SYSK’s Summer Movie Playlist: Why was Titicut Follies banned?

Summary

Stuff You Should Know: SYSK’s Summer Movie Playlist - Why Was Titicut Follies Banned?

Release Date: June 27, 2025
Host/Author: iHeartPodcasts
Description: If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Niño, true crime, and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

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Introduction

In the episode titled SYSK’s Summer Movie Playlist: Why Was Titicut Follies Banned?, hosts Chuck Bryant and Jerry delve into the controversial documentary Titicut Follies. This film, directed by Frederick Wiseman, provides an unfiltered glimpse into the lives of inmates at Bridgewater State Hospital, a facility for the criminally insane. The discussion navigates through the film's content, its cinéma vérité style, the ensuing legal battles, and its lasting impact on documentary filmmaking and institutional reform.

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Background on Titicut Follies

Chuck introduces Titicut Follies as a serious and somber documentary, marking possibly the last in their series due to its heavy subject matter. He emphasizes the film's significance in cinematic history despite its disturbing content.

Notable Quote:
"So this is not, I guess we're ending on sort of a down note because this isn't some fun talk about a fun movie. It's some pretty serious talk about a pretty sad documentary."
[02:30] — Chuck Bryant

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Frederick Wiseman and Cinéma Vérité

The hosts explore Frederick Wiseman's background, highlighting his transition from a Yale law professor to a pioneering documentary filmmaker. They discuss his adoption of the cinéma vérité style—a method aiming to capture reality without overt manipulation.

Notable Quote:
"Cinema verite, I mean, what's the direct translation?"
[07:24] — Chuck Bryant

Definition:
Cinéma vérité translates to "direct cinema," focusing on unobtrusive filming to let subjects behave naturally without scripted interactions.

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Bridgewater State Hospital: Setting of the Documentary

Chuck and Jerry provide historical context about Bridgewater State Hospital, originally established as a poorhouse in 1854 and evolving into an asylum for the criminally insane by the late 19th century. The facility housed a mix of violent criminals and individuals with minor offenses or no offenses at all, often without proper advocacy for their release.

Notable Quote:
"So in Massachusetts, by the way."
[14:07] — Chuck Bryant

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Content and Key Scenes of Titicut Follies

The discussion moves to specific scenes from the documentary, illustrating the harsh realities within the institution. They describe interactions between guards and inmates, highlighting psychological torment and the dehumanizing conditions faced by patients.

Notable Scene:
A guard aggressively shaves an inmate named Jim, persistently provoking him to elicit a reaction despite Jim's efforts to remain composed.

Notable Quote:
"They're trying to drive him mad."
[30:54] — Chuck Bryant

Another poignant moment features a lucid inmate, Vladimir, who articulates his deteriorating mental state due to the environment, only to have his pleas dismissed by clinical staff.

Notable Quote:
"He just wastes his breath. He just, like, they were never going to listen to him."
[38:00] — Jerry

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Legal Battles and the Ban

The episode delves into the legal controversies surrounding Titicut Follies. Initially approved by state officials, the film faced backlash for breaching inmates' privacy and depicting them in distressing situations. Lieutenant Governor Elliot Richardson spearheaded efforts to ban the film, leading to a landmark court case.

Notable Quote:
"In 68, it was a judge, superior Court judge, named Harry Callas, who found that it breached privacy."
[47:19] — Chuck Bryant

Despite Wiseman's meticulous permissions and ethical filming practices, the court ordered the destruction of the film's negatives, labeling it as "a nightmare of ghoulish obscenities." Wiseman appealed the decision, arguing for his First Amendment rights.

Resolution:
By the early 1990s, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, led by Judge Andrew Gillmire, ruled in favor of Wiseman, allowing the film's release with blurred faces to protect privacy. This decision balanced freedom of expression with individuals' right to privacy, setting a precedent in legal standards.

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Impact and Legacy

Titicut Follies played a crucial role in exposing the inhumane conditions of mental institutions, sparking conversations and reforms in mental health care. Although initially banned, the film found its niche in educational settings, film festivals, and streaming platforms like Kanopy, ensuring its continued influence.

Frederick Wiseman's body of work, consisting of 48 documentaries, remains a testament to his dedication to institutional critique through immersive and unfiltered observation.

Notable Quote:
"Zipporah Films is named after his wife who passed away a couple years ago at the age of 90."
[54:11] — Chuck Bryant

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Conclusion

Chuck and Jerry reflect on the enduring relevance of Titicut Follies and Wiseman's filmmaking philosophy. They acknowledge the film's raw portrayal of institutional life and its significance in documentary cinema. The episode underscores the delicate balance between truthful representation and ethical responsibility in filmmaking.

Notable Quote:
"Aware of what they're doing, and he just can't help himself. Probably, like five different times, he reacts and then tries to regain his composure again."
[30:51] — Chuck Bryant

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Final Thoughts

Listeners are encouraged to watch Titicut Follies for a profound understanding of its themes and historical context, with a cautionary note on its challenging content. The episode serves as a comprehensive exploration of a film that not only pushed the boundaries of documentary filmmaking but also left a lasting impact on societal perceptions of mental health institutions.

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Note: Timestamps correspond to the beginning of each cited segment within the provided transcript.

Transcript

[Chuck Bryant]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Josh Clark]

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[Jerry]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Jerry]

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[Chuck Bryant]

Does that sound crazy?

[Jerry]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Jerry]

And more at your DSW store or dsw.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey everybody, and welcome to the summer movie playlist. Chuck here introducing today's show, which is I think maybe the last one in the series on Teddicut Follies. So this is not, I guess we're ending on sort of a down note because this isn't some fun talk about a fun movie. It's some pretty serious talk about a pretty sad documentary. But it's a remarkable film in its own way and has its part place in film history. So we thought it was a pretty good episode. We hope you enjoy it all over again. Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Jerry]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And this is Stuff youf Should Know. Just us today. Jerry's on vacation and that's cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think Jerry's in Disney World. Kind of went right after me.

