Everybody with Angela Williamson is made possible by Fire Heart Entertainment and viewers like you.

Thank you.

To.

For decades, the television movie has brought powerful stories into our living rooms, from intimate dramas to sweeping epics.

These films have entertained, educated and challenged us.

Tonight, we delve into the art of televised storytelling with a master of the craft, an executive producer whose work spans over 30 films.

I'm so happy you're joining us.

From Los Angeles.

This is Kelsey s PBS.

Welcome to everybody with Angela Williamson and innovation, Arts, education and public affairs program.

Everybody with Angela Williamson is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

And now your host, doctor Angela Williamson.

Gary Hofmann is our guest.

Gary, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for asking me to be here.

We have spent so much of our life watching movies that you have made mini series, and I thought it was important that our viewers actually meet the man behind 30 plus films.

But you weren't always a producer, correct?

Did you get into this industry?

No.

I was the furthest from the furthest from a producer and land that you can imagine.

I was a merchant seaman for many years after college.

I had planned on being a sea captain, actually.

And then, one day in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on this 400ft or carrier, I said, you know what?

You know, there's no girls out here.

Not at sea, you know.

And so, I went to, playwriting teacher of mine at City College in New York, which was a spectacular free college.

There's a $17 a semester.

And I said, I'd like to do something other than float around on a boat.

Do you have any suggestions?

And he said, television.

And I was just very, very lucky that he said those words.

And he set me up with an interview with the woman who was the secretary of channel five in New York.

She was a secretary to the man who ran the station.

And we hit it off.

And she then called the producer of the local talk show, which was 90 minutes live each day and said, we have a young man here that we really think you should meet.

The producer interpreted that as her and her boss, when she was really thinking it was me and her, so she was the one.

I went downstairs, I met him, and I got hired as a cue card printer.

Now tell us.

Cue card printer.

What?

What do you do?

You take a big piece of oak tag and you write down the introduction, which I did not write, by the way, for the various guests, I would just print them as well as run and get coffee for the people.

And, I still remember I was making $125 a week.

That was 1973, $96 a week after taxes.

My rent was 92, and if I walked to work one day a week, I could actually make it work.

And you decided to stick it out?

I stuck it out.

Eventually I became the producer of that show, which was 90 minutes live every day in this in the 70s.

I know it's different now, but still, how you move up in this industry is all the same.

You start what we call as a bottom and you really have to have some humility.

You have to have talent and work your way to that point, to where now you become the producer.

What did you learn of what you had to do to get to that level?

Get to the office before anybody else and leave later than anybody else.

Be present like what you're doing and work hard.

What I like that I'm hearing here is, is how you actually didn't start in this industry.

No, but you must have made a really good impression on your professor.

If you could call him and ask him for a reference.

Yeah, he was a playwriting teacher, and I'd written a play that he liked using those connections.

Really important.

But then, I mean, you're telling me you're in a genre that's talk, but we all know you for the movies that you've brought into our living rooms.

How does Gary get from talk television to what we're seeing on our our small screens at home?

You know, it was a very, unpredictable journey, from producing that talk show, I then went on to, that was a channel five in New York.

I then moved to CBS in New York and did a talk show for them, which was extremely successful.

From there, they asked me to, be in charge of programing for the CBS owned and operated stations, of which there were five at the time.

From that, I met somebody who was in the movie of the week business.

We became friendly, from that job at CBS.

I then wound up running a young as a young man running the cable division for CBS, which I did not particularly enjoy, and left and moved back to Los Angeles and became a partner with the fellow who was in the movies.

The television movie business.

And then, he had a way of working that was interesting.

He he was he would approach the stars who had movie of the week commitments from the various network.

So, in other words, that the three women of Charlie's Angels, which was a big hit in the 70s, all the networks wanted to make TV movies with them.

So he would approach them and say, look, I'll work with you on your, movies and I'll finance them with you, and I'll protect you financially, and therefore we'll be partners.

And I felt that I didn't want to work that way.

I wanted to be the creative element.

I wanted the networks to say, well, I don't know whether we should buy this movie from Gary or not, but since it's him, let's have it fall on his side.

So that was my goal.

And, I then, approached a man named Ed Gottschalk who was, a prolific movie of the week producer as well as a feature film producer.

And I approached him.

I called him up out of the blue.

I called him up out of the blue because there was an article about a soap opera that was being produced by another producer who was not financed by the same people that were financing him.

So I called him up and I said, this guy's got this show.

How come it's not you?

And he said, get in here.

And then we met.

We liked each other and then, we made an arrangement which, the day before I was supposed to start, he invited me over to his house by saying, calling me at 7:00 in the morning on Sunday and said, get over here.

And then he totally changed.

