A Writer Solves a Mystery, and Ruth E. Carter Steps into the Spotlight

Summary

Podcast Summary: The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode: “A Writer Solves a Mystery, and Ruth E. Carter Steps into the Spotlight”
Original Airdate: February 22, 2019
Host: David Remnick
Guests: Patrick Radden Keefe, Richard Brody, Alexandra Schwartz, Ruth E. Carter, Doreen St. Félix

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Episode Overview

This episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour explores two major stories:

1. Writer Patrick Radden Keefe’s investigation into a decades-old murder and the lingering trauma of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, as told in his book Say Nothing.
2. A profile of Oscar-nominated costume designer Ruth E. Carter, whose career has spanned groundbreaking films, culminating in her acclaimed work on Black Panther.

Interspersed is The New Yorker’s unique “Alternative Oscars” roundtable and commentary on the state of the film industry. The episode features deep reporting, nuanced conversation about history, creativity, and unresolved social issues, and celebrates influential figures in the arts.

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Segment 1: A Writer Solves a Mystery — The Troubles and the Murder of Jean McConville

Guest: Patrick Radden Keefe (Author, “Say Nothing”)
Timestamps: 00:01–15:48

Main Points & Insights

• Legacy of the Troubles:
  The episode opens with a discussion of the enduring scars from the conflict in Northern Ireland (the Troubles), highlighting violence, unsolved crimes, and the persistence of trauma even after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

• Dolores Price & Secret Histories:
  Patrick Radden Keefe recounts stumbling across the obit of Dolores Price—the first woman front-line IRA soldier—to discover her central role in notorious bombings and violence (Old Bailey bombing, hunger strikes), and her later participation in a secret oral history project housed at Boston College (00:46–01:40).

• The Mystery of Jean McConville:
  Keefe details the disappearance and later discovery of Jean McConville—a widow and mother of 10, abducted and murdered by the IRA in 1972. Her children were left traumatized and in the dark for three decades.

  “She was a mother of 10 and a widow who was taken away by the IRA and disappeared. She was killed, but her body was buried in an unmarked grave. Her kids never knew what happened to her.” (Patrick Radden Keefe, 01:40)

• Accusations of Informing:
  The IRA insisted McConville was an informant (a rationale disputed by her family and never conclusively proven). Keefe’s investigation weighs evidence on both sides.

  “There's not a definitive answer in the book. I lay out the evidence on both sides.” (Patrick Radden Keefe, 02:34)

• Political Implications and Gerry Adams:
  The Boston College oral histories implicated multiple people—including prominent Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, long rumored (though publicly denied) to have been in the IRA or ordered killings.

  “Adams, who I feel pretty comfortable saying was...a commander in the IRA for many years.” (Patrick Radden Keefe, 05:52) “...he ordered the killing of Jean McConville? — Yes. Yes. And more than one person who was involved has said this. He denies it...” (05:12–06:16)

• Sense of Betrayal Among IRA Veterans:
  Keefe explains how former comrades like Dolores Price felt Adams (who led the peace process) had betrayed their actions and sacrifices, disavowing responsibility while claiming political credit.

  “What you've done is you've changed the means.” (Patrick Radden Keefe, 08:35) “...I find him emotionally very unsympathetic, downright sociopathic...But politically, Adams was the one who realized that you need to end this fight.” (Patrick Radden Keefe, 09:27)

• Responsibility in Accusing a Living Person:
  Keefe describes the gravity of naming a living suspect in McConville’s murder—both the legal and moral weight—and the measured, if stunned, response from the McConville family and the accused (10:50–11:56).

• The Cost to McConville’s Children:
  The trauma for McConville’s children didn’t end—once orphaned, they were separated into “awful” orphanages and repeatedly victimized (12:26–13:10).

• Legacy of the Troubles Today:
  Despite peace, violence and the specter of the IRA linger. Keefe notes ongoing tension—with Brexit posing a new threat of instability on the Irish border.

  “...the past will not stay buried, and if you ignore this kind of history, it will come back and have its revenge.” (Patrick Radden Keefe, 14:28)

Notable Quotes

• “They haven’t gone away, you know.” — Gerry Adams, as quoted by Keefe, on the persistence of the IRA (14:28)
• “I would never have named the name and pointed the finger at someone...if I wasn’t absolutely sure.” (Patrick Radden Keefe, 11:12)
• “If you ignore this kind of history, it will come back and have its revenge.” (Patrick Radden Keefe, 14:28)

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Segment 2: The Alternative Oscars — The Brodies

Guests: Richard Brody (film critic) & Alexandra Schwartz (writer)
Timestamps: 15:54–27:59

Main Points & Insights

• Remnick, Brody, and Schwartz debate the year’s real Oscar nominees and Brody’s personal picks (the "Brodies"), critiquing industry trends, embracing auteurs and calling attention to overlooked work.