[Jerry]

She's in the D. I said, hey, Jerry.

[Chuck Bryant]

In the south bathroom of Frontierland above The toilet. I've left. I've taped a gun. Go shoot Mo Green.

[Jerry]

Oh, my gosh.

[Chuck Bryant]

Go shoot Mo Green in the restaurant booth.

[Jerry]

Wow. No. Mo Green got it on the massage table.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that's right.

[Jerry]

The police commissioner or the police chief. He told me.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't believe I messed that up.

[Jerry]

He was tangential to the hit with the bathroom. I don't remember who he was trying to hit.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. I goofed that up. Hey, shout out to.

[Jerry]

Wait, no, I'm not done sorting this out.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, go ahead. Name all the hits in the Godfather. Go ahead, shout out to our pal and friend of the show, Kevin Pollock, because that made me think of the great, great show that is one of my favorite shows called Better Things from the wonderful, talented Pamela Adlon. They are entering their final season, and I watched the first episode the other night, and Pollock, who plays her brother on the show, had a great line that I knew was improv, where he was getting in his car and I can't remember what they were talking about. And he said, right in the eye, like Moe Green. And I texted him immediately, and I was like, right in the eye, like Moe Green. I was like, that was yours. And he went, oh, yeah. He said, that was improv.

[Jerry]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was very fun. It's always fun to be able to watch a TV show and text your pal that's on that TV show, right?

[Jerry]

Yeah, he's got the best parts. He just pops up in all the best stuff, you know?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he's in Maisel. He's. I think. And I've talked to Pollock about this, and he's like, yeah, I agree. I think he could star in a really great indie film. I just think he's a really great actor and he's great at comedy, but I think he's on top of that, just a really, really great actor.

[Jerry]

Didn't he star in that Project Greenlight film?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. Did he? Which one?

[Jerry]

I'm pretty sure. I think the first season.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, boy. I don't remember those movies. I know that Shia LaBeouf. That was where he got his start.

[Jerry]

Is that right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Was he in one of those. The Battle of Shaker Heights or something?

[Jerry]

I think that might have been the one that Pollock was in.

[Chuck Bryant]

Was he in that? I didn't remember that movie, but, I mean, a really good movie. And I'm not sure the Project Greenlight movies were there. It was a cool show, though. I dug it.

[Jerry]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm surprised they hadn't brought that back in the iPhone filmmaking age.

[Jerry]

Yeah. It's a little surprising. Who would be, who would bring it back, though now?

[Chuck Bryant]

Ben and Matt could bring it back. I mean, they. That's who did it the first time, right?

[Jerry]

Sure. But I mean, are they still relevant? Aren't there two, like, younger versions?

[Chuck Bryant]

The new Ben and Matt better. I don't know who the new Ben and Matt are.

[Jerry]

How about Wiz Khalifa and Charlemagne?

[Chuck Bryant]

The goddamn.

[Jerry]

Sure. There you go.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, great. Anyway, Kevin Pollock's a great actor and a good dude.

[Jerry]

Yeah, agreed. And probably somebody, I would guess who's seen the movie that we're going to talk about today. I would be really surprised if he hasn't seen it. Just because I feel like if you are into movies, if you're a movie maker, if you consider yourself a cinemaphile, if you want to get punched in the stomach, you've probably seen Titty Cut Follies, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, this is one that I saw in film class in college. It is one that you. There's about a 50, 50 chance that you will see this if you've seen it in film class in a college. People like Casey, Our colleague Casey Pegram no doubt is a Frederick Weissman fan. I'm surely if I texted him, he'd be like, oh, sure, Weissman, yes. Although I found Titicut Follies was not one of his greater works.

[Jerry]

Yeah, that sounds like Casey.

[Chuck Bryant]

God bless Casey. All time. Greatest movie crush cast. But yeah, Fred Weissman made this film. He was a law professor in his 30s, in the 60s, and made this documentary film about a mental institution, specifically one for the criminally insane is what they called it. And it was a very, you know, it was a movie that gained a lot of reputation as like the most disturbing film you've ever seen. And it's been banned in this many places and that kind of thing. But when you kind of peel it back, it's just a very straight up sort of cinema verite documentary about a institution that needed to get their act together.

[Jerry]

Right. And that was kind of Wiseman told Jam, like he's made 48 films. I think he just turned 92 a couple months ago.

[Chuck Bryant]

Amazing.

[Jerry]

And starting in 1966, he made about a film a year.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

And he has his own style, like you said, cinema verite, which I feel like we should probably kind of just go ahead and explain, don't you? Sure, yeah, go ahead, go ahead, Film guy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, cinema verite, I mean, what's the direct translation?

[Jerry]

Direct cinema.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, direct cinema. And it's the idea that you kind of set a camera up and let it. Let life happen in front of it. For whatever your subject is, you don't. You don't do interviews, you don't do talking head shots. You don't. It's really just one good example. Is that documentary in the. Of course, now, I can't think of it in the 70s about the American family that ran on PBS that was so groundbreaking, where they just set up a camera and followed this family. And if you're thinking this sounds a lot like reality tv, I think in its purest form, reality TV can be this. But it really turned into something else entirely.

[Jerry]

Oh, yeah. It's just so deeply manipulated by producers behind the scenes who tell them to do this or that or whatever. Yeah, Cinema verites would not want to do that. They just shoot and hope also that people act like themselves. That's another thing. And one thing, Frederick Wiseman, the guy who made Titicut Follies, said he believed that people basically acted like themselves when the camera was around because people are in general, lousy actors.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, we can attest to that.

