor of the truth for what actually happened.

Sophia Lambton  1:41:59

I also wanted to mention I wasn’t able to find out. I’m not sure if anyone actually knows, sure if she did visit him on his deathbed. The hospital in this movie is so weird, because I know what it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be the American Hospital in Noyes in Paris. And the hospital, as portrayed in this movie, it looks like some weird, fancy parking lot. I don’t know anything is very empty.

Dan LeFebvre  1:42:26

It does look like a parking garage.

Sophia Lambton  1:42:30

Yeah, bizarre. But anyway, I don’t know if they spoke to each other. When he was on his best deathbed. It was a huge risk for her to appear there, given that Jack and Kennedy was often there, the press were often there. I know she received reports about his condition from Vassar javezzi, who was a pianist with whom she was working at the time, on and off, and apparently ferocha, the butler. He didn’t remember having, I mean, I, I didn’t get to interview ferocho, because Fabio jedvozonia. He was a collective callous items who was on, who was in contact with filcher told me Firoz would not speak to anybody. Now, since then, firocha has actually published his own Little Book of Memories, but it’s very specific to his own relationship with callous. It’s not a biography of callous. It’s more this. These are things you would say to me, and you know, stuff like that. I don’t know if Fabio told me from ferocio that ferocio never mentioned driving her to the hospital to see on us. He was also her driver, her chauffeur. So I don’t know if she went that CNS. I do know that the last time they spoke, at least according to what she told stevios, Carlo topolos was quite a warm occasion. There was no bitterness there. Well, if we

Dan LeFebvre  1:43:45

go back to the movie, I found it interesting that the movie’s version of Maria Callas never listened to her own records. She says something about how it’s the records are too perfect. A song should never be perfect. It should be performed in that moment on stage. But then in the movie, during her final week, during the course of the movie, we see her listening to her own records, and even having her housemate Bruno recording her practicing so she can compare her voice to her earlier recordings. Is it true that Maria didn’t like to listen to her own recordings and then started to listening to them near the end of her life? That’s

Sophia Lambton  1:44:21

pretty much true, but not for the reasons the movie alleges. So first of all, Marie Carlos would never have found her recordings perfect ever. One of my favorite recordings of hers is manually score from september 1957 and she denied the release of it. She forbade the release of it because she thought it was so it was only released in 1959 um, whenever she had herself, she was she was always picking up on things she could have done better. There’s a really loving interview of hers with David Frost on the David Frost show on CBS from 1970 in which he plays her. I think it’s custom diva. It’s definitely from normo. It’s probably the custom diva um. From her first non recording from 1954 he asked, Well, did you sense mistakes? And that? She says, No, but it could have been better. That was always the case. But when she was at the peak of her career, I don’t think she particularly listened to recordings, but I will say she developed kind of an obsessive need to listen to them. When she started to lose her voice, or not started, but later on, by 1967 she was listening to recordings, definitely, maybe not six seven, but Peter Andre, who was who worked for Umi, remembering being, remembered being at her flat, at her apartment in early 1968 and she would play her recordings in front of people trying to figure out what was there, what had been lost. She especially was obsessed in her later years with her earlier recordings, trying to get back her early, more bestial, more out of control voice. But she was terribly self loathing. She said, in every artist, there’s a critic, there are always critics and creators. There’s the one who performs the instrument, the reflexes, and then there’s the other person in you who says, Well, that wasn’t good. That could have been better. So she taught herself to pieces, listening to recording. She would never have said anything was perfect, but yeah, she was listening to them, trying to get back something, trying to understand what she had been doing and what had gone

Dan LeFebvre  1:46:28

makes sense. Makes sense. Well, when we started our chat today, I mentioned the opening scene in the movie is also how it ends. So we’ll circle back to that. Now, as we start to wrap up our discussion and then the final scenes, we see Maria singing so loudly in her apartment that thanks to an open window, people are stopping in the streets to hear it then seems to sap the last ounce of energy that she has. Bruna and fruci went to go get groceries and take the dogs for the walk as well. They come back find her on the floor, even though it’s I’m assuming it’s not historically accurate, because that’s just not the way things happen in the real world. But I thought the movie’s ending was beautifully done. It had me in tears watching it, especially when the dogs come in, they start crying as they see her lying motionless on the floor. But how well did the movie do depicting the way that Maria Callas died?

Sophia Lambton  1:47:15

Well, obviously the moment about Maria Callas singing Republic, you know, the public coming that obviously didn’t happen. Rick House wouldn’t have sung like I mean, sometimes she did sing so loudly, practicing in her flat, the people or in a hotel room, for instance, that the neighbors heard. But not, not at that point when her voice was in tatters. She actually, by that point, she felt her voice was so bad she would, for instance, she would tell ferocho to leave the room when she practiced, all the doors would be closed and ferocious. Would remember that at one point she came out and saw him, said, What are you doing here? Because he wasn’t supposed to be there, you know, near the door, listening, kind of eavesdropping on her singing. She probably, you know, as I mentioned before, bro and chirocha was there when she died. It was quite a simple day. I don’t think. No, she didn’t have, she didn’t have occasion to sing, because she woke up at about 1pm um, prepared on some coffee and eggs. She went to go to go to the bathroom to get dressed. She had a sudden headache. I mentioned earlier she had been suffering from bad pain on her left side. A doctor had said it was flu and rheumatism, but she started having a heart attack. BRUNO offered her spoonfuls of coffee, while Firoz tried to call one of her doctors. Eventually, Fi called an ambulance. I’m not sure why he didn’t call an ambulance begin with, to be honest, but he was trying to reach one of her doctors, and and and she, and she died at about 2:15pm Paris time. Her poodles. She did have poodles. They were Jeddah and pixie. Pixie was smaller than her representation in this movie. Pixie was the white one. Jenna was the black one. I don’t know if they held when she died. They loved her very much. She tried to teach them to sing. There’s a recording of her trying to teach them to sing. And there, there’s a recording of them yapping, and she’s trying to get them to Yap melodically.

Dan LeFebvre  1:49:19

I’ve had dogs. I haven’t had poodles, but it would be a feat to try to get them to sing melodically.

Sophia Lambton  1:49:28

Yeah.

Dan LeFebvre  1:49:31

Something that Maria does mention throughout the movie is how she’s writing her autobiography, although we never see it published in the movie. There’s a line of dialog from her sister near the end, where she tells Maria not to write anything about her life, but if you do, be kind to yourself. And the impression I got from the movie was that she’s mostly hallucinating her life flashing before her eyes before the end. But did Maria Callas actually end up writing an autobiography?

Sophia Lambton  1:49:58

No, Maria clouds didn’t write an auto. Biography, but she was always interested in the idea of trying to set the record straight. The first time she did anything akin to that was when she she wrote a series of articles that were kind of her memoirs. So they were known as her memoirs for Oji magazine in Italy, using a ghost writer, Anita pensoti. So, so she kind of dictated to Anita pensoti That would have been in December 57 No, wait. No, no, December, 56 No, published in January 57 in six installments in orgy magazine in Italy. But she was considering an autobiography, as that is March 1960 when she wrote to her friend herb and Weinstock, the music critic. One day, rather soon, I will decide to write my book biography, but I need someone to make some research in Greece, of pictures, declarations, true in brackets and information that my memory can fail. You know how I’m precise in everything? At least I try my best to be later on. Should pick that up again. That the idea of a biography, an autobiography. But she was so funny. She said, I can’t talk about myself that would be lacking in modesty. So she started writing to her friends and colleagues. She wrote to the daughter of conductor Victor De Sabata, Eliana, who had been her friend in Milan, saying, Can you provide me some memories, because I don’t remember or something. And and wrote to dole Soria, who had worked she had founded Angel records together with her husband Dario. Maria would say there have been so many lies she told. In October 1971 she told Joan Crawford, who was kind of a cattle friend of hers, not not a close friend, but they were on Franny chance. She told Joan Crawford she was working on a biography. And she actually had the interest of an editor at Simon and Schuster in in New York, Peter schwed. And she continued writing. You know, she actually wrote to one of her old maids, meaning one of her former maids, not an old maid, but one of her former maids, Matilda sangioli, asking her again, can you supply some memories? Because I can’t talk about myself, I would be lacking in modesty. So there were there were discussions. She was always, you know, she wore her heart on her sleeve, and her letters are very expressive. They’re very expressive and they’re very open. So she would put for instance, I hope this letter makes sense because I was distracted listening to Wagner’s music on the turntable, and in another letter, in a letter to Irving colon and another music critic, she writes, PS, I hope this letter makes sense because I was interrupted 11 times whilst writing it, so she she really wore her heart on her sleeve. I I really hope that this this episode, and for those who are interested, my book dispels the idea that she was so mysterious, because actually, she really wasn’t mysterious. There have been many performing artists who are mysterious, who continue to be mysterious. Well, cast wasn’t particularly secretive, and she didn’t write hell to biography. She wasn’t a big writer. I don’t think she would have managed writing held a book. She would have found him boring. You know, talking about herself, she actually said in an interview, I don’t like talking about myself, I found me boring. I find me boring. So that wasn’t going to happen, but she did entertain the idea that

Dan LeFebvre  1:53:02

leads right into my final question for you, because you have a biography about Maria Callas in print, a centennial biography. I’ll make sure to add a link in the show notes for everyone to get their own copy right now to learn more about the RE real Maria Callas. But before I let you go, can you share one of your favorite stories that might surprise someone who has only seen the movie.

Sophia Lambton  1:53:23

Well, the first, first and foremost, what I want to tell someone who’s only seen the movie is that above and beyond all other false characterizations of Mary callous, above and beyond all other myths, I think what would have really gutted her was the idea that she could have been rude to a fan. She was never rude to a fan. I mean, all of the colleagues that were not, maybe not all, but the vast majority of people who worked with her talked about how generous and friendly she was. She was such a team player. I mean, she, she sent a message upon him. Kiku mufonio for a Royal Opera House audition. You know, she wrote to the opera house asking for an audition for her. She, when she was at Judah giving master classes, she got the Secretary, Lona Levant, basically she wrote, she sent a singer CB to Larry Kelly, who was a general manager of Dallas civic opera, even though the singer, Mario full score, was 13, nine years old. So you’d think the 39 year old could have done himself, but no, she’s doing it for him. But her public were like has her children, she would never have been rooted them, and she was in touch with her fans. At one point, a fan Dolores rivelino, who’d later become a chef, sneaked in, sneaked into her dressing room, as in kind of illicitly, and Maria offered her a swig from a big bottle of orange age she had been drinking. So she received fans in her dressing room at 3am and another example of how loving she was to her fans was during what was basically what I call the La Scala Cold War, which is when her husband, manegini kept I think it was his awkward, misguided way of getting a higher fee for his wife for her performances. He had spoken ill of the General Manager of La Scala, Antonio giangelli, to the press and giringhe never realized how much of this was coming from manegini and not from callus. So he was trying to get Marie callous to tell him her available dates for the fall. Look following seat in 1957 to 958, Oh, no. Sorry. No wait. No, no, sorry. 1958 to 959, and she would she would give him the dates, and he would say, but I can’t make decisions until I have your dates. And she would say, but here are my dates. And you’ll say, but I can’t make decisions I have this. It is such a silly exchange because it was dramatized in the press as this big few, but when you read the messages, it’s ridiculous. So was playing, or whether he was having some periodic illiteracy going on or something. But it ended badly, because eventually Marie Keller said, I cannot sustain this in genuine relationship, and she left La Scala, meaning she said, I’m no longer going to perform at La Scala. But before that, she was singing in Anna Bolena in april 1958 at La Scala. A month before she left the theater, things were really tense with giringelli. He would eventually, I don’t think it was this performance, but later on, oh, no, wait, I’m just trying to figure this out. No, no. Sorry. We’re not in April 58 we’re in May 58 she’s doing Pirata, her last performance at La Scala. For a long time, she’d return later on in polyuto. That would be in December 1960 but for now, she’s doing il Terada, Atlas column and gongue. It was so piss off at her. He had the big iron curtain, not just the red velvet curtain, but the Iron Curtain. Stage curtain fall down quite early after the performance, so she couldn’t get an ovation. She, you know, the audience couldn’t continue applauding. That was a signal, everybody must go home. And the fire marshal came out and said, you know, okay, clear the stage. Performance is over. And when Rhea came outside, there were all these fans who were huddled to say goodbye, and police officers, police officers, or I don’t know, security girls were there to restrain them. And she said, Leave them alone. These people are my friends. They are doing no harm, because that was her relationship with her public she had been banished from her dressing room. Usually, she would receive them in her dressing room, and sometimes stay up as late as 3am in the dressing room, signing autographs. But she had been kind of the feud had happened. She had left La Scala so during Kelly had ended the performance earlier, meaning they hadn’t given time for innovation or fan engagement, and she stood outside with them and stopped them from being banished by the strange guards who’ve been recruited to stand there.

Dan LeFebvre  1:57:35

Wow, yeah, that’s, I mean, that’s a very different, very Maria Callas than we see in the movie. So I really hope that everybody listening to this will pick up a copy of your book to learn more about the real Maria Callas. Thank you again. So much for your time, Sophia.

Sophia Lambton  1:57:50

Thank you so much, Dan.

September 30th, 331 BCE. Persia.

We’ll start this week by going back into ancient history from the 2004 Alexander movie.

Just a few minutes into the beginning of the movie we’ll find an event from this week in history as the camera pans across the desert. There are a few clouds in the sky, but it’s hardly a blue sky—more of a hazy mix of gray and an orange that, along with the sand in front of us, makes for a very one-colored landscape.

There’s some text on the screen telling us we’re in Gaugamela, Persia. That’s in modern-day Iraqi Kurdistan.

As we see a man on a horse, another man’s voice is narrating the story. He says it was mad. 40,000 of us against hundreds of thousands of them under Darius. East and West had come together to decide the fate of the known world.

That night, the soldiers camp in the desert. Collin Ferrell’s version of Alexander the Great looks at the moon along with Jared Leto’s character, Hephaestion. He says the moon is a bad omen, to which Alexander says it’s a bad omen for Darius.

They go on, talking a bit more about the battle to come before Alexander goes to his tent while Hephaestion walks off.

The next day, the sun is bright in the sky. We see scores of soldiers marching. The camera cuts between Alexander offering up a cow as a sacrifice and the feet of scores of marching soldiers. Dust gets kicked up as they’re marching. Immediately above the soldiers, the sky is darkened with the lines of long spears carried by the soldiers.

After the sacrifice is made, Alexander jumps on his horse and the camera flies into the sky for an overhead view. Among the sand in the desert, the soldiers are too many to count. The lines of soldiers we can see quickly fade into the dust and sand being kicked up as the men are marching. The battle is about to begin.

The true story behind that scene in the movie Alexander

In the show notes I’ll have a link to the deep dive that we did back on episode #157 of Based on a True Story for the entire movie, but for this week’s event, I actually backed up a day to September 30^th because what we just watched in the movie are the events leading up to the Battle of Gaugamela that happened on October 1^st, 331 BCE when Alexander the Great defeated Darius III of Persia.

The movie’s mention of 40,000 men against hundreds of thousands is a generalization, but it’s close enough. In the true story, Alexander had 47,000 soldiers under his command while Darius had anywhere from 50,000 to over a million soldiers.

As you can imagine, that’s a huge discrepancy in the numbers. But I guess that’s something that can happen about an event that took place thousands of years ago.

And to be fair, most historians today dispute there being over a million soldiers—that comes from some ancient sources. For example, a Greek historian who lived at the time, Arrian, estimated 40,000 cavalry and 1,000,000 infantry for the Persians. Another ancient historian estimated 800,000 infantry and 200,000 cavalry. Another estimated just 1,000,000 troops without breaking them down into cavalry and infantry. Yet another said 45,000 cavalry and only 200,000 infantry.

Only.

200,000 is still a huge army for a battle. But, you get the point of how conflicting accounts make it difficult to know exactly how many were there. Generally, modern estimates range between 50,000 and 120,000 soldiers altogether for the Persians.

On the Greek side, most historians agree the army under the command of Alexander the Great was about 47,000. There seems to be less dispute about that, but anyway you look at it, the Greeks were outnumbered.

Perhaps that’s one reason why the battle is something we still talk about to this day.

