MLK/FBI: America on a Collision Course

Factual America

12 Jan

Written By

For years Martin Luther King Jr, the leader and hero of the civil rights movement, faced constant surveillance and harassment by the US government.

Helping us to learn more about this dark chapter in America's history is award-winning director, editor and producer, Sam Pollard, whose latest film MLK/FBI premieres on January 15th 2021, ahead of Martin Luther King Jr Day on January 18th.

As a filmmaker with a career spanning more than three decades, Sam Pollard has won three Emmys and along with Spike Lee received an Oscar nomination for Four Little Girls (1997) . He is a teacher at the Tisch School of the Arts in New York, and a member at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

MLK/FBI is not a biopic. It is a complex and nuanced story with a clear protagonist, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, and the antagonist, J Edgar Hoover, who served as the Director of the FBI for almost four decades. Each man had his fatal flaws and each man had his own view of what America should be.

"I’m someone who would do a survey film about anything and anybody. I want to be able to dig in as an anthropologist and archaeologist, to look at the pros and cons, and nuances of human beings and different institutions." – Sam Pollard

Time Stamps:

02:47 - The film we are talking about today with our guest Sam Pollard.
04:00 - When MLK/FBI is being released and what the film is about.
05:40 - The FBI’s surveillance of American citizens, including Martin Luther King Jr.
09:30 - How FBI turned onto MLK’s private life and his extra-marital affairs to discredit him.
11:35 - What mass media were like at the time of MLK’s activities.
13:00 - Who J Edgar Hoover was, his power and influence in the USA.
17:20 - Why MLK/FBI is made now and why it turns out to be so relevant to this time.
19:45 - Why 2020 felt very much like 1968.
23:00 - How recent history has never ceased to surprise us.
26:50 - What the director’s responsibility is when making a film about Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
32:00 - MLK and J Edgar Hoover as the protagonist and antagonist in the film.
34:30 - Why all the participants in the film are commenting off camera.
37:00 - Why FBI tapes about MLK should be released.
40:30 - Sam Pollard’s memories of US society and politics in the 1970s and 1980s.
43:18 - Where the documentary film industry is heading.
46:00 - The next project Sam is working on.

Resources:

MLK/FBI (2021)
Follow the film on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.: From “Solo” to Memphis, a book by David J. Garrow
Eyes on the Prize (1990)
Sinatra: All or Nothing at All (2015)
Belushi (2020)
Alamo Pictures
This is Distorted

Transcript for Factual America Episode 43 - MLK/FBI: America on a Collision Course

Sam Pollard 0:00
Hi, I'm Sam Pollard, director of MLK/FBI.

MLK 0:05
Violence is self defeating. He who lived by the sword will perish by the sword.

Speaker 1 0:11
You know, when you construct a man as the great man, there's nothing almost more satisfying than also seeing him as the opposite.

Speaker 2 0:19
When the National Archives puts government documents up on the web, one has to confront them.

Speaker 3 0:26
Tapes from the hotel rooms, FBI reports. Those are pieces of information that we shouldn't have. The FBI was most alarmed about King because of his success.

Speaker 4 0:41
He realized how sick this country was, we would try to reveal the truth about segregation.

Speaker 5 0:50
J. Edgar Hoover is famous for saying that he feared the rise of a black Messiah.

Speaker 6 0:54
The FBI says it's clear. Martin Luther King Jr. is the most dangerous Negro in America, and we have to use every resource at our disposal to destroy him.

Speaker 7 1:07
J. Edgar Hoover was the head of the FBI for 48 years.

Speaker 8 1:12
The FBI's focus was collecting salacious sexual material of King with various girlfriends.

Speaker 9 1:21
Hoover had made the speech that Martin Luther King was the world's most notorious liar.

Speaker 10 1:26
Now, what am I gonna do about Martin Luther King?

Speaker 11 1:29
It looks to me like he is at the front door.

Speaker 12 1:32
This was a way that they could bring down a very influential black civil rights leader and contain the movement.

Speaker 13 1:41
FBI mailed the tape of Dr. King with other women, to him and to Coretta with an advice that he should go kill himself.

MLK 1:52
The greatness of America is the right to protest for right.

Speaker 14 1:59
Staying calm under fire is very hard when people are trying to kill you.

Speaker 15 2:05
Anybody who was to the left of mainstream in civil rights was deemed a subversive.

Speaker 16 2:11
They use surveillance in order to foment violence and break apart these organizations.

Speaker 17 2:19
They were running the surveillance state.

Speaker 18 2:22
This represents the darkest part of the Bureau's history.

Intro 2:33
That is the trailer for the documentary, MLK/FBI. And this is Factual America. We're brought to you by Alamo pictures, a London based production company making documentaries about America for international audiences. Today, we're talking about Martin Luther King Jr. and specifically the surveillance and harassment of the civil rights leader by the US government. Helping us to learn more about this dark chapter in America's history is award winning director and producer, Sam Pollard. Sam, welcome to Factual America. How are things with you?

