Bill Moyers on Three Decades Documenting ‘Two American Families’ With Tom Casciato and Kathleen Hughes

BILL MOYERS [from interview]: That’s the highest compliment that I think we can expect as journalists, when they feel that we’ve shown them the world that they experience.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Bill Moyers is one of the most celebrated journalists in American media. And for more than 30 years, he and his team have come back to one project again and again, the story of Two American Families.  That's the title of our latest film with him. It covers the Stanleys and the Neumanns, two families from Milwaukee, one white, one black, struggling to stay afloat in a changing economy.

BILL MOYERS [from interview]: There are all these people out there who work hard, continue to work hard, continue to do the right thing, and they never get a break.

 TERRY NEUMANN: That’s supposed to be the American dream. Well where is it?

children to see me that way, down or depressed.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Moyers and his producing partners Kathleen Hughes and Tom Casciato all joined me today to talk about this very special, decade spanning project.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: I'm Raney Aronson-Rath, Editor in Chief and Executive Producer of Frontline, and this is the Frontline Dispatch.

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RANEY ARONSON-RATH: So welcome to The Dispatch. Bill Moyers, it's wonderful to see you and hear you today. Kathy Hughes and Tom Casciato, thank you all for being with me on The Dispatch.

KATHLEEN HUGHES: My pleasure.

TOM CASCIATO: Thank you, Raney.

BILL MOYERS: Glad to be here. Yes, thank you.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Bill, I, I have to take the, the moment to, to welcome you to the conversation. You've been part of this film for 34 years. It's amazing to think of the scope. When you see Two American Families, what does it tell you about America?

BILL MOYERS: Well, it tells me that America is an unfinished promise because for all of us who are doing well or pretty good, there are all these people out there who work hard, continue to work hard, continue to do the right thing, and they never get a break and break out of the grip that they're in of low wages, infrequent employment, uh, difficulties with taxes and all of that. And for all of the commentary by politicians in this election about what a great nation we are, the most powerful in the world, everyone is saying, the richest in the world, right next door or right in the house with you are people who keep getting jobs like Tony Neumann and making too little, moves on to another job. By the time he's 20 years old, he's held 10 different jobs. And so we're an unfinished society. Uh, rich, yes. Educated, mostly. But we haven't achieved the security that should come from your labor. The laborer is worthy of his hire, or they, and, and that's the, that's what I take away from 33 years of following the same people in the same neighborhood.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Kathy and Tom, I know you all have been involved since the start. Kathy, can you tell me about why these two families in particular? What was so special about them that got you interested and curious enough about them to make a film?

KATHLEEN HUGHES: Well, you know, Tom and I were working with Bill and we had an assignment to start looking at what was going to happen to all of these thousands and thousands of people who were losing their manufacturing jobs in the late eighties and early nineties, the, you know, companies really starting in the seventies had started shipping jobs, uh, out of what we're now calling the rust belt down to southern non union states and then off to Mexico and eventually over um, overseas to China and other places, but, but back then there was all this discussion of like, what's going to happen to these people? Is technology going to make their lives more interesting? Are they going to get involved civically? Stuff like that. And we, we were looking around and what, I mean, there was a lot of research that we did and I wound up on the phone with this guy called Robert Reich, who ultimately became Bill Clinton's labor secretary. But back then Robert Reich was Harvard professor who was looking at what was happening to American workers. And he said, you know, here's what I see happening. We look closely, you see that we're growing a two tier economy. We have people doing very well at the top and more and more people are finding themselves with lower incomes and we're just kind of losing our middle. And he said, you know, I, he actually suggested we go to some cities like Cleveland or Milwaukee or whatever. And we started calling around you know, Milwaukee is thought of as such a working place. It still is really. Um, and I got a hold of some really interesting union people who invited us out and actually Tom went out and, uh, started meeting people, right?

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: So, Tom, pick it up. What, how does that, how does that happen?