Times were different in 331 BCE, and both Darius and Alexander themselves led the attack with their soldiers. After some intense fighting, the decisive blow took place when Alexander charged with a giant wedge of soldiers against the Persian infantry. They managed to weaken the Persian center where Darius was located.

Remember the name Arrian that I mentioned a moment ago? Arrian was a Greek historian who lived from around 86 to around 160 CE, so he wasn’t alive during 331 BCE when the battle was—but, of course, he was still closer to the events than we are today. Arrian’s book called The Anabasis of Alexander is one of the best sources we have about Alexander the Great.

Here’s a quote from Arrian about the turning point in the Battle of Gaugamela:

For a short time there ensued a hand-to-hand fight; but when the Macedonian cavalry, commanded by Alexander himself, pressed on vigorously, thrusting themselves against the Persians and striking their faces with their spears, and when the Macedonian phalanx in dense array and bristling with long pikes had also made an attack upon them, all things together appeared full of terror to Darius, who had already long been in a state of fear, so that he was the first to turn and flee.

By the end of October 1^st, Alexander won what many consider one of his finest and most decisive victories in the face of overwhelming odds. On the other side, the Persian King Darius III did manage to escape on horseback, but it was considered to be the beginning of the end for the First Persian Empire, which later fell completely to the Greeks and Alexander the Great.

 

October 1st, 1961. New York.

Our next event happened on Tuesday this week, and we’ll find it about an hour and 52 minutes into the made-for-TV movie called 61*.

We’re on a baseball field. The camera dollies down just behind home plate, so we can see a perfect angle of the batter, catcher, and umpire on the right side of the camera frame. On the left side, the pitcher stands on the mound. In the distance behind them is the crowd in the stands.

At the plate is number 9, and we can see from the uniform he’s on the New York Yankees. After a few moments, he gets into position in the batter’s box. The pitcher, wearing a Boston Red Sox away uniform, nods to the catcher the approval of the next pitch. Then, he winds, and throws.

The batter swings. We can hear the crack of the bat as the ball goes soaring into right field. The announcer is excited. It’s going back, back…the camera cuts to the crowd in the outfield looking up. The outfielder races to the fence, tracking the ball. He gets to the wall just in time to see the ball land a few rows into the stands.

And the crowd goes wild!

The true story behind that scene in the movie 61*

That short sequence in the movie is a depiction of Roger Maris hitting his 61^st home run of the 1961 season, breaking Babe Ruth’s record that he had set in 1927. We’ll learn more about that and the movie’s title in a moment, but before we do that, let’s do our fact-check of the movie because it is correct to show Maris hitting his 61^st homer off the Red Sox, but there’s more to the story that we don’t see there.

It was the final game of the 1961 season when the New York Yankees were playing their rivals, the Boston Red Sox. On the mound for the Red Sox was a rookie starter by the name of Tracy Stallard. Technically, Stallard had his major league debut the year prior in 1960, but he only had four appearances that year, so he qualified as a rookie in 1961.

That day, Stallard managed to get Roger Maris to pop out to left field during his first at bat. That was in the first inning. Maris came to bat again in the fourth. On a 2-0 pitch, Maris hit a fastball into the right field stands for his 61^st home run.

Oh, I mentioned the asterisk in the movie’s title of 61*. The reason for that is because in 1961, the American League expanded with the Los Angeles Angels and Washington Senators joining the league—the previous Washington Senators moved to Minneapolis after the 1960 season to become the Minnesota Twins. With more teams in the league, they decided to change the number of games played from 154 to 162. 1961 was the first year the American League did that, the National League didn’t follow with the 162-game season until the following year, 1962.

So, when Roger Maris was on his record-setting season in 1961, baseball was in the midst of a lot of changes. Not only the expanded number of games, but with new teams in the league that meant there were a lot of players in the majors who had just been called up from the minors.

In other words, a lot of people felt the teams were not quite as good as they had been just a year prior with 50 more players added to the league in the two brand-new expansion teams.

And, in a nutshell, that’s why the asterisk is on Maris’ record. Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in 154 games. In 154 games of the 1961 season, Roger Maris had 59 home runs. It wasn’t until the final game of the 162-game season for Roger Maris to hit his 61^st home run. Since it took Maris more games to break the record, a lot of people questioned whether or not the record was a legitimate record.

More specifically, it was a New York sportswriter named Dick Young who suggested the asterisk. Officially, the Commissioner of Baseball removed any asterisk from Maris’ record in 1991, but whether or not there’s an asterisk is still something many people debate today, due in large part to the 1998 season. That’s when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa both broke Maris’ record with Sosa hitting 66 home runs and McGwire hitting 70 home runs. That record would then be broken three years later when Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in the 2001 season. None of those three players, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds, have been inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame because of their alleged use of PEDs.

So, that started to bring up Maris’ record again because if he had the asterisk in his, should Sosa, McGwire and/or Bonds have one? For some baseball fans, the debate continues to this day.

As a little side note, it’s worth pointing out that Maris’ record of 61 home runs was still the most by a New York Yankee until Aaron Judge hit 62 in 2022.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, though, check out the 2001 movie called 61*. Roger Maris’ at-bat with the 61^st home run starts at about an hour and 52 minutes into the movie.

Oh, and since I mentioned Babe Ruth, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that it was also this week in history when Babe Ruth’s called shot took place. That was on October 1^st, 1932.

The New York Yankees were playing the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field for game three of the World Series when things got to be pretty chippy on the field with players on both sides doing their fair share of name-calling. When Babe Ruth came to bat in the fifth inning, he made a gesture that looks like he was pointing to the center field bleachers. Then, sure enough, he hit a home run right to those center field bleachers.

Was he calling his shot? This is another thing that’s up for debate. Some people say that’s exactly what he was doing. Footage of the event that you can find online certainly looks like that could be what he’s doing. But, again, it’s footage from 1932 so not quite the high-definition footage we have today. Some say he wasn’t calling his shot but simply gesturing his bat toward fans or other players or something else.

Regardless of what you believe, no one can deny that Babe Ruth calling his shot is an event that has gone down in sports history, and it happened this week.

Oh, and to bring it back to movies, there is a scene about 11 minutes into the 1984 movie The Natural where a nicknamed “The Whammer” that’s supposed to be kind of like Babe Ruth called his shot in a contest between himself and the star of the movie, Robert Redford’s character, Roy Hobbs.

Of course, that happens in a contest at a fair and not the World Series. “The Whammer” may have been based on Babe Ruth, but he’s a fictional character. Just like Roy Hobbs is a fictional character. So, that scene may only be inspired by a true story, but it’s enough of a reason to watch The Natural if you’re looking for more baseball movies to watch this week!

The last baseball movie I’d recommend is a documentary, not a fictional movie. It’s called Say Hey, Willie Mays! from HBO and as you can probably guess it’s all about Willie Mays. I’m throwing that into the baseball recommendation this week because it was actually last week in history when Willie Mays made what we now know simply as “The Catch.”

That happened during game one of the World Series on September 29^th, 1954. With the score tied 2-2 in the 8^th inning, Vic Wertz of the Cleveland Indians hit a fly ball to deep center field. It traveled some 420 feet or so, that’s about 130 meters, before Willie Mays made an over-the-shoulder catch while sprinting from where he had been positioned in shallow center field. In a single motion, he caught the ball, spun around and threw the ball back to the infield preventing any runners from advancing. It was such an amazing play that it’s been regarded as one of the greatest plays in sports.

So, hop in the show notes for lots of great baseball movies from this week in history!

 

October 3, 1993. Mogadishu, Somalia.

Our third event falls on Thursday this week, and we’ll find it about 43 minutes into the movie called Black Hawk Down as we find ourselves in the middle of Mogadishu, Somalia. There’s dirt street lined with buildings on either side. Driving down the street is a line of American Humvees, each vehicle is equipped with a machine gun at the top and manned by a soldier in full uniform. As they move forward, people in the streets start running the opposite direction as the Humvees. Whatever is about to go down, these civilians don’t want to get involved and I don’t blame them.

The camera changes angles now and we’re transported to the helicopters flying over the city, offering air support to the Humvees below. It looks like there are four helicopters, each of them loaded full of American soldiers so much so they we can see them sitting partially hanging out the open doors on either side of the helicopters.

Down on the ground, we’re inside a local resident’s car now. He watches as the four helicopters touch down in a line on the street. As the helicopters touch down, the soldiers jump out with their weapons ready. Another helicopter touches down on the top of a nearby building, the soldiers inside hopping out to get an overhead view of the street.

Almost immediately, these soldiers open fire on armed men across the way on another building. The four helicopters lift back off, leaving the soldiers on the ground. Or, well, some on the rooftops, as I just mentioned, but you know what I mean—they’re not on the helicopters anymore.

The camera angle shows us the helicopters leaving and then behind them we can see three more larger helicopters arriving.

But we don’t see much more of that yet as the camera changes again, following some of the soldiers who are entering one of the buildings. Weapons hot, they open fire on people inside. We can’t even see who they are before the soldiers shoot them, although it looks like they’re carrying weapons.

Back outside, the three larger military helicopters are taking up a triangle sort of positioning around a single building. On that building is the word “Olympic.”

These helicopters don’t touch down, but instead, they’re hovering low to the ground as ropes are thrown out either side. By this point, the blades on the helicopters have kicked up so much dirt and dust from the streets below that the normally blue sky has a tint of orange to it as we see from ground level the American soldiers rappel from the ropes.

Back with the Humvees, that line stops now. It’s hard to tell where they’re located from what we’re seeing in the movie. Quickly the movie cuts to another scene of American soldiers kicking in a door. Inside, a bunch of men put their hands up at the sight of the soldiers pointing their rifles at them.

There is someone firing at the Americans, forcing them to take cover.

One of the soldiers from the Humvees looks around the corner to see a helicopter hovering in the street with more American soldiers rappelling down the ropes. So, I guess the Humvees must be just around the corner from the helicopters by the “Olympic” building.

The four smaller helicopters from earlier aren’t anywhere to be seen, and now the three larger helicopters are flying away, too. Except they’re not going far. We can hear what must be the pilots talking to each other, talking about how chalk’s on the ground, so now they’re going to go into a holding pattern to provide sniper cover from the air.

Down below, things are getting more intense as a truck filled with armed men shows up and begins firing back at the American soldiers on the ground. Among the machine gun and rifles, we can see some of the men running up the stairs to a rooftop carrying rocket-propelled grenades: RPGs.

Back inside one of the helicopters, a soldier sees the RPG coming right at them. The pilot manages to move the helicopter out of the way just in time. A soldier on the ropes who was rappelling to the ground loses his grip and falls to the ground—we can’t see him hit because there’s so much dirt being kicked up by the helicopters that he just falls into the abyss.

Another soldier hops out to help his fallen comrade. The soldier who fell isn’t moving. The Americans and Somalis continue shooting at each other. After a while, the action shifts and we can hear the soldiers talking about as it’s time for extraction. We can see some men who seem to be prisoners from one of the rooms the soldiers burst into being guarded as they walk back to where the helicopters pick them up.

The armed resistance is increasing, though, and we can see an armed man leading a couple others with RPGs. Finding a view from below, he instructs them to shoot at one of the helicopters. The Americans inside see the RPG, but not before the tail is hit. A burst of flame and smoke pours out of the tail as the helicopter starts spinning around. Inside, alarms are beeping. Back at the command post, we can see the man in charge of the American’s mission stand up as he watches a screen with the smoking helicopter.

“Wolcott’s bird is hit,” we can hear someone saying.

Down below the American soldiers look up in disbelief as the helicopter continues to spin out of control.

“Super six-one is going down,” we can hear one of the soldiers saying.

Inside the helicopter, the pilot yells at the other men to hold on. Alarms continue beeping as he tries to control the ‘copter. The spinning helicopter manages to make it to a clearing between buildings before it crashes in a huge plume of smoke and dirt.

The true story behind that scene in the movie Black Hawk Down

That sequence comes from the 2001 film directed by Ridley Scott called Black Hawk Down, and it depicts an event that really did happen this week in history when not one, but two Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters were shot down on October 3^rd, 1993, in what we now know as the Battle of Mogadishu.

Or, I guess, because of the movie and the book it’s based on it’s also often referred to simply as the “Black Hawk Down Incident.”

What we didn’t get to hear in the brief description leading up to the events of October 3^rd was the reason the American soldiers were there that day.

In a nutshell, Somalia had just had a military coup by a group called the Somali National Alliance, or SNA, led by a man named Mohamed Farrah Aidid. Soon after, the United Nations launched an operation to offer food and relief supplies to the country’s affected citizens. So, from an overall perspective, that’s why the American soldiers were there as a part of the United Nations’ mission.

The mission for that particular day, October 3^rd, 1993, was to try and capture some of the SNA’s senior leadership. If you recall, the movie shows a building with the word “Olympic” on it. That would be a point for the movie’s historical accuracy, because it is true that intel had placed some of Aidid’s leadership in a building near the Olympic Hotel.

The movie also got the timing right.

By 3:40 PM, the four helicopters we see at first in the movie arrived. The movie doesn’t say exactly what they are, but they’re Boeing MH-6 Little Bird light helicopters. Their purpose that day was to carry rockets and ammo while authorized to kill any SNA soldiers who shot at them.

Down below, the noise of the helicopters had alerted Somalis in the city of their presence. The Americans’ mission was all about speed and by 4:00 PM, the Delta Force commandos had completed their mission and successfully captured 24 of Aidid’s senior leadership.

“Laurie” was the code word given to let everyone know the prisoners were secured and it was time to go home.

And just like we see in the movie, that’s when everything went wrong for the Americans when an RPG hit one of the Black Hawk helicopters. That was at 4:20 PM, so not long after the prisoners were secured.

In the movie, we hear them talking about Super Six-One, which is true because that was the designation for the MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that was shot down.

All of a sudden, the mission wasn’t just about getting out of there with the prisoners anymore. They had to rescue the soldiers in the downed helicopter. While most didn’t know it yet, both pilots had already been killed in the crash and a couple other soldiers were badly wounded. The remaining two soldiers inside set up to defend their ground until help came.

Oh, and one of those pilots was who we heard mentioned in the movie when they’re referring to “Wolcott’s bird.” That would be Chief Warrant Officer 3 Clifton Wolcott, one of the pilots of Super Six-One who was killed in the crash.

The line of Humvees we see in the movie were tasked with making their way to Super Six-One, while one of the smaller helicopters we saw in the movie, an MH-6 Little Bird, went to cover the crash site until the ground forces could get there.

But that posed a logistical problem because even though the helicopter crashed about 300 yards from the target building, the forces on the ground couldn’t see that. So, they asked for help from the helicopters still in the air and slowly made their way in the direction of the crash site.

Another Black Hawk designated Super Six-Eight was sent to the crash site. While the rescue team was rappelling from Super Six-Eight, that helicopter was also hit by an RPG. It didn’t crash, thankfully, but it was forced to return to base.

Another Black Hawk, Super Six-Four, went to the crash site to help both support the soldiers on the ground while also giving a visual indicator to the troops trying to find the crash site from below.

Things went from bad to worse when, at 4:40 PM, Super Six-Four was hit by an RPG, sending it crashing down into some buildings below.

There were now two crashed Black Hawk helicopters. It was the start of what would be a 15-hour rescue mission that would leave 80 American soldiers wounded, 18 American soldiers dead and an estimated 1,000 or more Somali fighters killed.

As you can tell, there’s a lot more to the story of what happened on October 3^rd and 4^th, so if you want to take a deep dive into the true story, scroll back to episode #105 of Based on a True Story where we covered the movie Black Hawk Down.

If you just want to watch the movie, of course, we started our segment about 43 minutes into the movie, but really, pretty much the entire movie takes place this week in history.

 

Historical birthdays from the movies

This week there are two historical birthdays on Wednesday!

Starting with Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg, who was born on October 2^nd, 1847, in the city of Posen in the Kingdom of Prussia—today that’s in Poland.

Paul von Hindenburg was remembered in history as the man who led the Imperial German Army during World War I and then became the President of Germany who proposed Adolf Hitler become the chancellor. Hindenburg remained the President until his death when Hitler dissolved the office of the president so that he could take those powers, too. Because of his association with World War I and Hitler, Von Hindenburg has been portrayed in a lot of movies and TV shows, but if you haven’t seen it yet then I’d recommend the two-part TV miniseries called Hitler: The Rise of Evil. In that series, Von Hindenburg is played by the great actor Peter O’Toole.