Sam Pollard 3:07
Things are pretty good, you know, depending on the, you know, we're dealing with the COVID in America, like everyplace else in the world. But I've been keeping safe and distance from people and try not to interact too much. So things have been fine.

Matthew 3:21
Oh, great. That's good to hear. Very similar here, we've just gone into a national lockdown. And we're based here in the UK. And, as you say, it's the great, in many ways, the great equalizer. So, I mean, you have an amazing filmography to say the least, but the film we're here to talk about is MLK/FBI. It's, well, we're recording this on the fifth of January, but this podcast will be released on the 19th. And by that time, your film will have been released, theatrical release, I guess on the 15th, and will it be also streaming?

Sam Pollard 4:00
Absolutely. I think that the IFC is planned to do virtual screenings around the country in the United States. And I know that it's going to be released in the UK in the same day.

Matthew 4:11
Okay. Excellent. Well, thanks again for coming on. It's an honor to have you and thanks for making this film. One of the great perks of this job I've got is I get to see these things before they come out. And I mean, if you don't mind, for our listeners, maybe you can give us a little synopsis of what MLK/FBI is about.

Sam Pollard 4:35
MLK/FBI is a documentary that looks at the high point of Dr. King's career in America from the 60s up to his assassination in 1968, before 1968. And how, as he was trying to break the backs of segregation in America, he was constantly being surveilled and monitored by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. He was wiretapped. You know, he was watched, he had informants in his organization, you know. They were constantly trying to figure out how to discredit Dr. King and his reputation. So this documentary looks at both who King was, what he was having to confront and deal with on a daily basis with the FBI and also, at the same time getting an understanding of the trajectory of the history of the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover.

Matthew 5:20
Okay, excellent. Well, I think we're gonna talk a little bit about all these things in a little more detail here shortly. So basically, this surveillance, which I guess many of us have been aware of, but which you now document very well for us, it has its roots in the Red Scare, doesn't it, of the 50s?

Sam Pollard 5:41
Absolutely. We come out of World War Two, America had just defeated Germany and Japan, and Italy. And you know, and we have had a relationship during the war with the Soviet Union, led by Joseph Stalin. And then all of a sudden in the late 40s, the notion of communism became the next sort of red herring in American history, where everybody looked around the corner and said, if you were a communist, you were trying to destroy the fabric of American democracy. And one of the strongest proponents of trying to destroy communism in America was the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. He was obsessed with the Communist Party. And so he was looking to find anyone who might have been connected like the Rosenbergs, you know, like Robert Oppenheim, anybody who's going to the Communist party and trying to make sure that they didn't infiltrate or destroy America. And so what happened in the 50s, Dr. King became a leader of the civil rights movement with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and developed a relationship in the late 50s, early 60s with a gentleman named Stanley Levinson, who had been a former member of the Communist Party. That immediately raised the hackles on J. Edgar Hoover's neck to say, oh-oh, here's this civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, this Negro, who's in conversation and having meetings with a communist, a former communist Stanley Levinson, and his feeling was that they were trying, the Communist Party was trying to corupt Dr. King and the civil rights movement. And it has always been concerned that African Americans who were unhappy with segregation in America, were, you know, were being approached by members of the Communist Party as early as the 1930s.

Matthew 5:49
And I think you've got a great archival footage there of Dr. King saying, what he finds the most remarkable is, that more African Americans had become communists.

Sam Pollard 7:34
Members of the Communist Party, very upfront about it. Absoultely. You know, because for many who thought the Communist Party was a way to sort of deal with segregation, it became something that was attractive.

Intro 7:45
Yeah. And so, I mean, it's to the point that even John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General, even tell Dr. King to cool it. To stop these associations with Stanley Levinson, don't they?

Sam Pollard 8:04
Yeah, because J. Edar Hoover had gotten Bobby Kennedy to approve the wiretapping, the monitoring of Dr. King because of his so called connections with Stanley Levinson. And when that information was brought to the Kennedys, right before the march in Washington, King went to the White House and met with John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy, who told him, you know, in no uncertain terms, that he needed to distance himself from Stanley Levinson and anybody who was in his organization who had any connections with the Communist Party. Now, the reality of it was that Dr. King said to these gentlemen, the President of the United States and the Attorney General, that he was going to sever its ties with Stanley Levinson and other members in his organization that communist affiliations or previous communist ties. But in reality he didn't. He didn't separate himself or distance himself from Stanley Levinson even though he did with some other people, you know. But he told these gentlemen that he was, but he continued to have Stanley Levinson as his very close confident.

