Transcripts For CSPAN3 Doris 20240704

Bidethis feeling and you start t you were a storyteller. Do you even remember . I remember a preferring to make up stories than to play back playing baseball. Sure as a little kid and you know Peewee League or anything like that i remember reading at a very young age so it started kind of. I started. But i, you know, i think its because i had a slightly lonelier childhood than some people because we lived overseas and. I had my friends were books. So thats what happened with that onto doris yeah, that resonates with me well does it with you go well you go in this world isnt so it compels you into the other world. Now thats really true. I think in my own experience because my mother had had rheumatic fever when she was a child. So it left her with a rheumatic heart and she was pretty much of an invalid in our house and had only an eighth grade education. But she read books and every spare moment she found precisely because of what you said, because she wanted to be transferred to other places, that she couldnt go. Thats what Emily Dickinson once said, there is no frigate like a book to take us lads away. Thats it. At night she would read to me the only i loved more than that was i would ask to tell me stories of the days when she was young. So i could imagine her jumping rope or jumping the stairs at a time. I could think of her as a young girl again. So as you say, my mom tell me a story about you and youre my age not realizing how peculiar that was until i had my own three boys who never once said to me, mom, tell us a story you when you were our age, but somehow i think i began to that storytelling could bring back and it would stop the aging process that i was witnessing. And she feel young again. And she would be young and it didnt work. Obviously, she died when i was 15, but still, that love of books and storytelling became the anchor of my life. So thats where it began. And when did it become a conscious project, the thought of maybe even getting for it, the thought of maybe even getting serious, this thing that its not just an amusing or an escape, but it could be a life. When does that start . Well i you know, i love the theater and. At first i thought i would be an actor and and i still occasionally do. But but i, i found myself sort of like restless and chafing at play. And i grew going to the theater a lot. If anybody here is lives in or spent time los angeles, the taper is a the market. Before i went run when Gordon Davidson ran it in particular is a fantastic to to see plays and more and more i wanted to write them i think rather than just in them and also noticed that actors had to get used to being pushed around which i knew. I knew that would get too used to being pushed around. So i avoided it pretty much. I think what happened to me its funny when you become Something Like an historian, its as if you were always meant to be. It but when youre going through that process doesnt happen that way. I mean, i think the that my storytelling got attached to history originally was i had a great in high school who taught history and its always often the teacher that sparked something and if actually told stories about president s and she i remember when she was telling us about Abraham Lincoln, she actually cried when she told us that he died. And i thought she knew him somehow, it was pretty special that she could bring him back to life. So i dreamed of becoming a high school teacher, not a writer. And then i went to college and in college i got interested in International History and relationships, comparative. I studied french and russian. I got a fulbright to go to paris and brussels, but i had a boyfriend and he had graduated from harvard the year before me and he had gone to Berkeley Graduate School in economics and he was willing to transfer back to harvard to be with me. So i felt too guilty. So i did not take the fulbright and as it turned, we broke up. After six months he won a nobel prize. But i married richard goodman, so it turns out. But the crazy thing is, when my graduation, Adlai Stevenson spoke and he talked about the fact about the civil rights movement, he talked about the fact that the people who would be remembered in the future may, well, be people who had gone to jail for their meaning. The civil rights demonstrators. And that summer, when i was at the state, id gone to the march on washington, and i was really already beginning to think i really want to study american politics. It so exciting to be here in america. So when i got to graduate school, no longer french and russian, i can speak neither of them anymore. But i became an american historian. And the reason why, of course, i became a president ial historian, which some of you know, is because i ended up working for Lyndon Johnson and he became the first president that id ever lived with known. Well, and he told me all of his stories because he was lonely and old and he needed to have those stories told to next generation. He chose me to do that. And so that became my first book. And