• Key Nominations Discussed:

  • Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley): Lauded for its political and racial satire.

    “It's about class, it's about politics, it's about labor politics. It's essentially an apocalyptic, revolutionary film.” (Richard Brody, 18:33)

  • BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee): Discussed for cultural resonance and use of real news footage.

    “It's a movie that takes the cultural background and pulls it into the foreground.” (Richard Brody, 19:38)

  • Madeline’s Madeline (Josephine Decker): Especially praised for Helena Howard’s lead performance.

    “Helena Howard...gives what I consider one of the greatest teen performances in the history of cinema.” (Richard Brody, 21:10)

  • The Old Man and the Gun (dir. by David Lowery, starring Robert Redford): Redford’s subtle, luminous acting is highlighted.

    “Every tremor of his eyebrows, every half smile on his lips, every wink, every gleam is picked up by the camera and seems to convey a lifetime of experience...” (Richard Brody, 23:00)

• Industry Critique:

  • Frustration at the lack of female director nominees.

    “...perpetually disappointed by how few women directors are nominated...no reason to have this total shutout once again.” (Alexandra Schwartz, 25:35)

  • The transformation of the Oscars in the Netflix era.

    “Netflix is now going to be sitting inside that ceremony and has every reason to have a pretty smug look on...” (Alexandra Schwartz, 26:17)

  • Suggestion: The Oscars should be a movie itself, directed by Scorsese (!).

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Segment 3: Ruth E. Carter Steps into the Spotlight

Interviewed by: Doreen St. Félix
Timestamps: 28:14–35:00

Main Points & Insights

• Career Beginnings in Black Theater:
  Ruth Carter describes shifting to theater arts and being drawn to “black theater,” inspired by formative college mentors (29:43–30:34).

  “I wanted to be around them, and I wanted to be doing black theater because I was reading all the plays. I still have the books I had back then.” (Ruth E. Carter, 30:20)

• Learning Costume Design for Film:
  Carter describes learning to recalibrate her theater-trained creativity for the detail-intense, close-up scrutiny of film.

  “In theater...the eye just eliminates detail as it travels...with film, it's blown up 600 times its size. So the details are much more prominent...” (31:36)

• First Big Break with Spike Lee:
  A chance encounter with Spike Lee, who encouraged her to move into film after seeing her innovative dance costumes. She learned on the job for his movie School Daze, drawing on her own college experience (31:31–33:17).

• Resourcefulness and Storytelling:
  Carter tells a colorful story about retrieving a unique, hand-knit sweater (with African masks) from an airport at midnight after nearly losing it on set—highlighting the practical and emotional stakes of her job (33:32–34:44).

• Cultural Impact & Recognition:
  Carter’s work spans I'm Gonna Get You Sucka, Malcolm X, Selma, and reaches a new audience with Black Panther, for which she received an Oscar nomination and attained popular cultural reverence.

Notable Quotes

• “[With film] I had to actually learn how to dial it back. But for School Daze, because it was a little bit more theatrical, it was the perfect film to start with.” (Ruth E. Carter, 31:36)
• “I was hell bent on keeping that sweater...and then Spike gave it to [the actor]. He didn’t even give you the sweater? No, he did not.” (Ruth E. Carter, 34:38)

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Memorable Moments & Quotes (By Timestamp)

• On Gerry Adams's denials and “counter interrogation training”:

  “This means you could be torturing the man and he wouldn't tell you anything. And he looked at me and he says, but if you want to go in with your WE notebook, good luck to you.”
  – Patrick Radden Keefe (06:16)

• On the continuing trauma for McConville’s children:

  “The kids were re-victimized in a whole series of awful ways.”
  – Patrick Radden Keefe (12:36)

• On transformative change in the film industry:

  “Independent producers have been rivaling Hollywood studios for years...the Oscars mistake is actually to broadcast itself at all. It ought to be a movie…”
  – Richard Brody (26:45)

• On costume design’s storytelling power:

  “Stage, you have aesthetic distance, and the eye just eliminates detail...with film, it's blown up 600 times its size.”
  – Ruth E. Carter (31:36)

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Episode Takeaways

• The past—personal, political, or cultural—refuses to stay buried, echoing in conflicted memories and unresolved wounds.
• Investigative journalism has the power not only to solve mysteries, but to confront the trauma of history and give voice to those who suffered.
• Creativity in the arts, whether in writing or costume design, requires resilience, adaptability, and often, resourcefulness against long odds.
• Recognition matters—to the orphans of a murdered mother, to overlooked directors, to African-American artists finally in the global spotlight.

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For further exploration:

• Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
• Ruth E. Carter’s costume work, especially on Black Panther

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End of Summary.