TOM CASCIATO: I went to the Union Hall, And I met with about 80 laid off workers from Briggs and Stratton, the engine company. Anybody who's ever mowed a lawn in America and looked down at what they're mowing their lawn with has probably seen the name Briggs and Stratton. And, uh, I was set up with these meetings, about 80 people, about 20 at a time. And I just sat in front of the room of 20 people. And I said what I always say at the beginning of a project. If you were going to turn on the TV tonight and you knew your life was going to be represented and what was going on in your life was going to be the subject. What is the story you would want told? This is a way to get a conversation going and to make sure that I and, and Bill and Kathy, that we are not imposing our ideas on these people. We're listening to them, listening to America in Bill's words. It's something we learned from him. And I heard all these different stories. And a couple of the laid off Briggs workers, Jackie Stanley and Tony Neumann, I just found particularly compelling. What is it? You know, I don't think any documentary filmmaker can really say what is that intangible thing that makes you say, this person would be great in a film. It's not always the best looking person. It's not always the, the most traditionally articulate person. It's someone who just puts it across honestly, is willing to have a conversation with you rather than try to talk in Sound bites because you're from TV and they think that's what you want. And they invited me over to that. They invited me over to their homes. I met their spouses. I met their kids Jackie Stanley lined up her five kids In a row and she said this is Nicole and this is Omega and this is Keith And then she and then and then she said i'll never forget And these are the twins, Claude and Claudale. And I just loved the idea of twins called Claude and Claudale. And, uh, I, you know, my memory is right about that point. I said, do you want to be in a movie?

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: And Bill, do you remember hearing about these families from Tom and Kathy, and what was your first thought?

BILL MOYERS: My first response was hooray, because I thought these were real people. That is, they were people not trying to fool Tom and Kathy. They were people who were willing to trust them. And that's what I found missing in American life at that time, as I still do. You know, I was angry at the politicians. I’d done a, an hour interview with Bill Clinton in Little Rock while he was running for the nomination. And I was convinced listening to him sitting out on the lawn of that, uh, state, uh, mansion where he and, and, and, and his wife lived. It, it was, it was eerie that he was talking so enthusiastic about the American people and who was going to benefit from what they were doing that I couldn't, I thought he must have forgotten what was happening right there in his hometown, which is not far from my hometown. I grew up in East Texas, he grew up in Southwestern Arkansas. And he had been campaigning as a populist. Honestly, he was talking about the things that everyday people need. And, uh, I was really impressed with him and what he said. When he governed, he didn't remember that. And he, one of the first things he did was to sign on to, uh, to, uh, Ronald Reagan's idea of sending a lot of jobs to, uh, Mexico because it would help people here to earn more money. It didn't make sense to me. So as the, as, as the administration unfolded and as the Republicans responded, I, I kept thinking, what happened to those people Bill Clinton talked about with me? Uh, where were they? What were they doing? Yeah. And so when I heard about Tom and Kathy, who they had seen, I realized these were the people that Clinton was talking about. They just lost 18 an hour, uh, pay and they were now making 6, 7, 8 an hour. And, uh, so I knew we had found people I thought our audience would trust and, um, and they did.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: So Bill, when you were talking to them, I mean, a lot of the earlier scenes are so poignant. You're just sitting with them, you're talking to them. Could, can you remember what surprised you the most in those conversations? You know, you talk to so many people, you've listened to so many people, but about those two families, what, what was the most surprising?

BILL MOYERS: Well I could see that Terry and Tony Neumann the, young white couple were in trouble. I, I, I will never forget the scene where they are talking on the phone with the bank, trying to get some consideration for their high mortgage, uh, and, and the possible loss of their, uh, uh, house.

[from film] TERRY NEUMANN: I did send a thousand dollar check in probably a few weeks back. I did send a $1,000 check in probably a few weeks back, but the check was sent back to me with a letter stating, "We will not accept a partial payment." I don't really think of that as a partial payment. I think of that as a basic payment and a good gesture on trying to get caught up.

Right now, we're going through a hard time. My husband's out of work. He went to school…

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And I debated as I, I almost considered ending that scene because I didn't want to make him look like victims. But then I realized they are victims of forces they can't control. They were being talked out of their house. And I think that's what was written all over, uh, Terry's confusion and, and her husband's concern that he wasn't getting it in writing. He knew he, he was a real guy. He knew he needed a signature and the bank wasn't willing to give it to him. And he was, you know, he was given the runaround.

TONY NEUMANN: I wanna know, is he putting this on paper?

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Tom and Kathy, can you tell me more about this family and who they are, and that's an incredible moment.