then i somehow was not only a teacher, i was a graduate, i was teaching at harvard at that time, but i decided when i had three kids, all of a sudden, my husband that had a ten year old when we were married, we had two kids immediately within 14 months of each other. So i suddenly had three boys. And i didnt think could write and teach and be with the kids. So i thought i had to make a choice. Maybe i wouldnt feel that way now. I did then. And my husband really supportive that i could be a writer i wasnt so sure. I knew i was a good teacher and he said just write like you talk i talk very great advice that i talk fast. And i wrote very slowly. So i was always people this morning. I was at one time i was at harvard yard and. I heard these two students saying, whatever happened to doris kearns anyway, did she die . Because it took me ten years to write that first book. But then i was Lyndon Johnson. You said he was lonely because he. Hed been kicked out. Really . I mean, he had he had withdrawn, but it was really because he had to withdraw. Yeah. And it was so sad because he knew that he had extraordinary he had done extraordinary things. I mean medicare, medicaid, aid to education immigration reform, voting rights, pbs desegregating the south. I aid to the cities. Extraordinary but the vietnam war had cut it all into and he just needed to feel like hed be remembered somehow. I think its that of all of us to somehow be remembered. And and he chose me somehow because i was there and maybe because i was young. And maybe because i was going to be an historian or. He thought i might be to tell the stories, too. And so they they became the foundation of the first book. And luckily the book did well. So that me to become a writer because i would, i would have been a teacher and maybe a professor, even, but not a writer by profession. It was listening to you tell these these origin stories. Im well, one person here, robbie, is, is known for his fiction and doris for her nonfiction. Your seems to be vocational that you compelled to do it right away. And doris, you took you took a winding path. Do you do you feel that fiction is who you are and nonfiction is who you are are you different species or are you both the same or are you the same species . Oh, well, i mean, i think doris is a gorgeous, beautiful salamander. Someone thats a good thing to think about. And im just, you know, a regular toad. Oh, thats ridiculous. You know, i think process is process. I make up and i sometimes know where theyre headed before get there, which is a writer thing. And or maybe shes a thinker or thing, but oddly enough in what i do, which is mostly like write and sometimes movies or tv. Like if youre writing a play and do too much research, you kill the play. Itll just be like rock em, sock them robots and the automatons. And so have to realize that this theres a moment where your research especially if youre writing about a moment that really happened. It has to be put down and i dont think its the same. Yeah, i think youre right. I mean the research for me is what allows you to have detail that will make a scene come alive. And you may have to do tons of research, know what the weather was like that day, what the room was like where you get frustrate it as a nonfiction writer is you your people so well you know they would have said to each other but you cant say that you cant fill that gap. You can say what somebody might have heard them say. You can have memoir, you can have a diary. And thats im so lucky that i didnt think that you can do that because like i said, i could do it better than these other people do it because know them. But you cant. Yeah, i imagine there there is a some kind of creative longing for you wish you could use what ravi gets and ravi probably that he had give you all my research and you dont have to do it oh that would be fantastic i would love that but i yeah i think i used my imagination and what i do to get through the day and it, it doesnt mean that i dont look at reality, i try and look closely at it and interpret it, but. Yeah, i, i, i, i read a lot of nonfiction because its somehow, its much more soothing on the brain than fiction. And i fiction at night to go to sleep because its soothing the brain. This is so interesting. Yeah, well, ive read fiction too for the same reason because i find i write. So when im reading other, im working right . Im working. Yeah. So how do. So what part does imagination play in your work. I still think it does i mean, empathy is one of the things that plays a role. I think youve got to try and get inside people that youre writing about and understand why theyre feeling the way they are, but imagining what they might be doing. And i think it works. I mean, i think its empathy and imagination and research together. I think thats right. And how do you decide i mean, this is a question. This is a writer question or kind of a journalist question. But how do you decide what you are going to write about or do you decide does it decide you know, well, the only one to