Matthew 9:06
Yeah. So this, as you've already said, for J. Edgar Hoover, this was a way of justifying wiretaps and bugging hotel rooms and these sorts of things. Even Dr. King's speechwriter, Clarence Jones's house is fully wiretapped, you know, so you document that very well in the film. And then, what they, how best to put it, they stumble upon things about Dr. King's, you know, of his personal life. And this kind of takes on a whole different form of, I don't know, it takes a turn basically.

Sam Pollard 9:49
It takes a deep turn. I mean, all of a sudden, hey they're listening, they're wiretapping Dr. King, eavesdropping on his conversations and what's happening in these hotel rooms. And lo and behold, they realized that he was having these extramarital affair. And for Hoover and one of his right hand men, William Sullivan, they saw this as an opportunity that they thought could really discredit Dr. King. Not only was he having these extramarital affairs, but he was a Christian minister, you know, who's basically talking about nonviolent protest from the pulpits of his church, you know, and pulpits of other churches around the country. And here he is having these illicit affairs. They thought that they had found the thing that could destroy who they thought was one of the most dangerous negros in America, by releasing this information about Dr. King's illicit affairs. Now, the thing to remember is, here we are in the mid 60s where the press at that time did not take the bait. They did not take material that look at people's deeply personal lives to use in the press, you know. The world has changed radically since then. But back then, would it be illicit affairs of someone like Dr. King, or even John F. Kennedy was not open game, you know.

Matthew 11:11
It's interesting. I haven't even, what do you think that was? And why has this all changed? Because it's true, sports figures, name it, whoever was in the public eye, these sort of things. Probably a lot of journalists knew things, or were given tips, but they just, as you said, never would take the bait.

Sam Pollard 11:30
It was a different world we lived in. I mean, think about it. It was a world back then where men wore suit and ties, where, you know, there was a certain sort of what I call American gentility. And so the idea that you were going to spread on the front pages that John Kennedy was involved with Marilyn Monroe, or that Dr. King was having these extramarital affairs, was not something they would do, you know. And you've seen how it's fully 180 degrees since then. Everything is game. But what's fascinating to me though, Matthew, is that even though things now being published and seen on television about people's personal lives for some people, it doesn't seem to have much impact. We've become so neutered to scandal and stuff, that even though you may bring out all the horrific things, in the personal life of Donald J. Trump, it doesn't seem to stick.

Matthew 12:28
Yeah. And other politicians as well across the globe, it doesn't stick anymore. People are like, to be honest, we've kind of, I guess, maybe even become schizophrenic a bit, completely separating the two. And behind all this, I do have a few more questions about that all, but behind all this is one man, as you've already talked about, who's also it's J. Edgar Hoover, isn't it? And so the film does a great job of also documenting as you said, him and the FBI and the agency that he built, and became this sort of, I don't know, very venerable institution, if you will, in the United States.

Sam Pollard 13:15
It became an iconic presence in American history. Think of it this way, Matthew. Here am I, here I am as a 13-14 year old African American male in East Harlem in 1963, in 1964, and my remembrance of J, Edgar Hoover at the time, was like he was a hero. He was a guy who, you know, with his G men, you know, killed John Dillinger. He was a guy who was gonna keep the country from becoming red, you know. He was a guy who had these FBI agents with the Tommy guns and stuff. I bought into that stuff back in 63-64. I mean, there's, as you see in the film, when there was a popularity poll taken of King and Hoover, you know, in the mid 60s, who was more popular, J. Edgar Hoover then Martin Luther King. I mean, one of the reasons that we put into the film all these old movie clips from films like Walk a Croocked Mile and Big Jim McLain, and the FBI stories, because I knew those films intimately from watching them on television, and understanding they were used to prop up, you know, the fact that the FBI was this fabulous organization that was doing good, helping America stay on the right track.

Matthew 14:30
Well, I mean, I'm old enough as a little kid remembering the reruns of the FBI would always show up, you know, when you come home from school, you know.

Sam Pollard 14:39
Efrem Zimbalist Jr.

Matthew 14:40
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And the thing is, he was head of the FBI for 48 years. I mean, this guy, he just, he was a man of power unto himself, wasn't he?

Sam Pollard 14:54
He was he was a dictator. I mean, imagine all the dirt he collected on people through those years. I mean, he could destroy people's lives. He had dirt on probably every president that came to the White House from his beginning as director up until he retired in the 70s.

Matthew 15:14
I mean, for our listeners, you can just Google it. I mean, there's always danger in just googling things and reading whatever Wikipedia. But there's plenty of quotes from different presidents who said they want to get rid of him, but didn't think they could.

Sam Pollard 15:27
That's right, He was a dangerous man. He had files.

Matthew 15:30
Truman wanted to get rid of him. JFK wanted to get rid of him. I mean, they just couldn't do it. But this film is, in many ways, this films is as much about the FBI or the US government as it is about MLK, isn't it? I mean, is that why it's MLK stroke FBI.

