GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK

Can you talk about the choice to shoot it in black and white?

"Really, the first and only thing to define it was that we were going to use the archival footage and it would just stand out so badly if we did it any other way. But then we also, Grant and I started talking about knowing that it was going to make it very hard to sell. It made it very hard to sell. It made it shockingly hard to sell. You'd think that at this point in my career if I'm going to write it for a dollar and direct it for a dollar and act in it for scale as the second biggest part of the film that I could get $7.5 million raised to do the movie and it took us forever. We did it piece by piece by piece to get it. But I only know Murrow and McCarthy in black and white. I've never seen them in colour and I don't know anything about them in colour. So I think that you have to film things in the way that you remember them. So I started going through some art films in the beginning because I thought that maybe I'd shoot it on super sixteen and try to get those lenses and something like that and realized that that was a dumb way to do it. Then I started going back to the documentaries and then I looked at the documentaries like 'Crisis' and 'Primary' and ones like that. I thought that was a better way to do it so that I could make it more of a fly on the wall kind of look. But black and white was the only option. It's funny, we shot it on colour film because you can use so much less light. I mean, if you're shooting in black and white it would take us twice as long to light it. So we have a colour print of it that we've seen and it is freaky looking. I mean, it looks like a sitcom. It looks so wrong."

What was it about Edward R. Murrow that fascinated you and made you want to make a movie about him?

"He was a big part of my growing up. My father was an anchorman, doing news his whole life and was a big part of what I -- Murrow was always the high water mark for broadcast journalists growing up and that's always what my father would refer to as sort of what the standard was set at that no one could ever reach again. Cronkite did pretty well. He did pretty well in Vietnam. So anyway that was a big part of my growing up, first of all. Then I revisited some of those speeches that I was pretty familiar with. I knew the Box of Lights and Wires speech really well. Most people who studied any journalism at all always heard that. I had heard a lot of the shows. I hadn't heard all of the television shows. I hadn't heard the "Annie Less Moss Show' before and I hadn't heard his rebuttals to McCarthy. But I started watching those speeches again and I thought that they were incredibly inspiring as I think they are, and I miss that kind of clarity at times. It's sort of like when was the last time you were watching network and you heard Paddy Chievsky's words? And you go,
'Wow.' So they sort of represented us at our best, and I'm always the guy in the car going, 'You know what I should have said?' So I really enjoyed the idea of talking about Murrow again."

Did the recent talk about the reinvention of McCarthy play any part in this?

"Yeah. Did you read that book? It's interesting with her. The problem with her is that she's a bad journalist. She sort of has her own market and does her own thing, but you can't get the facts wrong and the facts were wrong. She can say that Murrow got it wrong because there weren't Annie Lee Moss' in the phonebook. 'So Murrow is wrong and she was a communist and we can prove it.'

That's not the point and if you watch the broadcast and if you watch what
Murrow says in that specific broadcast, he says specifically, 'You will not that neither the prosecutor nor this reporter know or claim that she is or is not a communist. We simply demand that she have the right to face her accuser.'

That was always the point. That was Murrow's point. It was never about defending communists. We can always argue about the fact whether that was something to talk about because it was certainly using fear to attack civil liberties, but the question was much more and always was with him constitutional and Fred Friendly too. When I was  kid in school I was a big fan of Fred Friendly's. Some might remember the 'Ethics in America' that Fred Friendly did. So I read a lot stuff about Fred Friendly. He always carried a copy of the constitution, a little copy of the constitution in his bag. I have one here too and I always kind of keep it in my bag with me. It's kind of a great foundation to go back and look at. So it was always constitutional issues and I found that that was -- 'Page Six' ran a story a few months ago ran a story that I'm going to do a big liberal piece about McCarthy, and attacking McCarthy when we know that McCarthy was right about some of the people that he named.

Look, he may end up at the end of the day being right about two of the thousands that he named, that might end up happening. An infinite number of monkey's and an infinite number of typewriters. He might end up getting a couple right, but that's not the point. The point was that he was wrong about he technique and that was a concern that I also saw happening in other issues.

Padia may end up being a terrorists. He might be. We don't know. But either you're a prisoner of war and you have Geneva convention rights or you are a criminal and you have writ of Habeus Corpus and you have the right to face your accuser. The right to an attorney and the right to a speedy trial and all of the things that are the foundation of our government. And for us, what the question was, and what Grant Heslov I started talking about when we started doing it was is that it's not easy a democracy and that it requires constant diligence. That diligence requires us to be diligent and it also requires an understanding of the complexities. And the complexities are that it's not black and white really. It isn't like if we can't try the guy then lets set him free. Well, Murrow talks about protecting, the problems of protecting the individual and the state at the same time and they seem to all be present things to talk about again."

And there is legislation to these issues currently is there not?

"Well, they have been. The new one coming out, both the senate and the house � the house version is frightening. They're going to vote on it in October."

And they could arrest you right now, couldn't they?