[Jerry]

They're behaving like you would expect them to behave. So they're probably acting like they would without the cameras, Especially in a cinema verite kind of setup, because it's intrusive. There's a camera there, but it's not nearly as intrusive as like a camera on like some rig that's flying around. Like there's lighting people and campers and a craft services table that's calling your name. It's just much less intrusive than that. It's minimally intrusive as far as filmmaking goes. And that's the point of it, because they want to document reality without leading the viewer as much as possible, from what I understand.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's exactly it. And I love cinema verite documentaries especially. And I also like sort of quasi cinema verite where there's a lot of like. I don't mind interviews being put in there, as long as there's a lot of just sort of watching life happen. It's really amazingly engrossing. There were these two filmmakers that I think inspired Weissman, Richard Leacock and Robert Drew, who in the early. I think in the 50s and early 1960s were kind of dabbling in cinema verite documentaries. And they made one in particular called Mooney vs. Foul, which is about a high school football championship. And Mooney and Fowl are the two coaches. And I watched the trailer for that today. I Guess his. I'm guessing it's his daughter that put this up on Vimeo, along with some other, like, interviews with her dad, Drew's daughter, that it's really engrossing just to watch. And especially because all you see, if you're a modern person in 2022 and you're like, what was life like in the 1950s? You don't get that from I Love Lucy and Dick Van Dyke. Like, those are great shows. But to be able to just sit in and take a peek at these high school football coaches and these people, the community in the stands and these players, like, it's just so engrossing to me. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I really like it.

[Jerry]

Yeah, no, totally. But, yeah, I feel like even if it isn't your cup of tea, you would, like you said, be engrossed by it. I don't think there's any way to just be like, I don't know, some people probably find it dull. I'm sure there are, but it is engrossing. I don't think there's any other way to universally describe it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And Drew, I sent you that one little interview snippet. I don't know if you saw it, but he sort of was talking about being a new form of journalism where he talked about. It's like a. They were like, well, what is this, though? And he was like, well, it's like a play without a playwright or a movie without actors or journalism without opinions. And I was like, oh, well, that's interesting to say. In the 1950s.

[Jerry]

Yeah. All the way back then.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But it's. They saw it as Lee Lock and I think Drew saw it more as a form of journalism. And I feel like that's what documentaries used to be. And that's changed a lot sometimes for the better. It can be all things, I guess, but it seems like documentaries used to be way more journalism and less big time entertainment.

[Jerry]

Yeah. What do you think about. How do you feel about recreations in documentaries?

[Chuck Bryant]

I think it can be cool if you have a good, like a new spin on it. Kind of like when the Kid Stays in the Picture came out, the documentary about the producer, what's his Face?

[Jerry]

Robert Evans.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Robert Evans.

[Jerry]

The Godfather back then.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, exactly. Full circle. They did those recreations through animation and this really cool style of animation that like, it was really engaging and awesome and like recreate can be really cool if you do it right, I think.

[Jerry]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or really bad if it's like some dumb cop show on tv.

[Jerry]

Oh, yeah, like.

[Chuck Bryant]

But those are kind of fun, too.

[Jerry]

Yeah, you mean like the one headline news shows 100 episodes a day. Forensic Files.

[Chuck Bryant]

I haven't seen it, but if it's the recreate I'm thinking of where it's like, you know, they recreated murder on, like. You got $500 to shoot this.

[Jerry]

Yes, that's exactly right. You're thinking of Forensic Files. But still, if you watch enough of it, it'll really turn. Your whole life will turn dark. You gotta be careful with Forensic Files, everybody.

[Chuck Bryant]

So should we go back and talk about Bridgewater State Hospital?

[Jerry]

Yeah. Because this is the place where Frederick Wiseman showed up with his camera, with permission, as we'll see. And by the time he got there in 19, I think he shot in 1965, maybe 1966.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, 66.

[Jerry]

Okay. When he got there, it had been around for over 100 years. It didn't start out as a state hospital. It started out as a poor house, an almshouse, I think all the way back in 1854.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And it's interesting when you read these. It's disturbing, but when you read these old timey classifications in medicine or especially in mental health, where someone be. You know, the description of someone that might be put there might just be bad. Like, that's one of the descriptions.

[Jerry]

Right. Like, that'd be on par with, like labeling them alcoholic or schizophrenia or something like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But, you know, if you were. If you had an alcohol problem or you had legitimate, you know, mental health issues, or if you were pregnant maybe, or blind or you had syphilis, you might have been put in this poor house in 1854.

[Jerry]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So in Massachusetts, by the way.

[Jerry]

Yeah. I don't know if we said that or not.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

So that's how it started out. And then over time, they started adding criminals and focused more on criminals and the mentally ill. And then by the time 1895 rolled around, it became the state asylum for insane criminals at the state workhouse at Bridgewater. And then eventually it became known as Bridgewater State Hospital, I think by 1909. And then very crucially, here it was handed over from the State Board of Charity, because, remember, it started out as a poorhouse over to the Massachusetts Bureau of Prison. So for all intents and purposes, at least bureaucratically speaking, it is a. Is a place where the criminally insane, how they were termed in the 20th century, are held.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And there were some bad criminals in there. I mean, there were murderers, there were people who were convicted of cannibalism. Of rape, of children, or just generally of rape. So there were some bad dudes in there for sure. But then there were also. And this was sort of one of the saddest things about sort of that time in this country. Those people were right alongside other people who either committed a very minor crime or maybe didn't commit a crime at all. And they were just, quote, unquote, being held there temporarily. But that could stretch on into years.