He said, I don't want to be your partner.

Come and work for me.

I had certain shows in development.

He said, you keep them because I was going to donate them.

In terms of our partnership and because of him, I was able to get introductions to all of the people that were running movies of the week from the various networks.

Because of his reputation.

I could call up and say, I'm Gary Hoffman, I work with Edgar and get meetings with everybody.

So that's what allowed me to really start to have currency.

In the movie of the week business, which was something I wanted to do because they were doing social issues at the time, and not a lot of people were.

I mean, the regular TV shows weren't really focusing on social issues, very few, but they really couldn't do that the way that a movie of the week could.

Right?

Correct.

Yeah.

And so how do you pitch to a network?

Because it's all about the money and sometimes social issues.

There's controversy there.

So how do you pitch that to a network to get that greenlight so that you can do that movie?

Well first the networks wanted to do them.

So there was a you weren't, you know, shoveling against the tide.

You were really within the tide.

And they were making at that time, one year, over 250 movies of the week between ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, Showtime and HBO.

Those were the buyers.

I do remember the first pitch I ever had made for a television.

I want to hear that, I read a book called Stranger in My Bed, which was the true story of a woman gets hit by a car, has amnesia, goes back to live with her family, her son thinks she's faking, the daughter loves the new personality, and the husband doesn't know what to do with this.

Now stranger in his bed and she doesn't know what to do with this guy who's a stranger in her bed.

However, the book, about 95% of it was really about her rehabilitation.

And what I just told you about the family relationships was really about three pages of the book.

And so I called up NBC and I said, I just read a very strange book, True Story.

And I told him what the family relationships were.

He said, let me read the book.

I said, you don't have to.

There's only three pages you have to read.

And, they bought it.

We developed the script and we made the movie.

So what you're telling me is that at this point in your career, you have built such a strong relationship that you could pitch a movie of the week based on just three pages of an entire novel?

Yeah.

Now it would be different.

But then the answer is yes.

At that time, it was a producer's medium, meaning it was a content medium.

In other words, it was about what you were bringing them.

And you know what?

Many of the pieces of material that I brought were not accepted them make.

No, you know, you make that phone call, you sometimes do very elaborate research, and it's a no.

But the yeses came from basically a decision about material.

Now, those networks that made those movies of the week are no longer making them.

So the only place to really make a new movie other than for the theatrical theaters is the streaming services, for the most part.

And they're now the criteria for them is not only the material, but really the package that of people that come along with the material, a star or a director.

And I never had to do that.

I was spoiled, So, things have changed.

Well, you know, that's a great way to end our first segment together, because when we come back, we want to take a trip down memory lane and have you talk about some of the movies that made a huge impact in your life.

Great, great.

Come back to hear more from Gary.

Welcome back.

We want to hear more about these movies.

So our first movie I want to talk about bastard out of Carolina.

Tell her audience about that.

Well, what you're holding up is the, recognition that the movie, which was made for television initially for TNT, is the only film ever to be invited to screen at the Cannes Film Festival.

And, it's a very unique movie.

It won, the Television Critics Award is, Best picture.

And, it came about in a very unique way.

I had just, made what I call a programmer.

I mean, I felt every movie I made had strong human values and had a reason for me to be interested in it, but sometimes some are more, worthy than others.

So, I had called up a few agents and I said, just send me a script that you think is great, whether or not you think it's a high concept, easily, communicated idea for a television movie, which they had to be.

I just I'm looking for something great.

So a script arrived, I read it, and to this day, it's.

It wasn't based out of Carolina, but it was a script by a young man that today, I still feel it's the only script I've ever read that was actually a work of art.

So I called up the agent.

I said, I want to meet this fellow.

So he comes in.

He's a very young guys like 21, 22 years old, very shy, comes and sits at my desk.

I said, would you like a cup of coffee?

I said, sure, my assistant brought him a cup of coffee and he put a dollar on the desk and I said, it's $1.50.

You know, I think I'm making a joke.

It's like.

And then he said, I'm sorry, I don't have it.

And he meant it.

So I said to him, what?

I'll start your career.

I'll Start You is a movie of the week writer.

I will get you approved.

What do you want to write?

Is there a book?

Is there an article?

Is there a original idea?

What do you want to do?

He said, well, a friend of mine wrote a book.

It's going to be published and I'll bring you the manuscript.

It's great.

So he brought me the manuscript of bastard out of Carolina before it was published, and I read the first paragraph in the office and I said, wow.

I said, this is a piece of literature.

And.

Right.

Very.

And I went home that night, I read the entire book and felt like an anvil was hit over my head.

And the next morning I called up the most literate person that I knew who was working as an executive at a network that could buy something, and it was a woman named Joan Borstein.

