NT-3356

Slate and Countdown: The Eleventh Hour #356, Lumet, Length 28:11. Rec: 5/7/90. Dir: Andrew Wilk

The Eleventh Hour graphic and show opener

Lipsyte introduces famous director, 65 year old Sidney Lumet sitting in fron of TV screen "With Sidney Lumet". Close up on Lumet as Lipsyte announces his most recent film "Q&A" made in New York and cuts to a clip.

Film clip ends. Wide shot looking down on the studio with Lipsyte and Lumet sitting at a triangular table.

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INTEVIEW;

Robert Lipsyte:
12 Angry Men. Now, at a time when the Bensonhurst trial is going on? How would it have to be different? How could Oh, I would have a fight. I would have such a fight with Reggie rose about the ending of that movie. And if you won the fight, what would have happened at the end?

Sidney Lumet
I think what would have happened is that they have finally found a character would have done precisely what I do. I think he would have left discouraged, disheartened, but feeling absolutely obligated to to put up the fight he did.

Robert Lipsyte
But you bounce back every time. I mean, you've made 36 films, and you've made most of them right here in city. Right. So I mean, you get knocked down, but you come back. Yeah. You mean is that? Is that the message? The struggle is all?

Sidney Lumet
Well? Yeah, exactly. I just don't know how you can figure on winning all the time, or winning ever. Certainly, politically, I've lost for the last 25 years ago, except for odd breaks. So I think life is not it's not a question of of victory, or getting everything you want or part of what you want. You are a certain kind of person, you behave in a certain kind of way, and it's your obligation in a way to be yourself

Robert Lipsyte
You got this early? Yeah, I think so. I think you were a child actor, child of the depression. Your father was a star of the Yiddish Theater. What was happening? What was the message?

Sidney Lumet
I think the message that I got always or and certainly I behaved this way, was you keep working? That work is inviolate. That work is constant. The work is probably your best friend. That that work is noble. And there's just no question about it. Things can turn out disastrous. disastrously personally, or they can be unhappiness about this unhappiness about that. The work stays in violent, you keep that pure, and you keep working.

Robert Lipsyte
Well, let's let's take take q&a. That's about working men to these are working cops. And people in the Justice Department in the Justice business, which you have always had kind of a finger on your whole career.

Sidney Lumet
By the way, I don't seek q&a. Mr. website is dark as some people do. To me, the very fact that at the end of the movie, Timothy Hutton, this character al Riley, Al Riley is ready to acknowledge an unconscious racism on his part, on the most internal profound level. Something that he didn't even know existed is enormously meaningful, and one can hardly call it optimistic except that at least the acknowledgement of the state which I think is rad. happened in New York is the first step toward hopefully some correction somewhere down the line.

Robert Lipsyte
Do you do you think that's important? Because I remember I read the book when it originally came out, I guess when I was 77. Uh huh. And the racism didn't see. I mean, you really kind of jacked up when I drew from the book. Yeah. But I mean, you you made it your own. You made it 1990. I mean, is that what you sense going on here in New York now, a kind of racism that we're not willing to acknowledge,

Cut to another scene from the film, 12 Angry Men.

Sidney Lumet
I wish I wish I felt that were true. I wish it would be wonderful. If it were I don't think anybody's work affects one iota of anyone's opinion. I may be wrong about that. I don't know. I never have felt that

Robert Lipsyte
How can you go on if you don't think that you're having some sort of impact?

Sidney Lumet
Well because you're looking for victory again, you see, and I'm not I'm going on because I have to I want to I think that's what makes my life interesting. And, and I hope valuable. But it's not connected to victory,

Robert Lipsyte
you know, in terms of what was seemed like the most provocative New York movies right now, q&a, your your film, do the right thing, and possibly, Bonfire of the Vanities, especially if it expresses, you know, the book in terms of class, the justice system, and race, all dealing with the same thing. Had you thought about either of those projects, how you might have dealt with, first of all, was Bonfire of the Vanities, something that you would have been interested in making?

Sidney Lumet
No it wouldn't have been

Robert Lipsyte
why.

Sidney Lumet
I felt and and this has nothing to do with the movie because I don't know what the what the script of the movie is. I felt the book brilliantly written was also very mean spirited. I think that the use of all that for, for kind of, for a kind of wit, for a kind of humor. That wolf is Superbad, to use it in a satiric sense without really letting us know what he feels like. What is he really finally sat satirizing? How does Tom Wolfe feel about what I think I know just out I don't know the man at all, but just out of the nature of what I read. And and I think I might find that alarming. So that book wouldn't have interested me at all, no.

Robert Lipsyte
Which does get back to the responsibility of the creative artist.

Sidney Lumet
And up to each individual, you know, I can't make rules for Tom Wolfe, and he shouldn't make rules for me. And I would certainly not intend to I may be wrong in my interpretation of what he wrote. But that is right for me as the writing of that book was obviously right for him.

Robert Lipsyte
What about do the right thing?