KATHLEEN HUGHES: When we first met the Neumanns, Tony had lost his good paying factory job at Briggs and Stratton, the lawnmower company. And he also, he didn't just lose a decent wage. He lost benefits as well. They had family health insurance. There was a pension. So it was a big loss and they, they bought their house thinking that Tony had a secure job there, and once he lost that job, he did try to find other work, and he, he was looking desperately and and for work. And what was so interesting was that there were a lot of jobs out there that. We, you can hear the politicians talking about the, job growth, how many jobs are being created. But what none of them ever really talked about back then was how much those jobs paid, how many hours those jobs, were they part time or, you know, full time, and were there any benefits attached? So, so it was a tough time for them, and Tony worked as hard as he could, um, but they couldn't make up for that other job. And there had been a, what I think of almost as an old fashioned plan, that Terry was going to stay home and raise their three little children. And Tony really wanted her to be able to do that. Um, and she wanted to do that, but at some point she starts to understand that she has to get out there and bring some money into the home. So there's, there's tension all around when we first arrived, because as Bill was just saying, one of the first things we filmed was them begging the, the mortgage company not to take their house.

TOM CASCIATO: And I think they were blindsided. They bought that house with an expectation that in America you would be able to have a decent paying job and you would be able to see after your kids. And, uh, I think like a lot of people, they just didn't expect to happen what, what happened to them. It's not like the world owes you a living, but there was an entire generation. You know, one of the things I think about the Neumanns and the Stanleys is, On the one hand, they are individuals leading individual lives and having their own experience, which they are the best authorities on. But on the other hand, they also represent something. And they represent a group of people who were born at a certain time with a certain American expectation, who, whose expectations were never met. Now the Stanleys are in their 70s, the Neumanns are in their 60s. Stanley's retired. The Neumann's are almost retired. The game is pretty much up. It wasn't just that they lost their job in the 1980s. It's that nothing happened in the subsequent decades that would ever allow folks like them to take part in the American dream.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Bill observing that, what Tom just said, that's so powerful to hear what's going through your mind as Tom is just saying that you know, observing these two families and what they stand in for?

BILL MOYERS: Well, if you are an accountable journalist, you suddenly find yourself in the story. I wasn't sitting there, an outsider, uh, listening to them and taking notes, because I knew we were filming it. But what I did feel is, gee, I know these people. I grew up with these people in Marshall, Texas. Terry sounds like my, uh, sister in law. And I didn't know we were doing a film anymore. I was just listening to them and saying, how do we get this down? How do we get it all? And I thought, well, this is going to take 33 years. Uh, and, and I hung around because I knew I was right. Uh, I wanted to make sure we were right. Uh, no, it's amazing how you get to feel for these people. When you know, they're not thinking about making a movie either, or even being in a television documentary. This white guy has walked into their house, cameras behind him, and he sits down and now, tell me your drama. And, and, and, and, and, and they do. They do because it's not a drama to them, it is life.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: It’s their life.

BILL MOYERS: It is staying up at night. Wondering if they're going to get that check from the bank. Wondering if they're going to keep their car. Wondering if there's a job out there that will pay something over 6 or 7 dollars. Uh, uh, and you, when you leave and go home, it takes you a while to take off what had come to be, to be your role. Which was not a role, it was just to be there and listen.

KATHLEEN HUGHES: Right.

BILL MOYERS: And, and, and, and it just kept going. They, they never hesitated again, did they Tom or Kathy. They never said don't come back. Right?

TOM CASCIATO: And we never, and we never would have come back were it not for your predecessor at Frontline, Raney, David Fanning. Kathy and I, after this film aired in January of 1992, we worked with Bill and Judith Moyers for the rest of the year on different projects. And then in 1993, we went off and formed our own company. I knew David a bit, we knew each other because I had worked on some frontline shows in the 80s when I was first getting started. Kathy and I came up to WGBH in Boston to talk about projects we might do. And David said, What's happening with those families in Milwaukee? Why don't you just go back there?And he gave us a little bit of money and said, why don't you just go back there and do some filming? So this was right when Clinton was elected. And Kathy and I went back and we filmed the scene that you will see if you watch the film of the two families each watching Bill Clinton's inauguration.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: I, William Jefferson Clinton, do solemnly swear and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States…[fade under]

CHIEF JUSTICE WILLIAM REHNQUIST: Congratulations.

KLAUDALE STANLEY:From the way he ran his campaign, it was more like he wasn't going to send more jobs or factories out of the country and bring more in. And I guess that in the next four years, maybe we might have openings and maybe you might not have to film as many people, and you're—more people have jobs and things probably work out.