It's showtime.

And I called her up and I said, Joan, I read this book.

I don't know whether you're going to want to make it or not.

It's very unusual, but you're going to be glad you read it.

It's the best I've read in ten years.

And she did, and she couldn't put it down.

And she said, let me see what I could do.

And she wound up, buying the, you know, developed putting up the money to develop the script.

And I hired this fellow to write his first movie, television.

The book then gets published.

The book becomes a huge bestseller, becomes nominated for the National Book Award, which is the highest literary award in the United States.

And when the book gets published, it becomes so renowned.

This has never happened to me since.

It never happened before.

I was getting calls from actors and actresses who wanted to be in the movie, and then there was new management that showtime and said, we don't want to make this movie.

We're going to do thrillers and we're going to do inexpensive.

Thriller is one after another.

We don't want this movie.

Meanwhile, I then get a call a little later on.

I don't know what to do.

I mean, I'm sitting there with this great script, which I know a network would never make for many different reasons.

And I get a call from the fellow who's running TNT named Alan Saban in who I made movies with at various networks, and he said, Gary, I need an award winning movie.

And I said, Will you?

I have it for you with Jennifer Jason Leigh attached.

But you make Westerns.

What do you you're he's a let me read it.

And he reads it overnight and says, let's do it.

So we wound up making the movie for TNT.

However, when Ted Turner saw the movie because it was about child abuse, he was so upset about one particular scene that we had yet not finalized the editing of.

He said, I don't have anything to do with this movie.

The sound of TNT couldn't air.

The picture is done, and then I get a call from Showtime saying, we want to now take it back.

So they made a deal with Warner Brothers to take the domestic rights to play the movie.

And because the movie was essentially banned in Boston because of his huge publicity about Ted Turner not wanting this on his network, it becomes the highest rated premiere movie on Showtime ever.

And while we were in this limbo, the fellow who ran the Cannes Film Festival through a relationship with Angelica comes to our editing room and looks at the picture.

Before I had music or anything else in it and said, I want this at Cannes.

And then we wound up delivering for Alan Stephenson, who wanted to have an award winning movie.

Unfortunately, he didn't get the credit for it because Showtime aired it, but it won the critics Award for the Best Movie and Mini-Series.

That was such a fascinating story.

I want to go at something else.

I okay, this is equally a fascinating story.

Soul of the game.

Now, this is a movie about the Negro Baseball League, right?

The last viable year in the Negro League.

The last the last year.

So how does this get come across your desk?

Interesting.

Also a call from a network.

Network as well.

Yeah.

Saying we keep getting these books about it, but all they are kind of a historical ranging from 1919 49 because it petered on a little more.

How did we come up with some way of doing the, the, the story?

So I wound up going back and I read 3 or 4 books about it, and said, you know what, let's compress time and do the most important story, which was the last viable year, which was, and then the chemistry and the interactions and the relationships between Josh Gibson, who to this day is still the only baseball player to ever hit a ball out of Yankee Stadium.

Satchel Paige, who was the highest paid baseball player, including all of the people in the white leagues.

And the reason for that was he got a percentage of the gate of every game he pitched, and he pitched every game for three innings.

And Jackie Robinson, who joined Satchel Paige, is Team Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige were on opposite teams, and they had a great personal relationship as well as a great rivalry.

And so, develop that, at HBO, I wrote up a basically a treatment of what the story would be and, sold it to HBO in a letter.

By the way, I never had a meeting on that.

I just sent the letter cold because HBO had just abandoned making the Jackie Robinson story for, I don't know the reasons why.

I think they ran into certain issues.

And I said, I wrote in the letter, I said, this is better, and then laid out what I wanted to do, and I got a call saying, we're in.

This is so interesting.

Okay, before we finish our time together, we have to talk about this one movie.

This is the only movie that you directed, correct?

The biggest thing here is that you had financed because you actually directed this movie, Bonnie and Clyde.

Yes.

I also wrote it.

You wrote it, you wrote and directed and produced that and produced and produced it.

I mean, everyone thinks they know the story.

So how does Gary actually put your take on this story and make it the success that it was?

Well, what happened was I went to jail, as I would often do.

I would go to the library and look in the nonfiction section for interesting material, and there was a book written by Clyde's childhood friend, Ted Hinton, who end up being one of the people who actually assassinated him and Bonnie on that famous day.

And I said, well, nobody really ever knew that.

And then and what's also interesting is that they were only 16 and 18 years old when they met.

And so I felt that there was really a real different take that could be done on their story.

And so it's a story about young love.

And, you know, the truth is, yeah, I think I did I, I did portray what they did because it's undeniable.

In truth, in real life they were probably both sociopaths.