Transcript

[David Remnick]

From one World Trade center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of the New Yorker and WNYC studios. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David remnick. For nearly 40 years, the city of Belfast was synonymous with bombings, murders, and guerrilla warfare.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

Police reported 56 hijackings, 17 bombings, 23 shooting incidents, and nearly 200 attacks on.

[David Remnick]

The conflict in Northern Ireland between the British government and the IRA. The Irish Republican army ended in 1998, officially, that is. But the Troubles continued to bubble up in unexpected places. In 2013, Patrick Radden Keefe stumbled across an obituary of a woman named Delores Price.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

She was the first woman to serve as a real frontline soldier in the ira. She was part of that civil rights movement in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, and she got radicalized, and she ends up leading a bombing mission to England and getting arrested and going to jail and going on homicide.

[David Remnick]

She helped blow up the Old Bailey.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

She helped blow up the Old Bailey. She led the mission. And this is when she's scarcely out of her teens. She goes toe to toe with Margaret Thatcher. Eventually, Thatcher lets her out of prison. And later in her life, after the peace process, she was very disaffected.

[David Remnick]

After the Troubles, Dolores Price took part in a secret oral history project. Members of the IRA were interviewed on tape about the acts of warfare and violence that they'd committed. The tapes were sent to Boston College here in the US and each record was supposed to remain sealed until the interviewee had died.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

And in 2013, when Dolores Price died, it had come out that she had been involved in what was one of the most notorious incidents in the Troubles, which was in 1972. There was a woman named Jean McConville and who was a mother of 10 and a widow who was taken away by the IRA and disappeared. She was killed, but her body was buried in an unmarked grave. Her kids never knew what happened to her.

[David Remnick]

Why would she have been killed by the ira?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

The children didn't know at the time. What we learned later is that the IRA maintains to this day that she was an informant for the British Army.

[David Remnick]

She's a mother of 10. What could she possibly known that it would have been of tremendous value to the ira?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

This is what her children, who are now adults, say, is that they. They really vehemently contest any suggestion that she had been uninformed. They said, what would she know? She was trying to take care of us.

[David Remnick]

Is there an answer to that question?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

There's not a definitive answer in the book. I Lay out the evidence on both sides. And there are people who today will swear up and down that she was and that she wasn't. So I don't know.

[David Remnick]

When you say they disappeared this woman, what exactly did they do to her? And when was it discovered?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Well, again, we didn't know. The children didn't know. One night in December 1972, she's at home with her kids and a group of people comes and knocks on the door in a housing project in West Belfast. They barge in, they have guns, they're masked, and they pull Jean McConville out. And her kids were quite young. The youngest were two twins, were six years old at the time. They're clinging to her legs, they're screaming. These intruders say, well, bring her back. We just want to talk to her. And they never saw her again. It was only in 2003 that her body was found.

[David Remnick]

2003, 30 odd years later, 31 years.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Later, her body's found by a beachcomber in the Republic of Ireland walking along a beach one day.

[David Remnick]

So they're finding bones.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

They found bones. And there had been some storms and so some erosion in that coastal area. And these bones were kind of churned up from the ground. And it was only more than a decade after that that people like Dolores Price started talking and some of these secrets began to come out about the circumstances of this death. When?

[David Remnick]

Why would they talk?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Because they experience great trauma. So part of what I was trying to do in this book is take one violent incident and approach it as you would a novel. And you've got a handful of compelling, interesting characters, real people, and you look at the way it affected them, the victims and the perpetrators alike, and how that played out over the decades. And for some of them, people like Dolores Price, there was a huge amount of trauma associated with the violent acts that she had committed in the name of a united Ireland. So she looks back as a mother herself, as somebody reaching middle age, and begins to re evaluate some of the things she's done.

[David Remnick]

And what access did you have to the papers at Boston College?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

It was pretty limited. So they.

[David Remnick]

So not all dead?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Well, there's that. But then the other thing is that there was a huge political fight. Part of the reason I thought there might be a story here initially, a magazine article, was that on the one hand, it's a story about a terrible murder that happened in 1972. On the other hand, it's a story about how that history, far from being remote or a closed case or a cold case, that nobody's paying any attention to, was incredibly politically explosive because more than one person had talked in this archive at Boston College about the circumstances of Gene McConville's death. And it emerged that people were pointing a finger at Gerry Adams.

[David Remnick]

So Jerry Adams, we should explain, is somebody who was always thought to be a leader of the Provisional IRA involved in violent acts. He's always denied it. He was also a member of Parliament in Britain and a leader of the Irish political party Sinn Fein. And he became a pivotal figure in the reconciliation in the 90s. So why would this be such a big deal all these years later?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Well, for a variety of reasons. One is that Adams, who I feel pretty comfortable saying was in fact a commander in the IRA for many years.

