American Masters

Well, I wouldn't because in those days, for me, I mean, I always say there are two kind of filmmakers that I sort of had this epiphany later on.

The kind that can write grants and go and put pieces of funding together and make a film and it ends up on American Masters or PBS or somewhere.

And I considered what I did... was I would go...

When I started out with one page, I remember sort of reinventing myself.

and it's you know I think

it should be if it's not I mean like it's on one of Johnny Cash's like American Masters recordings that he did with Rick Rubin so I mean it is like it should be considered in the American canon you know of like american songs the american songbook but um so i knew like some of that history but i didn't know going like even when i wrote the proposal about um the hawaiian steel guitar and that instrument's influence on guitar um you know it was the first you know commercially available electric guitar it was like one of the most popular instruments like in the whole country for like several decades in the first like 20, 30 years of the 20th century.

And that was introduced to the united states by a hawaiian musician named joseph kikiku um or kakeku and um you know there's like there's a really wonderful book that i i used as a reference called uh kikakila which is the hawaiian name for the the steel guitar by a guy named uh john troutman and um he actually like you know, these Hawaiian musicians, it was so popular.

They're like traversing like the entirety of the United States in the first like 30, 40 years of the 20th century.

And it was incredible.

They did a series, American Masters.

And so there's one on Clurman.

And so you could kind of get a set of flavors.

It was on PBS.

Or American Masters.

It's one of those, isn't it? It might have been one of those.

It's good, and they have good rapid-fire questions with Woody Allen, which shows up on YouTube.

And then the other was his relationships with men.

There had been one documentary in American Masters, great American Masters, right after he passed away, and they just weren't dealing with, that story wasn't told.

And he hadn't told it for obvious reasons, at least in anywhere that, in recordings or in interviews or in his writing.

So you were making a choice to tell the story in his own words.

Yeah, well— We just did a film about the theater.

It was on American Masters.

It's called Every Act of Life, about the great playwright Terrence McNally.

And you think about someone like Terrence who would write a fabulous play, but then it goes into the hands of the actor or actress, right? And so the words are just words, and they have to come alive.

We'll be right back.

[upbeat music] Jacques, there's a woman in, uh, American Masters, a- a chef, I don't remember her name.

She said, "If cooking is a language, I would be a deaf mute without what Jacques has taught me."

Oh, that's very nice.

I hope I'm not, uh, gonna embarrass you in front of your daughter.

All right.

Uh, uh, I wrote here, "Has anyone called Jacque sexy before?" Because Anne Bramson said that you were catnip to the ladies, and this is what Tony Bourdain had to say in that American Masters thing, which I thought was great.

He said, "I believe that before you are allowed to...

So they force CBS's hand, they get the green light, and they premiere on October 15th, 1951.

And according to the PBS American Masters material we're analyzing, I Love Lucy didn't just succeed as a show.

It fundamentally transformed the structural reality of the television medium in five distinct ways.

Five massive ways.

For the 100th birthday, Dick's 100th birthday, there were a couple of film projects produced.

One was a film that showed only in theaters, and then there was a PBS American Masters special.

The gentleman who did the film actually went back and interviewed any number of people from Danville, Illinois.

And to hear the stories of the people who knew them or knew the family was quite interesting.

And so you started working in restaurants while you were in school.

I saw in, I think, in the American Masters that you were the head chef and you were reviewed before you were 16 or something, right?

Yeah, well, there was...

As the apprentice, we were three apprentices, and we sleep upstairs, and there was the chef and the first commis.