Sam Pollard 15:49
That's exactly right. We felt that was important to, to show the dichotomy between these two men and these two organizations, Dr. King, as the head of the civil rights struggle, particularly through the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and J. Edgar Hoover, as the Executive Director of the FBI. And the fact that they were on this collision course. That's the only meeting they ever had in Washington, DC. And the FBI only stopped monitoring King because he was assassinated.

Matthew 16:22
Yeah, exactly. Well, I think what we're gonna do is we're gonna give our listeners an early break, and then we'll be right back with Sam Pollard.

Factual America midroll 16:34
You're listening to Factual America. Subscribe to our mailing list, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter at Alamo pictures to keep up to date with new releases or upcoming shows. Check out the show notes to learn more about the program, our guests and the team behind the production. Now back to Factual America.

Matthew 16:53
Welcome back to Factual America. I'm here with Sam Pollard, award winning director and producer and editor of many great films, but as we already discussed, we're talking about MLK/FBI, theatrical release on January 15, which is Dr. King's birthday, and just days before the official holiday that is commemorated for him in the US. Why make this film now, Sam?

Sam Pollard 17:23
Well, I would like to say, honestly, to you, Matthew that I made this film because we knew that it would be in resonate with the times today. But in all honesty, Ben Hedin and I, the producer of the film. I just finished another wonderful documentary, if I do say so myself, titled Two Trains Runnin'. And we were looking for a new project in 2017. So Ben, who's a real sort of civil rights buff, just read Dave Garrow's book about Dr. King and the FBI. And he sent me a copy. He said, Sam, I think this is our next film, which is to take a look at the relationship between the FBI and Dr. King. So I read the book. And I was very familiar with David Garow, because he had been one of our major consultants when I worked on Eyes On the Prize, too. And so I read the book and I called Ben, I think two days later, I said you're absolutely right. This is our next film. This will be, I think, a good deep dive, because I'm at the stage of my career where I just don't want to do what I call sort of a survey film about anything, anybody. I want to be able to dig into it like an anthropologist, an archaeologist really. And to really look at the pros and cons and nuances of human beings and different institutions. So by, you know, taking on this stuff, I felt it was a great opportunity to dig into who Dr. King was, dig into Hoover, dig into the FBI. And so that was really attracted to the project now, who knew that 2020 would be such a monumental year in world history, you know, with the pandemic, with the deaths of people like Breanna Taylor and George Floyd, and the Black Lives Matter movement taking hold, not only in America, but all over the world. Who knew that our film would be a part of this sort of zeitgeist? So, you know, it's sort of like, it just, two things coming together that we weren't aware of what happened.

Matthew 19:17
I had this done as a question I'll ask you later, but I'll ask it now, since we're on it. As a documentarian, I would say you're a historian as well.

Sam Pollard 19:28
I would agree with that.

Matthew 19:29
Yeah. Great. I'm glad we agree on this. Going to 2020, as you say, with Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, does it feel like here we go again? 2020 looks a lot like 1968.

Sam Pollard 19:45
From my perspective, it absolutely does. 2020 does feel like 1968. And it's interesting to me, you know, Matthew, I was 18 years old when Dr. King was assassinated and Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. Probably because of my youth, the impact of that year didn't hit me until years later. But 2020 has really hit me. You know, I'm much older human being maybe mature to a level where the nuances and complexities of life, I'm so much more in my face, it's so real to me now that this deck, this particular year 2020, will resonate probably even more for me than 68. Cause I was a young man, I understood what was happening, but I don't think the impact of it has resonated like what's happened in 2020.

Matthew 20:40
It's a very interesting perspective, as someone who's definitely middle aged, will attest. I mean, when you're 18, things are so black and white, aren't they? And there's something good about that. It's good. I mean, I'm glad there's 18 year olds out there who can feel that way. But at the same time, when you get older, it's kind of like, well, things are never completely, just so black and white, are they?

Sam Pollard 21:07
That's exactly how you see life. I mean, that's exactly how I saw life like in 68, things were pretty black and white to me. I always say the three big emotional impacts that happened to me in the 60s was - in November 22 1963, I'm sitting in my junior high school classroom. And my teacher comes in and says the school will be closed today, because the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, has just been shot in Dallas. I couldn't believe that a president of the United States could be shot. I was like, what, and then two days after my birthday, April, 4th 1968, I'm sitting at home. And the news comes on that Martin Luther King has been shot in Memphis. Again, I'm like flummoxed. And then three months later, you know, almost three months later, Bobby Kennedy's killed in California. I couldn't believe that this was happening in America. But somehow the impact of that didn't have the same kind of resonance that this 2020 has had on me, as a middle aged man with grandchildren and grown up children, and looking at the world in a more complex and nuanced way.