[David Remnick]

How do you know?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Because I've interviewed a whole bunch of people who were in the IRA with him. Because, really, it's Adams who maintains today that he was never in the IRA and there's nobody else.

[David Remnick]

So you're saying that he ordered the killing of Gene McConville?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Yes. Yes. And more than one person who was involved has said this. He denies it, but he denies he was ever in the ira. Look, it's funny. I did want to talk to Adams, but I was also mindful that just because you get the interview doesn't mean he's going to tell you anything. I had this hilarious encounter when I was doing the reporting where I talked to a former IRA guy who's known Adams for a long time, and he was saying, look, even if he talks to you, he's not going to tell you anything. And I sort of said, hey, don't underestimate me. You know, I've got my ways. And the guy kind of chuckled, and he said, you know, Jerry's had what they call counter interrogation training. This means you could be torturing the man and he wouldn't tell you anything. And he looked at me and he says, but if you want to go in with your WE notebook, good luck to you.

[David Remnick]

Listeners. Please note that was Patrick Keefe doing the imitation, not David Remnick. Now, Adams, you're saying, ordered this murder and ordered Dolores Price to do it. What was their relationship like, and did it stay the same?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

It didn't. And that's part of the dramatic arc of the book, is that there were a handful of people who were characters in the book who were very, very close when they were young members of the IRA in the early 1970s. And it wasn't just Dolores Price. It was her sister, Marion Price. It was a guy named Brendan Hughes. Who was involved in many of these operations. And they did some awful things. They set bombs in public places, they killed people, and they did so in the name of a united Ireland. And then in the 1990s, Adams, whose political instincts had always been a little bit more evolved, perhaps, than some of his contemporaries in the ira, starts to realize, we're not going to fight the British into the sea. And so he starts taking part in this peace process. And what that means for Dolores Price and Brendan Hughes and some of these other people who took orders from Adams, they feel betrayed is that they feel betrayed is that they say, I did these things telling myself that the ends would justify the means. And what you've done is you've changed the means.

[David Remnick]

That would change.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

There would be a united Ireland, and there might be a great deal of bloodshed in order to get there, but we would get there, and you've changed the game. And then, in addition to doing that, Adams would rather blithely say, oh, well, I personally was never in the ira. I didn't order any of these things. I don't have any of that blood on my hands myself. And that drove some of these people mad. I mean, I think some of it was PTSD and trauma, but there was also a sense of. A very acute sense of betrayal.

[David Remnick]

Clearly, you do not find Gerry Adams an attractive figure in many, many ways. On the other hand, this was a question of incredible historical significance in the region. And it was resolved, and it was resolved with Jerry Adams at the center of it. So in the end, how do you think history will treat Gerry Adams?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

This is one of the great ironies of Adams as a figure. I find him emotionally very unsympathetic, downright sociopathic in his kind of clinical tendency to just cast aside anybody who's not useful to him anymore. But politically, Adams was the one who realized that you need to end this fight. And so I do think that there's an enduring irony in the idea that this is a man who was guilty of ordering perhaps the most notorious war crime of the conflict that he then helped to end.

[David Remnick]

So say Nothing is, in my mind, two books at once. First, it's the best book about the Troubles I've ever read, and that's on one side. On the other, it's a murder mystery, and you solve it. Your book discusses Dolores Price. She was a possibility in your mind, an IRA member named Patrick McClure, who was a possibility for reasons that you get into. And there's a third person. And in a sense, this book is A whodunit. I don't want to make light of it, but there's a mystery that's solved here and a third person is named. What is it like to accuse somebody of murder in a book? And have you heard from this person?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

It was certainly the most intense decision I've ever made in my career as a reporter and writer, I'll tell you that. There was a lot of lawyering, as you'd imagine, and this person is still alive and had never been associated with.

[David Remnick]

This murder, had he or she been associated with any other murder?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Yes. So it was a former IRA member. But I. I'll put it to you this way. Leaving aside the legal issue, morally, I would never have named the name and pointed the finger at someone and accused them of carrying out, you know, one of the most heinous war crimes of the troubles of a terrible conflict.

[David Remnick]

Have you gotten a response from the accused?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

So I initially reached out to this person's lawyer in May and got nothing and got in touch again, got nothing and said, I'm going to publish this book accusing your client. Nothing. The book came out in not even.

[David Remnick]

A response, a negative response, a cease and desist, anything, Nothing.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

And the book came out in November in the UK and Ireland in part because it had this news in it which they wanted to get out because it was a fairly newsworthy thing over there. And it was excerpted in the Sunday Times. They got in touch with the lawyer a few days before publishing the excerpt, got a no comment. A few days after the book came out, this person released a statement saying it wasn't true, but that they wouldn't be saying anything more about it. And I've heard nothing since.