But at that time, to make a movie about portraying a sociopath would be very difficult because it was there.

But for the grace of God go.

I was kind of one of the criteria for making these movies for television.

And so I felt that I could create identification through, Clyde at first being just a bad boy, which is the truth.

And most people don't know this, but, Bonnie was actually married, and she, she married at 16 years old.

And her husband, who was a jerk, walked out on her.

So, it was an a girl who won, by the way, when she was ten years old.

The spelling bee, she was very bright.

And then it was seeing him as somebody who can take her out of this really miserable life during the depression, just for fun.

It starts with a joyride and goes to hell after that.

Last but not least, before we end our time together, the high price of passion.

It defied the normal way a television movie was made.

I invented a format.

The story is about a true story of a professor who's obsessed with a prostitute in Boston.

He was a Tufts professor.

He bankrupts himself, steals money from the university, and to rid himself of the obsession, he ultimately murders this girl.

And so the movie begins where we find out that this girl is missing.

And then the next thing is this long line of cars.

Go to this little suburban house and come in and find in the with the professor.

There it was.

Richard Crenna gave a fantastic performance.

Find all of the belongings of this girl.

And so the format of the movie became his confession begins each act and then flashes us back.

They make a deal.

If you'll tell us where the body is, we won't go for the death penalty.

So each act begins with him telling what happened from his point of view and nobody had ever done that before in terms of a format of a movie.

And also in the movie, I have everyone lying to everyone else.

So he's lying to the girl.

The girl is lying to him.

She's lying to his parents.

He's lying to her parents.

He begins a relationship with them.

And so it's this.

The allure of the movie for me was fascination instead of his being there.

But for the God of grace, of God, I go it was about this is really fascinating.

And, it was the first really television movie ever to really do that.

When I was watching the movie, how I was hooked because I wanted to know where the body was, and then to find out at the end they never found it.

I mean, how hard is it to tell these true life stories, keep the audience interested?

But yet, do you feel something towards the person that you're telling the story about?

I mean, it seems like you're pulled in so many different directions.

You know, each television movie, you know, is different.

The stranger.

I'm back in my bed.

You're wondering what's going to happen with this marriage.

I mean, it's that that simple, burning bed, which I had nothing to do with, about domestic abuse of, Farrah Fawcett Burns, her husband, who was an abuser, you know, is about that relationship.

What ultimately is going to break?

We know what's going to happen as soon as we tune into the movie.

So what?

What is the straw that's going to break her back and make her do that?

So each each movie has different reasons for people to, you know, structured differently from people to watch.

Well.

And you've done that so well with over your 30 movies and I appreciate you taking some time to talk about these movies, but having us revisit the movie of the week of the mini series, that was such an important part of television and its history.

But before I let you go, my final question for you is what's your advice to upcoming producers?

Well, first you got to really it's more difficult now than when I was making all of these movies because the marketplace was very clearly defined, 250 slots they had to film.

You can't put up a sign saying, sorry, we couldn't come up with a movie tonight.

Come back tomorrow.

So my advice if you trying to make a living at it, not necessarily saying, look, I have this one movie that's going to be the esthetic thing that I need, but if you're trying to make a living at it, pick a marketplace and get to know it and get to understand it and have the attitude is there are people filling, fulfilling this marketplace, there's no reason why I shouldn't be one of them.

Two and you will have to reiterate that to yourself every single day, because it's going to be very difficult.

And that would be my advice.

Be committed and work hard, find great material, define your marketplace.

If it's sitcoms, fine.

If it's at one hour dramatic shows, fine.

Focus, focus.

That's a great way to end our conversation.

And thank you so much for spending some time with us and going down this memory lane with us.

But most important, Gary, thank you so much for creating television that focused on social issues so that we could think and be educated too.

Well, thank you for having me.

I really enjoyed this.

Thank you.

And thank you for joining us on everybody with Angela Williamson.

Viewers like you make this show possible.

Join us on social media to continue this conversation.

Good night and stay well.

Everybody with Angela Williamson is made possible by Fire Heart Entertainment and viewers like you.

Thank you.

To.

For decades, the television movie has brought powerful stories into our living rooms.

From intimate dramas to sweeping epics, these films have entertained, educated and challenged us.

Tonight, we delve into the art of televised storytelling with a master of the craft, an executive produce whose work spans over 30 films.

I'm so happy you're joining us.

From Los Angeles, this is clicks, PBS, Welcome to Everybody with Angela Williamson and innovation, Arts, education and public affairs program.

Everybody with Angela Williamson is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

And now your host, doctor Angela Williamson.

Gary Hoffman is our guest.

Gary, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for asking me to be here.