Matthew 22:24
It's also interesting because for someone who, like me, was born about the time, I was born 1967 for the record, you know, the 60s always seemed like this time period that - you would never see anything like this again. And then here we are in 2020. And it's just like, every day, you never know what's gonna come through.

Sam Pollard 22:48
You never know anymore. It's an amazing world we live in now. Every day, in this news cycle, Matthew, something happens, you say what? It's like, over the weekend, we're hearing about, in America, we heard about the election, that run off in Georgia, between the republicans and democratic senators, senatorial candidates, and all of a sudden, this tape comes out of Trump talking to the state attorney in Georgia. And you're like, what? And then yesterday, you're hearing about how two more senators have joined this, going to be a part of the objection of the confirming electoral votes on Wednesday. It's like, what? And the idea that the National Guard's gonna come out in the streets of DC just in case. It feels schizophrenic?

Matthew 23:42
Yeah, I know. Someone asked me about some book recommendations, and I was thinking back to even like, Philip Roth. He has a book on, one of the books that he wrote about the presidency and you got like a Lindbergh becoming a president and things like that, and it seems fantastic at the time. And it is fiction, but, you know, truth is stranger than fiction.

Sam Pollard 24:14
Listen, man, I didn't believe in 2007 and Obama was running for president, that he would win.

Matthew 24:21
I completely agree with you. I had someone in 2006. I was working for The Economist at the time, a young intern, American intern came to me, she was - what about Obama? You know, because he'd had that speech at 2004 convention, which, you know, still to this day, puts goosebumps on my back, hair stand over my back is such an amazing speech. And then she said, well you guys..., there's no chance. There's no chance someone named Barack Hussein Obama can get elected. And then, you know, then it did. It did happen.

Sam Pollard 25:01
But then we got, Matthew, 2017 Donald J. Trump. I mean, what?

Matthew 25:09
It is a strange world we live in.

Sam Pollard 25:11
And even to last night in Georgia, man, he's saying he still won the election.

Matthew 25:18
Yeah. And he's saying he's gonna get Vice President Pence to... He's gonna save the day on Wednesday, when he supposedly doesn't certify the results of the Electoral College.

Sam Pollard 25:31
You can't not certify. All he's there to do is to monitor it.

Matthew 25:35
It's purely ceremonial role. I don't know. The thing is, I've stopped thinking well, I will say, I wasn't one of those that were like, if Trump loses, he'll go and not that he would go quietly, but you know I think those who were saying, I wouldn't be so strong as saying I thought there'd be a coup. But for those who say, look, he's got a certain MO and he doesn't know how to operate otherwise, basically.

Sam Pollard 26:03
Exactly, so he will not go gently into this good night.

Matthew 26:07
No, he will not.

Sam Pollard 26:09
He will be a thorn in our side until, you know, he passes away quite honestly.

Matthew 26:17
That's quite possible, because they're already talking about him coming back in 2024

Sam Pollard 26:21
He's never gonna go away, man. He's gonna, I mean, it's a little like when he challenged Obama's citizenship. He was like a dog with a bone. He can't let go. He can't let go. The guy is so pathological, man.

Matthew 26:41
Well, maybe we can get back, let's go back to, we could talk about this forever. But let's get back to this film. It's not a spoiler alert. We don't want to go too much into the details of the film, because I want people to come in and watch this, as they should. It's a great film. I really enjoyed it. You pose a question. You mentioned David Garrow, who as you said, you worked closely with on Eyes on the Prize and who features prominently in this film. And you posed a question to him that I thought was really interesting, right at the end of the film. And I'm going to paraphrase it and pose it to you, which is, what is your responsibility as a filmmaker when making a film about someone like MLK?

Sam Pollard 27:30
Yeah, here's my answer. My responsibility is to try to tell a story that's complex and nuanced, and not to whitewash it, you know, not making a biography about Dr. King or anybody who I may admire or respect. I always want to be able to dig into the human being and see that they have their own particular moral, what I call human flaws. And so for me, the responsibility that I felt that I had and Ben Hadin, the producer, he also felt, we had, was to tell a story, a complex, nuanced story about Dr. King, and the things that he had to confront. He was not only dealing with being a leader of the civil rights movement. He was dealing with his own personal demons, his own, you know, his liaisons with other women. He was dealing with the fact that at a certain point in his trajectory, he decided to come out against Vietnam and understanding the kind of pushback and backlash he would get from doing that, not only from the white community, but from within the black community. To understand that he wanted to try to understand that the motion for civil rights was also about economic rights. And that's why he felt the need, to have to create the Poor People's March. The fact that, you know, he was a man who was constantly multitasking. You can see the weariness in his face that this film unposed, as he's moving through the years dealing with different things from going to Birmingham, going to Albany, Georgia, going to Chicago, you know, going to Oslo to get the Nobel Peace Prize. Coming back to America, having to deal with J. Edgar Hoover. I mean, this man had a very complicated life. And I felt that we had a responsibility to show it. Now, does it make him look like the saint that everybody is sort of paying him to be? No, I just think it shows him as a human being as much as we try to show Hoover as a human being too. I think that's my responsibility as a filmmaker.