[David Remnick]

Now, one thing we've forgotten here is 10 kids lost their mother and became orphans instantly. What became of those 10 children, the McConville children?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Well, things didn't get any easier for them. They. It was heartbreaking. They initially tried to stay in the family apartment because they thought their mother might be coming back. But eventually the state stepped in and they said, look, if you're going to put us into a home, can you at least have us all be together? And the state split them up and put them in different orphanages. And those orphanages were every bit as bad as you might imagine that Irish orphanages would have been in this period of time. And so the kids were re. Victimized in a whole series of awful ways.

[David Remnick]

When you made this name public, how did the kids, who are now obviously well grown, how did they react?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

It was an intense experience I. I wrote a letter to Jean McConville's children prior to the book coming out, telling them what I had learned. And they'd always had a different idea of what might have happened. They were extremely surprised about the identity of the person who I pointed to. But what I heard from a lot of people who have watched this case closely and know some of the parties involved is, again, this idea that they were both shocked to learn the identity of this person. But when you thought about it, it made perfect sense.

[David Remnick]

Patrick, in many ways, the troubles feel like a long time ago. You found that sources were still sometimes reluctant to talk to you, even now, for fear of the ira. And as recently as last month, a car bomb was discovered in Northern Ireland, which is not good news. Do you know, feel as though the troubles are somehow bubbling up again in some form or another?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Well, I think that.

[David Remnick]

And why is there an ira?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Well, that's a big question. There's a line that Gerry Adams used famously. He was giving a speech and somebody in the audience yells, bring back the ira. And Adams leaned into the microphone and said, they haven't gone away. You know, and this is a big question in Northern Ireland. Is this idea of is the IRA still there? And there definitely is some form of it that continues to exist, and tensions are high, and I think they're only going to get higher if with Brexit, we see some possibility of the return of a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and the north. So on one level, to the extent that there's a thesis in this book, it's that the past will not stay buried, and if you ignore this kind of history, it will come back and have its revenge. And I think we're seeing that a little bit in the Brexit context. Having said that, some of the more alarmist coverage of the situation recently has suggested that you could get a return to the bad old days of 1972, and I think that's pretty unlikely. I think that you could see on the margins great tension and maybe a little violence here and there, but I don't think there's the appetite for people to go back at this point.

[David Remnick]

Patrick Keefe, thank you very much.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Thank you.

[David Remnick]

The New Yorker's Patrick Radden Keefe. His book about the Troubles and the murder of Gene McConville is called say Nothing, and it comes out this week. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We are here with the Alternative Oscars, better known as the Brodies, named for Richard Brody, who writes about film for the New Yorker. And I'm also here with Alexandra Schwartz, who writes about damn near everything for the New Yorker. Books, theater, politics and what have you. And, Richard, I've got to ask you, what's going to win the lowly real Oscars, do you think?

[Richard Brody]

Just to start, I think that Roma's going to win.

[David Remnick]

And you're anti Roma.

[Richard Brody]

I'm not a big fan of Roma. I think that Roma has its own problems of aesthetics and of politics.

[David Remnick]

And the political problem that you see with it is that in a sense, that the main character, the cleaning woman, the nanny, doesn't have a voice.

[Richard Brody]

Doesn't have a voice. Exactly.

[David Remnick]

We don't know her past.

[Richard Brody]

We don't even know her real relationship with the children in the house.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

But at least, Richard, you could say that it's an autourist movie. And you love auteurs.

[Richard Brody]

Well, not necessarily. You know, there's that great line from Andre Bazin, auteur. Yes, but of what?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Touche.

[David Remnick]

There we go. We're off to the races. Richard, let's just go through your nominees for best picture. You have a couple of them are pretty well known and some of them aren't, so just go through them.

[Richard Brody]

One of the ones that's well known is. Sorry to bother you, Boots Riley's first feature about a young man, a young black man in Oakland played by Lakeith Stanfield, who is working as a telemarketer and is encouraged by a colleague, played by Danny Glover, to put on his white voice in order to succeed.

[David Remnick]

Hey, young blood, let me give you a tip. Use your white voice. Man, I ain't got no white voice. Oh, come on. You know what I mean? If you have a white voice in there, you can use it. It's like we didn't pull over by the police. Oh, no, I just use my regular voice when that happens. I just say, back the up off.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

The car and don't nobody get out.

[David Remnick]

All right, man, I'm just trying to give you some game. I. You want to make some money here, then read the script with the white boys. And it's a movie about class as much as it is about race, isn't it?

[Richard Brody]

It's about class, it's about politics, it's about labor politics. It's essentially an apocalyptic, revolutionary film.