TOM CASCIATO: And the optimism they felt, because there was a new administration, a new day, a younger person in the White House. And,

KATHLEEN HUGHES: Promise of new jobs.

TOM CASCIATO:  Promise of new jobs. uh, we sat, we, we did a lot of filming with them over a, I don't know, a week or two, Kath, I can't remember how long, and then we sat on that for probably two years, and then David and we and Bill all got together in 1995 and said, let's go back again, and we'll do this five year look at their lives. At that time, we thought, five year look at their lives, that's incredible, never imagining doing you know, this was 1995. Never imagining we'd be having this conversation in 2024. And that led, that was the first collaboration with, uh, Kathy and Bill and I with Frontline .

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Well, very, very early in my tenure as a senior producer, we worked on the last film for Frontline with you all. And I had the privilege of sitting in the room watching Bill and David and you all as you're writing the script and things are coming together. And I have to say, you know, it's captured every single one of us at Frontline. And Bill, as we were just talking about, it's also captured people today after this aired 2024, the film airs. You said you were reading the comments on YouTube. How did you feel reading the response to the contemporary film that just was updated yet again?

BILL MOYERS: It was astonishing. I, I, I, recovering from an illness, and I sat here with my overnight nurse, and, uh, I asked him to watch it. The, the film didn't end here on, until midnight. But I was sitting here with my friend, my, my helper, and I suddenly noticed that he had been dozing when we sat down a little bit. And I looked over and I said, pow, to him. I didn't say a word to him, but I just banged the, banged the side of my chair and he came to oh, oh it started. After that, he never closed his eyes

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Oh, that's wonderful, that’s wonderful.

BILL MOYERS: never closed his eyes. And then his views became a kind of chorus when I read the the commentaries on your YouTube version of the show. I have never, I've watched a thousand films in my life. Uh, and, and I've never seen an audience, felt an audience, that wrote the way they did. Real people dealing with real issues. Practical issues in their life, and they were getting it from a television show. That's the highest compliment that I think, uh, we can expect as journalists, when they feel that we've shown them the world that they experience.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: I think when I looked at the comments, I'm so glad you mentioned them because the community was so engaged and I noticed that, you know, it was people in their 70s about to retire. It was also people in their 50s. It is so rare to have people talk about their finances that open, that openly, right. And I think when a lot of people talk to me about the power of this film in particular, all of these years is that they were so honest about their financial situation. Um, Bill, I, I was curious as you look now, you look at the, the decades of your work, um, where does this work sit inside your larger body of work?

BILL MOYERS: You know, I said at the beginning, uh, that I thought these people were looking at the reality and living the reality, experiencing of, of, of what they were talking about in the story. And I realized, I didn't say it then, but I realized this is the story of America, I said it was the story of America, the story of America since the very beginning, I mean, in 1860, 1880… 1786 to 1787, there was an uprising, as I'm sure the three of you know, in Massachusetts, against high taxes, and an uprising against very stringent economic conditions for them. There were armed bands in western Massachusetts that actually forced the closing of several courtrooms to prevent foreclosures, to prevent debt processes. They were angry because we were writing a constitution at that time and they weren't going to share in it. And, and, and that's where the earliest visions in America occurred. When the elites, with good intentions, were writing highfalutin documents about how the world was going to work and America was going to grow. And yet, there were people out there, everyday people, like my father, who lost his farm — he was a tenant farmer in the depression —the year I was born. And, and he, he would have been in Shays Rebellion, I think, if he had lived back then. Uh, and, and, so when I read these comments. I'm hearing the same thing that I would have heard if I'd been working for the Boston Herald or whatever it was in, in, in, in 1786. If I'd have gone and talked to those farmers, they would have told me in their clipped British accent what was happening to them. And, um, you just can't get over that. And I'm so glad to see my intuitive feelings confirmed by the people who wrote Frontline. And by the way, Raney, if you read them all, you know that about every tenth one was, An astonishing revelation that person had sent the scene the first episode and he'd seen the whole series .

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: It's so true. You know, we made a decision early to make sure that all of those films were available for everyone. And those films, those earlier films. Millions of people have viewed them and commented on them, and so there was a hunger. We could see it, Bill. We could see it in the comments from the older films that there was a hunger to know more what had happened to the Neumann's and Stanley's today. Um, Kathy and Tom, when you set out to go and tell this more recent chapter, um, we talked a lot about it before you went, but what, what was surprising to both of you?