"They could. But the interesting thing is that they could also go to my doctor and find out anything that they want to find out and not tell me about it and tell the doctor that he's not allowed to tell me about it and not go to a judge ahead of time to get a subpoena to have a reason to do it so that if some FBI guy who was dating the same girl as I am [Laughs] right decides that he's pissed off at me I could have a very bad time of it right now. That's why I never date FBI girls. Never. Never. But it is an issue. To me it was an interesting to talk about again. I worry about polarizing issues. I mean, we all know what the world is like out there right now and we also know that there are a couple of ways to do this. I had to be very careful about how I campaigned for my father which I couldn't do because it was Hollywood versus the heartland. Somehow we sort of lose the moral argument lately. Fair enough. We'll take those hits. It's all cyclical, but I didn't want this to be a polarizing piece. I wanted it to be a factual piece. I tried to treat this as my father did and he talked to me about it for a long time. We double sourced every scene in the movie. Every scene in the film is double sourced. We literally, it was either Jill and Shirley or the Howardson book or it was Fred Friendly's book. It was infinite numbers of things. It might've been other documentaries that we used. Everything that we could to source each of the scenes and basically the content in each of the scenes because we wanted to be able to say, and that's why we used McCarthy playing himself, for the same reason � wanted to say, 'Look, you tell  us what we did wrong.' I had Jill and Shirley on the set everyday. 'Tell me what we're getting wrong. Tell me where we're missing it.' I know that there are people out there who are going to try and marginalize it because all you have to do is find one thing wrong and go,

'Well, it's all horseshit. It's all crap.' So then I thought that I had to be very careful with the facts. That's important and so that was my job. So what I found to do was to go and look at all of the other arguments, the arguments against Murrow. George Seldis wrote a book that talked about it, and he's a really interesting bright journalist, but he thought that Murrow taking sides was a mistake. So we went through the idea of taking sides and how dangerous that might have been and if it was a wrong step or a step in the wrong direction and we brought that into the story. We read some of the journalism school's conversations about the Alger Hiss Piece where he said they didn't correct that because he didn't want to be known for that. So we put that in. We just felt that it was important to constantly balance all the other arguments and say, 'Fair enough. Let's have those discussions.' And not say that we're right or that we're wrong, but that we can have discussions."

Have you compared this to your previous film where your subject wasn't so concerned with facts?

[Laughs] "I sort of worked backwards. I worked the wrong way didn't I? I started with the downfall of television and now I go back to the golden great moment in television. I'm going backwards. I'm going into radio next. And then just smoke signals. The telegraph. That'll be a fun movie."

Shouldn't he just not admit to his mistakes?

"But that's how you'd have to do it. Don't you think that's the best way. I mean, think about the best way to neutralize an argument. That's to accept the arguments immediately. For instance, Kennedy's first act as president is the Bay of Pigs which is the dumbest first act that any president has ever done in their lives. If you've ever watched that press conference which is one of the greatest moments that I've ever seen ever by a president, I've watched it a dozen times, but he walks out and even before anyone asks a question he says, 'What happened yesterday is my fault. I take full responsibility. I did it. I took some bad advice. It was a dumb thing to do. First question.' And they were like, 'Whoa. Uh. Wasn't that a dumb thing to do?' He goes, 'I just said that. Next question.' So then it was like, 'What's Jackie going to wear to the --' And it was over. You realize that the truth is not to be afraid to ask the questions that should be asked."

Was CBS helpful in giving you archival footage?

"Well, there's two issues. CBS was very helpful with the archival stuff. Les
[???] is an old friend of mine. It's funny because he did this interview and he's getting a lot of crap for saying that I'm going to change the news into
MTV style and they're using me as sort of this battering ram against him. I called him up and said sorry, but he was instrumental in helping us to get the archival footage because it was hard and it's expensive for a $7.5 million film. That's a lot of money. The smoking commercial I put in because we're smoking so much in the film. I'm not going to not smoke in this film. It's accurate. Two thirds of those guys died of lung cancer, but it's real. There is this sort of white washing now that wants you to take out cigarettes from movies. In fact, there are policies at the studio. You'll get a memo that will say absolutely no smoking in these films. Look, I'm a non-smoker and I had nine great aunts and uncles die from lung cancer including my Aunt Rosemary. I think that it's dangerous to glamorize it and we make it look pretty good. So I thought that it was important to at least make a point in there about it because it's a pretty manipulative thing. I mean, you don't know it's a smoking commercial when it comes up. I thought that was at least a way to comment again, like we were talking about taking an argument away to go, 'Yeah, we get it. We know that what we're doing is making it look good like "Casablanca."'

Everyone smoked and you can't change the rules. And you had the doctor even checking your heart with a cigarette in his mouth."

Would you like to ever do a movie about your Aunt Rosemary's life someday?

"She didn't want that. They did a movie of the week. I can't remember what it was called now based on her. Sandra Locke played my Aunt Rosemary and it was all about her sort of meltdown after Bobby Kennedy was killed. No. I didn't really think about this as a biopic. We didn't go home with Murrow. I really thought of this as a section of time. And the first film I didn't really think was a biopic because I didn't really feel like � I felt like it was an acid trip. I think that I'd have to leave that to someone who wants to do the history of some really good jazz singers."

Did you talk to Murrow's family?

"Sure. Casey was on the set a lot. Janet is long gone, but Casey was on the set a lot. In fact, we shot this sort of piece to go along with the film. It's a documentary. We see Joe and Shirley there everyday and you see Ruth Friendly and Andy and Dave Friendly there. We shot the piece because I also wanted to be able to say � Casey was a young boy at the time. Ruth was married to Fred. But the rest of the guys were around and saw it, and I wanted to be able to go, 'Joe and Shirley were standing there when this happened.' So that when people try to marginalize it and say that it's horseshit and that it didn't happen you can go, 'Well, they were there and they said we were right.' And we wanted to have that on film somewhere. To me, the biggest thing was that it was important to recalibrate this historical thing. We tested this film and literally twenty five percent of the people didn't know who Joe McCarthy was. They asked us who the actor playing Joe McCarthy was. We wanted to take out one of those ads in the trades that says 'For your consideration for best supporting actor' which I think might be great. We might even get him a nomination because no one could do him better."

Good Night, And Good Luck is released to buy on DVD on 26th June from Lionsgate Home Entertainment