Or if you want something more focused on entertainment and not quite as historically accurate, Hindenburg is played by Rainer Bock in the 2017 Wonder Woman movie.

Also on October 2^nd but in the year 1869, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in Porbandar, India. Better known as Mahatma Ghandi, he was born in British-controlled India and was a lawyer and activist who was influential in leading India toward a peaceful independence from British rule. Probably the most popular movie portraying Ghandi’s life is the 1982 film from Richard Attenborough simply called Ghandi where he was played by Ben Kingsley.

On October 5^th, 1902, Ray Kroc was born in Oak Park, Illinois. Ray was best known as the businessman who bought a fast-food company from the McDonald brothers in 1961 and turned it into the McDonald’s brand we all know today. That story was told in the 2016 movie called The Founder where Ray Kroc is played by Michael Keaton. We compared that movie with history back on episode #90 of Based on a True Story.

 

‘Based on a True Story’ movie that released this week

Tuesday this week marks the 14^th anniversary of David Fincher’s biographical drama about the founding of Facebook. In The Social Network, we follow Jesse Eisenberg’s character of Mark Zuckerberg as he’s a Harvard University student back in 2003.

According to the movie, he’s dumped by his girlfriend Erica Albright, played by Rooney Mara, and in response to the breakup he creates a website called “FaceMash.” That website basically lets Harvard students compare and rank the attractiveness of female students, and it’s an instant hit—so much so that it lands Zuckerberg in trouble with the university administration.

Inspired by the success of “FaceMash,” Zuckerberg decides to create a social networking site for Harvard students, which he calls “The Facebook.”

Meanwhile, we meet two other students named Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. The identical twins are both played by Armie Hammer in the movie, and they approach Zuckerberg with an idea for their social networking site, “Harvard Connection.” Zuckerberg agrees to help them but instead uses their concept as a foundation for his own project.

“The Facebook” quickly expands to other Ivy League schools and eventually spreads to universities across the country. Eduardo Saverin, played by Andrew Garfield, is Zuckerberg’s best friend and co-founder of Facebook. He serves as the company’s CFO, providing the initial funding for the venture. However, tensions arise between the two as the platform grows in popularity.

Sean Parker, portrayed by Justin Timberlake, enters the picture as the co-founder of Napster and becomes involved with Facebook. Parker convinces Zuckerberg to relocate the company to Silicon Valley and pursue aggressive expansion, leading to a rift between Zuckerberg and Saverin. Eventually, Saverin’s shares in the company are diluted, and he is effectively pushed out of the business.

The film is framed by two lawsuits filed against Zuckerberg. The first is from the Winklevoss twins, who claim that Zuckerberg stole their idea. The second is from Saverin, who sues Zuckerberg for diluting his shares in the company. These legal proceedings are interspersed with flashbacks to the creation and rise of Facebook.

As the lawsuits are settled, the film concludes with Zuckerberg alone, refreshing his Facebook page while awaiting a friend request acceptance from his ex-girlfriend Erica. The movie ends with text stating the outcomes of the lawsuits: the Winklevoss twins received a settlement of $65 million, and Saverin’s name was restored to the list of Facebook’s founders.

The true story behind The Social Network

So, that’s all from the movie’s version of events.

Shifting from the fiction and into the fact-checking, I’m sure you already know who Mark Zuckerberg is, and maybe you’ve heard of the Winklevoss twins. Erica Albright, Eduardo Saverin, Sean Parker…those are all real people, too, and the movie does a pretty good job of setting up who they are in the true story.

The movie is also correct to show Mark Zuckerberg setting up a website called “FaceMash” that was basically comparing two women side-by-side and letting users vote on which one was more attractive. While the movie doesn’t really focus on this, in the true story Mark Zuckerberg based his “FaceMash” website that he built in 2003 on a website from 2000 called “Hot or Not” that, well, is pretty self-explanatory on what it did.

While Tinder didn’t come around until 2012, a lot of people have compared that style of swiping left or right as the same as concept. Except, of course, Zuckerberg’s “FaceMash” website only included voting for women.

To get photos of students for his own website, Zuckerberg hacked into the Harvard student directories. Those directories were called “facebooks” – so you can get a sense of where the name came from. You can also get an idea for how happy students were when they found out their photos were on FaceMash without their permission. He launched FaceMash on October 28^th, 2003, and the movie is correct to show that almost immediately it was both very popular—and also something that Zuckerberg got into huge trouble over.

After all, he had used photos without permission and used them to objectify women without their consent. People considered it both a violation legal copyright infringement, as well as just being ethically immoral.

Zuckerberg managed to avoid getting expelled, and shut down FaceMash after just three days.

In the movie, we see the lesson Zuckerberg learned from this was to find a way to get people to give their photos and information for free. That’s where, according to the movie, the Winklevoss twins’ idea of “The Harvard Connection” comes in.

And that’s basically correct, because as Zuckerberg was facing the repercussions of FaceMash, enter the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler, along with another student named Divya Narendra. He’s played by Max Minghella in the movie.

And it is true that those three worked on a new networking website they called “The Harvard Connection” back in late 2002, and into 2003. When Zuckerberg’s whole FaceMash debacle made him a name on campus, Narendra and the Winklevoss twins asked Zuckerberg if he’d join their project as the lead developer for “The Harvard Connection.”

The idea they had for “The Harvard Connection” was basically to be a social networking platform online for Harvard students—with an eventual plan to grow beyond Harvard—it was eventually renamed “ConnectU.”

So, that’s how Mark Zuckerberg got involved in what was then The Harvard Connection. At the same time as he was helping them, he also recognized the idea of a social networking platform was the perfect way to get people to upload their information into his own platform—the next “FaceMash,” so to speak.

And so it was that, on February 4^th, 2004, Zuckerberg launched a new website he called “The Facebook” after Harvard’s internal directories. This time, though, he wasn’t hacking the directories to get information. He allowed users to upload their information to share with others. And so, the concept of what we know as Facebook now was born.

The Facebook started getting popular fast—and the movie is also correct to show that the Winklevoss twins and Narendra were not happy when they found out about Zuckerberg’s new website. After all, it was basically what they were wanting to do! On top of that, they also felt like Zuckerberg was slacking on developing their platform while working on his own competitor.

We see that in the movie, but to get a better understanding, it’s helpful to know the timeline of it all.

So, if you recall, it was at the end of October in 2003 that FaceMash was shut down. In November of 2003, Narendra and the Winklevoss twins asked Zuckerberg to help with their project. He agreed. Then, on February 4^th, 2004, Zuckerberg launched The Facebook on his own while still developing The Harvard Connection. It took a few months, but as The Facebook got more popular, around May of 2004, the rest of The Harvard Connection team found out about The Facebook.

Well, I guess technically by then they had rebranded from The Harvard Connection to ConnectU in the hopes of expanding beyond Harvard.

In September of 2004, ConnectU officially filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg claiming he stole their ideas to start Facebook. In return, Facebook filed a lawsuit against ConnectU in 2005 claiming they stole Facebook’s web design for ConnectU.

As you can imagine, the lawsuits didn’t make either side happy for quite some time…until, in 2008, they finally agreed on a settlement that saw Facebook handing over about $20 million in cash as well as over a million Facebook shares—another $45 million or so in valuation at the time.

At the time of the settlement in 2008, Facebook was worth about $15 billion dollars, thanks in no small part to an October 2007 investment from Microsoft of about $240 million for 1.6% of Facebook.

Oh! And I didn’t even mention Justin Timberlake’s character, Sean Parker.

It is true that Sean Parker was the very first president of Facebook.

It’s also true that he’s the same guy who founded Napster, although the movie focuses more on Facebook so it doesn’t really tell that part of the story.

In a nutshell, the true story for Sean Parker’s involvement started years earlier back around the turn of the century in 1999 when Parker and his partner Shawn Fanning launched the file-sharing service they called Napster—named after Fanning’s high-school nickname. Both Parker and Fanning were still teenagers when they launched Napster, after all. And that gives you a little insight into Sean Parker, because he didn’t go to Harvard like Mark Zuckerberg did.

In fact, Sean Parker never went to any college. At 16, he won a tech fair by developing a web browser. That was back in 1995, and Netscape Navigator launched in 1994, so the idea of a web browser was still new at the time—and that win earned him an internship at a company called FreeLoader. That was the first company started by Mark Pincus, who you might know as the guy who started Zynga. You remember FarmVille and Words with Friends?

So, that’s who Sean Parker worked for throughout high school. As Sean said in an interview for Forbes, “I wasn’t going to school. I was technically in a co-op program but in truth was just going to work.”

He also said he made about $80,000 that year which, adjusted for inflation, is about the same as $150,000 today. So, his parents were okay with him not going to college.

And that’s what he was doing when he met Shawn Fanning on a dial-up bulletin board. Together, the two built and launched Napster in June of 1999. It gained popularity to help infuse them with some investment money, but they also started to run into legal troubles. That part of the story comes from the band Metallica. They had a song called “I Disappear” on the Mission Impossible 2 soundtrack that showed up on Napster before it was officially released.

In April of 2000, they officially filed a lawsuit against Napster, followed soon by other musicians like Dr. Dre as well as the RIAA overall.

The tricky part to all this, though, is the way Napster worked isn’t by hosting the files themselves. If you’re familiar with BitTorrent, that’s a technology that came out in the wake of Napster and works basically the same way. When you installed Napster, it’d scan your hard drive for any MP3 files—technically you could do more than just MP3s as Napster’s software evolved, but MP3s and music was its focus. So, it’d scan for MP3s and create an index of the files you had on your computer. Then, someone else could request that file and Napster would transfer it from your computer to theirs.

The concept is called peer-to-peer, and what that meant is that Napster didn’t actually store the files themselves. So, when they were hit with lawsuits to remove all the copyrighted files—they couldn’t really do that. Napster was forced to cease operations in 2001 and filed for bankruptcy in 2002.

Of course, as is often the case for tech companies, other companies buy up their assets and branding. So, as a little side note, if you look up Napster today—it still exists, or maybe it’s better to say it exists again, because it’s a completely legal streaming service now.

So, in 2002, Parker started up a new company called Plaxo. It was basically a souped-up address book in Microsoft Outlook, but at the time it was also a precursor to social networking. Parker was forced out of Plaxo by investors in 2004, so when he saw “The Facebook” as it was called then on his girlfriend’s computer while she was a student at Stanford and immediately saw the potential.

Thanks to Sean’s past with Napster, he had connections with investors and helped bring on Peter Thiel as one of the first outside investors for Facebook. If that name rings a bell, it’s because he co-founded PayPal alongside Elon Musk, which he was also the CEO of until they sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.

So, around 2004, Thiel was flush with cash and invested $500,000 for about 10.2% of the company. He sold all those shares in 2012 for about $1 billion, although he’s still on the board—actually, there’s a Wall Street Journal article from 2019 that I’ll link to in the show notes if you want to read about some of the controversy swirling around him and his pressuring of Facebook not to fact-check political ads.

And I’m sure you’ve seen the aftermath of those decisions as Mark Zuckerberg was called to testify before Congress in April of 2018 about Facebook’s role in the election.

September 24^th, 1780. New York.

At 36 minutes into the third season, episode 9 of AMC’s Turn: Washington’s Spies, we’ll find an event that happened exactly 244 years ago today during the American Revolutionary War.

Hitting play on the series, we’re in a wooded encampment of American soldiers. In the foreground is a cannon, with horses and a tent in the background. On the right side, everything is gathered around a rustic, wooden building. Off in the distance, behind the building, a uniformed officer in blue and white can be seen riding a horse into the encampment. Taking off his helmet, he tells one of the soldiers he’s looking for Colonel Jameson. They point him to the building. Handing the soldier his helmet, he walks to the building and enters.

Once inside, we can see another uniformed man sitting behind a desk. That must be Colonel Jameson, although there’s no one with that name cast in the series. But we can tell the man walking into the building who just entered the encampment is Seth Numrich’s character, Benjamin Tallmadge.

Tallmadge addresses Jameson inside the building, and we can see another man there playing a game of checkers across from the Colonel. The other man isn’t wearing a uniform at all, and when Tallmadge introduces himself as Major Benjamin Tallmadge from General Washington’s staff, the other man seems to noticeably shy away a bit.

Tallmadge tells the Colonel he was sent to find out what happened last night.

Now the three men are all facing each other, and Tallmadge makes no indication of recognizing the non-uniformed man. Colonel Jameson goes on, saying an enemy ship got a little rowdy, but she turned tail after a few shots. Oh, and this man was caught by some Skinners a few hours ago. They said he’s a spy, but he has a letter of pass from General Arnold that they couldn’t read.

Tallmadge looks directly at the other man, who we know from the actor is JJ Feild’s character, Major John Andre. He smiles at Tallmadge saying it was a simple misunderstanding. Tallmadge makes no indication of recognizing Andre.

“Yes, of course,” he says. Then, he asks Jameson for a word between just the two men, and they leave the building together. Once outside, Tallmadge asks Jameson to confirm Andre’s story. Then, Tallmadge asks Jameson if he had any shoes on. Jameson pauses for a moment.

No, he didn’t have any.

You didn’t think that was odd?

Then, turning to look at one of the Skinners standing there, Tallmadge continues to talk to Jameson.

“Or, you didn’t think it was odd that one of the Skinners is wearing a pair of royal officer’s boots?”

We can see one of the men standing there is wearing a nice pair of boots. Tallmadge asks what the man’s name is inside. Jameson thinks for a moment, then he says, “John Anderson.”

Tallmadge thinks for a moment, seemingly racking his brain for that name.

Then, Colonel Jameson continues to speak, saying that he should add that he did have plans for West Point on his person. But we didn’t think anything of it because they were in General Arnold’s handwriting. Tallmadge is in disbelief, “Wait a minute, what? And you just thought to tell me this now?”

Jameson stands a little taller now, “Of course not. It’s all in my report to General Arnold.”

Tallmadge pauses for a moment, as the realization starts to set in across his face before rushing away.

The true story behind this week’s event in the movie Turn: Washington’s Spies

Let’s start our fact-checking of this week’s event by clarifying the timeline, because the series doesn’t give us any indication of dates or anything. But, if I had to guess, I’d say this segment from the movie happened on September 24^th, 1780, because of a line in the series where Colonel Jameson talks about “John Anderson” being caught the night before.

And we know from history that the real Major John Andre was captured on September 23^rd, 1780—so, the night before the meeting we see in the series.

The TV show is correct to mention the name John Anderson, too, because that was the name John Andre used undercover. And it’s also correct to suggest Benjamin Tallmadge was involved as part of Washington’s Spies—as to borrow from the title of the series.

So, in the true story, Major General Benedict Arnold was in the inner circle for the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, General George Washington. But, Arnold grew disillusioned with his position in the Army because, quite simply, he was going broke and the Continental Army wasn’t paying him what he felt he deserved. So, he offered to turn over the fort at West Point in exchange for about £20,000 and a position in the British Army. While it’s hard to convert British pounds of 1780 to today’s U.S. dollars, a rough ballpark would be about $42 million today.

After nearly a year of communicating in secret, Major Andre took a British ship called Vulture to meet face-to-face with General Arnold of the Continental Army. They met in the evening hours of September 21^st, 1780, and talked all night until the sun started to come up on September 22^nd. Even as the sun came up, Major Andre decided to keep the conversation with Arnold going, so instead of going back to Vulture, he and Arnold decided to go to a nearby house. It was owned by a man named Joshua Hett Smith at the time—he’s not in the TV series at all. Today, though, Smith’s house has another name: The Treason House. That’s thanks to the meeting between Andre and Arnold that took place there. At least, that was a nickname it had before it was demolished. I’ll throw a link in the show notes of a photo of what the house looked like in case you want to see.

So, at Smith’s house on September 22^nd is where Andre and Arnold continued their conversations. Meanwhile, though, the presence of a British ship on the river drew the gunfire of some Continental soldiers. That’s what the TV series is talking about when we hear Colonel Jameson telling Tallmadge about a ship that turned tail after a few shots.