deciding me was Lyndon Johnson, obviously. But once that happened then that was such an extraordinary experience to have written about somebody that i knew and spent so many hours with. And and it was a great character. I mean, he would just never stop talking. He had a pool at the ranch where we would sit with our legs dangling on the pool and he would just talk and talk well. And meanwhile, little rafts go by with floating notepads on them and floating telephones in case he needed to work. At any moment, we would walk around his ranch and there would be the house with graveside where he would be buried, there would be the trees. This is where he was born, hed tell me the stories. And he i mean, i just think he never stopped talking. So i knew i would never have that again. Right. Id never have a live fact. Ive had all dead president s since. But i decided that i never wanted to write about somebody that didnt fundamentally feel respect for right, right. Have their disappointments, fail you. But why would i want to wake up in the morning with hitler or stalin . Thats exactly right. Have Great Respect for my colleagues, done that. But i couldnt let my day be shadowed by that. But then the hardest thing was that i chose president s everybody else wanted to write about because they had the most ones, lincoln and fdr and Teddy Roosevelt and everybody written. There were 16,000 books about lincoln when i started on because really scary. So you have to tell a story this is where imagination comes in and this is why i didnt think about this. So you said but you have to tell a different story im not writing a straight biography from birth death because other people have done that. So with link, what happened with fdr first was that i wanted to write fdr and eleanor to make a different and about the homefront rather than the war front. And it worked. I mean, it allowed me to feel that the two of them together had made something larger than, one of them alone. So when i went to lincoln was so scared. It was the moby of historians and everybody wants to write about lincoln. It was the 19 century. I hadnt really studied it. So i figured, well, it worked with mary with fdr and eleanor so ill do abe. Mary, i spent two years on writing a book about them and i realized that she couldnt carry the story the way eleanor. Eleanor was everywhere i wanted to be. Shes in the middle of everything happening. So luckily went up to auburn, new york to give a talk and thats where seward, his secretary of state from. And i went to the house that he had lived in, which is still preserved like. It was then and i found out hed written a thousand letters to his wife because she was in auburn while he was in washington during war. And theyre amazing to talk about their relationship. She talks about lincoln. He talks about the cabinet and letters are treasures for biographers, letters and diaries. And then i found out he was important in cabin. And then i went to columbus, ohio, and there was chase, who was the secretary of treasury. He had a huge diary that he kept night, night after night. Then i went to saint louis, and thats where the attorney general came from. Bates and he had a diary. So all of a sudden i had these cabinet people and they were spending more with lincoln even than married. And somehow it became a team of rivals because they had all been his rivals in the 1860 election. So that became story. And then when i got to Teddy Roosevelt, so many books written about him, but i was interested in the friendship between teddy and taft because i found 400 letters between the two of them. So its always the you can have. And so i tell young people when theyre when they are thinking if they want to be remembered by history if you write things down, you keep a journal or a diary, even if youre not a large character, be used someday. So im not a good person. I didnt do that. I started a diary when i was in high school and my mother died. I couldnt figure out how to meet the moment in the writing, so i put just stopped and i never did it again. So i dont know. You dont keep a diary anymore, ravi. Do you keep a diary . No. Too scared. Yeah. You know. Because i think such terrible things. Yeah. And i hate to be seen for who i really. I never understood why writers kept diaries. Virginia woolf kept it. I never should be writing. Yeah, no. Yeah, i very. But i do write down, you know went to the dentist today. Oh thats says. I do. I like little haiku, but i buy very diaries. So they look. Yeah and i start the year off, you know, im going to fill the back and. They just gradually over years theres theyre words sometimes by the end the only word left is clay. I found one that had clay somewhere in december and was like, what did i why . But you know, the interesting is that one of the most valuable sources i was writing about, franklin and eleanor was something the ushers diary they kept remarkable detail thing. Franklin up at 720, had breakfast eleanor came in at 8 00, she saw x, y, z. She wrote this article. Then once i had those i had every