Sidney Lumet
I thought that was a wonderful movie. I thought the hoopla about it was about its appeal to violence was all utter nonsense. It's to talk about our utter violence from what 13,14 an appeal to our violence from 13 to 14 blacks have been shot by the New York Police Department in the last five years and so is is patently silly. I did feel interestingly enough, and in relation to q&a, I think that the the two pictures deal with a different aspect of the same problem. I think Spike Lee's picture deals with that the potential for violence and what it takes to set it off. q&a doesn't deal with the violence of it. In that sense, it deals With it on the level of deals with the people are racist in it right across there. And it doesn't affect the moment by moment action, but it affects their entire life. It's not as if there is going to be one corrosive incident and an explosion on a kind of a level. It's just there on a day to day dull dull dull level part of the behavior. And it's the totality of the behavior which is destructive in q&a.

Cutaway from Q & A to a scene from Lumet's 1973 film, Serpico.

INTERVIEW.

Sidney Lumet
sounds strange coming from me because it seems like the pictures are enormously critical. When I've talked to I've spent a lot of time with him Mr. Lipsyte and when I've talked to them, we always get into the same argument. Which is I've always said to them, Well, you know, your job would be a lot easier in Russia. The problem being a cop is that you're a competent democracy. And the two are sometimes clashing. I love them, because I think they are incredibly brave. I think they live on a level that's that very few of us good. I've written with. And I tell you, I've gone out on this Friday and Saturday nights, and there's no way I could do it. As a way of life, one of the things I love always is that the men like it's the branch that doesn't like my pictures, the men love them. And because my respect my all of the world that they live in, and the sanity they keep in that world is enormous. But I must say it's changed in the past three or four years. They are shooting more frequently. I don't know whether that's a generational thing or what

Robert Lipsyte
do you think it's the racism? Is this bottom line of racism?

Sidney Lumet
I think? I think it's I think that's part of it. I think there are a lot of elements, it's, it's also, let's face it from their own points of view. It's a lot more dangerous out there. Since dope, they can walk into any situation and have absolutely no idea of, of what is predictable.

Robert Lipsyte
It's like in almost every one of your films a appealing But dad cop kind of almost looks at us and says, you know, if it wasn't for me, you know that the slime would be coming into your neighborhood, killing your daughter, and I'm bad. Because I'm in between I'm the thin blue line. Do you believe that's true?

Sidney Lumet
Absolutely. Absolutely. That's what I mean when I say they live on a on an edge that I couldn't conceive of myself living in and that I will always find moving and fundamentally makes me for them. Despite the pictures in a way. The pictures are an expression of that. I know, I know, that sounds like like I'm juggling ideas around but I really do feel that

Robert Lipsyte
Do you feel that the pictures or the expression of the fact that it's society that makes them the way they are? I mean, just just as way cop snicker if anyone dares to say that, you know the perps have been made this way by society. In a sense, you're almost saying this, that we've created these, you know, tainted heroes.

Sidney Lumet
I'm saying the situation in total becomes more and more impossible. Not just for us, just living in the city but but for cops living in the city. Nothing in the justice system was ever designed to handle what was being done today. I remember when I met Ed Torres who wrote q&a. He is an actor Judge in the United States in the state Supreme Court. And Ed was in charge of that Night Court when I was doing prints in the city and was my reference source. And it would take me through Night Court. And nothing in the system was ever designed for a cop to sit there for six hours, and a legal aid guy to go back into the pen area where they're kept before they're brought up in front of the judge and say, Rodriguez, which one of you is Rodriguez, he hasn't even had a moment to even meet the man he's going to defend two hours down the line. And the judge sitting there on a Friday or Saturday night, we'll be dealing with 30 second decisions, that's about what he will have the value of what they're trying to cope with. Nothing in the justice system was ever created. I came out of it with a feeling that it's a miracle it functions at all. Not that it's functioning badly. But it's simply that it can still exist seemed extraordinary.

Robert Lipsyte
To me your view is getting darker. Your view from your lense is getting darker. what are you going to do next? And where do you see? Where are you going to take us from here?

Sidney Lumet
I don't know. Mr. Lipsyte I, the next piece of work, whatever it will be, it will be reflecting I hope, if I do it, well, whatever I'm feeling at the time, as I said before, I I don't lay this out in advance. I really know. Afterwards, I'd look back and I say, Oh, that's what those pictures were about. That's what I was interested in at the time. So I can't answer.

Robert Lipsyte
What is the process in which you will make your next choice.

Sidney Lumet
I'll open a script, or I'll get an idea or read a book or I'll read it. See a newspaper article and I'll say, oh,wouldn't that be a good movie?

Robert Lipsyte
You back on the streets of New York with cops? Do you think?

Sidney Lumet
I sure wouldn't close it out as a part of my life. I hope not.

Robert Lipsyte
Sidney Lumet, thank you so very much for being with us. That's the 11th hour. I'm Robert Lipsyte.

Host Robert Lipsyte announces the show and introduces himself. Show ends.

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