Matthew 29:23
And if I may say so myself, I think you do that extremely well. Because I think what comes out to me is that ultimately, this film is about the complexity of human beings. I mean, yes, there's a story about MLK and J. Edgar Hoover, and we do put our heroes on pedestals. And you've already mentioned JFK and things that people didn't know about at the time. And maybe, you've also alluded to, that we've completely separated people's personal life and character from what we think about them or what happens to them as politicians, but maybe that's gone too far to the other extreme. We need to understand that great things can be achieved by flawed people.

Sam Pollard 30:10
Exactly. That's a great phrase to lay this the way you just said it. Great things can be accomplished by flawed people. And that's always been a trajectory. It's never been like person is one thing or the other. They're complicated. I mean, if you go back in American history to George Washington, to Thomas Jefferson, to Abraham Lincoln, up through the centuries, every one of these men in America, that have been considered great American heroes were flawed human beings.

Matthew 30:40
And we've wanted to make, so all these myths, it was like about George Washington, you have all these myths develop that...

Sam Pollard 30:47
Always. It goes back to a John Ford film I watched that came out in 1948, called Fort Apache. With Henry Fonda and John Wayne and Henry Fonda was an encrazed Colonel who basically took his men to slaughter. And at the very end of the film, you know, when John Wayne has taken over his command, he's been interviewed by the journalist. And Ford did this with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and he says, when you print the legend or you print the real story, a lot of times you print the legend, and forget what the real story is, you know.

Matthew 31:27
So how did you then go about telling this story? I think you've already mentioned this about what you look for now in terms of stories in films. This is, for listeners, this isn't a biopic, but it's a story with a clear protagonist and antagonist, as we've discussed, each with their fatal flaws, and each with their own view of what America is meant to be.

Sam Pollard 31:53
Exactly, you said it. That was the charge. And we did our first cut of the film, which was over two and a half hours, the challenge was to make sure that we kept that trajectory - the protagonist and antagonist - all the way through up to the assassination of Dr. King. And then with the epilogue, what does it all mean? And so we had put in a lot of stuff in the two and a half hour version, that looked at Kings sort of trials and tribulations in Albany, in Birmingham, and even in Chicago. And we felt that, you know, and we even more on the black power movement with the FBI. But we thought, as we started now with them, we have to sharpen the narrative, we have to focus it more, to make sure that the two men who are at the center of the story, that their stories and the context of what they were involved in, comes through even more strongly. And we even had a whole section that dealt with people that were part of the group called the solo brothers who were connected to Stanley Levinson. That was sort of to set up, J. Edgar Hoover wanted to really understand the arc of the Communist Party, his obsession with the Communist Party, which we had to lose. We really had to really sharpen the narrative, which is really, you know, part of, all of us, as filmmakers, we're always trying to figure out how to sharpen a narrative telling our story.

Matthew 33:17
Which is, I mean, it's quite a challenge. As I find out, not in this case, but when interviewing filmmakers, it's always interesting, because they will sometimes talk about things as if they were in the film, and then forgetting that those didn't necessarily make the final cut. But then I've come to appreciate the fact that you have so many hours of film and stuff in the can that you must lose track of how much...

Sam Pollard 33:47
Well you do, you forget sometimes, you forget the stuff you have in the can. I mean, it's always fascinating about documentaries, any kind of film, sometimes when you have an opportunity, to look at some footage that you didn't use or outtake from material that you didn't use, you'll say, oh, how come I didn't use that? Oh, I did, but I took it out.

Matthew 34:07
And then you, interestingly, I thought, you keep the talking heads hidden throughout the film. And I imagine that was done, obviously it was done purposefully. Maybe you can give us a little thoughts behind that. As someone I knew, I recognized Andrew Young's voice, and you see him in the archival, but we don't see him till the very end. But that was obviously done on purpose. And for what purpose?

Sam Pollard 34:34
It was part of our initial approach to telling this story. Ben and I both said that we felt that we want to have the story told by what you were seeing on the screen and have the people commenting off screen. And the film that sort of influenced that trajectory for me, was a film I had seen around 2011-2012 called The Black Power Mixtape where I think it was a Dutch filmmaker had all this fantastic, archival footage about the Black Power movement. And nobody who commented on it from Angela Davis to Harry Belafonte was on camera, they were all off camera. So I thought we should try, we should try to do that. And I also sort of done that, with a film that I edited and was one of the producers on about Frank Sinatra in 2015. We had all this audio of Frank Sinatra, and it was just audio. So we decided that people that we will have interviewed, that would be all off camera. So we had done all these audio interviews with other people in Sinatra's orbit. They were audio only. And if you watch a lot of documentaries today, I mean, the Amy documentary, there's a new one out about John Belushi. They all take that same sort of aesthetic approach. There's one about Bruce Lee that's called Being Water or something. You know, and it's all the same, same approach. Nobody's on camera. They're just talking, a voiceover.