TOM CASCIATO: Well, I have to start with what was unsurprising, which is that the Newmans and the Stanleys just kept working. If anybody ever asked me, what's this film about, or what's this series of films about, you could say that in one sentence. They just kept working. They never felt sorry for themselves. They never stopped trying. They never stopped playing by the rules. And that's what was unsurprising. What was surprising was I got there, uh, to, uh, Jackie Stanley's house, and I looked in the mirror and I thought, gee, I look a lot older than when we started this. I, Kathy looks about the same,

KATHLEEN HUGHES: Oh. Not true.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Well, we, we all get older, right? I mean, I think that's one truth.

TOM CASCIATO: What surprised you, Kath?

KATHLEEN HUGHES: That I also got older. That's not, that is a huge surprise, but no, I do think, um, the, the fact, even though it's the kind of thing where maybe even with your own family, you know it, but you don't know it. So you go into the Stanley household and you see. you know, medicine lined up for Jackie and she's not feeling well. And they're 70 years old and, are supposed to be retiring, they really can't relax, you know.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: I think that was part of the, the hardest thing for me to see was the pain of having them sort of grapple with that. So, uh, could you talk about that a little more? I mean, even seeing Jackie's face and understanding her health issues.

TOM CASCIATO: Well, you know, I would say, and I think I speak for Kathy here, too. We feel very privileged to be allowed to be there for those moments and allowed to be filming those moments. That really means a lot to us. When people are willing to show that kind of vulnerability, and in Jackie's case, she'd been on TV a few times before, so it wasn't like she didn't know that the country was going to see this. Um, it was really moving for us in the moment. And really, you know, you ask about surprises, and really surprising. We were not expecting it at all. They got to her accountant's office in a very jolly mood, and there are actually a few laughs in that scene. Um, but when they really get down to the nitty gritty, the fact that Jackie allowed herself to be so vulnerable in front of us, in front of our camera crew, in front of America, was, uh, I would say surprising and terribly impressive.

BILL MOYERS: One of the scenes I will never forget was a surprise to me because I was not with Tom and Kathy when they were out there for this, but it's when Terry goes back to the house that she had to give up because they didn't have the money. She walks in, it's occupied again by a young family who bought the house for 38000 dollars which was below what, uh, our people on camera had paid for it. And, and there was the most painful crease down the middle of, of, of Terry's face that I had with me when I finally went to bed the other night.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Oh.

BILL MOYERS: I mean, can you imagine?

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Yeah. I know that. I know what you're talking

BILL MOYERS: Yeah, yeah.

KATHLEEN HUGHES: Yeah. I was talking to Terry yesterday, and I told her that so many of my friends are so impressed with her strength and her determination. And she literally said, but this is, it's about me, but it's not about me. I hope people don't think, you know, this film is just about me. It's about so many people. She does understand. And I think both families at this stage understand that by, by letting us in and by participating, they are telling a larger story, a story that they feel is important that, and so that, that was really moving to me.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Yeah, I can see that. I can, I can imagine that you, you get the sense from all of them. First of all, you don't feel the cameras there, which is very unusual in any documentary. Um, you feel like they're just living their lives. Bill, as you were describing, just the cameras sort of melted away, which is, you know, we, we all make films, so we know that's very hard. So that has to be about them wanting to share for a larger purpose than just themselves, right? Um, Bill, tell me about other scenes that really moved you,

BILL MOYERS: When Claude Stanley, who had had a good job himself and was now down in the basement of a house working on the wall in the, in the damp, dampness of that, that place. And you saw him there time and again, because he had that job. I don't remember how many years, but he had it. He, he could have quit it. He could have claimed disability from the humid, humid atmosphere, but he didn't. It was a job, and he was going to do everything he could to hold on to it. And just watching him work, uh, was unforgettable.

TOM CASCIATO: I would say that one of my unforgettable scenes is just really an interview scene that Kathy and I did with Claude and Jackie Stanley in 1993 where they were talking about how if they still had their union jobs, their kids would have money for college put away and things would be pretty good and they were now making half or less than half of what they used to make. And Claude Stanley said something that has stuck with Kathy and me forever. And he said, if she's not producing, I'm producing. If I'm not producing, she's producing. And then he said, I do, she do, I do, she do. And Kathy and I, your listeners might not all, I'm sure your listeners don't, don't all know that Kathy and I are married.