[David Remnick]

Okay, second nominee.

[Richard Brody]

Second nominee. BlackKklansman, Spike Lee's historical drama, and at the same time, a sort of historical fantasy about the combating of the KKK in a Colorado police precinct by A white and a black officer.

[David Remnick]

How do you propose to make this investigation? Well, I've established contact and created some familiarity with the Klansmen over the phone.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

I'll continue in that role, but I'll need another officer.

[David Remnick]

Surprise, surprise, a white officer to play me when they meet face to face. That's my point exactly, chief. Black Ron Stallworth over the phone. White Ron Stallworth face to face. So there becomes a combined Ron Stallworth.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Can you do that?

[David Remnick]

I believe we can. With the right white man, we can do anything.

[Richard Brody]

It's an outrage that Spike Lee has never been nominated for a directing Oscar before.

[David Remnick]

Now. How do you think Spike Lee will make out? And what was your view of blackkklansman?

[Richard Brody]

It's weirdly hopeful retroactively, and at the same time, it's a history lesson. There's a tremendous amount of cultural context in blackkklansman. It's in effect, a movie that takes the cultural background and puts. Pulls it into the foreground and brings.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

It up to the present. I mean, one of the things that I think about most often with blackkklansman was the kind of use that Spike Lee made of footage that all of us have watched on tv, you know, of Charlottesville and I think in other events and how emotional and freshly terrible it felt to watch that kind of footage that we've all seen but recontextualized.

[David Remnick]

And finally, the film that I think it really is, the Brody film of the year, is. And I can't do a drum roll. There we go.

[Richard Brody]

Madeline's Madeline. Josephine Decker's film, Madeline's Madeline, is a very classic and somewhat classical coming of age story. The story of a high school student in New York who is both a theater prodigy and who is suffering from mental illness, and also who, like all teenagers, is in a very stressful relationship with her mother, played by Miranda July. But what's so exciting about this film is that Helena Howard, who was a teenager at the time she made the film, gives what I consider one of the greatest teen performances in the history of cinema. There's one scene, an improv exercise in her theater troupe, where she's impersonating her own mom. And you see some of the raw fury she feels toward her mother. Coming out in that scene when you.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

Were just a little baby, I stroked.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Your head so soft.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

I said to myself, I said, this baby, she's so perfect. She's gonna be so strong.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

And look at you now. You are. Are sick. You're so sick.

[David Remnick]

So Madeline's Madeline is sweeping best picture and Best Director and Best Actress in the Brodies. Now we come to Best Actor, Richard. And this, I think, is going to surprise a few people.

[Richard Brody]

I thought that Robert Redford's performance in the Old man and the Gun, a movie with a New Yorker connection because it's based on a story by David Grann that originally ran in the New Yorker, is the most extraordinary performance I saw from a man this year.

[David Remnick]

Right. And it's about a guy who, in the beginning of the film, you think he's just a charming rogue and he robs banks. But he doesn't hurt anybody, and he doesn't really mean it. What you realize after a while is he's. He's a sociopath. He can't live without knocking over banks.

[Richard Brody]

Mm.

[David Remnick]

This place is not my style, but say it was a bank. And standing that counter up there, that was really a teller's window. That lady standing there was the teller behind the window. And you just walk in real calm, and you find yourself a spot, and you sit down just like we're sitting here, and you wait and you watch. And that may take a couple of hours, might take a couple of days even, but you wait. It's gotta feel right. The timing has to feel right. And when it does feel right, you make your move. So you walk right up, look her in the eye, and you say, ma', am, this is a robbery. And you show her the gun like this.

[Richard Brody]

Redford does something here that I've never seen him do before. It's a performance of tremendous intimacy. Every tremor of his eyebrows, every half smile on his lips, every wink, every gleam is picked up by the camera and seems to convey a lifetime of experience and slyness.

[David Remnick]

And now we're gonna talk about the real Oscars for a moment. So we come to two films that seem to dominate the nominations. You've got Roma and the Favorite.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

Mm.

[David Remnick]

I have to say, I already expressed my admiration for Roma. I really love the Favorite, and I thought it was incredibly funny. And I had no reason to know this film was gonna be what it was, having seen that director's predecessors, which are the Lobster and that movie with a deer killing.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

A deer killing of a sacred deer.

[David Remnick]

I thought the Favorite was incredibly funny and interesting. Did you see it?