single one from 1940 to 45 because the book was just covering that period. Most people would use them. They for the pearl harbor or some important date. But i could know if somebody saw him, i could in the memoir to see what they talk about. I could read the newspaper article about the meeting and allowed me to get the structure. Im not that youre to write every day, but youre going to relive every day and something happens. And its going to happen here. So i have a question. Me thats not here. That just to me that i want to ask, are you always writing about yourself . Not no. Okay. No i mean, i think at a certain moment you you arent consciously writing about even a part of yourself, but your hopefully your daughters spoke about empathy before. Yeah, i think the fundamental qualities you use, especially with fiction, even when its enraged, i do this thing. I think i sometimes give the most morally suspect person in a play of mine. The lines. Are you feeling empathy for that person . Yes, because theyre usually, you know, to be angry about. But no, i dont think all writing is a mere biography, i think i think at times you leap out and you know, and i do think you identify and in fiction you do identify with their aches and pains i would say specifically you know what they feel pretty much what their aches and pains. You mean on the profound possible . Yeah. Yeah yeah. And you know, wrote a play called other desert cities and theres a oh, thank you. What is and. Theres a a retired politician sort of politician and he was a chairman of the gop in california but. He was a sort of old style gop guy and. Not one of the new kind. And i gave him a backache and. Stacy keach played him on broadway and the back ache became fundamental to the imagining of that character. But was like somatic pain from what he was seeing on around him. Yeah im surprised i because i even i couldnt get in there if i wasnt doing something that was so import that i was so urgent and therefore me that i guess even i connect even though i dont do it robby does i do what you do i, i feel that im all me on some level i feel like im there. I dont know that i feel like theyre me but i feel like im talking to them. I remember once when i was writing about and eleanor and their relationship, my heard me outside the study saying eleanor, just forgive him for that affair so many years you know he loves you, franklin. You know that you love her and you need her. And they wonder what is going on here. So in that sense im there. Yeah, yeah. But sam, having a lot of your stuff i think you are there actually you may not be you may not robert evans or jack nicholson, but youre at table. Yeah, yeah, i feel that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel that way. And i feel your your sensibility in in in in what . In what youre doing. Well, thank you. Thank you. Its funny thing in nonfiction. Well lets well lets talk about process i think its very even if its mundane its profound. Do you do you write every day and do you write all day . No i think im always amazed that writers who write all day, you know, i really doing other things, being alive and looking around and and playing, you know, the dog or going out or just taking a nap. And i, you know, i am a sort of a a depressive and. So that sounds fun, you know, half of the time. Yeah, its a la at least. And i, i have a hard time if the depressed part is overactive itd he sort of paralyzing so i but i i, you know, i, i can be like activated by looking, for instance, paintings or reading, and ill write something most days and, but i dont, i dont know. Im 62 and ive written about 25 plays. Wow. I mean, so somehow theyre getting somehow that energy. Yeah, but you dont set a program for yourself. You do. When you want to do it. Then in a rush, youre not in a rush. Then in oh then in a rush and in a rush and then in a rush. Yeah, yeah. But im different. I wake up every morning at 530. I have four a long period of time. Just love that those hours want me for husband died. It meant that i had 2 hours or so before he woke up, which meant were completely quiet. And then hed come down for breakfast. Youd hear him at the top of the stairs, im here. Its time for. And we would have breakfast together and read the newspapers. I mean, it was had a real ritualistic partnership and then he would go off into study in the last year before he died, he was opening these boxes which ill talk to you about. He had saved 300 boxes of his entire career in the 1960s. He was everywhere, wanted a person to be. He worked for jfk was in the white house. He was there when jfk died, getting the eternal. He did all of lbjs great civil rights speeches. He was in New Hampshire with bobby kennedy, i mean, with mccarthy and then with with bobby when he died. And it was a time capsule, the sixties. So for the last few years of his life, i would be working what i was doing in my study. And a good friend of ours, deb colby, came over to our house to start going through the boxes him so theyd go over to his study which was on the