[Jerry]

Yeah, there's still something today called civil commitment, and it's basically that you were being held not because of a crime or because of a minor crime, and you maybe have even served your sentence, but you're being held because you had been deemed mentally unfit to return to society. Even though maybe you didn't even start out, like, in a mental hospital, maybe you started out in jail, and then you're just a troublemaker. They considered you a troublemaker in jail, and you got sent to the hospital. At that point, your sentence was just. It just went away. It was. You were there until a doctor decided you should be let out. And the problem was getting the attention of a doctor long enough to say, oh, actually, you're. You're fine. You can let you out was really difficult to do. And so it was a really desperate place, especially for people who didn't feel like they should be there, belong there. Because after a while, it seemed to exert its influence on your mind and your outlook, and it would. It would bend you to. To reflect it so that you kind of needed to be there after a while, even if you didn't start out that way.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, anyone who's ever seen One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, it's kind of. Exactly. That happens in the plot. Like, people got worse at these places.

[Jerry]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And you mentioned the actual medical attention. President of the Massachusetts Bar association at the time, Paul Tamborello. And big thanks to Olivia for digging this up and putting this together for us. But he told the Harvard Crimson back then that of the 650 men held at the hospital at the time, actual medical staff were able to see less than half of them one time a year for about 20 minutes.

[Jerry]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So other than that, you're like, well, then who was it if it wasn't medical staff? It was like prison guards, basically.

[Jerry]

Yes. And even then, when you did get that 20 minutes, you were confronted by a person or group of people who were going on the premise that everything you said came out of your mouth was loony and not based in reality or fact, no matter how well you put your case or stated your case or complained. Like any show of emotion would just prove to them that you were meant to be in there for another year until they could hopefully see you again and reevaluate you.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, there was this one example Livia found of. Geez, it's hard to believe. Matteo Calicocci was arrested in 1927 at my daughter's age, almost seven years old, for stealing seven bucks from a grocery store, which is a pretty good take, 1927, by the way. And he was found incompetent to stand trial and then kind of sent all around over the years to different institutions after he tried to escape in 1935, was eventually landed at Bridgewater. And this was another one of those archaic terms, was charged with bad habits and resisting authority. And this seven year old eventually ended up here later in life, but stayed there for 28 years and released in 1963. So that's just one example of how like sort of a small petty crime. But if you maybe have an attitude or you're a troublemaker as a kid and you bounce around from place to place, you just might wind up here with no one advocating for you. Uh, it kind of this all made me think of like what families were doing. But I guess at the time some families were kind of like maybe convinced themselves they were better off there or they didn't want to deal with the trouble or there were no family. I don't know.

[Jerry]

Yeah. Or the family was poor and had no influence over anybody so they couldn't do anything about it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Very sad. Should we take a break?

[Jerry]

Yeah, I say we take a break and we'll come back with Wiseman and his tenure while he was at Bridgewater.

[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Jerry]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Jerry]

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[Chuck Bryant]

Mm.

[Jerry]

But then when he graduated he still ended up getting drafted anyway. And he was in there for almost.

[Chuck Bryant]

Two years, kind of after the war, but. Yeah.

[Jerry]

Yeah, but I still. I'll bet he was not happy about being drafted either way.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Jerry]

So he. He went. He, I guess went to Korea for a couple of years. And then after the army, he and his wife. What is her name?

[Chuck Bryant]

Zipporah Batshaw. Great name.

[Jerry]

Yep. She. She was a law professor as well. They went to Paris, lived for a couple of years, and then decided they needed to move back. So they moved back to, like, the Boston area. But while there, Frederick Wiseman got into filmmaking. He started just shooting stuff with a little 8 millimeter camera at about the time that cinema verite was being developed in France.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. So like you said, he came back from France, started teaching law at Bull and sort of had that filmmaking bug still. So he bought the rights to a book, a novel called the Cool World, about poverty in Harlem. And he hired a woman named Shirley Clark. Sorry. To direct it. And it was a very small. I don't think it was much of a big film at all, but it was a very small sort of indie film at the time, which is to say it was probably not seen much, but Wiseman was like, hey, like, if Shirley Clark can do this thing, I can do this thing. And I don't like law school. I don't like teaching law. And one of the things he did because he didn't love teaching law was take his class on a lot of field trips, I guess, just to mix things up. And they used to go to Bridgewater, and after a few visits, he was like, wait a minute. I think everything kind of came together. His love of filmmaking, his cinema verite kind of becoming popular, and his interest in that, and then his disinterest in law and interest in Bridgewater. So he had this idea to make this film there.

[Jerry]

Yeah. So as we'll see later, this is kind of crucial. He got permission to show up. He said many times in later interviews, Bridgewater is not the kind of place you just kind of parachute in at night, do all your filming, and then creep away at dawn with all of your footage. Like, he had to get extensive permission from.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sounds like he's done that before, though, which is kind of cool.

[Jerry]

Yeah, we've done that before, too, in grocery stores, remember?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that's right.

[Jerry]

So he got permission from the lieutenant governor. He got permission from the Department of Corrections head. He got permission of the superintendent of Bridgewater. They all knew he was there, and they would have Figured out eventually anyway, because he spent 29 days filming in Bridgewater. And he would just do his cinema verite style, where he would just walk around and just film stuff, film, whatever he could. Just film, film, film. And I saw something where he said that for his documentaries, he films anything from, like, 75 hours at a minimum. Chuck. To 250 hours. And then he goes through it all and edits all the stuff he likes. And then after, like, month eight of editing, he'll start piecing it together into like a Arc. A story arc.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow. Which boiled down in this case, to 83 minutes of a movie.

[Jerry]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And the name Titicut Follies comes from. I think Titicut was a Native American name, I would guess somewhere in the region. I didn't really pinpoint it.