[Alexandra Schwartz]

Yeah, I did see it. And, you know, I was not a fan of the lobster, which I felt to be too. Yes. The face that you're making, David, conveys my feelings about it as well. I felt that it was too solipsistically invested in its own conceits. But the Favorite was something really different and fresh. And it is about Queen Anne, who in the movie is played by Olivia Colman, who is wrapped up in sort of governing England as it is at war, but more in her own personal affairs. She has 17 rabbits in cages kept in her bedroom. And she, her lover is played by Rachel Weisz in a fantastic performance, who guides her and uses her erotic influence to get political favors accomplished. And her standing at court is compromised when Emma Stone, as a sort of tumbleweed figure, arrives, falls out of a carriage into the mud and arrives and screws everything up.

[Richard Brody]

You have become close to Abigail.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

She's been a dear.

[Richard Brody]

Yes.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Such a shame.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

But I've had to dismiss her for theft. She's a liar and a thief.

[David Remnick]

Your tongue seems uncharacteristically still.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

I heard you.

[Ruth E. Carter]

She's my servant.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

She's not dismissed.

[Ruth E. Carter]

I've made her my maid of the bedchamber.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Did you not hear what I said?

[Alexandra Schwartz]

Yes.

[Ruth E. Carter]

You regard her as a liar and a thief.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

Yes.

[Ruth E. Carter]

I do not, obviously.

[David Remnick]

Alex and Richard, if you look at the sort of sum total of the nominees this year, are the Oscars doing better, are they doing worse? Or is it just kind of the same old, same old?

[Alexandra Schwartz]

Well, two things that come to my mind looking at the nominees are, one, I am perpetually disappointed by how few women directors are nominated. I mean, first of all, it's a major imbalance in the industry in general, but this year there were definitely contenders and there was no reason to have this total shutout once again. So it's disappointing to me, and it brings the Academy's credibility down in my eyes, not simply for some kind of gender ratio ideal, but really for, you know.

[David Remnick]

Gender ratio at all.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

Yeah, at all. And just appreciating quality when it's there. It's hard for me to believe that if a movie like can youn Ever Forgive Me had been made by a man, that it would not be nominated.

[David Remnick]

I think you were gonna make another point, though, Alex.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

Yeah. The one thing I'd say is the enemy is inside the house. You have Netflix. It has arrived. Roma has is nominated up the wazoo for all these awards. The Oscars have had to deal with increasing competition from tv, from people, you know, sitting at home and flicking it on. It's interesting to me that Netflix is now going to be sitting inside that ceremony and has every reason to have a pretty smug look on, you know, its face.

[David Remnick]

Is there anything wrong with that?

[Richard Brody]

I don't think there is, actually. I mean, independent producers have been rivaling Hollywood studios For years. In fact, this is one of the reasons why the ceremonies have been transformed in recent years for quite a while. Studio films have more or less been shifted shut out of the Oscars, at least the Best Picture Awards, because independent producers were coming in and producing the higher quality films that were then getting nominated. See, I think the Oscars mistake is actually to broadcast itself at all. It ought to be a movie, you know, Martin Scorsese. Martin Scorsese, everything in the. Martin Scorsese ought to direct the Oscars the way he directed the Last Waltz. And then it ought to be shown in theaters a certain amount of time later.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

That's a pretty great idea.

[David Remnick]

That's a great idea. But I think Martin Scorsese's view of the Oscars after Raging Bull lost to Ordinary People, something I still haven't gotten over. Quite too jaundice for him to carry that off year after year. So I'm guessing, by the way, A Star Is Born was not your favorite for the year.

[Richard Brody]

You know who was originally supposed to direct A Star Is Born that was gonna be directed by Eastwood? Beyonce was gonna have the Lady Gaga.

[David Remnick]

Exactly.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

I think you once told me, Richard, Clint Eastwood could put two sticks and rub them together and it would be a great movie.

[David Remnick]

Richard. Alex, thank you so much.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

Thank you.

[Richard Brody]

Thank you, Alex. Thank you.

[David Remnick]

You can read Richard Brody on filmewyorker.com all the time. And Alexandra Schwartz is a staff writer.

[Richard Brody]

Step to the right, please.

[David Remnick]

Costume designer Ruth. Ruth E. Carter has had a pretty remarkable career in movies, going all the way back to Spike Lee's third film in 1988. She's been nominated three times for the Academy Award, but it's her work on last year's film, Black Panther that really blew up. You saw people all over the country in homemade Black Panther costumes on Halloween. Now Ruth Carter is getting her due as one of the leading designers in Hollywood. And her work was shown at the this year's Fashion Week in New York.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

So we're at spring studios for the Ruth Carter exhibit called Next of Kin. Next of Kin features designs from and inspired by I'm gonna get you, sucker. School Days. Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, what's Love Got to Do With It, Selma, Chiraq, and Black Panther. And that, of course, is only a free fraction of the projects that Ruth Carter has worked on.

[David Remnick]

In fact, she's so busy that when staff writer Doreen St. Felix wanted to interview Carter, she had to catch her at the star studded opening night party where the costume from 1988's I'm gonna get yout Sucker was on display. They were platform shoes with live goldfish swimming around in the soles.