other side of the room, then come back for lunch. And in the days before this he would always be looking over what i did. Give me advice on what id been writing. Then hed go back to the study in the afternoon and would do other things, maybe read poetry or read drama and i could work again. But then every night at five or 6 00, we stopped, never worked after that we after our kids grown, we went out to dinner every night with a gang of people in Concord Center who we knew the same restaurants, some restaurant monday nights, some restaurant thursday nights. Im mercer and then we come home, watch on television, go to bed. And so ive always been a morning person. Yeah and the hardest thing that happened, you know, after so what happened anyway of right as well since i started talking about the boxes so i was helping him eventually after he went through them the first time i went through them the second time with him and we the sixties together essentially and it made him realize hed been sad he hadnt wanted to open the boxes, even though. They slept with us for 40 years because the sixties ended so sadly with bobby dead and jfk dead and Martin Luther king dead and the riots and the antiwar violence and the war itself. And so but finally, when turned 80 decided, if i have any wisdom to its now so lets go through them and it was a great experience it just made him feel it gave him a sense of purpose in those last years he was in his eighties but he in there every day in these boxes he realized i was going to help him to write a book and then when he died i had to figure out what to do. And i lost my routine. I moved from concord because i couldnt stand being in the which wed built together with the house of books. Every room filled with a different fiction in drama and another poetry and another. And it was too big. So i went to boston and i lost the routine. And for a year really didnt get anything done. I was thinking, can i really do this . And then finally, somehow i started waking up again at 530, i brought the same couch that id sat on in the other and the same rug and the same chair. That was the only thing. And all the furniture was too big and and an old furniture. But i kept that and i went back that in my study, and i started at 530. And one morning i started again after a year and figured i can do that. So just, just almost finished it. Its coming out in april and its called an unfinished love story, a personal history of the so that routine mattered. Routine matters. That was a long answer to your quest. And it was a good answer. And robin, a new show thats out today this very day, right today is. The day, right. Right. Yeah, thats amazing. I didnt know that. And thats capote in the swans, right . Oh, they they thats good. Thats good. Well, what how do you feel feel . Well, im very proud of it, because its. Its not sort of normal in any way. Its very odd and drift and and its sort of melancholy and its more of a meditation on a feud than a narrative driven story of a feud. And its its it came out right. It came out. What a great feeling. Yeah, really good. And i to talk about adaptation of something youve both been involved in but did you feel like you had to get these people right . I mean did you feel that you were confined like to to truman or you were babe paley . Did you did you communicate with them in some in some way where they would say. No, thats not me or. Yes, it is. Did they hold you back . Do you think that those are people who shut up ever . Yeah yeah. Save for babe. Theres always a lot of footage of everybody but babe paley. Somehow is very reserved and, kind of absence, so you have to infer her some way. But certainly, like you, know truman, theres it really is about decline and fall and unfortunately, theres so much filmed evidence of that. You those appearances on cavett and carson and Stanley Siegel where you just see him sort of like a kind of camembert cheese into the chair. So theres a lot of that that voice was sort. But thats what i do. I look at someone and i can figure out their pretty much doris, do you feel that the lincoln do you feel that your lincoln would spielbergs lincoln . Yes, i do. I mean, what happened . It was a long process. Took almost, maybe almost ten years to make that movie because. I first approached me. We were at a he had asked me and a bunch of historians to get together because he was doing a documentary on the century that had just passed and and i was one of the people there. He found that i was writing about lincoln and he said hed always wanted to make a movie about lincoln, but had to wait until he was mature enough to, be able to do it, to tackle it because he cared much about lincoln. So he asked me to come out to his house in long island. We talked it. I was only half done. I had i was it was 1999 and i didnt think it was until 2005. But he decided he wanted to get it and then he got an option. Then it was on other movies and he keep calling me from whatever movie was on to say what, did lincoln do today . That was his