TOM CASCIATO: But ever since that day in 1993, Kathy and I, when something's going right for one of us and something's not going right for the other, we will look at each other and say, I do, she do, I do, she do. And that's how you get by in these relationships. And the Stanleys. marriage, their relationship with their children as well, but the Stanley's marriage is really something to see. Um, it's, they have deep religious faith, deep faith in each other. And along with everything else, I think there's a bit of a love story in this film and more than one person has commented on that, uh, to me. And that's another thing that I just find very powerful about the experience. And again, Very privileged to, to be, to see that, to be able to witness that.

KATHLEEN HUGHES: Absolutely. And there are many lines, which we will not bore you with, that we have incorporated into our lives. For instance, when our children were little, um, and, um, We, things were often missing and we'd look at one another and say, how can he lose a backpack? Because that's exactly what Terry Neumann exclaimed one tired morning. And there are probably 15 of them that have become part of our, our lexicon. So it's, uh, yeah.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Well, I think, I, I think is, you know, we see this in the comments too, it's that people see them get older. We're all getting older, you know, and that's one thing that you can do as you're watching is imagine yourself as a kid, a parent, a grandparent.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: one thing that we kept, you kept seeing it in the responses is we need more journalism like this, more listening to people like this. And Bill, can you just give us some, a reflection on the state of play when it comes to journalism right now? You know,

BILL MOYERS: I'm seeing, I'm seeing a withering of local journalism. The hometown in my paper where I grew up, where I got my first newspaper job, uh, when I was 16, it's shriveled. It's shriveled. It's nothing but advertising now. The, the local stories are not about what's really happening in town. Uh, just not. Marshall, in my hometown, is, um, is, is not rich. Some rich people there, but most of the people were like my, growing up there, we worked for working class families, like you saw in this film in Milwaukee. And, uh, we're losing journalism, and it's It's sad because with the loss of journalism in a small town, the first thing that happens is an increase in, in po, in corruption. It was the newspaper that kept the city council from stealing from the people in my hometown once. So without journalism, we're in trouble, and we are in trouble.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Yeah, we keep, we keep telling stories of that Bill. So, you know, it's one of my biggest passions is making sure we're, we're paying attention to the loss of local journalism and supporting local journalists as much as we can. And um, I appreciate that. So I, um, was hoping that we could talk about. The kids and, you know, they became parents.One became a grandparent. Can you all tell me about the generational issues here and what you see as a long tail of some of the struggles that you started with in the first place, um, documenting and some, some of the triumphs.

KATHLEEN HUGHES: You know, one thing, and I think I'm quoting Tom is that what we see handed down to all of the children is this ethic about working hard, um, in the Neumann family you see both sons taking the night shift if they need to, uh, working long hours, trying to bring in every dollar possible, you know, wages are up in 2024 and they're not going to, we don't know how long that's going to last. Um, and you know, they're working in kind of manual jobs and warehouses and factories and so forth, but they're really trying to, to, to get ahead. So that's just, to me, that just feels like they're, they got all of that from their parents.

TOM CASCIATO: And we really can't write the future for these families. We only know what's happened so far. And for their kids, as Kathy is saying, a lot of them have struggled the same way the parents have, in different ways. Nicole Stanley, the oldest daughter in Claude and Jackie's family, has a master's degree. Her parents didn't go to college. She has a good job in IT. She also has 90, 000 dollars in student debt. So she had educational advantages her parents never had, but she also has the burden of that education that her parents never had. Keith Stanley, the oldest son in the Stanley family, says to me what is the single most profound thing in the film. And he says that, first of all, he says this knowing that everybody looks at his family as this paragon of hard work. And they are a paragon of hard work, but he says it's not only about hard work in this country. He knows a lot of people who have worked just as hard as the Stanley family and lost their houses in the, in the crash of 2008, lost their cars, have never made it even to the point that Jackie and Claude have made it to, to, uh, retire. And it's not just about hard work in this country.

[FROM FILM] KEITH STANLEY: as much as I believe what my father and my grandfather taught me about rolling your sleeves up and getting the job done, I know it's not just hard work that you need to succeed. Many times it's about luck. It's about who you know. It's about your ZIP code. And I think sometimes that's conflated within our society, that if you work really hard that you will be successful. I think there's a lot more to that equation.

TOM CASCIATO: he demands to lift up other people who are working just as hard as he is and may not be doing as well as he is. And I find that to be really the most, as I said, profound thing in the whole film.