[Jerry]

I think for the Bridgewater area, that's what they called it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. And the Follies were. The film opens up with a musical performance by the. I guess they were inmates with the song Strike up. The band. They're all dressed the same. And you can see quite a few clips on YouTube. But as Olivia points out, Wiseman has always been really guarded with how his films are exhibited. And so I don't think you can just, like, go YouTube this thing up and watch the whole thing still.

[Jerry]

Even I did last night.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, on YouTube?

[Jerry]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay.

[Jerry]

Not on YouTube. No, it was on Vimeo.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, interesting. All right. I wonder if that's, like, some sort of pirated upload.

[Jerry]

It was a VHS copy put online, so I'm thinking, yeah, it was pirated.

[Chuck Bryant]

Did you watch it all?

[Jerry]

Yeah, I did. I watched. I'd never seen it before. I was familiar with it, the title. I had not a lot of idea of what it was about, but. Yeah. Was.

[Chuck Bryant]

What'd you think?

[Jerry]

Certainly striking. It was really something like, it had ups and downs and highs and lows, and I think it was everything Wiseman wanted me to feel about it. It was pretty great.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, it is great. Even at 83 minutes, it's tough to sit through the whole thing because I think by its nature, cinema verite can be taxing. Yeah. Even while engrossing, it can be pretty taxing. That's the best way to put it. But it's also, obviously, in this case, it's not about a high school football championship. It's literally watching these people. I mean, I guess we should just talk about some of the scenes, maybe.

[Jerry]

Yeah. And a lot of the people are gonna go back and be like, joshua, this was great. Bear with us, everybody.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, hey, you're a cinephile.

[Jerry]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Punch me in the face.

[Jerry]

But no, the stomach face says way too hostile. Stomach's.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, sure.

[Jerry]

A little bit of friendliness left in it, you know?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, like Houdini style.

[Jerry]

That'll do.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, one of the scenes that Livia picked out, that certainly stands out in my mind, too. And I think you can actually find parts of this one on YouTube is a guard, I guess. Was he dry shaving him? It looked like dry shaving. Or was it a wet shave?

[Jerry]

No, they put, like, shaving cream on him and everything.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay.

[Jerry]

And everybody seems to characterize it as, like, really rough, like, forceful, kind of almost like he's being tortured with the shave.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was fast.

[Jerry]

It was fast.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

I didn't. It didn't look like it hurt the patient, so I. It didn't. And it didn't seem like the guy was trying to torture him. It just seemed like he was being very quick and efficient. And he does, like, cut him at the edge of one of his mouth. One of the edges of the corner of his mouth. Sorry.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Jerry]

So he's bleeding a little bit, but he doesn't seem like. He doesn't seem in distress at all while he's shaving him. At the very least, he's not in distress because of the shaving.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. But then what happened?

[Jerry]

Well, there are these at least two guards. Right. And this inmate, by the way, is named Jim. He's probably the most famous character in the. In the movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

Or patient, I should say. He's not a character. He has. He's very. It's easy to get a rise out of Jim. As hard as Jim tries to not let you get a rise out of him, if you press his buttons, he's gonna, like, yell. He's gonna get mad. He's gonna try to contain himself. And there were a couple of guards that were guarding Jim while he was being, like, washed and shaved and all that stuff, who just spent the entire scene trying to get a rise out of him by saying, like, why is your room so dirty, Jim? Are you. Is your room going to be clean tomorrow, Jim? You got to keep your room clean, Jim. Just ceaselessly and incessantly. And we see eventually when they take him back to his room, it's totally empty. There's a window. There's nothing in the room. And in fact, Jim is kept naked in his room. So there's no way for Jim. For Jim's room to be dirty and also for. No way for Jim to keep his room clean. These guards, you realize, were just trying to get a rise out of Jim. And they do over and over again. And it's really hard and sad to watch Jim, like, just get upset. He's trying so hard to just not let these guys get to him because he knows what they're doing, he's fully aware of what they're doing, and he just can't help himself. Probably, like five different times, he reacts and then tries to regain his composure again.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It's almost as if they're trying to drive him mad.

[Jerry]

Yeah. And they're also doing. I saw somebody describe it as they're goading him with the kind of, like, bored desensitization or desensitivity of somebody who does this, like, every day and know exactly what he's gonna do. And there's no fun in it anymore, but they just kind of do it to amuse themselves as much as they can from it. Which is even worse, you know. Cause he's torturing this poor guy mentally.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And we should point out, too, that, you know, Weissman showed scenes like this, but it wasn't. It wasn't like, a 100% indictment on the people who worked there because he did also show some parts where there was some care taken. I mean, what was your. Like, I haven't seen the whole thing since college. So what was your net. Net on that?

[Jerry]

So I think the thing that I got from it was that Wiseman treats everybody as human and equal in that he's not expressing, like, empathy necessarily. He's not trying to even get you to empathize or sympathize. He's not trying to get you to form an opinion. He's just showing you what he found. And if he is trying to get you to form an opinion, it's so obtuse that it's tough to put your finger on in retrospect. Maybe you respond exactly the way he wanted you to, but he's not. Very rarely does he, like, hammer you with it. So I feel like he just treats everybody the same. Like, there's a guy, there's a patient who talks about all of the children he's raped. And he knows that it's bad. He knows that it's like that. Like what he's doing is wrong and he can't help himself. But there's like, Wiseman makes no effort to make this man seem despicable or evil or anything like that. He might as well be talking about, like, a car. He's thinking about Buying for how Wiseman portrays it. And so, like, if he's treating that guy equal, he's definitely treating, like, the guards and the clinical staff and everybody equally. But I think more than that, he just turns the camera on and lets them behave as they're going to behave. He lets them present themselves to you rather than him trying to manipulate it so that you see what Wiseman wants you to see.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, that's the purest form of cinema verite, which, you know, it's interesting how conditioned we are to even hearing an ominous musical score during a scene where a guy might talk about crimes like that. And when all that's stripped away, like, it can be more unsettling, I think, than hearing that creepy score.