relaxing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, i can see that. And so then finally decided he wanted to get a scriptwriter start. So he had two scriptwriters work on it for some years, but they never quite got daniel daylewis as what he wanted to be. Daniel had said no to those first two scripts. He said, theyre beautiful scripts, but they dont speak to me. Finally he got tony kushner to do it. And i think, i partly persuaded tony like i persuaded daniel that when you study lincoln youre going to feel like youre a better person for living with him, which is what i certainly felt. And daniel day then became friend. I mean, he asked me immediately, as soon as daniel said yes. He said, please take them to springfield because he has to see the sites away. But we dont want people to know that hes lincoln yet because were not going to announce that he wants to have a year to become lincoln. So i told the tour guide, you dont know who this guy is. We just come in and look around and at that all worked. It was fine, except we went to a bar that night beforehand and was supposed to go with him under an assumed name, but somebody immediately bought a string and i thought, steven is going to kill me. But they didnt bring the drinks for him. They bought it for me. So it was only in springfield. Would that happen . He up to daniel. Daniel is so unrecognizable. He comes every character, right . So this part of the story. So then anyway, for a year i sent him books only texts he doesnt email. So learned to text my kids tease me because i fell in love with him. How could you not . As daniel daylewis and his Abraham Lincoln at the same time . And so we became somewhat close and then however, when i went to the premiere no, im sorry. When i went to the production in richmond, he wouldnt let me see play lincoln because he never, ever is out of character. So he couldnt hello to us. Hes never going to not be anything even the other actors had to call him. Mr. President. The whole he never relaxed. Oh, annoying. It was so crazy. Right . But its. Hes staying in here as soon as the last shot was taken, he. Hi, steven. And that was it. No he would talk to steven, but not even to tony. And so anyway. So, but i went to the production site and rick carter, who won the academy award, he takes me into a pinball machine and factory. Its stardust on the floor. And i think, what is this. And then we opens the door and its a recreation of the white house in the 1860s it was astonishing the rug the rug that had been there, they had had woven specially the wallpaper was the way was supposed to be. There were cubby holes in the desk. Lincoln used to put little parts of his speeches and the lighting was low is as it was, and i felt miraculously transpose it back to that every detail, even though nobody would necessarily know that was there. So it was it was great. I watched other there instead of daniel. Never saw daniel until the premiere. So then i went to l. A. , i saw him there. But then in new york he said, we have to go to a bar afterwards to celebrate that first bar in springfield. So he took me his favorite bar, the carlyle, and had these favorite, favorite drinks of his called old cubans, quite a few of them, but it was fine. Everything was great. Then he gets to the first of a series of awards and spielberg comes to give it to him and. He tells the story of how he wanted him to do this, but he turned down two scripts and he these great letters. But he finally said yes. So daniel got up there and somehow unaccountably there was a wall journal reporter in the room. He said, i, i dont reject everything. When Doris Kearns Goodwin asked me to go binge drinking with her, i accepted it. One answer. Good. And i was thrilled to be wall street journal, but it was great experience. I mean, when somebody as you know well, somebody can buy your work and they dont have to talk. Thats right. But let me be part of the process at every step along the way. And just to go to the academy awards, i felt really proud of what they done. And the interesting thing is this big fat i had originally tony had written a script that was more chronological and he loved and chase not liked him as a person, loved him as a character. And then was just too big. And they finally this is where imagination comes in. They hit the idea of just doing the 13th amendment, but meanwhile they knew the character of lincoln and thats what mattered to me was that that they got the person was they got the political genius he was got the humor person he was they got the melancholy that he had. And thats what you care about. Did they responsibly do that they even i was even able to persuade daniel and steven to tell my favorite story. Lincoln loved to tell stories that were sometimes off color. And this one he told endlessly. Daniel told it brilliantly. It was about the American Revolution hero, ethan allen, who went to england. The war and the english were a dinner party. They decided to embarrass him by, putting a huge picture of general George Washington only outhouse, where hed have to