We have spent so much of her life watching movies that you have made mini series and I thought it was important that our viewers actually meet the man behind 30 plus films.

But you weren't always a producer, correct.

So you get into this industry?

No, I was the furthest from the furthest from a producer and land.

And you can imagine I was a merchant seaman for many years after college.

I had planned o being a sea captain, actually, and then, one day in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on this 400ft or carrier, I said, you know what?

You know, there's no girls out here, not at sea, you know?

And so, I went to, playwriting teacher of mine at City College in New York, which was a spectacular free college.

There's a $17 a semester.

And I said, I'd like to do something other than float around on a boat.

Do you have any suggestions?

And he said, television.

And I was just very, very lucky that he said those words.

And he set me u with an interview with a woman who was the secretary at channel five in New York.

She was a secretar to the man who ran the station, and we hit it off.

And she then called the producer of the local talk show, which was 90 minutes live each day and said, we have a young man here that we really think you should meet.

The producer interpreted that as her and her boss, when she was really thinking it was me and her.

So she was the one.

I went downstairs I met him and I got hired as a cue card printer.

Now tell us.

Cue card printer.

What?

What do you do?

You take a big piece of oak tag and you write down the introduction, which I did not write, by the way, for the various guests, I would just print them as well as run and get coffee for people.

And I still remember I was making $125 a week.

That was 1973, $96 a week after taxes.

My rent was 92, and if I walked to work one day a week I could actually make it work.

And you decided to stick it out?

I stuck it out.

Eventually I became the producer of that show, which was 90 minutes live every day in this in the 70s.

I know it's different now, but still, how you move up i this industry is all the same.

You start what we call as a bottom and you really have to have some humility.

You have to have talent and work your way to that point, to where now you become the producer.

I mean, what did you learn of what you had to do to get to that level, to get to the office before anybody else and leave later than anybody else?

Be present, like what you're doing and work hard.

What I like that I'm hearing here is, is how you actually didn't start in this industry.

No, but you must have made a really good impression on your professor.

If you could call him and ask him for a reference.

Yeah.

He was a playwriting teacher, and I'd written a play that he liked using those connections.

Really important.

But then, I mean, you're telling m you're in a genre that's talk, but we all know you for the movies that you've brought into our living rooms, how does Gary get from talk television to what we're seeing on our our small screens at home?

You know, it was a very, unpredictable journey, from producing that talk show.

I then went on to, that was a channel five in New York.

I then moved to CBS in New York and did a talk show for them which was extremely successful.

From there, they asked me to, be in charge of programing for the CBS owned and operated stations, of which there were five at the time.

From that, I met somebody who was i the movie of the week business.

We became friendly, from that job at CBS.

I then wound up running a young as a young man, running the the cable division for CBS, which I did not particularly enjoy, and left and moved back to Los Angeles and became a partner with the fellow who is in the movies the television movie business.

And then, he had a wa of working that was interesting.

He he was he would approach the stars who had movie of the week commitments from the various network.

So, in other words, the the three women of Charlie's Angels, which was a big hit in the 70s.

All the networks wanted to make TV movies with them.

So he would approach them and say, look, I'll work with you on your, movie and I'll finance them with you, and I'll protect you financially and therefore we'll be partners.

And I felt tha I didn't want to work that way.

I wanted to be the creative element.

I wanted the networks to say, well, I don't know whether we shoul buy this movie from Gary or not, but since it's him let's have it fall on his side.

So that was my goal.

And, I then, approached a man named Ed Gottschalk, who was, a prolific movie of the week producer as well as a feature film producer.

And I approached him.

I called him up out of the blue.

I called him up out of the blue, because there was an article about a soap opera that was being produced by another producer who was not financed by the same people that were financing him.

So I called him up and I said, this guy's got this show.

How come it's not you?

And he said, get in here.

And then we met, we liked each other.

And then, we made an arrangement which the day before I was supposed to start, he invited me over to his house by saying, calling me at 7:00 in the morning on Sunday and said, get over here.

And then he totally changed.

He said I don't want to be your partner.

Come and work for me.

I had certain shows in development.

He said, you keep them because I was going to donate them in terms of our partnership and, because of him, I was able to get introductions to all of the people that were running movies of the week from the various networks because of his reputation.

I could call up and say, I' Gary Hoffman, I work with Edgar and get meetings with everybody.

So that's what allowed me to really start to have currency in the movie of the week business, which was something I wanted to do because they were doing social issues at the time, and not a lot of people were.

I mean, the regular TV shows weren't really focusing on social issues, very few, but they really couldn't do that the way that a movie of the week could.

Right?

Correct.

Yeah.

And s how do you pitch to a network?

Because it's all about the money and sometimes social issues.