[Jerry]

Totally.

[Chuck Bryant]

It reminds me, and this is certainly not the same thing, but we went to a Cleveland Indians baseball game one time when Emily's family still lived in Ohio, and it was this throwback game where they didn't do any modern things at all. And you don't really think about that. You're like, oh, it's a baseball game. What do they do? Like, all they had was the organ player and the announcer going, you know, now to bat number five, so and so, so and so.

[Jerry]

Awesome, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

Done. You didn't play a song when they came up that the batter picked out. They didn't have the Home Depot hammer and nail and shovel chase each other around the field between innings in a race. They didn't. You know, there's. You don't realize when you go to a pro sports game, of all the extra boy. Especially an NBA game.

[Jerry]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

All the extra stuff that's there until it's gone. And it was really, really weird. I liked it. Her family was like, I'm bored. And I was like, I think this is kind of cool.

[Jerry]

Did they have pretty Cracker Jacks at least?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah. I mean, they sold the stuff. And it wasn't throwback prices, of course. But it's weird when you're so conditioned, though, kind of like with film, just to background noise and just sort of the things that we hear in movies, lighting or a camera move or, you know, cinema verite is all about sort of just locking that camera down or hand holding it. Sometimes when all that artifice is gone, it can have a reverse effect that all the artifice has. Like you're using it for.

[Jerry]

Yeah. And I think in addition to what is added to kind of manipulate you emotionally or unconsciously, there's also a lot that's removed a lot of reality that's removed. Like the background noise. If they put background noise in, it's Foley artists. It's not the actual background noise that was there when they were filming. That's not what Wiseman does. This film is replete with disturbing background noise. Like televisions that are on that you can't see other people's conversations, that you can't make out what they're saying. The lighting he uses is only the lighting at Bridgewater. He doesn't use any of his own light. It's all whatever it's called, available light. And, yeah, when you just kind of watch it, you're like, this is just like looking in on real life, which makes what you're seeing all the more disturbing, because in addition to almost being there, you almost feel guilty, especially if you have half a conscience of witnessing the stuff that you're seeing, because you're seeing some of these people. Like Jim, when he's taken back to his cell after those guards got a rise out of him while he was being shaved, he's naked, fully naked, stomping around, basically throwing a tantrum, trying. You can tell he's trying to calm himself down. This is how he's getting out his anger. And Wiseman just sits there and films the whole thing. And you're forced to watch as the viewer. I saw somebody put it. It's basically like you're the one standing in the doorway. Even after the guards have left, you're still standing there watching this man in one of the. Probably one of the several worst points of his recent life, just gawking at him, basically. And that's the hard part of it, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Or at the other end of the spectrum, there's a scene with a guy named Vladimir. And this guy is very lucid, and he's speaking very clearly about, you know, I think I've deteriorated since I've been here. I think all this noise that you're hearing, all these TVs that are always turned on full blast, it's sort of driving me crazy. And I would like to go back to prison, where I actually could work out in a gym and I could take classes. And this medication that they're giving me is making me worse. Like, I feel that it's harming me. And when he's. You know, when the guards take him out of the room, then there's a scene of the clinicians, like, discussing things, and it's sort of like, sounds like we need to up his medication and his tranquilizers because he's paranoid. So when you see something like that. It's sort of the other end of the spectrum from Jim. Equally disturbing, but part of the beauty of this and the rawness of this film is like, these people are all in here together.

[Jerry]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's never lost on you.

[Jerry]

His is a particularly sad case.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

Because you can tell, like. No, he's with it, this guy. He knows what he's saying. He's not trying to manipulate. He's pleading his case in a logical way. He's trying so hard not to get worked up. How would you not get worked up when you're pleading your case to be released from a mental institution, from somebody who's just taking you as, you know, nuts, so why should you be listened to? There's even one of the medical staff at that meeting after he leaves the room and they're discussing him. She says, what did she say? She's like, if you take his basic premise as true, then everything he says from that is totally logical. But of course, his basic premise is total hogwash or whatever. She says something like that. I'm paraphrasing just to say so. It's like that guy had never had a chance. He just wasted his breath. He just. Like, they were never going to listen to him. And it's like Red in Shawshank. Yeah. Yeah. Was he not supposed to be there? He was supposed to be there, wasn't he?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah, but every time he came up for parole, he would plead his case, they would deny it, and then finally, in the end, he was like, you know, it doesn't matter what I say in here, you're not going to let me out anyway. That's my Morgan Freeman, by the way.

[Jerry]

That sounded a little more like Boss Hogg on tranquilizers. What? Yeah, that was Boss Hogg sedated.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man.

[Jerry]

Let's hear it again.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I can't.

[Jerry]

Maybe Jerry can edit that.

[Chuck Bryant]

I can't ever do my Morgan Freeman again. One of the great voices. But, yeah, he basically says, you know, I'm institutionalized. You're not gonna let me out, no matter what I say. And of course, that's when they let him out, because it's a dramatic film and with a great, wonderful, happy ending. Not like Titicut Follies.