encounter it sooner or later. They figured hed be at the indignity. George washington in an outhouse. But came out of the outhouse and he wasnt upset at all. So often you see George Washington there. Oh yes, he said i think it was the perfectly appropriate place. What do you mean . They said, well, theres nothing to make an instrument ship faster than the sight of general George Washington. And he great. I mean, he got his humor. He got his sadness. So anyway, was a great experience. So this panel is called the power of storytelling and when when i read that, i figured well, thats for the audience, for the reader, you know. But what you just said about lincoln making you a better person, im thinking this is also a power of storytelling change. The storyteller and and and so i want to know what was it about lincoln that that that did this to you and then i want robbie bates to answer that same question, not about lincoln, but about his own. So work i mean, if if the a profound time when course of of writing changed you. Yeah i think you know what lincoln was making everybody feel was somehow he wasnt going to allow past resentments to stay within in them. Stanton, who becomes his secretary of defense, was was humiliating to him in the law case years earlier. But he he would be the best person for the job puts him in that they end up being as Close Friends as anybody be. He had the normal feelings, envy and anger. But he said, if you and if you let those feelings, theyll poison you. Well, every the jealousy is the worst envy. I every time i feel one of those things, i just abe, be there. Stop, stop. And he just. He had all the qualities that want in a character. A good character humility and empathy and resilience and accountable in acknowledgment of errors and ambition for something larger than self. So i did feel i really felt like he had changed me a little bit. I dont have that kind of experience. Think what the process changes. You know, you do you go through the process of going from an idea to pages to a whole piece and then say its being filmed, the kind of gargantua, an effort it takes, as you know from lincoln to sudden to to turn into something thats alive and dimensional and the process of going from nothing to a thing thats airing tonight or first hour of the eight that that process you i feel i recently realized that i had to accumulate it a lot of a lot of work over years and the i mean this is so weirdly intimate but that i didnt have to be like the kid anymore. Yeah well, what a great moment. Yeah. How did that how did how do i get that. You know, its a very its a lot years of of therapy, but its also years of work of working and and, you know. I am so you know, youre good. Do you do you know youre good . Im good. Im good sometimes im good at writing. Im i try and be a good person, but i dont know what youre asking me, you know . I mean, like can you when you look and say, wow you know im not a kid anymore is part that like oh ive done good yeah yeah no i dont say ive done good. I usually have relief that not dead. Yeah yeah right. Yeah. Really still thats, you know but also you never know, whether the next thing is going to be good. I mean. Thats the problem no matter what. I was talking about that this morning one when Steven Spielberg showed me the first cut of his movie, he so nervous his wife was there and his partner that he wouldnt stay in the with us he was pacing i was imagine and then he finally came back in and he said, what you guys think . And when we said we saw lincoln alive, he was walking and talking. So he calls daniel in ireland like two in the morning to say they liked. And then we had two bottles of champagne. But thats you want you want a professional to never feel like youve done now. So of course its going to be good. You get scared with every single one. I mean, i keep thinking now it was fine when i was working the book, but now theres that period between, the time you you turn it in, its out there in the world and its going to be seen in the world. And yes. And then you get scared and thats scary and inevitable. And i imagine even maybe i would be scared even more scared if i did what you did, which is spending all of your time working on this thing and then giving it away for someone else to suffer to a director, for instance, or a producer or a to, to, to make it also, youre youre giving up a certain amount of control at a certain. Are you . Well, i mean, i also the ep along with ryan murphy, who produced it and i have a son who had okay i mean, i wouldnt say i had power. I had i had a certain degree of rather than and and that gus van zandt, who directed most of the episodes and i had a great working relationship. And, you know, so i was the whole time and the times i havent been in it hasnt turned out so great actually. Really great . Yeah, yeah, yeah. That doesnt happen that doesnt happen with us. It hasnt happened. It hasnt happened for you has it . Im not sure i know what you mean. Well you mean if if you were selling other of your other other books been