They couldn’t have known it at the time, but that’s a nice little historical level of detail there because the ship they’re talking about is Vulture, which had delivered Andre to the meeting with Arnold and then once it shot at, Vulture was forced to retreat, leaving Andre stranded.

When it was finally time to leave, Arnold convinced Andre that he’d be safer going undercover on land instead of trying to sneak back to the British ship that was long gone by now.

So, that’s why we see Major John Andre in the series without a British uniform on—because he took it off to try and sneak past the American lines. He tried to do that in the early morning hours of September 23^rd, and I say “tried” for a reason. He was not successful.

If you remember from the TV series, Colonel Jameson tells Tallmadge that Andre had a passport from General Arnold that the Skinners couldn’t read.

The term “Skinners” we hear in the series are referring to slang term used in American-held territory for fighters loyal to the British Crown. That was a real term, but it’s how Colonel Jameson says the Skinners couldn’t read the pass that’s a change from what really happened.

In the true story, the men who captured John Andre were named John Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Van Wart. Those were the three Americans who stopped Andre on the morning of September 23^rd, 1780. They didn’t have to read any passport from Andre, because he told them exactly who he was. You see, one of those men, John Paulding, just happened to be wearing a captured Hessian uniform.

Hessians were Germans who were serving in the British army.

So, Hessians were loyal to the British Crown. When Andre saw the Hessian uniform, he assumed the three men were British soldiers. He asked if they belonged to the “lower party” referring to the British camp to the south of them. They said they do, so John Andre told them he was a British officer who was on important business. It must’ve been quite a shock to Andre when the three men replied with, “We’re Americans” and arrested him.

Only then did Andre change his story, telling the men he was actually an American. That’s when he showed them the passport that General Arnold gave him, but again the men didn’t even need to read it like we see in the series because at that point they already were suspicious of this man.

Just like we see in the series, it is true that John Andre was taken to a nearby camp run by Lt. Colonel John Jameson. And Jameson had no idea of Andre’s true intentions, but he was aware of the passport from General Arnold. Of course, Jameson also had no idea of Arnold’s true intentions, either, so Jameson was going to send Andre directly to Arnold!

Very very similar to what we see happening in the TV show, Major Benjamin Tallmadge arrived at Jameson’s camp while Andre was there. He was suspicious of Andre, and instead of sending Andre to General Arnold, he convinced Jameson to send Andre and the letters from Arnold that Andre was carrying to General Washington.

As fate would have it, though, Jameson knew what all this implied. But he still wasn’t sure about Arnold’s guilt. And remember, as far as he’s concerned, General Arnold is still Colonel Jameson’s superior officer at this point—because, technically, he still was. If for any reason General Arnold was found not guilty, you can bet General Arnold’s retaliation would fall on Colonel Jameson.

So, Col. Jameson sent Andre to General Washington, and also sent a letter to General Arnold telling him of Andre’s arrest. That gave Arnold enough time to escape, which he did—also this week in history—on September 25^th, 1780.

And while John Andre’s capture and Benedict Arnold’s betrayal was a major moment during the American Revolution, of course, it’s just one small part of the overall story of the spy ring that’s told in AMC’s Turn: Washington’s Spies.

So, if you want to learn more about the true story, I’ve got a deep-dive episode all about Turn linked in the show notes—that’s episode #139 of Based on a True Story.

 

September 25^th, 1944. Arnhem, Netherlands.

Our next event happened on the 25^th, so Wednesday this week, and back during World War II. To see how it’s shown in the movies, we’re at about two hours and 42 minutes into the 1977 film A Bridge Too Far.

Picking up a piece of paper, Sean Connery’s character, Maj. Gen. Urquhart, reads it with an air of disgust in his voice. “Withdraw!?”

He turns around, speaking to no one in particular, although we can see some other soldiers in the background.

“Two days, they said, and we’ve been here nine,” he mutters under his breath as he paces across the floor. Again, in disgust, he mutters something about how you’d think we could accomplish one bloody mile. Then, General Urquhart’s demeanor seems to change slightly as he turns to another man in the room. As if finally accepting the piece of paper, he says they have their marching orders.

In the next shot, we see General Urquhart addressing his men. Referring to George Innes’ character, he says MacDonald will stay behind with the radio to give the Germans something to listen to while the rest of the men sneak away. On top of that, some of the medical staff have volunteered to stay behind with the wounded who are too bad to move. Those wounded will replace the men firing, to allow them to escape.

By the time the Germans find out what’s happening, we should all be safely across the river.

And then, under the cover of a rainy night, we see what looks like General Urquhart’s British soldiers making their escape. It’s so dark and the rain is heavy enough that it’s very difficult to see just how many there are, but we can see a line of soldiers all walking along a rope, using it like a guiding line. They stop when they can hear the sound of German voices over the rain.

After a moment, the voices seem to die down, and the line starts moving again. One of the soldiers turns to Urquhart and says something to the effect of how he’s finally starting to believe they’ll make it. And, in the next few scenes, there are more and more soldiers in the cover of night who are walking the same direction toward a large river. General Urquhart watches for a moment before getting into a small boat with a few other soldiers and making his way across the river, too.

The true story behind this week’s event in the movie A Bridge Too Far

That event we’re seeing is the end of the military operation known as Market Garden—a disastrous failure for the Allies during World War II that many historians believe prolonged the war instead of ending it early.

So, let’s start our fact-check with Sean Connery’s character, Major General Urquhart.

He was a real person, and he really was the man in charge of the 1^st Airborne Division for the Battle of Arnhem. That battle was just part of the overall Operation Market Garden, but the movie is correct to show Arnhem as being the last major part of the overall Market Garden that ended in the retreat of Allied forces.

In a nutshell, the way Operation Market Garden worked was the Allies dropped paratroopers at strategic locations just a few miles away from the bridges they were tasked with taking out. That’s why Sean Connery’s version of General Urquhart says something to the effect of going a “bloody mile” or something.

The airborne part of the operation commenced on September 17^th, 1944, and the plan was for the troops to hold the bridges until the land forces could meet them. That’s where the name comes from, because the “Market” part of the plan were the paratroopers, to be relieved by the “Garden” part of the operation—the ground troops.

If you remember, in the movie we hear Sean Connery’s version of General Urquhart mention how it was supposed to be two days, and it’s been nine.

Well, it is true that they were supposed to be relieved within 48 hours.

It’s also true that didn’t really go according to plan, though, because there were a lot more Germans in the area than the Allies anticipated. Somewhere around 100,000 Germans were in the area, compared to a little over 41,000 Allied troops. Of course, that’s for the overall operation, for the part of the true story we’re seeing in the movie with General Urquhart, there were about 10,000 of the British 1^st Airborne Division.

But, it’s still important to know the overall military operation, because all that fighting slowed down the reinforcements that were supposed to make it to them. The British paratroopers who had managed to make it to the bridge, there were only about 800 or so that made it to the bridge at Arnhem only to find themselves surrounded and alone. Despite that, and in spite of constant artillery bombardments and ground assaults from the Germans, the British held their positions for four days.

By the time the 21^st of September rolled around, the British at the bridge were being forced to surrender. The Germans continued their heavy assaults on the Allied troops. Still, they held out for a few more days. Finally, it was this week in history during the late-night hours of the 25^th or early morning hours of the 26^th that General Urquhart ordered a withdrawal.

So, that’s the scene in the movie A Bridge Too Far—the Battle of Arnhem, and also the bridge at Arnhem proved to be too much for the Allied troops. And although the scene from the movie we watched today made it hard to see how many soldiers managed to escape, only 2,000 of the 10,000 troops who were dropped managed to get out.

Oh, and just to clarify about the name of the movie. The name “A Bridge Too Far” comes from the book by Cornelius Ryan about Operation Market Garden. That’s the book the movie is based on, and the term “a bridge too far” is referring to the bridge at Arnhem where General Urquhart’s men were at, since it overstretched the Allies and led to the eventual withdrawal.

Would Operation Market Garden have been successful had they not tried to capture the one bridge at Arnhem? Despite that being something the book and movie title implies, in the true story, Operation Market Garden is debated among military historians to this day because as you might imagine, the true story is a lot more complicated.

But, if you want to watch the disastrous end of the operation that happened this week in history, hop in the show notes for where you can watch the movie A Bridge Too Far!

 

September 28^th, 1978. The Vatican.

At about two and a half hours into the film Godfather 3, we’ll find our next event from Saturday this week as two men dressed in black clergy robes walk down a dimly-lit hallway. The walls are a dark red color, with a huge painting in an ornate frame hanging on the wall, as well as fancy, old chairs and wooden furniture set along the wall. One of the two men is carrying a small tray with a saucer and cup.

As the movie plays, they walk down the marble-floored hallway and around the corner. After a pause, there’s a slight knock at the door. As the door opens, we can only hear someone saying, “Tea, Your Holiness? It will help you sleep” and the man with the steaming hot cup of tea on the saucer walks into the room.

The door closes behind him as the movie shifts to another scene of what looks like a mob hit as the character on the bed is smothered by two other men holding a pillow. Another cut in the movie, and we can see a sequence of even more dead men—apparently others taken out by the mob.

In the luxury box of a play, someone comes up to Al Pacino’s character, Michale Corleone, and whispers something in his ear. It must be something important, because he gets up and leaves with the man. In the dark hallway of the theater, we can hear what sounds like Andy Garcia’s version of Vincent Mancini telling Michael that their man inside the Vatican says something will happen to the Pope.

He’ll have a heart attack?

This is serious.

Michael says this Pope has powerful enemies, we might not be in time to save him. Then, they decide to go back into the play so no one notices them missing.

Back in the room we saw the man enter with the tea cup earlier, now it’s a nun knocking on the same door. She doesn’t wait very long for an answer before she opens the door herself, saying something as she walks into the room. There’s no reply, so she walks further into the room. On the nightstand, she picks up the saucer with what seems to be a now-empty teacup.

The nun is still trying to get the attention of whomever is lying on the bed.

The camera cuts to the man, smiling as if calmly sleeping in the bed. She nudges him. He doesn’t move. She nudges a little harder, making the reading glasses fall off his nose. He still doesn’t get up. The nun gasps, and rushes out of the room. We can hear the sound of the teacup shattering on the ground as she runs out of the room screaming, “The Holy Father is dead!”

The true story behind this week’s event in the movie Godfather III

Let’s kick off our fact-checking segment by stating the obvious: This is an example of a movie using a very real historical event as part of its fictional story. That real event is the death of Pope John Paul I.

And you guessed it, this week in history is when the real Pope John Paul I died.

Was he poisoned by a cup of tea like we see in the movie?

Well, that’s where the fictional part of the story comes into play…and not necessarily because the movie is wrong, but more that we just don’t know everything about the true story.

And here’s where this part of the story ventures into the land of conspiracies, because if you’ve ever done any research into the Catholic Church, you’ll know they’re not really known for being forthcoming with all the intricate details about how a Pope dies. Oh, sure, there’s the official version…but is that what really happened to Pope John Paul I?

Like any good conspiracy theory, let’s just lay out what we do know about the true story so you can decide what you believe.

We didn’t talk about this part of the movie, but if you’ve seen Godfather III, then you’ll know that earlier in the movie we see Pope John Paul I being elected to the papacy.

In the true story, that happened on August 26^th, 1978, and if you got the impression from the movie that perhaps he wasn’t 100% on board with the papacy, you’d be correct. We know this because of an interview that Father Diego Lorenzi did to honor the former pope. Lorenzi had worked with Pope John Paul I before he was Pope John Paul I, back when he was the Patriarch of Venice.

As a side note, his name before being Pope John Paul I was Albino Luciani. He picked Pope John Paul I because Pope Paul VI was his papal predecessor who had named him a cardinal, and the pope before that was Pope John XXIII, who had named him a bishop. So, that’s how he got the name.

So, anyway, as the true story goes, Luciani had said before going to the College of Cardinals where they vote for the pope, that if they voted for him—he would turn them down. But, in the end, he must’ve changed his mind…because when he was voted in, he said “yes” just like we see in the movie.

Well, I guess in the movie he says, “I accept,” but you know what I mean.

Pope John Paul I was only the Pope for 33 days, though.

He died on September 26^th, 1978. That falls on Thursday this week.

To say his death was a surprise is an understatement. He was the shortest-reigning pope since Pope Leo XI died of a cold just 27 days after being elected—back in the year 1605.

According to the official version of the story, Pope John Paul I died very similar to the way we see in the movie: Peacefully and in bed. The bedside lamp was still lit…and while the movie shows him smiling as if he’s just sleeping with a happy dream, we don’t really know if he had a smile on his face when he was found.

With that said, though, it is a little nod of the hat from the filmmakers to the real history because Pope John Paul I had the nickname “The Smiling Pope” because, well, he smiled a lot.

The official version of the true story is that Pope John Paul I most likely had a heart attack at some point during the night.

As you can imagine from such a short papacy, there are a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding his death. And one of them is very much in line with what we see in the Godfather III that it surrounded something to do with the Vatican Bank and maybe even the Mafia. Check out the show notes for a link to David Yallop’s 1984 book called In God’s Name where he lays out that conspiracy in more detail.

 

Historical birthdays from the movies

Time now for some birthdays from historical figures in the movies that were born this week in history.

On September 25^th, 1764, Fletcher Christian was born in Cumberland, England. He’s best known as the master’s mate on the Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty under the command of Lieutenant William Bligh. It was Christian who led the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789. That story has been told in multiple movies, including the 1962 movie simply called Mutiny on the Bounty where Fletcher Christian is played by Marlon Brando. And we did a deep dive into the historical accuracy of that movie back on episode #156 of Based on a True Story.

On September 26^th, 1888, Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He was better known as T.S. Eliot, who is now considered one of the 20^th century’s greatest poets. He was played by Willem Dafoe in the 1994 biopic about his early life called Tom & Viv.

On September 27^th, 1389, Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici was born in the Republic of Florence, in modern-day Italy. Cosimo was best known as the Italian banker whose immense riches allowed him to establish his family as one of the most powerful families during the Italian Renaissance. He was played by Richard Madden in the Netflix series simply called Medici.

 

‘Based on a True Story’ movie that released this week

This Sunday is the anniversary of the Denzel Washington movie called Remember the Titans! The movie was directed by Boaz Yakin and when it opened 24-years ago this week, it earned back almost everything it took to make the movie. With a budget of $30 million, Remember the Titans opened with about $21 million on its way to over $130 million worldwide.

Released in 2000 and set mostly in 1971, Remember the Titans gives us the “Based on a True Story” text about 45 seconds into the movie as it goes on to tell the tale of the T.C. Williams High School football team from Alexandria, Virginia. That football team goes by the Titans—hence the name of the movie.

According to the movie, T.C. Williams High School are newly integrating Black and white players, as well as coaches. That’s where Denzel Washington’s character, Herman Boone, comes into the movie as he’s appointed the head coach of the football team, replacing the former head coach Bill Yoast—he’s played by Will Patton in the movie.

And that’s where the first racial tensions arise in the movie, because Coach Yoast doesn’t appreciate being replaced. Then again, in the movie, Coach Boone doesn’t like that he’s been appointed the new head coach despite Coach Yoast having a fantastic career. He almost doesn’t accept the position, but he eventually does, and similarly Coach Yoast decides to stick around as Coach Boone’s defensive coordinator.

In the movie, we see Coach Boone taking the team to a rather rigorous training camp in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in an attempt to unite the team. Using the history of the Battle of Gettysburg to emphasize the importance of unity and overcoming racial divides, the team gradually begins to bond. The movie really focuses on two key players and team captains, Gerry Bertier, who is white, and Julius Campbell, who is Black, and as those two start to develop a close friendship so, too, does the rest of the team.

Gerry is played by Ryan Hurst while Wood Harris plays Julius Campbell in the movie.

When the team returns to Alexandria, there’s still the societal pressures and ongoing racial tensions they have to face. But the Titans go on to have an extraordinary season, remaining undefeated and eventually making it to the state championship—no thanks to a scheme by the school board to have Coach Yoast reinstated by having the refs make bad calls against the Titans. But, Coach Yoast is onto the scheme and calls out the ref in the middle of the game, so things go back to the Titan’s way once the refs go back to making fair calls.