There's controversy there.

So how do you pitch that to a network to get that greenligh so that you can do that movie?

Well firs the networks wanted to do them.

So there was a you weren't, you know, shoveling against the tide.

You were really within the tide.

And they were making at that time, one year, over 250 movies of the week between ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, Showtime and HBO.

Those were the buyers.

I do remember the first pitch I ever made for a television.

I never want to hear that.

I read a book called Stranger in My Bed, which was the true story of a woman gets hit by a car, has amnesia, goes back to live with her family, her son think she's faking, the daughter loves the new personality, and the husband doesn't know what to do with this.

Now stranger in his bed and she doesn't know what to do with this guy who's a stranger in her bed.

However, the book, about 95% of it, was really about her rehabilitation.

And what I just told you about the family relationships was reall about three pages in the book.

And so I called up NBC and I said, I just read a very strange book, True Story.

And I told him wha the family relationships were.

He said, let me read the book.

I said, you don't have to.

There's only three pages.

You have to read.

And, they bought it.

We developed the script and we made the movie.

So what you're telling me is that at this poin in your career, you have built such a strong relationship that you could pitch a movie of the week based on just three pages of an entire novel?

Yeah.

Now it would be different.

But then the answer is yes.

At that time, it was a producer's medium meaning it was a content medium.

In other words, it was about what you were bringing them.

And you know what?

Many of the pieces of materia that I brought were not accepted them make.

No, you know, you make that phone call, you sometimes do very elaborate research and it's a no.

But the yeses came from basically a decision about material.

Now, those networks that made those movies of the week are no longer making them.

So the only place to really mak a new movie other than for the theatrical theaters is the streaming services.

For the most part.

And they're now the criteria fo them is not only the material, but really the package that of people that come along with the material is star or a director.

And I never had to do that.

I was spoiled, So, things have changed.

Well, you know, that's a great way to end our first segment together, because when we come back, we want to take a trip down memory lane and have you talk about some of the movies that made a huge impact in your life.

Great, great.

Come back to hear more from Gary.

Welcome back.

We want to hear more about these movies.

So our first movie I want to talk about bastard out of Carolina.

Tell her audience about that.

Well, what you're holding up is the, recognition that the movie, which was made for television initially for TNT, is the only film ever to be invited to screen at the Cannes Film Festival.

And, it's a very unique movie.

It won, the Television Critics Award is, Best picture.

And, it came about in a very unique way.

I had just made what I call a programmer.

I mean, I, I felt every movie I made had strong human values and had a reaso for me to be interested in it, but sometimes some are more, worthy than others.

So, I had called up a few agents, and I said, just send me a script that you think is great, whether or not you think it's a high concept, easily, communicated idea for a television movie, which they had to be.

I just I'm looking for something great.

So a script arrived, I read it, and to this day, it's.

It wasn't based out of Carolina, but it was a script by a young man that today, I still feel it's the only script I've ever rea that was actually a work of art.

So I called up the agent.

I said, I want to meet this fellow.

So he comes in.

He's a very young guys like 21, 22 years old, very shy, comes and sits at my desk.

I said would you like a cup of coffee?

I said, sure, my assistant brought him a cup of coffee and he put a dollar on the desk and I said, it's $1.50.

You know, I think I'm making a joke.

It's like.

And then he said, I'm sorry, I don't have it.

And he meant it.

So I said to him, what?

I'll start your career.

I'll Start Yo is a movie of the week writer.

I will get you approved.

What do you want to write?

Is there a book?

Is there an article?

Is there a original idea?

What do you want to do?

He said, well a friend of mine wrote a book.

It's going to be published an I'll bring you the manuscript.

It's great.

So he brought me the manuscript of bastard out of Carolina before it was published, and I read the first paragrap in the office and I said, wow.

I said, this is a piece of literature.

And.

Right.

Very.

And I went home that night, I read the entire book and felt like an anvil was hit over my head.

And the next morning I called up the most literate person that I knew who was working as an executive at a network that could buy something.

And it was a woma named Joan Borstein at Showtime.

Okay.

And I called her up and I said, Joan, I read this book.

I don't know whether you'r going to want to make it or not.

It's very unusual, but you're going to be glad you read it.

It's the best I've read in ten years.

And she did, and she couldn't put it down.

And she said, let me see what I could do.

And she wound up, buying the, you know, developed putting up the money to develop the script.

And I hired this fellow to write his first movie, television.

The book then gets published.

The book becomes a huge bestseller, becomes nominated for the National Book Award, which is the highest literary award in the United States.

And when the book gets published, it becomes so renowned.

This has never happened to me since.

It never happened before.

I was getting calls from actor and actresses who wanted to be in the movie.