Matthew 36:01
We're actually having the Belushi people on recording later this week.

Sam Pollard 36:06
Oh, R.J.? Tell R.J. I said hello.

Matthew 36:08
I will, I definitely will. I mean, I won't take credit for this, because I saw someone else said this. But I think what it helps do, is it really help the viewer become fully immersed in the time. You don't have this sort of flashing back and forward.

Sam Pollard 36:24
That was the idea. That was the idea. Not to break it up with somebody coming on camera, but keep you immersed in the material and in the period. Exactly.

Matthew 36:33
Now, my understanding is, David Garrow, the Pulitzer Prize winning historian, who you've worked with, is reassessing his, I don't know what these things mean, reassessing his view of MLK, in light of some of the stuff that he has seen. The tapes may be released in 2027. I mean, what do you think? And do you think they should be released?

Sam Pollard 36:59
My answer to this last question is yes, they should be released. And here's why. Now, some people could say, and Ben Hadin and I had this discussion a few times, were we now doing what the FBI have been trying to do for so many years, years ago. You know, are we undermining King's reputation. And I had to seriously think about it. I mean, you know, we're gonna look at stuff that people don't really want to talk about. Are we doing the same thing the FBI was doing? Now my answer to that is no. I think that, as filmmakers, and as historians, which is the term you used about me, we tried to be much more thoughtful, and even-handed in terms of how we've been dealing with the rape allegations in the film. Now, I think in the release of the tapes, I think a few things can come to light. To me, it's not just the affairs he had with the women. I think we have come to light with the fact that when he was in these hotel rooms in city after city, in Albany, Georgia, and Chicago, and Selma, there had to be people in those rooms with him, like Dorothy Cotton, or Ralph Abernathy, or Clarence Jones, or Andrew Young, or James Bethel, talking about strategies. Talking about the strategies they needed to implement, to go into these cities to break the back of segregation. So to me, that's fascinating. I think I'd be looking forward to hearing that if it exists. The other thing that I think we also should be mindful of, is that if you were viewing and loved Dr. King, in the 60s and 70s, like I did, none of these things I'm gonna hear in the tapes, I think is gonna change my sense of him. They'll just make me see more, more flawed human being. Now, if you hated Dr. King or you despised what he was all about, this will just confirm what you thought about him from the beginning. So you know, it's an interesting thing about, you notice, you can hear one person say something and you can have one person who believe it sounds one way another person believe sounds another way. Like Trump's speech last night in Georgia. Now, obviously, there are people in that crowd who worship what he said. Now me, I found it horrific. That's what's so fascinating about the life.

Matthew 39:09
I think that's a very good point. And it does remind me of some of the, as someone who, I have an interest in failed Democratic presidential administrations. And so I've looked in a lot into LBJ and Jimmy Carter and people like that. There's, there's a lot of...

Sam Pollard 39:28
Do you think that LBJ had a failed presidential administration?

Matthew 39:31
Well, I don't think so. Actually, that's the point. I don't think it was failed. In fact, I think, again, you would talk about flawed human beings. He was extremely flawed human being. I'm from South Texas originally. So I grew up sort of, not that there's any hate geography about LBJ but he was held up in a certain certain way, but he couldn't, I mean, it's almost Shakespearean the tragedy that he found himself in, in terms of not being able to express himself away from Vietnam.

Sam Pollard 40:09
That's what tarnished his reputation. I mean, it's fascinating, you think back on these presidents, man, that I grew up with, you know. In 1962, I thought JFK was the cat's pajamas. You know, here he was with that beautiful wife and those beautiful kids and his Camelot, you said, wow. And then from 63 after to assassination in 68, you know, LBJ Great Society, I thought I was a part of that. As a young teenager, I was one of those kids who got money from The Great Society. And then Vietnam. And then Richard Nixon, man, this is what's so fascinating. I'm in 1970, when did Nixon leave office, '74?

Matthew 40:56
'74, April '74.

Sam Pollard 40:58
I'm in Antigua in 1974, with a bunch of white high school kids, building a community center in Antigua, the summer of '74. And one day on the news, we get the news that - what? - that the President of the United States is going to leave office because of what they came. This is amazing to me, man. I was so ashamed of America, ashamed. You know, I've grown up with a president being assassinated, civil rights icon being assassinated. Bobby Kennedy, might have been the next President of the United States, being assassinated. And then in '75, a president who has been dishonorably, you know, thrown out of the White House. I mean, you can't write these things, man. The trajectory of the American history is like what the fuck?