[Ruth E. Carter]

The goldfish shoes are a necessary, necessary addition, of course. Hopefully there won't be any snafus with the fish.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

No, they got them.

[Ruth E. Carter]

I remember on the set we had extra fish. So if something. Heaven forbid.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

So let's go back to the 80s. You're a student at Hampton University, and you decide that you want to switch to theater arts. What inspired that? I know that you weren't necessarily thinking that you wanted to work in costume and design when you first enrolled there.

[Ruth E. Carter]

Well, I was always hanging out with the theater students anyway. I was auditioning for plays. I came from experiences with theater in high school, after school, summer school.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

What were some of the plays that you were in when you were in high school?

[Ruth E. Carter]

Thank you for asking. Yes, I was Beneatha in A Raisin in the Sun. Yes, I was Alberta in Sty of the Blind Pig. My directing final was Day of Absence.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

Wow.

[Ruth E. Carter]

I had the best instructors. Like, they were my mentors, my first mentors, because they're. They were the ones that introduced me to Alice Walker and Wole Soyenka and all of the plays that the Negro Ensemble Company was doing at the time. When I was in college, I wanted to be around them, and I wanted to be doing black theater because I was reading all the plays. I still have the books I had back then. And when I graduated, I wanted more, and I. I knew I needed more training as a costume designer. So I did internships at the Santa Fe Theater, the Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico. I was there for a season, and then I drove to la, still thinking, I'm gonna get to nec, you know?

[Alexandra Schwartz]

But it didn't quite happen that way.

[Ruth E. Carter]

No. I got to Spike Lee, right? Yeah.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

How did you then come from, you know, meeting him and then working on school days?

[Ruth E. Carter]

Well, it actually was him coming to a performance, dance performance, where I had did the costumes for the dancers. And my senior recital was dance costumes at Hampton. I did our touring company, and he came and he told me to get more experience in film. He inspired that. And from there, I, you know, just thought about film, but really didn't think that it was dynamic enough because I had just done opera, and I felt like film was so realistic, it didn't translate immediately to me. I had to learn how to be a film costume designer, because theater, you have aesthetic distance, and the eye just eliminates detail as it travels to its subject. And with film, it's blown up 600 times its size. So the details are much more prominent than they are if they were on stage. Stage. So I had to actually learn how to dial it back. But for school days, because it was a little bit more theatrical, it was the perfect film to start with. We had the fraternity pledgees, we had the Gamma Rays, and we did a musical production. Two of them, three of them in that film. There was a step show, and it was a subject that I had lived. Having gone to an hbcu, Hampton University, I knew all of that.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

I think a lot about how costumes are so important in terms of establishing continuity in a film. And I was wondering, I know film sets can end up being a little crazy. Were there any times where a piece got lost and the character needed it and you had to find a way.

[Ruth E. Carter]

Oh, my God.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

Created again.

[Ruth E. Carter]

Okay. So in school days, Kaim Hershey wears a sweater that I designed with African mask on it. And a dear, dear friend who was a part of my internship, she was a draper and I. She knit every day. I sent her the idea and she knit that sweater for me. So my first film, I thought about Georgia Carney Darling, who could knit. And she told me how to lay out the pattern so that she could count the stitches and make that sweater with African masks on it.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

Incredible.

[Ruth E. Carter]

And at the end of the show, which I thought it was the end of school days, it was the last day of shooting. I was hell bent on keeping that sweater. So towards the end of school days, I packed the sweater with my personal belongings and sent it to the airport. And we needed that sweater for another scene. And I didn't realize it, and it was one of a kind. So we, in the middle of the night, traveled to the airstrip and we managed to get the sweater.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Wow.

[Alexandra Schwartz]

So you're on an airstrip in the middle of the night getting this sweater.

[Ruth E. Carter]

Oh, my God. Digging out of my boxes, that sweater. I was hell bent on keeping it. And then Spike gave it to Kaim Hershey. I. He didn't even give you this? No, he did not.

[David Remnick]

Ruthie Carter, who's been nominated for the Oscar in costume design for her work on the film Black Panther. She spoke with Doreen St. Felix, who's a staff writer at the New Yorker. And that's it for the New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for listening and I'll see you again soon. Same time next week.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a.

[David Remnick]

Co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus. Of Toon Yards, with additional music by Alexis Cuadrado.

[David Remnick]

Our team includes Alex Barron, Emily Bottin.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen.

[David Remnick]

Frillman, Kalalea, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Louis Mitchell, Sarah Nix and Steven Valentino, with.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Help from Emily Mann and Jessica Henderson. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported.

[David Remnick]

In part by the Tsarina Endowment Fund.