And then there was new management that Showtime had said, w don't want to make this movie.

We're going to do thrillers and we're going to do inexpensive thrillers one after another.

We don't want this movie.

Meanwhile, I then get, a call a little later on.

I don't know what to do.

I mean, I'm sitting there with this great script, which I know a network would never make for many different reasons.

And I get a call from the fellow who's running TNT fellow named Alan Saban in who I made movies with at various networks, and he said, Gary I need an award winning movie.

And I said, Will you?

I have it for you with Jennifer Jason Lee attached.

But you make Westerns.

What do you you're he's a let me read it.

He reads it overnight and says, let's do it.

So we wound up making the movie for TNT.

However, when Ted Turner saw the movie because it was about chil abuse, he was so upset about one particular scene that we had yet not finalized the editing of.

He said, I don't have anything to do with this movie, and sound of TNT couldn't air at the picture is done.

And then I get a call from Showtime saying, we want to now take it back.

So they made a deal with Warner Brothers to take the domestic rights to the movie.

And because the movi was essentially banned in Boston because of his huge publicity about Ted Turne not wanting this on his network, it becomes the highest rate premiere movie on Showtime ever.

And while we were in this limbo, the fellow who ran the Cannes Film Festival through a relationship with Angelika comes to our editing room and looks at the picture.

Before I had music or anything else in it and said, I want this at Cannes.

And then we wound up delivering for Alan Sabaton, who wanted to have a World Award winning movie.

Unfortunately he didn't get the credit for it because Showtime aired it, but it won the Critics Award for the Best Movie and Mini-Series.

That was such a fascinating story.

I want to go with something else, and I know this is equally a fascinating story.

Soul of the game.

Now, this is a movie about the Negro Baseball League, right?

The last viable year in the Negro League.

The last the last year.

So how does this get come across your desk?

Interesting.

Also a call from a network.

Network as well.

Yeah.

Saying we keep getting these books about it, but all they are kind of a historical ranging from 1919 49.

Because I put it on a little more.

How do we come up with some way of doing the the, the story?

So I wound up going bac and I read 3 or 4 books about it and said, you know what let's compress time and do the most important story which was the last viable year, which was and then the chemistry and the interactions and the relationships between Josh Gibson, who to this day is still the only baseball player to have a hit a ball out of Yankee Stadium.

Satchel Paige, who is the highest paid baseball player, including all of the people in the white leagues.

And the reason for that wa he got a percentage of the gate of every game he pitched, and he pitched every game for three innings.

And Jackie Robinson, who joins Satchel Paige, is team.

Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige were on opposite teams, and they had a great personal relationship as well as a great rivalry.

And so, develop that, at HBO, I wrote up a basically a treatment of what the story would b and, sold it to HBO in a letter.

By the way I never had a meeting on that.

I just sent the letter col because HBO had just abandoned making the Jackie Robinson story for, I don't know, the reasons why.

I think they ran into certain issues.

And I said I wrote in the letter, I said, this is better, and then laid out what I wanted to do.

And I got a call saying, we're in.

You had to tell this story.

I mean, this was a young Jackie Robinson, so it still needs to make a little bit of an impression because people, most Main Street people remember that name.

So how do you write this script to actually feature the other baseball players as well?

Satchel Paige and, well, what was happening was the reason it was the last viable year is that Branch Rickey, who ran the Dodgers in Brooklyn at the time, wanted to integrate baseball and was planning actually on cornering around 8 or 10 black baseball players.

That was his plan.

But what happene is that the Fiorello LaGuardia, who was the mayor of New York, called in the owners of the Dodgers, the Giants and the Yankees and said, I want you to integrate.

And so Branch Rickey wanted to go down in history as the guy who did it.

So what he did was he force he he went after Jackie Robinson rather than Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige.

And the reasons for that were interesting.

Josh Gibson would often, as they travel from city to city, wind up being in jail because he would wind up wandering the street naked or doing strange things.

So Branch Rickey thought that he was an alcoholic.

In actuality, when he died, they found out he died from a brain tumor.

Satchel Paige was older.

And, he didn't feel that.

And the image of satchel Paige was kind of burlesque.

He would drive on to the fields with his huge cream colored, convertible along with his girlfriend, and he would always arrive purposely late because he knew the fans would go wild when they finally saw him.

So Jackie Robinson became the person to go after so interesting.

Okay, before we finish our time together, we have to talk about this one movie.

This is the only movie that you directed, correct?

And it says here you direct it with finesse and suggest a sweetness in the slaughtering, of the slaughtering couple who held up basics and killed innocent people in the early 30s.

And that's what it's sort of reading because I don't have my glasses.

But the biggest thing here is that you had finesse because you actually directed this movie.