Matthew 41:58
Which in a way makes I mean, the 80s and 90s were just sort of this, in that regard, exceptional decades, almost, they were kind of boring decades. Well, there was all kinds of stuff going on and there's, Berlin Wall falls and stuff like that, which you never thought would happen. But in terms of these sort of, these fast moving events, which, you know, 2020 had our head spinning around every day. You think about that arc from sort of Kennedy winning election to Nixon leaving the White House, that's all within for 14 years, you know.

Sam Pollard 42:37
It's amazing history, man. And think about the history that's gonna be written about 2020. Think of the books and the films, that's gonna come out in the next 10-12 years, man. Wow man.

Matthew 42:50
Well, you've got some ideas there, you think, for future projects?

Sam Pollard 42:55
Must be, I always got something percolating in my head. What a time we're living in? I can't believe it. You can't write a better script than this.

Intro 43:08
Well, that's a good point. You are a professor at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, among other things. And what do you think about the future of documentary filmmaking? Are you optimistic? You must see what the next generation looks like in terms of filmmakers, and where things are headed.

Sam Pollard 43:27
I think that the next decade of documentaries is alive and well. I'm in the academy now. And every year, we have an academy queue over 200 films, all types of documentaries. I've watched about 20 of them in the past week, I've watched 20 of them. And it's amazing the breath of creativity that you've seen. I've seen two documentaries about Khashoggi. And I like them both. Kingdom of Silence. I like them both. I watched the Belushi doc the other night. I think that, you know, my generation filmmakers has done some extraordinary movies. It goes back to Michael Moore really. And now I think this next generation people like Matthew Heineman, are creating a new wave of interesting and fascinating documentaries.

Matthew 44:21
We had, actually had Stanley Nelson on a few weeks ago. And I asked him this question about being a golden age of documentaries. And what he said - it is for some. Because he says someone like him, he says, for those who are established, he's getting calls all the time to do a doc, but that he thinks it's still very difficult for those who aren't established, even for people who have one good doc under their belt, to still get commissioned to do documentaries. At least that's how he is seeing things.

Sam Pollard 44:58
I don't think he's wrong, but I think, and he's done this, and I do it to, is to mentor the next wave of documentary filmmakers to help them get a foot up, their foot in the door, you know, an ability to make their own, to tell their own stories. He's not wrong, but that happens all the time. You know, there's a group of us who become established and we are the go to people, but then we have to help try to make room for the next generation. That's always the way it's got to be.

Matthew 45:25
And I think it's even like pro sports coaches or managers, you always wonder how does that guy get that job again? When it's just because they want a safe pair of hands? They're not thinking in terms of that.

Sam Pollard 45:40
Exactly, and then someone has the nerve and the guts to take a chance with somebody new. That's how it's gotta be.

Matthew 45:51
So what's next for you? I don't think you have any plans on retiring anytime soon.

Sam Pollard 45:58
Not in the next 10 years, but after that, I'll be all the way over. But I have a film premiering on HBO in about a month called Black Arts - In The Absence of Light. It looks at many of the 20th-21st century wonderful artists and the history of black artists in America, from Romare Bearden to Faith Ringgold, to present day artists like Jordan Casteel and Amy Sherald and Kehinde Wiley. And then I'm also finishing up a documentary that I'm working on which is really my passion project, a documentary that's hopefully going to be televised on this series American Masters next year in 2022 about the renowned percussionist composer, Max Roach.

Matthew 46:38
Oh, wow. Okay.

Sam Pollard 46:39
So, I'm getting that done and, you know, developing some other projects, hopefully, I'm not going to talk about yet until I get the seal of approval.

Matthew 46:51
I can't imagine you won't get the seal of approval. But best of luck with that. Well, I think we're coming to the end of our time together unfortunately. It's been a pleasure having you on, I really, really enjoyed our time and thanks for making time for us. And just to remind our listeners, we've been chatting with Sam Pollard, director of MLK/FBI, released on January 15. And just look for it, it's being streamed across the globe, as far as we know. And just to say thanks again for coming on. And also to give a shout out to This Is Distorted Studios here in Leeds, England. And remind our listeners to remember to like us and share us with your friends and family wherever you happen to listen or watch podcasts. This is Factual America. Signing off.

Factual America Outro 47:49
You've been listening to Factual America. This podcast is produced by Alamo pictures specializing in documentaries, television and shorts about the USA for international audiences. Head on down to the shownotes for more information about today's episode, our guests and the team behind the podcast. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at Alamo pictures. Be the first to hear about new productions, festivals showing our films and to connect with our team. Our homepage is alamopictures.co.uk

MLK/FBI: America on a Collision Course

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MLK/FBI: America on a Collision Course

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Belushi: The Brilliance and Tragedy of a Comedy Genius

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