made films. Oh no. Weve actually a really good love. Have the First Experience was my husband wrote a chapter in a book about his investigation of the ring television quiz show. Some of you may remember the 64,000 question 21 and Robert Redford made it unbelievable and we went to the set and rob morrow, who played came to our house for couple of weeks to absorb my husbands characteristics, and i thought it was a really one. Youve been lucky. In fact, at the end we went to the premiere and redford said to , my husband, what did you think of . He said, how could i not love it . I was the moral center of the movie. I got to say, we we were going to get television, but television got us. And meanwhile, i was funny and and i and i was handsome. Yeah, thats a good thats a good. So. But you now producing as executive producing like. Yes. Well what happened is the History Channel to beth lasky, my partner and me, with the idea that we would help them to work on be an ep on a movie on a six hour document tree on George Washington wasnt one of my guys. So this was scary that the first film thing that wed be doing together . I didnt know him well, but id always wanted to write about him. But it was too late. I mean, there were too many things written about him. And then another ten year project. And this time in my age seemed a little crazy. So it was great to have a team to work with. I loved process. We were involved in every step the from the writers board to the theres another word for it but anyway the outline the treatment the scripts we saw dailies, we talked to the actors and we loved it. So we formed a Production Company and then now has done lincoln a seven and a half hours and Teddy Roosevelt 6 hours like franklin roosevelt. So weve had four of them done in the last couple of years. So our little pastimes come to an and were now doing a project, an eight hour project with Kevin Costner on the west. How fabulous . Oh, its been fun. I love movies. I love so well i only a few minutes left and i guess i want to know what do you dream about for four years for yourself . The future of yourself as a storyteller. Please ask doris that for. I think, i think really in the end, what i love history so much i think it if i can make other people feel a love for history because theyve seen a film or theyve read a book history gives us prospect. I think it gives us solace. I think especially in the time were living where its so anxious and people dont know where the country is going to be able to go on. If im a public historian at times on television to be able to talk about times were really, really hard. This ones hard. They were really, really, really hard. The civil war, i mean, no way that lincoln thought when he got in, he could probably imagine that he could get through those first three months. He later said, without going crazy and the early days of the turn of the 20th century, when things very much like today, the global revolution that we have today was echoed then by the industrial revolution. There was a gap between the rich and the poor people in the country hated people in the city, people who are old, upset with people who were young. All these new inventions, the pace of life was changing. There was a populist movement or the early days of the Great Depression or the early days of world war two. We thought we were in the worst of times then, and somehow this came through. So i just thats why i think if people can love history more, its being cut down in high schools. Its heartbreaking to me. It gives that sense of lessons and perspective. We learn what worked, what didnt work. And if i made other people inspire them to do like history that thats what i feel thats a great thats a right now robbie can you take this you have minute and 8 seconds i want to order you what im ready to do it. Dont take it away. You know, i noticed like when i started writing, i was a, you know, a poor playwright, and then my plays started getting and then i started drifting to hollywood and i noticed that ive spent a long time learning to battle the the the currents in the in in business and. They are punishing and exhausting the processes as well. And i think i would like. Just spend some time just i dont know that the theater, the is also sort of theres so much out there to to navigate. I think id like to like write a couple of little novellas like james salter, you know, and quietly live a quieter life and, you know, worry about picking up the phone and not worry about is the script on time and are they okay and, you know, theres whos in and whos out. I dont want do that much longer. I would burn out. I want salter you. Thank you. Yes. Was hoping you would say that. I would say that now were were i theyre telling me were done. But but i hope that you come up and meet robby doris and theyll sign for you after this and have a great time at the at the festival. Thank you both. Thank you. And boy, i just dont think that i sams just a great book about francis coppola. Yes. Hes not just the person who peoplea it guys, its been a crd