As they’re celebrating their trip to the state championship, tragedy strikes when Gerry Bertier is driving his car when a truck side-swipes him, leaving him in the hospital for the big game. Despite this, the Titans still manage to win the state championship…and then, we find out at the very end that Gerry died ten years later, bringing everyone back together for his funeral.

The true story behind Remember the Titans

Shifting to the fact-checking segment, and let’s start with what is probably the biggest historical inaccuracy: Gerry Bertier was not in a car accident that left him handicapped before the state championship game.

With that said, though, it is true that he was in a car crash…but, it wasn’t like what we see in the movie.

In the true story, this was after Titans’ 1971 season when they had a banquet to honor Gerry. Afterward, he was driving some of his friends home in his mother’s new Camero when he lost control of the car, it crashed and resulted in Gerry being paralyzed.

Speaking of their 1971 season, the rest of the key plot points in the movie are basically correct.

T.C. Williams High School in the movie was a real place. That name comes from Thomas Chambliss Williams, who was a former superintendent of the school system from the 1930s to the 1960s. Today, it’s the Alexandria City High School.

During the movie’s timeline, though, T.C. Williams High School was pretty new, having first opened its doors in 1965. That same year, the city of Alexandria integrated all their schools, and T.C. Williams High School received all the 11^th and 12^th graders in the city.

So, the movie is correct to show the racial tensions and prejudices throughout the team, and the school overall. On the football field, though, the Titans had an amazing year. Earlier I mentioned Gerry Bertier, so he was a real person. So, too, was Julius Campbell.

In the true story, they were both team captains whose friendship helped bond the team despite the racial tensions outside. And on top of that, helped the Titans become simply a great team as well. After all, they had players from three different schools coming together at T.C. Williams for the first time that year.

And they ended up going 13-0, and not by a close margin. Gerry Bertier alone had 142 tackles and 42 sacks! What about Julius Campbell? He had 34 sacks of his own. That’s 76 sacks for just two players—in 13 games! So, it’s no wonder the Titans outscored their opponents 338-38.

Then, as we talked about before, Bertier’s car crash left him paralyzed. Oh, to give you a better idea of how the movie’s timeline compressed that part, the Titans’ final game in 1971 was on December 4^th. The car crash that left Bertier paralyzed was on December 11^th.

The movie skipping ahead to 1981 for his death is, sadly, also true.

Gerry Bertier was on his way home in Charlottesville, Virginia, when a car going the opposite way on the highway crossed the center lane and smashed into him. He died at the hospital later. Gerry Bertier was 27 years old.

September 17th, 1925. Mexico City, Mexico.

To find our first event this week, we’ll skip to about eight and a half minutes into the 2002 movie called Frida.

The streets are crowded with people, but the movie is focusing on a young man and woman in the crowd. She gets sidetracked by one of the vendors on the street. He calls to her, “Frida, come on!” Putting his arm around her, the two continue making their way through the crowd on the street. They’re both dressed nicely in what appears to be some sort of a school uniform.

In the next shot, young Frida is running along the sidewalk. “It’s the bus!” She yells as she runs. We can see a bus—but in the 1920s, this bus looks more like a modified truck with room for people to sit in the back—driving along the road. The boy, Alejandro, assures her they’ll catch the next one.

She keeps running, “No, no!” He runs after her as the two run through the street, almost getting hit by a car, running down the bus. A moment later, and it works. They catch up to the bus and climb aboard.

Once on the bus, the two continue the conversation they were having. Frida sits down on a bench. Then, a lady with a baby is there and Frida gives up her seat for them. Alejandro and Frida continue their conversation, talking about something political or apolitical—Alejandro talks about Marx and Hegel, so maybe they’re referring to Karl Marx and Georg Hegel. They both are standing along with others on the bus, holding onto a bar for stability like you’d expect on a bus even today.

Frida doesn’t seem interested in the conversation about Marx and Hegel and gets sidetracked by someone else on the bus and the theater props they’re carrying.

Just then, the bus driver tries to swerve. Through the window of the bus, we can see what looks like a trolley ramming into the side of the bus. The trolley seems to continue pushing the bus until it hits a wall, throwing glass and everyone inside the bus all over the place. The camera fades to black before coming back to show Frida lying there, bloody and obviously badly hurt from the accident.

The true story behind that scene in the movie Frida

What we’re seeing in the movie happened 99 years ago this Tuesday, on September 17^th, 1925. That’s when Frida Kahlo’s life was forever changed in a bus accident that left her severely injured.

Of course, today, we know of Frida as an artist. At the time of the accident, Frida was only 18 years old and art wasn’t what she was wanting to do with her life.

One of the reasons we see the Frida and Alejandro wearing what looks like a school uniform is because the real reason the two schoolmates and friends were in Mexico City that day was because that’s where they went to school. But they lived about an hour away in Coyoacan, so that’s why they were taking the bus each way.

That day seemed like nothing out of the ordinary for the two.

And the movie was also correct to show the crash being the result of a trolley car. It was traveling full speed when the bus turned around the corner and there wasn’t enough time to get out of the way. The trolley slammed into the bus, crushing it and anyone inside against the street corner.

While we don’t really see this happening in the movie, there was a metal rod that ripped through Frida during the crash. Afterward, a nearby pedestrian trying to help people in the crash saw the rod sticking out of Frida and tried to remove it only to cries so loud that Alejandro would later recall no one could hear the ambulance siren because of Frida’s cries.

For months, Frida Kahlo was confined to bed while her body healed. During that timeframe, she turned to art. Her parents put a mirror on her bed so she could paint herself. She started painting more and more, something that helped her cope with the loneliness of being, well, alone in a bed for months on end.

By the time she was able to leave the bed, her life had changed. She was on the path to become an artist known for putting her own personal trauma and pain into her art. That openness was one of the key characteristics of Frida’s artwork, something that was unique at the time as most women artists in the early 20^th century didn’t put their own hardships into their art. Frida’s artwork was the opposite of that. She didn’t hide what was difficult or painful as many women were forced to do. Instead, she put herself on display through her paintings in a very real way, in a way that was groundbreaking at the time and something we remember her for today.

 

September 19th, 1952. Washington, D.C.

For our next event this week, we’ll jump to about two hours into the 1992 biopic starring Robert Downey, Jr. simply called Chaplin.

We’re in an office with elegant wood furnishings. A United States flag stands in the corner. Behind the desk in the middle of the room is a black, leather chair. It’s empty. There’s a man in a suit carrying a manilla folder who has just entered the office. He notices the chair is empty, so he turns his head to look off camera.

He carefully sets the folder down on the desk before sneaking over to the other side of the office. As he does, we can see the U.S. Capitol building through the windows.

The camera pans over as the man quietly makes his way to the fireplace. Now we can tell why he was sneaking. He’s trying not to wake the man sleeping in his chair by the fireplace. He touches the sleeping man’s hand trying to wake him.

“Sir”, he whispers quietly.

It didn’t work.

The camera cuts to the man’s face now and we can see this is Kevin Dunn’s character, J. Edgar Hoover. The man shakes Hoover’s shoulder now in a slightly more firm attempt to wake him.

“Sir,” he says a little louder than the whisper before.

Hoover’s eyes open slightly.

“Sir,” the man continues, “we just got word. Chaplin’s off to London on vacation.”

Hoover doesn’t move as he ponders this for a moment. Then, slowly, his mouth curls into a smile.

The next scene in the movie is the one that happens this week in history as we can see text on the screen saying it’s New York Harbor, September 1952.

A massive ocean liner is in the harbor. If you imagine what the Titanic looked like with its iconic four funnels, or smokestacks, well this ship looks a lot like that but with three. So, a similar style ocean liner, albeit not as large as Titanic—but still a good-sized ship. Imagine that in front of the New York skyline in 1952, and that’s what this scene looks like.

After a moment, the movie cuts to aboard the ship, though, as Moira Kelly’s version of Oona O’Neill Chaplin rushes down the stairs to find her husband, Charlie Chaplin. She finds him as he’s at the stern of the ship, overlooking the New York skyline, the Statue of Liberty. On the ship a blue flag with the British Union Jack in the corner is flying.

Oona rushes to Charlie. When she gets there, she has a concerned look on her face. He recognizes this immediately and asks what’s wrong. Then, she tells him the news: They’ve thrown you out.

Charlie is confused at first, as she hands him a piece of paper with the news. She explains it to him: They’ve thrown you out of the United States.

The true story behind that scene in the movie Chaplin

Transitioning to our fact-checking segment, and right away I’ll admit the first part that happened in Washington D.C. probably didn’t happen this week in history. But it’s an important part to set up what did happen this week in history when Charlie Chaplin was refused his entry into the United States.

Granted, the way it happened in the movie was dramatized, but the gist is there.

In the movie, the agent telling Hoover that Chaplin has gone to London mentions it as being a vacation. In the true story, Charlie Chaplin went to London to hold the world premiere of his latest movie called Limelight, which was an autobiographical movie in which the character in the movie is an ex-star dealing with the loss of his popularity. Since Charlie was originally from London, that’s where the story in Limelight was set, so that’s where he decided to hold the world premiere for the film.

And, I guess, it is true that Chaplin took his family to London with him so I could definitely see how it could’ve been considered a vacation, so maybe we can give the movie a break on that.

He boarded the RMS Queen Elizabeth on September 18^th, 1952. On September 19^th, the U.S. Attorney General James P. McGranery revoked Charlie’s permit for re-entry into the U.S.

This is my own speculation, but the speed which that happened the day after tells me there were people in the government just waiting for him to leave so they could revoke the permit.

In the years since, it’s been suggested the U.S. government didn’t have much of a case against Chaplin and he probably could’ve been allowed back into the U.S. had he applied. But, when Charlie Chaplin got the news, he decided not to return to the U.S. He himself wrote about the event in his autobiography, and while I can’t offer a direct quote here, you can read exactly what he said on page 455 of his autobiography if you’d like. To paraphrase, basically, Chaplin was fed up with the insults and hatred he’d received in America.

The catch was that most of Charlie’s wealth—his film studio, his home, etc. was in the United States. So, it was Oona who returned to the U.S. to settle his affairs. They moved to Switzerland and she renounced her own U.S. citizenship in 1953.

As you can imagine, there’s a lot more to this story…which is why I had a chat with Pulitzer Prize finalist author Scott Eyeman, who has written a number of excellent biographies on film history—including his book called Charlie Chaplin Vs America that digs into the true story of Charlie Chaplin—and of course you’ll find a link to it in the show notes.

 

September 21st, 1937. England.

Our third event from this week in history can be found in the 2019 biopic called Tolkien, and we’re starting about an hour and 43 minutes into the movie, we’re outside with trees in the background and dead leaves covering the ground. A man and woman are walking together with some kids. The man asks the kids if they’ll do something for him. He asks them to listen to a story.

“Is it a good story?” One of the kids asks in a blunt way that kids do so well.

“I hope so,” he says.

“Is it long?”

“Extremely long.”

They go on to ask more questions about his story. Has it been started? What’s it about?

He says it’s been started in his mind. It’s about journeys, adventures, magic, treasure, and love. All things, really. All the kids are looking at him now.

He says the story is about the journeys we take to prove ourselves. It’s about fellowship. He points to one of the little boys and says it’s about little people just like you. The child retorts that he’s not little, and the man quickly corrects himself. No. Little in stature, not little in spirit.

The movie cuts away from the outdoors and we’re not in the woods anymore. We’re inside in a room. The same man from before is sitting, reading some papers. He’s deep in thought.

Then, he turns the paper to a fresh page. Pen in hand, he pauses to think for one more moment before he starts to write. The camera angle doesn’t let us see what he’s writing at first, but after a few seconds, it cuts to a more overhead view of the page. Now, we can see the words he’s written to start the story: “In a hole in the ground, there lived” … he stops writing for a bit and the camera cuts away from the paper to the man’s face. He speaks the word: “Hobbit.”

The true story behind that scene in the movie Tolkien

Okay, so right away I’ll admit that this is another scene that didn’t really happen this week in history. But that’s because the movie doesn’t show the real event that did happen this week, and that scene in the movie is talking about the start of something that ended this week in history…the movie just doesn’t show the ending.

I’m sure you already know by now the man with the story is J.R.R. Tolkien and the story itself is The Hobbit. That scene comes from the 2019 biopic that is simply called Tolkien.

And it shows Tolkien starting to write The Hobbit. What happened this week in history was that The Hobbit was published.

What we don’t see in that sequence in the movie is that J.R.R. Tolkien had been writing stories about the world he created—Middle Earth—for many years at this point, but The Hobbit was his first published work.

There was a BBC documentary in 1968 where Tolkien himself described writing that opening line. I’ll include a link to it in the show notes for this episode if you want to watch it, but basically Tolkien recounts that he was grading his student’s papers in his house at 20 Northmoor Road. He had a pile of exam papers to go through, something he admitted was a boring task.

He picked up one of the papers to review and the student had left one page blank. So, he just grabbed the blank page and wrote down: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

That was then published this week in history on September 21^st, 1937, as The Hobbit. Of course, he’d go on to write The Lord of the Rings and other books, making Tolkien one of the most popular authors of all time. And covering the Tolkien movie as one of the first interviews for Based on a True Story is no mistake, because I’m such a fan of Tolkien’s work…it was one of my great honors to chat with legendary Tolkien scholar John Garth about the Tolkien movie.

Hop in the show notes to find a link for that episode now!

 

Historical birthdays from the movies

Let’s move onto our next segment now, where we learn about historical figures from the movies that were born this week in history.

On September 18^th, 1905, Greta Gustafsson was born in Stockholm, Sweden. She’s better known by her stage name, Greta Garbo, and is regarded by many as one of the greatest screen actresses of all time. Her story was portrayed in the 1980 movie called The Silent Lovers where she’s played by Kristina Wayborn.

Oh, and as another bonus, Greta Garbo was the actress who played Mata Hari in the classic 1931 film of the same name that we covered on episode #74 of Based on a True Story—so I’ll link that in the show notes.

On September 20^th, 1884, Maxwell Perkins was born in New York City. He was an editor and publisher at Scribner where he oversaw works by esteemed authors like Thomas Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway, to name a few. His story is told in the 2016 movie called Genius where Max is played by Colin Firth. We covered that movie in more depth back on episode #65 of Based on a True Story.

Also on September 20^th, but in 1917, Arnold Jacob Auerbach was born in Brooklyn, New York. He’s best known by his nickname, “Red,” and as the head coach of the Washington Capitols, Tri-Cities Blackhawks, and Boston Celtics, where he set NBA records was one of the most successful coaches in the history of professional sports. He was played by Michael Chiklis in the 2022 TV series from Max called Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.

 

 

‘Based on a True Story’ movie that released this week

Time now for our segment about ‘based on a true story’ movies released this week in history, and this week’s movie has the BOATS text less than a minute into the movie. The very first thing after the opening credits in the movie Goodfellas is text that says, “This film is based on a true story.”

This Wednesday marks the 34^th anniversary of Goodfellas, which hit theaters in the U.S. on September 18^th, 1990.

Directed by Martin Scorsese, Goodfellas is adapted from a book by Nicholas Pileggi called Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family. The IMDb description for Goodfellas says it is, “The story of Henry Hill and his life in the mafia, covering his relationship with his wife Karen and his mob partners Jimmy Conway and Tommy DeVito.”

Henry Hill is played by Ray Liotta, while his wife Karen is played by Lorraine Bracco. Jimmy Conway and Tommy DeVito are played by Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, respectively.

It starts in the 1950s, as a young child, Henry’s mother happened to grow up in the same Italian city as Paulie Cicero, so now that Paulie is a big wig in the Mafia, that’s how Henry grew up around “the life,” as they call it in the movie. So, it’s not a big surprise that Henry starts working for Paulie Cicero when he’s old enough. Paulie is played by Paul Sorvino in the movie.

Also growing up with Henry is Tommy Devito, who is played by Joe Pesci. When Henry and Tommy start helping the Mafia with jobs—they can’t be more than teenagers at the time—the two boys are mentored by Robert De Niro’s character, Jimmy Conway.

As they continue to rise in the Mafia’s ranks, so, too, does their violence. Tommy, in particular, has a short fuse leading to a lot of rage. That rage is on full display in the 1970s when a guy named Billy Batts enters their nightclub. Billy Batts is played by Frank Vincent in the movie.