KATHLEEN HUGHES: He's made that his career. He's a community organizer.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Right. I mean, he's a, he's a really successful community organizer and giving back. Bill, I'm so touched by your work in so many different areas of, of what you've done. One of the things that I really appreciate about your conversations with people has always been your ability to talk to them also about their faith.

BILL MOYERS: Oh, well, I'll never, I'll never forget the scene, the first time we see, uh, Terry and her family in church, waiting to receive the, the blessing. And they're, they're really into it. I mean, you, you, you see Tony, uh, tears in his eyes. He's moved by his situation, but he's moved by something deep, uh, that he holds onto, uh, his faith and he holds it for a long time until finally the world beats him down and he can't hold it anymore because faith is supposed to be a helpmate. Anyway, I'll never forget that, uh, that, that scene. And there are a lot more. There are a lot more.

TOM CASCIATO: You know, and I think as far as religious faith goes, the families still have it. And that's something that goes all throughout the film. But that's not anything Kathy or Bill or I could ever have predicted.

BILL MOYERS: No.

TOM CASCIATO: We filmed, we filmed these families in 1991 and religious faith was a part of their life. They might have lost their faith over the next 33 years. We didn't know that this was going to become a theme in the film. But as you see, the Stanleys have always kept it very strong. You see them praying together in the film. You see Terry Neumann going to visit her priest, the very priest who was saying mass in 1991 during the scene that Bill is describing where Tony Neumann begins to cry, Terry's still going to see him in 2024. And I think that that has been, in their lives, such a huge thing. And again, as is the Stanley's love story, it's one of those sub themes. You know, we set out to do a story about economics, but all this other stuff that's part of life creep into the film.

BILL MOYERS: Which, which reminds me to say, that Tom and Kathy were there many times that I wasn't and, and, and the camera kept rolling. It, it, it inspires me to remind ourselves that when Tom and Kathy are not there, the cameraman and the sound man are there. And they just keep rolling because they, they know from experience and from the same curiosity that the three of us have that it's not over. The scene's not over, life is not over, you never know what's going to happen next.

KATHLEEN HUGHES: But they all did enjoy it. All, everybody enjoyed it when Bill came out.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: I bet they did.

KATHLEEN HUGHES: Because talking to Bill is like talking in a, you know, they understood they were really going to have a great conversation because that's your skill Bill. You really did get them to characterize their circumstances in a way that I don't think they even knew they could, so…

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: I mean, that's how I felt today, Kathy. So just to be able to talk to you, Bill, is such a, is such a privilege really. And also to hear your reflections on how these stories intersects with your own work and the decades that have gone by. I will say, after we all cried and watched the film yet again at Frontline, we said, you know, one thing I will promise you all is that we will be going back. I mean, we'll have to keep going back.

BILL MOYERS: You better hurry.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: As long as we can keep going back, we will keep going back.

TOM CASCIATO: I'll look in that mirror and I'll be even a little bit older, Raney. Thanks. Thanks for…

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: You know, it's going to be okay. Bill, do you have any parting thoughts that you'd love to share with us as we're sitting here and talking together?

BILL MOYERS: Thank you for doing this. Thanks to the audience for responding as you did. And thanks to public broadcasting for this opportunity to do journalism that isn't going to disappear.

TOM CASCIATO: Hear, hear.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Hear, hear. I say the same thing. Kathy, Tom, and Bill, thank you so much for joining me on the dispatch. It's really been an honor. Thank you all so much.

KATHLEEN HUGHES: Thank you.

TOM CASCIATO: Thanks for having us, Raney.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Thanks again to Bill Moyers, Kathy Hughes, and Tom Casciato for joining me on the Dispatch. And special thanks to Judith Moyers for all your work over the years on these important films.

You can watch Two American Families on Frontline.org, Frontline's YouTube channel, and the PBS app.

The Frontline Dispatch is produced by Emily Pisacreta. Maria Diokno is our Director of Audience Development. Katherine Griwert is our Story Editor and Coordinating Producer. Frank Koughan is our Senior Producer. Lauren Ezell is our Senior Editor of Investigations. Andrew Metz is our Managing Editor. I'm Raney Aronson Rath, Editor in Chief and Executive Producer of FRONTLINE. Music in this episode is by Stellwagon Symphonette. The FRONTLINE Dispatch is produced at GBH and powered by PRX. Thanks for listening.