Bonnie and Clyde.

Yes.

I also wrote it.

You wrote it.

You wrote and directed and produced to do that and produced and produced it.

I mean, everyone thinks they know the story.

So how does Gary actually put your take on this story and make it the success that it was?

Well, what happened wa I went to jail, as I often do, I would go to the library and look in the nonfiction section for interesting material, and there was a book written by Clyde's childhood friend, Ted Hinton, who ended up being one of the people who actually assassinated hi and Bonnie on that famous day.

And I said, well, nobody really ever knew that.

And then and what's also interesting is that they were only 1 and 18 years old when they met.

And so I felt that there was really a real different take that could be done on their story.

And so it's a story about young love.

And, you know, the truth is, yeah, I think I did I, I did portray what they did because it's undeniable and truth in real life, they were probably both sociopaths.

But at that time, to make a movie about portraying a sociopath would be very difficult because it was there.

But for the grace of God go.

I was kind of one of the criteria for making these movies for television.

And so I felt that I coul create identification through, Clyde at first being jus the bad boy, which is the truth.

And most people don't kno this, but, Bonnie was actually married, and she, she married at 16 years old.

And her husband, who was a jerk, walked out on her.

So, it was an a girl who won by the way, when she was ten years old.

The spelling bee.

She was very bright.

And then it was seeing him as somebody who can take her out of this really miserable life during the depression, just for fun.

It starts with a joyride and goes to hell after that.

Last but not least before we end our time together, the high price of passion.

It defied the normal way a television movie was made.

I invented a format.

The story is about a true story of a professor who's obsessed with a prostitute in Boston.

He was a Tufts professor.

He bankrupts himself, steals money from the university, and to rid himself of the obsession he ultimately murders this girl.

And so the movie begins where we find out that this girl is missing.

And then the next thing is this long line of cars.

Go to this little suburban house and come in and find in the with the professor.

There it was.

Richard Crenna gave a fantastic performance.

Find all of the belongings of this girl.

And so the format of the movie became his confession begins each act and then flashes us back.

They make a deal.

If you'll tell us where the body is, we won't go for the death penalty.

So each act begins with him telling what happened from his point of view.

And nobody had ever done that before in terms of a format of a movie.

And also in the movie, I hav everyone lying to everyone else.

So he's lying to the girl.

The girl is lying to him.

She's lying to his parents.

He's lying to her parents.

He begins a relationship with them.

And so it's this.

The allure of the movie for me was fascination instead of his being there.

But for the God of grace, of God, I go.

It was about this is really fascinating.

And it was the first really television movie ever to really do that.

When I was watching the movie, how I was hooked because I wanted to know where the body wa and then to find out at the end they never found it.

I mean, how hard is it to tell these true life stories, keep the audience interested?

But yet do you feel something towards the person that you're telling the story about?

I mean, it seems like you're pulle in so many different directions.

You know, each television movie, you know, is different.

The stranger on my bed, you're wondering what's going to happen with this marriage.

I mean, it's that that simple burning be which I had nothing to do with, about domestic abuse of, Farrah Fawcett Burns, her husband, who is an abuser, you know, is about that relationship.

What ultimately is going to break.

We know what's going to happen as soon as we tune into the movie.

So what?

What is the straw that's going to break her back and make her do that?

So each each movie has different reasons for people to you know, structured differently from people to watch.

Well.

And you've done that so well with over your 30 movies.

And I appreciate you taking some time to talk about these movies, but having us revisit the movi of the week of the mini series, I was just such an important part of television and its history.

But before I let you go, my final question for you is what's your advice to upcoming producers?

Well, first you got t really it's more difficult now than when I was making all of these movies because the marketplace was very clearly defined, 250 slots they had to film.

You can't put up a sign saying, sorry, we couldn't come up with a movie tonight.

Come back tomorrow.

So my advice if you're trying to make a living at it, not necessarily saying, look, I have this one movie that's going to be the esthetic thing that I need, but if you'r trying to make a living at it, pick a marketplace and get to know it and get to understand it and have the attitude is there are people filling, fulfilling this marketplace, there's no reason why I shouldn't be one of them.

Two and you will have to reiterate that to yourself every single day, because it's going to be very difficult.

And that would be my advice.

Be committed and work hard, find great material, define your marketplace.

If it's sitcoms, fine.

If it's one hour dramatic shows, fine.

Focus, focus.

That's a great way to end our conversation.

And thank you so much for spending some time with us and going down this memory lane with us.

But most importantly, Gary thank you so much for creating television that focused on social issues so that we could think and be educated to, well, thank you for having me.

I really enjoyed this.

Thank you.

And thank you for joining us on everybody with Angela Williamson.

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