And according to the movie, Billy Batts is not just any guy, but he’s a made man in the Gambino crime family. He says the wrong thing to Tommy, who starts stabbing Billy Batts.

Killing a made guy without approval from the Mafia’s leadership then, basically, you’re the next to get whacked. To try and avoid that fate, the three associates try to cover up their crime by burying Billy’s body in upstate New York…and then re-bury the body a few months later when they find out the place they buried it was going to have something built on it.

A tip to the FBI ends up sending Henry to prison for about four years, so we see some of his prison time in the movie as well. While he’s in there, he has Karen sneak drugs into the prison so Henry can sell them to another inmate.

When he gets out, Henry joins Tommy for a heist that Jimmy is planning. The target is the Lufthansa vault at JFK International Airport in New York City. And, according to the movie, it’s successful! Ray Liotta’s version of Henry Hill says they got away with $6 million in cash.

But…some of the robbers get a little too excited about their new money and they ignore Jimmy’s order not to make any large purchases. So, after that leads police to find the getaway car they used, Jimmy has everyone killed, except Tommy and Henry.

Violence finally comes to the trio a few years later when Tommy is tricked into thinking he’s going to a ceremony for his becoming a made man. Instead, he’s murdered for his part in killing Billy Batts. That’s in 1979, and no doubt it doesn’t help Henry’s cocaine habit that just continues to get worse—leading to his arrest in 1980 when he tried to buy some drugs from undercover agents.

He gets bailed out by Karen, but the drugs go against Paulie’s orders—he had told Henry not to get into the drug world. So, after he’s bailed out, Paulie gives Henry some cash and then officially cuts ties with Henry.

Henry turns to Jimmy for help, but Jimmy is still in the Mafia and we start to get the sense from the movie that Jimmy is probably going to take out Henry. So, Henry decides to become an informant for the feds. He gives them enough information to take down Jimmy and Paulie, and in exchange the feds put Henry and his family into the Witness Protection Program.

And, according to the text at the end of the movie, that’s where Henry Hill is still at—in the Witness Protection Program, after his arrest in 1987. Paulie died in Fort Worth Federal Prison of a respiratory illness in 1988 at the age of 73. Henry and Karen separated in 1989.

And Jimmy Conway, Robert De Niro’s character, is currently serving a 20-years-to-life sentence for murder and won’t be eligible for parole until 2004.

The true story behind Goodfellas

Well, obviously, it’s after 2004, and now in 2024, those three men are all dead now. But, remember, the movie came out in 1990, and back then two of the three were still alive.

So, that gives us the perfect place to start our fact-checking: The people.

Henry Hill was based on a real person; we’ll learn more about him in a moment. The real Henry Hill died on June 12^th, 2012.

And Lorraine Bracco’s character, Karen, really was Henry Hill’s wife. Karen Hill née Friedman is still alive as of this recording—she’s 76, and the movie is correct that she and Henry divorced in 1989, although it was legally finalized in 2002.

For the other mobsters, the names changed some.

Robert De Niro’s character of Jimmy Conway is based on a real gangster named Jimmy Burke. The real Jimmy Burke died on April 13^th, 1996—so, after the movie was released.

Joe Pesci’s character, Tommy DeVito, is based on another real gangster named Tommy DeSimone. And in the movie, we see Tommy’s death. We don’t really know what happened to the real Tommy DeSimone. He just simply disappeared on January 14^th, 1979.

And Paul Sorvino’s character, Paulie Cicero, is based on Paul Vario, who really was a powerful caporegime in the Lucchese crime family. The movie was correct to say he died in a Fort Worth prison of a respiratory failure as a result of lung cancer on May 3^rd, 1988.

The movie does a pretty good job of capturing how the real Henry Hill got into the Mafia. His dad was an Irish-American, and his mother was of Sicilian descent. The family moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn when Henry was just seven years old, and coincidentally Paul Vario had a son about the same age. So, they played together often, and Henry started idolizing the mobsters he saw.

Just like we see in the movie, Henry started working for the mobsters as a teenager. One of them was Jimmy Burke, the guy that Robert De Niro’s character is based on.

So, that’s how Jimmy started to take Henry under his wing, very much like we see in the movie. As for the real Tommy DeSimone, that’s the guy Joe Pesci’s character is based on, he grew up in the same neighborhood as Henry so they became close friends as they rose in the Mafia’s ranks.

That brings us to the event in the movie that changes it all: The murder of Billy Batts. Billy was a real gangster, who really went by the nickname Billy Batts. His real name was William Bentvena.

The movie doesn’t show anything about Billy Batts being in prison, it just shows him getting out and implies he was in there for a while. And in the true story, William Bentvena was in prison for narcotics trafficking—he was caught by undercover police in a drug deal on Valentine’s Day in 1959. Then, three years later, he was convicted and received a sentence of 15 years. He was released in 1970, though, which is why we’re seeing him for the first time in the movie.

And while the way Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito acted out the scene of killing Billy Batts is sped up a little bit, the basic gist gets across with the movie’s version.

This all comes from the book the movie is based on, and according to that book, Henry Hill’s version of the events are just like what we see in the movie. The whole reason for them being at the nightclub owned by Jimmy that night was because of a welcome home party of sorts for Billy. That’s why we see the balloons and streamers decorating the bar in the movie, and I think someone even comes up to Billy to say “Welcome home, Billy,” in the movie too.

At one point in the night, Billy joked to Tommy something about asking if he still shined shoes. Tommy took it as an insult and threatened to kill Billy. Here’s where the movie changed it, though, because in the movie’s version it seems to be later that night when Tommy attacks Billy from behind, before Jimmy joins in.

The true story behind that event might’ve started with an insult about shining shoes that led to Tommy’s threats against Billy Batts, but it was actually two weeks later when Tommy snuck up behind Billy and pistol-whipped him, yelling, “Shine these fucking shoes!”

And the movie shows Jimmy start kicking Billy pretty fast, too, but I couldn’t find anything about it happening that fast in the true story. Henry Hill’s version of the event did see Tommy beat Billy to the point of him being dead…at least, they thought he was. Just like we see in the movie, Billy wasn’t really dead. They started hearing noises from the trunk of the car.

And he was in the trunk of the car because Jimmy Burke was driving his body up to a friend’s dog kennel in upstate New York where he knew he could hide the body. Because the movie is also correct to show that the real Billy Batts was a made man in the Gambino crime family.

Oh, and the movie is also correct to show them having to move the body later. Jimmy’s friend who owned the dog kennel sold it about three months later. So, Jimmy ordered Tommy and Henry to go move the body. We don’t see this happening in the movie, but in the book Henry says they took the body to be crushed in a compactor at a New Jersey junkyard owned by a mob associate.

The real Henry Hill also gave commentary for the movie, which I’d recommend watching, and for that he contradicted his previous statement, though, and said Billy was buried in Jimmy’s nightclub, a place called Robert’s Lounge, until it could be put in the compactor later.

Regardless of which version is true, that was the beginning of the end for the real Tommy DeSimone who was killed in retaliation just like we see in the movie. Although the movie mentions it was only partially for the murder of Billy Batts—and that’s true, because he also killed someone else the movie doesn’t even show.

That’s a guy named Ronald Jerothe. Tommy dated Ronald’s sister and beat her up, which made Ronald understandably angry and he said he was going to kill Tommy. But, Tommy overheard this, and killed Ronald first.

Here’s the connection: Both Billy Batts and Ronald Jerothe reported to the same guy in the Gambino crime family: A man named John Gotti, maybe you’ve heard of him. He turned out to be quite infamous as well.

So, Tommy committed the murder of Ronald Jerothe, and on top of that it came out that Tommy had committed another unsanctioned murder of Billy Batts?

You see where this is headed. Thomas DeSimone was reported missing on January 14^th, 1979, by his wife, Angela. So, if you see that as the date of Tommy’s death, that’s why…but we don’t really know if he died that day because when Angela reported him missing, she said she last saw him a couple weeks earlier.

At least, that’s how the story goes…but the true story? Well, as you can imagine, when we’re talking about the world of organized crime, we just don’t know a lot of things.

So, for a lot of these events —for a lot of things, that’s all we have to rely on: The word of someone who was there.

Even the things I’ve talked about today, we know most of that thanks to the book the movie is based on as well as a book Henry Hill wrote himself later called Gangsters and Goodfellas.

Actually…do you want to hear more Mafia stories from someone who was there?

On episode #286, I had a chat with Scott Hoffman, whose dad was a part of the Chicago Outfit and actually worked for the real Henry Hill as a kid himself! We talked about how the Mafia is portrayed in movies like Goodfellas, and other gangster movies like Casino, Donnie Brasco, and The Sopranos!

September 10th, 490 BCE. Marathon, Greece.

We’re kicking off this week with the movie 300: Rise of an Empire, and as soon as the opening credits are over, Lena Headey’s character, the wife of the Spartan King Leonidas from the first 300 movie.

Lena Headey’s character is Queen Gorgo, and to start Rise of an Empire, she’s addressing many of the Spartan soldiers who fought with her late husband. These soldiers are all carrying spears, shields, and, of course, the impressive physique of bare-chested six packs that we saw the Spartans have in the first 300 movie.

Sixteen Spartan soldiers surround Queen Gorgo as she addresses them, but there are more like 36 or 37 spears visible, suggesting even more soldiers behind those we can see as they hear their queen speak.

She tells them her husband, Leonidas, their king, and the brave 300 are dead.

As she continues to speak, she moves among the men showing even more soldiers beyond the numbers I just mentioned, but it’s nearly impossible to count them as the camera shifts angles. As the camera changes, though, we can see sails above Queen Gorgo’s head. We can hear the creaking of a wooden ship, which tells us they’re all on a ship.

She tells them it was King Darius who came to take our land ten years ago when youth still burned in our eyes. Ten years ago, this war began as all wars do: With a grievance.

Then, the movie takes us back to ten years earlier.

Mud is being kicked up by feet running in slow motion. The particles of mud and dirt flung high into the air just hanging as time moves at a snail’s pace. As we see more bare-chested men wearing helmets, blue robes on two men leading the charge to the right side of the screen, all with the round shields and weapons: Swords and spears.

Queen Gorgo’s voiceover continues, saying King Darius was annoyed by the notion of Greek freedom and has come to Greece to bring them under submission.

As thunder claps and lighting strikes, the camera changes yet again. Now we can see a vast mountainous landscape, on a dark and stormy night. In the foreground, numerous ships can be seen, some still in the waters, and other right along the shores. All of them have their sails put up, suggesting the ships are disembarking onto the beach beyond.

And on the beach beyond, tiny black dots can be seen. It’s nighttime so impossible to see all of them individually, but each dot is a soldier from one of the ships, giving the overall scene an enormous size. The beach they’re all on leads to a pathway between right mountains, right in the center of the movie’s frame, and in the distance are even more black dots: Greek soldiers charging at Darius’ men as soon as they arrive on the Greek shores.

Queen Gorgo’s voiceover confirms this as she says Darius made landfall at the field of Marathon with an invading force which outnumbered the Greek defenders 3-to-1.

Rain continues to pour down in slow motion as the camera zooms in on the same Greek soldiers we saw in slow motion earlier, this time they’re coming over the muddy horizon and charging directly toward the camera. A bolt of lighting and the loud thunderclap in the stormy sky behind the advancing soldiers suggests even the sky is angry.

She says at dawn the hopeless Athenians do the unthinkable: They attack.

We see King Darius turn around, looking in the direction of the Greek soldiers coming over the horizon. Other soldiers are taking off belongings from the ship. Sure, they’re all soldiers, too, but none of them are ready to fight.

And Queen Gorgo’s voiceover also confirms this, as she says the outnumbered Greeks attacked the weary Persians as soon as they landed after their month-long trip at sea gave them shaky legs. We see some of the Persian soldiers grab spears and swords in haste and start to face the approaching enemy.

Then, the camera cuts to the architect of this mad strategy: A little-known Athenian soldier named Themistokles. The camera focuses in on a single soldier as Gorgo says he gives the Persians a taste of Athenian shock combat.

Sullivan Stapleton is the actor who plays Themistokles in the movie.

The very stylized movie was still going in slow motion this whole time, but now as the Greek and Persian armies clash time speeds back up to normal pace as the sound of swords clanging, and the sound of two fighting armies can be heard against the thunder and rain.

It looks like a bloodbath.

The Persians are caught off guard, and the Greeks run right through most of them. Slicing his way through the Persians is Themistokles, who we can tell now was one of the soldiers wearing a blue robe. That conveniently makes him a lot easier to pick out among the two forces fighting each other in the rain and mud.

Shifting between real-time speed and slow motion, Themistokles fights his way to the shores and the Persian ships. Wasting no time, he runs right up one of the ship’s ramps, slashing and killing everyone on board.

The camera cuts to show King Darius in one of the ships just off shore. He’s watching the chaos unfold in front of him, clearly enraged at what he’s seeing. Back to Themistokles, and he jumps back onto the beach, leaving the ship he was on. There must be no one left to kill on that one.

He races along the beach, killing more and more Persians. An arrow slices at his arm. More arrows hit his shield. Throwing his sword to kill one of the archers, Themistokles charges at the other. Another arrow, this time he turns his head to let it glance off his helmet as he tackles and kills the archer.

Queen Gorgo’s voiceover has returned, saying all of this was for a crazy Greek experiment called democracy. A free Greece.

Slamming the archer to the ground, Themistokles seems to have reached the end of the beach, but he takes off his helmet to look out at the Persian ships still in the waters. On one of those ships is King Darius, still watching the slaughter in front of him. For a moment, Themistokles and King Darius stare directly at each other from across the water between them.

Finally, Darius turns away as if to say the Persians are about to leave—at least for now.

Queen Gorgo’s voiceover says through the chaos, a moment appeared. And Themistokles took advantage of that moment. We see him pick up the bow from the archer he just killed. Then, pulling back an arrow, he lets off one shot.

Back on the Persian ship, Darius has his back turned now and doesn’t notice the arrow coming toward him. But someone else on the ship does. Another man on the other side of the ship runs in slow motion as he screams, “Nooooooo!”

Queen Gorgo says this is the moment that will ring throughout the centuries and make Themistokles a legend.

The camera follows the arrow he shot as it flies across the water, aimed directly at King Darius. From the other side of the boat, the running man reaches Darius just in time the arrow hits him in the chest, knocking him backward into the other man’s arms. He glares at Themistokles with a burning hatred that tells you there will be vengeance.

Then, Queen Gorgo tells us who this other man is: Darius’ son, Xerxes.

She goes on to say that for all the praise that would be heaped upon Themistokles, he knew he made a mistake. Xerxes’ eyes had the stink of destiny about them. He knew he should’ve killed that boy.

But, instead, after delivering the fatal arrow to King Darius, we see Themistokles simply turn and walk away.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie 300: Rise of an Empire

As immersive as the fictional portrayal is, as we begin separating fact from fiction, let me start with a blanket statement that I’m sure you already know but it’s still worth saying: 300: Rise of an Empire is the sequel to 300, which itself was based on a comic book of the same name.

That’s why it shifts between slow motion and real-time speed, and gives unrealistic streams of blood flying around the scene as soldiers swing their swords.

Even once we separate ourselves from that side of things, another major caveat we have to keep in mind is that we’re talking about something that happened 2,514 years ago. Do we know if Themistokles and King Darius had a stare down across the water like we see in the movie? That’s not the kind of thing that gets documented so of course we don’t know for sure. But, I bet if you had to guess how realistic that sort of moment is, I bet you would come to the same conclusion that I would and guess that’s not very realistic at all, haha!

With those major caveats aside, there really was a major battle at Marathon between the Greeks and Persians that happened 2,514 years ago this week.

Lena Headey’s character, Queen Gorgo, really was King Leonidas I’s wife. He was, of course, famous for the Battle of Thermopylae that was told in the movie 300—which we looked at on episode 5 of Based on a True Story.

Another element of truth the movie shows correctly is the timeframe between the events. We hear Queen Gorgo talk about Leonidas and the 300 being dead, and also how it was ten years ago that Darius brought the fight to our shores at Marathon.

The legend of the 300 at Thermopylae happened in 480 BCE, while the Battle of Marathon was ten years earlier in 490 BCE.