[Jerry]

No. One other thing that I think we should point out, too, for people who haven't seen the movie, we know Vladimir's name and Jim's name just because it comes up, like, in discussion, like they're calling him Jim or somebody addresses Vladimir as Vladimir. There's no Chiron at the bottom of the screen says Vladimir or Jim. There's no one explaining how Jim got here or what Vladimir did. There's no nothing, nothing is explained. It's just here's a scene, here's another scene, here's another scene, here's another scene. Nothing necessarily leads into anything else. There's one part that Wiseman says he regrets because it was so. He calls it ham fisted. Where it's really hard to watch. It is the main doctor, the main clinician who's a recurring character whose name we have no idea who it is. At least if you just watch the movie. He force feeds a patient who stopped eating and through with a nasogastric tube stuffed down his nose all the way into his stomach. And this guy is just stoically taking this like he's decided he is not going to eat. They even give him a choice. They're like, you can drink the soup or you're going to, we're going to force feed you. And he's like, you're going to have to force feed. But I don't even think he says anything. Yeah, so there's a, there's a force feeding scene. You watch an emaciated man who's starving himself force fed. And he intercut that part with scenes from the man's preparation for burial.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Jerry]

To kind of show like, you know, he didn't make it. He was successful in ending his own life through starvation. And then also I think what Wiseman was trying to get across was that he was, you know, he's really being cared for. He's given like a decent burial and like I think eight. He has eight pallbearers from the institution and he's like treated very well compared especially to this, this force feeding through a tube down his nose. And Wiseman thought that was a little ham fisted. That is, that is the most cinematic part of the entire movie. Nothing else is anywhere remotely like that. It's all just scene, scene, scene, scene, scene and like no explanation of who these people are or what they are trying to say.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, should we take a break?

[Jerry]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. We'll take our second break and be back right after this.

[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

This episode of Stuff youf Should Know is brought to you by Human Footprint Season 2 on PBS and the PBS app. The Emmy nominated series returns to reveal the global impact of Earth's most ingenious and most destructive species, humans.

[Jerry]

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[Chuck Bryant]

So before we talk about the sort of court cases and whether or not this film could be banned or exhibited, it's interesting. You talk about like it's just scene, scene, scene, scene. But on the flip side of that, it is like such a carefully curated edit from all those hundreds of hours of footage down to 83 minutes. And that's one of the things that Weisman sort of talked about, was he didn't. Apparently he didn't. I don't know if he came around, but he didn't even like the term cinema verite because he felt it sounded too much like you were just shooting stuff and putting it in front of people. And he said, I am manipulating people, but it's through the edit. So while you may not think that, I mean, I guess he was a master at it, because you probably shouldn't feel manipulated, but he's still putting together that careful edit. You know, it's interesting.

[Jerry]

He is a master edit, and it's pretty remarkable. This was his first film and he was that masterful at it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

So I said earlier that it was crucial that he had gotten permission to film not only from, you know, the lieutenant governor and the superintendent of Bridgewater, but also from everyone he shot. He got either written permission from them or verbal permission, audio, visual, I guess, on camera, them giving him permission to use them in his film. So he was covered up in permission. And don't forget, he was a law professor, too. And when the movie first came out, when he finished, he showed it to the superintendent of Bridgewater and to the lieutenant governor. They both apparently liked it, according to Wiseman. But it wasn't until the movie came out into wider release at the very beginning, I think New York Film Festival or something like that. And people started responding by saying, like, this is barbaric, this treatment at Bridgewater. What's wrong with the state of Massachusetts that they suddenly turned on the film and Wiseman had on his hands what would come to become a banned film.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, so one of the central players here is Elliot Richardson, who was that lieutenant governor you referenced at the time, had loftier political aspirations. So when it came time to run for an office higher than that, tried to suppress this film, thinking it would count against him, and it became sort of like Livia calls it, a political tool. That's exactly what it became. And Richardson would end up accusing Weissman of double crossing the state. And it all sort of hinged on the idea. Not like, oh, you showed these awful things, but it hinged on the idea of permissions. And privacy was sort of the legal framework of it, because the argument was, sure, you might have gotten the permission from these men, but they are in no state to give real permission. And so there were a series of court cases over the years that sort of debated this, like, for many, many years. In 68, it was a judge, superior Court judge, named Harry Callas, who found that it breached privacy. And this was interesting, though, because, like, I get that as a legal basis for argument, but this judge said he kind of attacked the filmmaking process and said it's just a hodgepodge of sequences with no narrative. And said each viewer is left to his own devices as to what's being portrayed and in what context. And in the meantime, Weisman's over there going adoy, like that's what cinema verite is. But I thought that was like this judge just said, you should destroy, not should. Like, ordered it to be destroyed.

[Jerry]

Yeah. He also called it a nightmare of ghoulish obscenities and said the negative has to be burnt.

[Chuck Bryant]

Very judgy judge.

[Jerry]

Yeah. And of course, Wiseman was like, well, I'm not burning my negative. I'm going to fight this and appeal it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, sure.

[Jerry]

That case, by the way, was the first one in Massachusetts history where a court affirmed that a right to privacy exists. It had never been affirmed in a court case, and it was established in that case. So it was not cut and dried, though, because Weismann has a First Amendment right to freedom of expression. So it became freedom of expression versus freedom of privacy, or right to privacy, I should say. And I think the ACLU got involved and they submitted an amicus brief that basically said, we think that this film has value, but to a very limited number of people, specifically lawyers, judges, law students, medical students, psychiatrists. People in those fields should be able to see this. And that is about it. And so that kind of became the ruling shortly after that initial, you need to burn the negatives on appeal. That's what they came up with.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And so for a number of years after that, for those reasons, it was shown in, like, film class. It was shown in medical schools. It was shown in the library. Yeah, it was shown in libraries. That was a great place to see something like this. Or in different institutions would show this and say, this is what not to do. Like, you can't do stuff like this. Yeah, there was, I believe, and this is sort of through the 70s, and then in the 80s, some attorneys got involved that said there were some suicides at Bridgewater in the mid to late 80s. There were some class action lawsuits that followed by patients where the attorneys said they could draw a direct line basically between a patient dying by suicide and the fact that this film wasn't shown like it should be allowed to be shown. For these reasons.