But here’s where the movie takes some creative license, because even though the timeline means Queen Gorgo was alive during both battles, we don’t really know how involved she was with the army to travel with them on ships and telling the story of Marathon to soldiers like we see her doing in the beginning of the movie.

It’s certainly plausible. Especially because we do know she held a position of importance in Greek society at the time, not only because of her husband being king, but also because she was in her own right an intelligent woman. For example, a lot of what we know about her comes from an ancient Greek historian named Herodotus, and even though he didn’t write about women often, one story he told was how Gorgo helped decipher a hidden message warning the Greeks of a Persian invasion. That makes her one of the first female cryptanalysts in recorded history.

Back to the movie’s version of the Battle of Marathon, though, one of the things Gorgo mentions in her voiceover is that the Persians outnumbered the Greeks 3-to-1.

And that’s about right. Historical estimates put the Greeks at about 11,000 soldiers while the Persians had somewhere between 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers carried by 600 or so ships called triremes. So, of course, the movie uses the higher number to make the contrasts between forces seem even greater.

So, it is true that the Greeks here heavily outnumbered.

Did they attack as soon as the Persians landed in Greece to help overcome the mismatch in numbers?

No, they didn’t. That part of the movie is not true.

And now it’s time for the part of the true story that maybe you’ve heard before from a very different legend. After all, you’ve heard of the long distance run of 26.2 miles, or 42 kilometers, being called a marathon. As the legend goes, that’s the distance the Greek messenger Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens to inform them of the victory at Marathon. So, obviously that would’ve happened after the battle if he informed them of the Greek victory.

While that is the legend, according to Herodotus, that run actually happened before the battle…and he didn’t run from Marathon to Athens, but he ran the 150 miles, or 240 kilometers, from Athens to Sparta to ask for their help for the impending Persian invasion. Actually, that’s how we know it happened this week in history, because the historical records tell us the Spartans couldn’t march until after their holy day.

Oh, and as a fun little bit of trivia, as of this recording the world record holder for a marathon is Kelvin Kiptum from the 2023 Chicago Marathon where he had an average speed of about 13 mph, or 21 km/h. Of course, that’s a 26.2 mile marathon. It’s said that Pheidippides did his 150-mile run from Athens to Sparta in two days. That’s an average pace of 4.7 mph, or 7.5 km/h. A runner named Yiannis Kouros holds the ultramarathon record of 150 miles in 22 hours, 52 minutes, and 55 seconds in 1984. That’s an average pace of 6.6 mph, or about 10.6 km/h.

Meanwhile, I’d probably pass out from exhaustion way back by the starting line so I’m glad they sent Pheidippides instead of me haha!

Back to the Battle of Marathon, though, the reasons for the Greek’s ultimate victory is still something historians debate, but as with most things in history there’s not likely to be just one thing; there were a number of factors that went into the final Greek victory at Marathon.

But let’s start breaking it down by looking at something the movie doesn’t show: Their armor.

While the actors in the movie are obviously in such great shape they can use their six packs as armor, it’s probably not a surprise that the real Greek army actually wore more armor than we see in the movie.

At least, sort of.

Here’s where the true story really gets more complex than the fictional one from the movie, because the Greek army consisted of a lot of citizen-soldiers called hoplites. After all, ancient Greece wasn’t really unified into the country of Greece that we think of today. It was made up of city-states that banded together when they needed to fight off shared enemies like the Persians. That’s why you’ll find references to the Athenians, the Spartans, and so on…they’re all Greek, but they’re also independent city-states.

On top of that, because Greek hoplites were essentially civilians called into military service when needed they often weren’t trained well and they usually wore whatever armor they could afford.

“Usually” is the key word there, because the Greek general in charge of the force that went out to face the Persians at Marathon had all his men equipped as hoplites for what many say was the first time in Greek history.

Oh, that general’s name was Miltiades and he isn’t in the movie at all.

Even though the armor the Greek hoplites wore was quite different than the lack-of-armor we see in the movie, the Greek’s armor was a lot lighter than the Persian’s armor. That was a major tactical advantage, because that let the Greeks move a lot faster than the Persians.

So, even though the Greeks didn’t charge the Persians as soon as they landed on shore, they did charge at the Persians. That wasn’t a common fighting tactic back then, so it was unexpected by the Persians. But, of course, simply charging your enemy isn’t going to overcome 3-to-1 odds on its own like the movie shows.

Speaking of what the movie shows, in her voiceover, Lena Headey’s version of Queen Gorgo says the architect behind the Greek’s decision to run out to meet the Persians before they could establish a foothold is a soldier named Themistokles.

While Themistokles really was someone who fought at Marathon, the commander of the Greek armies was the general I mentioned before: Miltiades.

Other Greek generals weren’t sure if they should attack the Persians or wait for them to attack them at Athens. After all, then they’d have the benefit of defensive positions in the city to help them fight against overwhelming odds.

As fate would have it, the Greeks found out the Persian cavalry happened to be away from the Persian camp. He took advantage of that situation, and ordered the attack on the Persian infantry.

That made the odds a little more in the Greek’s favor with the 11,000 Greeks attacking about 15,000 Persian infantry. On top of that, since the Greeks were the ones attacking they had more control over where the battle would be fought and they chose to attack on a mountainous and marshy terrain. So, the movie is correct to show mountains and mud…that helped ensure the Persian cavalry wouldn’t hear about the attack and return to route the Greeks while they were fighting the Persian infantry.

Of course, the Greeks were still outnumbered by the Persian infantry alone. That brings us to yet another reason for the real reason the Greeks won at Marathon: Phalanxes.

Basically, with long spears and large, bronze shields, the Greeks packed together so tightly that the Persians couldn’t penetrate with their shorter swords. General Miltiades also employed a tactic that proved to help the Greek victory, too. As the battle raged on, the center of the Greek forces collapsed to allow Persians to advance. Then, the wings of the Greek forces would collapse into the center so all of a sudden the Persians would find themselves surrounded.

While we don’t know for sure exactly how long the battle lasted, most historians believe it only took a few hours for the Persians to be routed and flee back to their ships. In that time, estimates place about 6,500 Persians killed while fewer than 200 Greeks lost their lives in the battle.

What of King Darius himself?

The movie got that wrong, too.

Darius I did not die at the Battle of Marathon. In fact, most historians say he wasn’t even there. Two generals named Datis and Artaphernes led the Persian forces. So, the movie’s plot line of Darius’ son Xerxes wanting revenge for his father’s death isn’t what happened.

In the true story, Darius I dead four years after the battle from natural causes. That’s when his son Xerxes took the throne. He did continue fighting the Greeks leading to a second Persian invasion of Greece that culminated in the Battle of Thermopylae the legend of the 300. But that wasn’t revenge for his father’s death. That was continuing the expansion of the Persian Empire that many consider to be the first global empire in history.

Something else we hear Queen Gorgo’s voiceover talk about in the movie is the idea of a Greek experiment called democracy.

That’s actually true, the ancient Greeks are often credited with what was at the time a new system of governance that was radically different than the monarchies, oligarchies, and tyrannies of the time. More specifically, it was the Athenians who laid down the foundations around 508 BCE.

So, when we take a step back from the Battle of Marathon itself and look at the bigger picture, you can see why so many point to Marathon as being a single day in history that changed the course of history.

Many of the founding figures of Western philosophy such as Socrates to Plato, Aristotle, came from Greece in the years, decades, and centuries afterward. If the Persians had wiped out the Greeks at Marathon, it’s not hard to imagine us living in a very different world today.

If you want to see how the Battle of Marathon is portrayed on screen, hop into the show notes to find where 300: Rise of an Empire is streaming now!

 

September 11, 2001. Herndon, Virginia.

Just saying that date, I’m sure you can guess what our next event is…although the location might throw you off. The reason for that location is because seven minutes into the 2006 movie called United 93, there’s some text on the screen to tell us we’re at the National Air Traffic Control Center in Herndon, Virginia. The camera follows a man into a room filled with screens and people—it looks a lot like what you’d expect an air traffic control center to look like.

As the man walks into the room, there are some claps and we can hear someone saying, “Congratulations on the promotion, Ben!”

That’s how we know the man is Ben Sliney. Others continue to clap or offer a congratulatory handshake as he makes his way further into the room. He smiles, thanking them, says “good morning” and jokes that he’s glad everyone is awake.

Standing in front of a bank of monitors, Ben talks to some of the other guys about the current situation. One of them says there’s a small system in the southwest, nothing much too big. Another system moved off to the east, so we have clear skies. Ben replies to the weather report saying that’s good, it’ll be a good day on the east coast.

The other guy points to something on the monitor. They can all see what it is, but from the angle the camera is facing Ben Sliney, we can’t see the monitor. But we don’t really have to, because the guy explains that the President is going to be moving to Andrews, so we’ll have restrictions in place around that. Pretty much standard ops. Ben doesn’t take his eyes off the monitor as he nods his approval.

Then, he smiles, and thanks them for their reports. They go back to work while Ben moves onto another area of the room. He looks at the monitors. Everything seems to be pointing to just another day.

The true story behind that scene in the movie United 93

We’ll stop our movie here because, as you might imagine, the entire movie is centered around the same day—and also because I’ve already done a deep dive into this movie over on episode #113, so if you want to learn more about the whole movie that’ll be linked in the show notes.

For today, though, the movie is true that September 11^th, 2001, started off as just another normal day at the National Air Traffic Control Center. But, as I’m sure you already know, it was not just another day.

The movie was also correct to suggest the President traveling to Andrews, referring to Andrews Air Force Base just outside Washington, D.C., where then-President George W. Bush was flying in from Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.

And the movie was also correct to show a reason for Ben Sliney to be congratulated when he entered the room that day. September 11, 2001, just happened to be Ben Sliney’s very first day as the FAA’s National Operations Manager.

While the scene I just described takes place in Virginia that’s just because that’s where the control center is based. Officially known as the Air Traffic Control System Command Center for the Federal Aviation Administration, but since the government loves its acronyms that’s the FAA’s ATCSCC.

What we didn’t talk about in this segment were the four planes hijacked that morning. American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center. American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon in Washington D.C.

The fourth plane was a little different, though, because it didn’t hit the hijacker’s intended target.

After it was hijacked, United Airlines Flight 93 was headed toward Washington D.C. with an intended target of crashing into the U.S. Capitol building. But the passengers on United 93 revolted against the hijackers, and the plane crashed in a field near Stonycreek Township in Pennsylvania.

During the course of his first day as National Operations Manager for the FAA on September 11^th, 2001, Ben Sliney made the decision to land every plane in the air over the United States. That was the first time in U.S. history that’s ever happened.

Oh, and in the movie, Ben Sliney is played by…well, Ben Sliney. That’s right, the real person played himself in the movie.

Obviously, there’s a lot more to the true story, if you want to learn even more, queue up BOATS episode #113 linked in the show notes for as soon as you’re done watching the movie this week.

 

September 14, 1814. Baltimore, Maryland.

For our third event this week, we’ll pull a dramatization segment from a Smithsonian documentary.

The sky is gray and dreary. It almost looks like fog or some mist. In the foreground, a massive American flag riddled with holes is flapping in the wind.

The camera cuts to three men now. One of them is wearing a uniform, but he’s more in the background. The focus is on one of the two men not in military uniform—in particular, one of the men seems to be pacing around nervously as he’s looking off in the foggy, gray distance.

With a slightly different camera angle now, we can see the three men are standing on the deck of a ship. The pacing man is running his hand through his hair now, as he continues to look off frame.

The camera backs up to further away now, and we can see there are four ships. The closest one fires its cannons, followed by another blast from one of the ships further in the distance. Now the camera cuts back to the American flag flapping in the hazy sky.

The true story behind that scene in the movie A Star-Spangled Story

That short sequence comes from a documentary called A Star-Spangled Story: Battle for America, and event it’s showing is when Francis Scott Key got his inspiration for a poem called, “The Defence of Fort M’Henry” after seeing the flag on Saturday this week.

You probably know his poem by another name: “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Francis Scott Key is the guy who I mentioned pacing and running his hands through his hair in the movie. In the true story, Key was a lawyer who went to the British along with another man named Colonel John Stuart Skinner to ask for the release of Key’s friend who had been captured by the British in late August.

Key and Skinner took a ship out to the British fleet that was near the city of Baltimore, Maryland. While they successfully negotiated for the release of Key’s friend, a man named Dr. William Beanes, the timing wasn’t great because the British were just about to launch an attack on Baltimore.

So, Key, Skinner, and Beanes were forced to watch as the British unleashed a 25-hour long bombardment on the American soldiers at Fort McHenry. At dawn on September 14^th, Key saw the huge American flag flying over Fort McHenry and started writing the poem. He didn’t write it all that day, though.

He jotted down a few lines, then completed it a few days later after the three men, Key, Skinner, and Beanes, were released from the British fleet. Most people are only familiar with the first verse of the poem that would go on to become “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Francis Scott Key wrote four verses:

 

O! say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,

O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there —

O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

 

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,

Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze o’er the towering steep,

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,

In full glory reflected now shines on the stream —

‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave

O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

 

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore

That the havock of war and the battle’s confusion

A home and a country should leave us no more?

Their blood has wash’d out their foul foot-steps’ pollution,

No refuge could save the hireling and slave,

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave;

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

 

O! thus be it ever when freemen shall stand

Between their lov’d home, and the war’s desolation,

Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land

Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto — “In God is our trust!”

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

 

Key’s poem, “The Defence of Fort M’Henry,” was published almost immediately along a notation that it goes to the tune of a popular British song written by John Stafford Smith called “Anacreon in Heaven.”

That was the official song of a club of amateur musicians in London called the Anacreontic Society.

Together, the words from “The Defence of Fort M’Henry” along with the tune of “Anacreon in Heaven” combined to become “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which was an immediate hit in America. It wasn’t for over a hundred years, in 1931, that “The Star-Spangled Banner” was officially adopted as the national anthem of the United States.

So, now you know the phrase “by dawn’s early light” in “The Star-Spangled Banner” is talking about this week in history: The dawn of September 14^th, 1814.

If you want to learn more about the true story, check out the documentary from the Smithsonian called A Star-Spangled Story: Battle for America. We started our segment at about ten minutes in, but as you can tell from the title the whole thing is about the story of the song, so this is a good week to watch it all!

 

Historical birthdays from the movies

It’s time for the birthday segment, about historical figures from the movies that were born this week in history.

On September 12^th, Henry Hudson was born somewhere in England. Maybe in London, and maybe in the year 1525, but as you can probably guess a lot about his early years aren’t known for sure. He was an explorer who is best remembered through some of the discoveries he made: The Hudson River in New York, or Hudson Bay in Canada. While there haven’t been a lot of movies about him, probably because we know so little about his early years or even his disappearance in 1611, there was a movie in 1964 called The Last Voyage of Henry Hudson if you want to watch something about him.

On September 13^th, 1660, Daniel Defoe was born in London, England. He was a writer who is perhaps best known for the 1719 novel called Robinson Crusoe. He was played by Ian Hart in the 1997 movie about the novel, also called Robinson Crusoe.

On September 15^th, 1254, another explorer was born in Venice: Marco Polo. Although perhaps you best know him as the namesake of the swimming game version of tag, the real Marco Polo made his mark on history by traveling along the Silk Road in Asia in the 1200s and returned to Europe and publicized the great wealth and size of the Eastern empires such as China, the Mongol Empire, Persia, India, Japan, and many more. Until Marco Polo’s book about his travels around 1300, most of Europe didn’t know much about the Asian countries. Netflix had a series about him simply called Marco Polo that ran for two seasons where Marco Polo is played by Lorenzo Richelmy.

 

‘Based on a True Story’ movie that released this week

Today is the 19^th anniversary of the release of the supernatural horror film directed by Scott Derrickson that claims to be ‘based on a true story’ called The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

Set in the modern era of when the movie was released in the 2000s, the storyline revolves around the trial of Father Richard Moore. He’s played by Tom Wilkinson in the movie, and in the movie, Father Moore is a priest charged with negligent homicide following the death of a 19-year-old college student named Emily Rose.