[Jerry]

Yeah. Like, had it been shown, there would have been a public outcry for more reforms, and that wouldn't have led. You know, those reforms may have prevented the suicides at Bridgewater. And so Wiseman said, like, he never gave up on the film being released to a wider audience. And he saw that that was a good time to bring this up again, and it actually worked out. He got a judge to basically say, like, okay, this is. Yes, you should be able to show this, but we need to blur the faces of the men out. And Wiseman said, that's impossible. This is film. It's not video.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then also, work with me here, man.

[Jerry]

Right. He said, also, it'll artistically ruin my film. But you remember when we did that one gorilla filming in the supermarket, we ended up having to go back and blur every single thing in the supermarket out except for us. Kind of screwed it up a little bit. I could see where he's coming from. Right. And so he appealed again, and finally they said, you know what? Not a single inmate at Bridgewater, and none of their families has ever filed a formal objection to this film being shown. So how about this? Just show it. It's unbanned officially by the early 90s.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. That was in 91, with Judge Andrew Gillmire of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. And then after that, it was still. Because Wiseman is, like I said earlier, very picky about how his films are exhibited. And so it wasn't like it was just everywhere. I think PBS aired it in 93 in full. You could always buy the DVD from him from his website, or if there was a film festival or a film class. Like I said, when I saw it was in college film class from a VHS tape that the professor owned. Probably bought it from Weissman, and that's sort of how it lived its life. I mean, it's. It's interesting that this, like, this still is a relevant topic and a relevant film and, you know, is being talked about today. Like, in 2022, I think in 2017, he even tried to. Or I think he successfully finally got it on his streaming service called Kanopy with a K, which is also kind of through the library system, which is awesome.

[Jerry]

Yeah. You can watch it for free if you sign up for a Kanopy account with your library card number. Yeah, you can go watch, I think, all of Wiseman's films, all 48, which is pretty great. But there seems to have been some direct effects of the film on Bridgewater. But still, from what it sounds like, there's still a long way to go with Bridgewater, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think they made a lot of strides. And then they found even as recently as this year that they were using what they call chemical restraints, basically just doping people up more than they said they were doing. So this is ongoing there. And then Weisman, like you said, made 48 films and they had names like hospital or high school. And it's just sort of that very bare bones cinema verite look at a single topic that's sort of in his bread and butter. I think it's a really cool thing.

[Jerry]

Yeah, it is really cool. He's just fascinated with institutions, although he even says he has no idea how they work. And I think he's even said he's not quite sure he understands his film himself, which is pretty awesome to say.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And Zipporah Films is named after his wife who passed away a couple years ago at the age of 90. And he's, like you said, still going strong.

[Jerry]

Yeah. What's his latest one? City Hall.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, about Boston City Hall.

[Jerry]

Yeah, it came out in 2020.

[Chuck Bryant]

Pretty cool.

[Jerry]

Well, if you want to know more about Titicut Follies, you should probably go watch it. But be warned, it is really rough. Even though it is great in the term of. A cinemaphile would use it. How about that? A cinephile.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Jerry]

I always had an extra syllable, so that, of course means it's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm going to call this follow up on the effect of altruism. One of our favorite things is when we talk about a topic and someone from that topic gets in touch and is a listener. Yeah, for real. And that's what happened in this case with Grace Adams. Hey, guys. We are so excited that you covered effective altruism and you did so wonderfully. And Grace is with giving what we can. Giving what we can. Would love to give your listeners a free book on effective altruism. If you include this link in the show notes, which we don't have, but we'll just say it here, people can opt to have a free book sent to them, including the Precipice by Toby Ord. Anywhere in the world. World. We love sending out books and things. It's a great way for people to engage more with the ideas. Wishing you all the best from a big personal fan, Grace Adams. And. Oh, I should have made this into a bitly. Should I do that real quick?

[Jerry]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. So you just talk to people while I do that.

[Jerry]

Oh, okay. Well, hey, everybody.

[Chuck Bryant]

Actually, I mean, we could edit this.

[Jerry]

Together, but Toby Ord wrote in and said the same thing too. But he also sent us well wishes and said we did a good job on the effective altruism episode, which I thought was pretty good because I like to think we're fairly fair handed with it. We weren't too over the top subjective, don't you think?

[Chuck Bryant]

I think so. Although we did get one email from someone that's like kind of acted like we didn't point out any of the downsides, which I disagree with.

[Jerry]

I disagree with that. But anyway, how's that bitly coming?

[Chuck Bryant]

Chuck okay my friend, I am done. I have the bit. Lynn if you go to bitbit lysyskgive you can get your free book.

[Jerry]

Yes, pretty great free books on effective altruism and free books by Toby Ord on existential risks which, I mean, come on, if you want to get in touch with us like Grace from GiveWell did, we would love to hear from you. You can send us an email whether you want to give away free books or not. It's okay, you don't have to send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

[Josh Clark]

You listen to your favorite show.

[Jerry]

This.

[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

Are you still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted. If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back.

[Jerry]

Welcome to the now it pays to Discover.

[Chuck Bryant]

Learn [e-mail] credit card based on the February 2024 Nielsen report.

[Jerry]

You know, some people say that Odoo business management software is like fertilizer, the way it promotes growth and all. But other people say Odoo is like a magic beanstalk because it grows with your company and is also magically affordable. And there's some people who would even say Odoo's individual software programs come together to build the perfect suite. Like building blocks. Well, Odoo is all of these things. Fertilizer, magic beanstalk, building blocks for business. So sign up [e-mail] o d o o.com this is an I Heart podcast.