As you might’ve guessed by the title of the movie, Emily died during an exorcism performed by Father Moore. According to the movie, she’s a devout Catholic college student who begins experiencing terrifying symptoms that she believes are signs of demonic possession. Her symptoms include severe seizures, hallucinations, and physical contortions. Despite medical intervention and a diagnosis of epilepsy, her condition deteriorates, leading her and her family to seek help from the church. Father Moore believes them and agrees to perform an exorcism.

In the movie, the exorcism itself is where we really get into the supernatural horror elements. Emily starts speaking in different languages, has unbelievable strength, and her body moves in unnatural ways. Despite Father Moore’s best efforts, the exorcism does not work, and Emily passes away in the process.

That leads us to the courtroom, where we see the trial of Father Moore after Emily’s death. On one side, you have the prosecution, which is led by Campbell Scott’s version of Ethan Thomas, insists Emily had a medical condition and Father Moore’s exorcism denied her the treatment she needed. For the defense, Laura Linney’s version of Erin Bruner, argues that Emily actually was possessed by a demon. She argues that it was the demon that killed Emily, not Father Moore.

The movie is an interesting clash of religious faith, science, and the law—you know, the kind of things everyone agrees about all the time.

And in the movie, even the jury can’t seem to agree. Their verdict is to declare Father Moore guilty, but also to ask Mary Beth Hart’s version of Judge Brewster to give Father Moore time served. Judge Brewster agrees, and Father Moore is allowed to go free despite the guilty verdict.

The true story behind The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Shifting to the fact-checking, let’s start with the most obvious of inaccuracies in the movie: The title.

Instead of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, a more historically accurate title for the movie would be “The Exorcisms of Anneliese Michel.”

That’s because the real person the movie is based on is a 23-year-old German student teacher named Anneliese Michel, and in the true story, Anneliese had 67 exorcisms before she died on July 1^st, 1976.

Which brings up another inaccuracy in the movie: The timeline.

The true story happened in the 1970s, while the movie makes it more contemporary to when it was released in the 2000s.

So, with all of that said, it’s probably not too much of a surprise for me to say this movie is stretching the term “based on a true story” to its limits. But, to play devil’s advocate to what I just said, that doesn’t mean the concept of the movie is completely fictional.

What I mean by that is if you look at the people, places, timeline, and the location of the movie, sure it’s made up. However, the basic gist of a woman having an exorcism that led to her death and the Catholic Priest involved being put on trial for her death…that is true.

Born in 1952, and raised in a devout Roman Catholic family, Anneliese Michel was a deeply religious woman. Her childhood wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but all that changed in 1968 when, at the age of 16, Anneliese started having some severe convulsions.

Naturally, she went to a doctor first and before long she was diagnosed with epilepsy and depression. Once she was diagnosed, she started receiving treatments with little to no effect. Of course, even that isn’t all that uncommon…people can get misdiagnosed or have medical treatments that don’t help with whatever ails them.

For the deeply religious Anneliese, whatever ailed her started giving her some uncommon symptoms, though. She heard voices, and perhaps most terrifying of all, saw hallucinations that included demonic faces. Of course, when it comes to symptoms like that, it’s not like you can show other people the hallucinations you’re having, so that’s where those around Anneliese started to splinter into two different beliefs about what was happening to her.

On one side, you had the doctors and medical staff trying to help Anneliese through scientific methods while on the other side you had Anneliese and the Michel family. As the medical treatments failed to help, and Anneliese only grew worse, they started to believe more and more that this was beyond anything medical.

Or, in other words, I suppose you could say they lost faith in medicine and returned to their religious faith. So, they went to the Catholic Church to ask for help. At first, they were rejected. After all, the Catholic Church also tends to default to a medical explanation before jumping to a spiritual one.

And, as I alluded to before, Anneliese had been diagnosed by medical professionals with temporal lobe epilepsy, which has been known to cause many of the symptoms Anneliese had like the seizures and hallucinations.

Earlier, I mentioned Tom Wilkinson’s character in the movie, Father Moore. He’s not a real person for all the aforementioned reasons of time, place, people changes, etc. but Father Moore’s character in the movie is based on two Catholic priests named Father Ernst Alt and Father Wilhelm Renz.

Father Alt was the local priest for the Michel family, so he likely spent the most amount of time with Anneliese, and as such he was crucial in helping convince the Catholic Church to change their mind. Eventually, in September of 1975, Bishop Josef Stangl approved the exorcism under the condition that Father Alt and Father Renz adhere to strict secrecy about the whole matter.

On an average of a couple times a week from September of 1975 until June of 1976, Father Alt and Father Renz performed exorcisms on Anneliese. That’s why there were so many exorcisms performed on her. It wasn’t a one-and-done thing. And the movie is correct to suggest some of the things like speaking in multiple languages, abnormal bouts of strength, and strange contortions of her body.

While there’s no footage of the real exorcism of Anneliese publicly available that I could find to compare with what we see in the movie, I think it’s safe to say the movie does what movies love to do and exaggerate things a lot.

We know Catholic priests used the 1614 Rituale Romanum, because that’s basically the Catholic Church’s instruction manual for priests performing exorcisms. As the name implies, that’s from 1614, so I don’t think the exorcisms they actually performed were anything like what we see in the movie…although, again, I’ll have to play devil’s advocate to myself, because the Catholic Church updated that 84-page document for the first time in 1998.

So, from 1614 until 1998, the rite of exorcism remained the same. And since the movie takes a true story from the 1970s into the 2000s, I suppose they’d be using the updated version. And while my Latin is rusty to the point of non-existence, all my research suggests there wasn’t a lot changed. Just some minor things like updating descriptions of what Satan looks like since now the Church teaches Satan is a spirit without a body.

Unfortunately, even the exorcisms couldn’t help Anneliese.

In her final months, she stopped eating. She stopped drinking. In addition to everything else she was going through, Anneliese started to suffer from severe malnutrition. Then, on June 30^th, 1976, Father Renz performed yet another exorcism…one that would be her last.

Anneliese Michel died on July 1^st, 1976.

The movie is also correct to show a trial after her death. Father Alt and Father Renz were charged with negligent homicide just like we see Father Moore charged with in the movie. In a 1978 article from The Windsor Star newspaper, Father Alt said he never thought Anneliese was “dangerously ill.”  In the same article, Father Renz said he didn’t call a doctor because, “the exorcism ritual expressly states that clergymen should not burden themselves with medical matters.”

I’ll add a link to the article in the show notes if you want to read it, because it also talks about how the Michel family sued the five doctors who helped treat Anneliese because they drew up a report of her case—something the Michel family said was a violation of doctor-patient confidentiality.

In the end, the verdict in the true story was the same for the two priests as it is in the movie for Father Moore: Guilty. The sentencing was not the same as the movie, though, because in the true story the priests were sentenced to six months in prison, with three years of probation.

And now you know a little more about the true story behind The Exorcism of Emily Rose!

September 2nd, 31 BCE. Mediterranean Sea.

Our first event comes from the HBO miniseries about ancient Rome that is simply called Rome, and to find the event from this week in history we’ll have to skip to the start of the very end—almost of the whole series. In other words, the very beginning of episode 10 in season two, which is the series finale.

You’ll know you’re at the right spot when there’s no land as far as the eye can see. There’s only water. In the foreground, a single rowboat is floating on the choppy waters. I counted ten people inside, although the camera is too far away to see any faces. The focus of the scene, though, is in the distance on the horizon.

That’s where we can see scores of ships, some closer, some further away—and almost all of them are ablaze. Huge plumes of smoke are rising into the sky, casting almost an orange glow above the waters. A ball of flame shoots through the smoke and explodes on one of the ships.

The camera then cuts to the rowboat, where we can see James Purefoy’s version of Mark Antony looking down at the water with a defeated look on his face.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the TV series Rome

That was a very quick scene, because the series goes on to wrap up the storyline in the aftermath of the battle in the final episode of the series, but the event it’s showing there is the Battle of Actium.

The show is correct to show Mark Antony looking rather defeated because he was on the losing end of what would be a decisive victory for Octavian.

Octavian and Mark Antony had been at odds with each other…well, pretty much since the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE. We learned more about that back in episode #308 during the Ides of March. For a while after that, Octavian and Antony were allied as they tracked down Caesar’s assassins along with some other well-known historical figures such as Cleopatra.

Once they took care of the assassins, the rivalry between Octavian and Antony grew into a resentment that culminated in the Battle of Actium. Antony and Cleopatra had about 500 ships and 70,000 infantry while Octavian had 400 ships and 80,000 infantry. Despite large numbers of troops, the battle took place in the sea. After some intense fighting, Cleopatra fled with her Egyptian ships and Antony broke off the attack to follow her. The rest of Antony’s ships surrendered to Octavian. About a week later, Antony’s troops on land surrendered as well.

It was a decisive win for Octavian, who would later be known as Caesar Augustus, and cement him as the undisputed master of the Roman world.

If you want to watch the brief segment we talked about today, check out the HBO miniseries called Rome and we see the ships and Antony’s defeat happening at the beginning of the final episode in the whole series.

 

September 4th, 1886. Skeleton Canyon, Arizona.

Our next historical event comes from Geronimo: An American Legend, and we’ll have to fast forward to about an hour and 40 minutes into the movie to reveal a beautiful landscape of a desert canyon. Not a single person can be seen, but it doesn’t take long for Matt Damon’s voiceover to tell us the date of September 4^th, 1886, as well as the significance of the date.

Damon’s character in the movie, 2^nd Lt. Britton Davis, says that’s the date that Geronimo and 34 Chiricahua men, women, and children surrendered to General Nelson Miles.

The scene in the movie changes to Kevin Tighe’s character, Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles, riding a horse in front of those men, women, and children walking by foot along the canyon.

We can see some other U.S. soldiers in uniform riding horses in the background, too, but the camera’s focus is on Miles.

The voiceover continues, saying that as Geronimo handed over his weapons, he simply said, “Once I moved about like the wind. Now I surrender, and that is all.”

One of the soldiers there is 2^nd Lt. Davis—a very young Matt Damon.

The camera cuts to another scene of this whole column of men, women, and children walking by foot alongside the soldiers on horseback.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Geronimo: An American Legend

Another quick segment as far as the movie is concerned, but the movie is correct to give us the date of September 4^th, 1886, as being when Geronimo surrendered for the final time—he had actually surrendered multiple times before, but life on a reservation wasn’t kind to those who were used to a nomadic lifestyle like the Apache people were.

That quote is something often attributed to Geronimo, too:

“Once I moved about like the wind. Now I surrender to you and that is all.”

What’s tricky about verifying the quote, or really many things about the nature of Geronimo’s actual surrender is that his story of what happened and the story of what happened from the U.S. soldiers who accepted his surrender are different.

According to the U.S. Army’s account, Geronimo’s surrender was unconditional. Not so, according to Geronimo’s own memoirs. He insisted to his dying day that he and his people had been misled and the surrender was conditional.

Maybe that’s why the movie doesn’t show the actual surrender itself but describe it through voiceover.

But, the movie was also correct to mention Geronimo’s weapons in that voiceover. He had three weapons on him at the time of surrender: A Winchester rifle, a Colt pistol, and a Bowie knife.

Today, the rifle is on display at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, while the pistol and knife are at a museum in Fort Sill, Oklahoma—where Geronimo died in 1909, decades after his surrender.

If you want to watch the scene from the movie we talked about this week, you’ll find where it’s currently streaming in the show notes.

 

September 7th, 1876. Northfield, Minnesota.

For our third event this week, we’ll go to the heist movie from 1972 called The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid. About an hour and two minutes into the movie, we can see a water trough in the foreground of the shot is filled almost to the top. There’s a carriage just on the other side of it, and in the background, we can see buildings along the road.

Picture if you will: A typical Western town from a 1970s movie—and this is basically what that looks like.

Except when I think of towns in Western movies, I think of a dirt road being all dusty in the heat of the sun. This one is muddy because it’s raining out. Someone carrying an umbrella races along the road as they try to keep from getting wet.

A couple women rush along the sidewalk, too, seemingly trying to stay dry. Not everyone cares about the rain, though, as we can see a man on a horse meandering slowly along the road. The camera focuses in on him as he continues along the road and now we can start to see some of the signs for buildings along the way.

The signs for the stores are very self-explanatory: That one just says “Furniture” and next to it is “Manning’s Stoves & Hardware.”

There’s not much of a surprise about what you’ll be able to get there.

The camera shifts focus now and instead of following the lone rider on the horse, it cuts to three men on horses coming the other direction. Oh, there’s more than three—there’s another guy who seems to be a part of the same crew.

It looks like it’s raining harder now, too, as the camera angle changes. The four men get off their horses and as they’re moving, we can see at least one of them has a rifle. They walk up to the sidewalk, looking around as if they’re seeing who is noticing them arrive. No one else seems to notice…or, at least, if they do it’s not apparent from the movie.

Inside one of the buildings, there’s a man writing something down. There’s a noise behind him, and he turns around just in time to get hit over the head with a shovel. He slumps over, unconscious. The window blinds are closed so no one from the outside can see what’s about to happen inside.

The other guys in the crew who were still outside in the rain calmly walk inside, and we can see there’s a sign on the outside that says this is a bank. More violence ensues as the men force the workers inside to, as one of the men says, “make a withdrawal.”

Except…I don’t think this is a legitimate withdrawal since it’s happening at gunpoint.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid

Time for the fact-check!

What we just saw in the movie…or, rather, what I just described to you as I’m watching the movie, is an event from this week in history when the James-Younger Gang participated in what many have called one of their most infamous holdups.

As the name of the movie says straight up, this raid really did happen in the town of Northfield, Minnesota. Well, the movie calls it a raid. It was a bank robbery. For a bit of geographical context, Northfield, Minnesota is about 36 miles, or 58 kilometers, to the south of Minneapolis.

And the First National Bank of Northfield had about $15,000 in its safe at the time. In 1876, that’s about the same as $423,000 today.

And while the segment of the movie we just heard described doesn’t give any indication about who is who, in the true story, one of the reasons why the robbery at the Northfield bank has gone down in history is because it was the beginning of the end for the notorious outlaw Jesse James.

The James-Younger Gang got their name from two sets of brothers: Frank and Jesse James as well as Cole and Bob Younger. They weren’t the only ones in the gang, of course, but they were the leaders and generally considered the most notorious of the outlaws.

Around 2 o’clock in the afternoon on September 7^th, 1876, the James-Younger gang rode into Northfield, Minnesota with a plan to rob the bank. I couldn’t find anything to suggest it was raining like we see in the movie, but the weather didn’t really matter for the plans.

Three members of the gang took up position down the street near a bridge as lookouts. Two more stayed outside the bank. Frank James, Bob Younger, and another of the gang, Charlie Pitts, were the members of the gang to enter the bank. While it didn’t necessarily happen exactly like we see in the movie with the shovel knocking one of the men unconscious, the robbers did demand the bank employees open the safe.

One thing the movie got wrong was how the town was alerted to the bank being robbed. We didn’t talk about this in the scene of the film we covered, but a little bit later there’s someone outside the bank who gets shot by someone in the gang. That is what makes everyone get alerted to what’s going on.

In the true story, it should have been included in the segment we talked about earlier because there was someone leaving the bank right as some of the gang went in to rob it. That person, a man named J.S. Allen, recognized the bank was being robbed almost immediately. He didn’t know who the robbers were, but he knew what was happening and he called out for help. Some townspeople nearby heard the call for help and grabbed their guns to investigate the bank.

The robbers outside the bank guarding the door didn’t help with the curiosity of the armed townspeople investigating.

A shootout started.

In the chaos, two of the James-Younger Gang were killed and left behind as they fled with only about $26.70 instead of the $15,000 in the safe.

A militia was formed to find the gang that had just tried to rob the bank. When they caught up to them, Charlie Pitts was killed by the militia in a shootout that saw the Younger Brothers captured. The only ones to get away from the attempted robbery at the Northfield bank was Jesse and Frank James, who had split off from the rest of the gang to flee back home to Missouri.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history as it’s depicted on screen, check out the 1972 film called The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid.

The gang rides into town to start the bank robbery sequence at about an hour and two minutes into the film.

And while we don’t have an episode covering that movie, if you want to learn more about the true story I’ll include a link in the show notes for this episode to a fantastic article from the Minnesota Digital Library that includes photographs of the places and people involved.