All language subtitles for obit.2016.limited.1080p.bluray.x264-bipolar

Uh, hello, I'm trying
to reach Melody Miller.

Ms. Miller, it's Bruce Weber
at The New York Times.

I don't know if you got
any of my emails,

but we would like to run
an obituary about your husband.

First of all, it's fair
to describe your husband

as an advisor to Democratic
candidates, right?

I mean, he worked
with Kennedy in the--

he was on Kennedy's
staff, right?

Right.

What I'm gonna do is first go
through just the usual questions

that we go through with
all families, and then I have

some specific questions
about your husband.

Your husband's
full name at birth?

William P. Wilson.

That's P-A-R-M-E-N-T-E-R?

September 4th, 9/4/28.

And what was his date of death?

So he was 86.

And where was he when he died?

Washington, D.C., okay,
and the cause of death?

Did he go to public schools
in Chicago?

So he enlisted in the Army
and served in the Korean War,

and then University of Illinois
on the GI bill.

What did he study?

Okay.

People often ask,
"Oh, you're an obit writer.

Isn't it depressing?"

Maybe it's macabre,
maybe it's a little morbid.

I'm not sure
that writing the obits,

the fact of death
is really that much

at the forefront of my mind.

It's almost never depressing,
because we're almost always

writing about someone in his
or her eighties or nineties

who has died after a long, rich,

creative, fulfilling life.

In an obit of 800 words or so,

maybe a sentence or two
will be about the death,

and the other 90 percent
is about the life.

So it's counterintuitive,
ironic even,

but obits have next to nothing
to do with death,

and in fact
absolutely everything

to do with the life.

We don't have much new going on.

Yeah, I've only got two people.

Oh, I was gonna give you

this Argentine cardinal.

He seems to have had
a big role in the Vatican.

I think we looked
for him already.

The--and I don't think
there was anything, actually.

There aren't too many of us
doing this anymore.

I mean, you could count them
on one hand.

Most papers just don't devote

an entire department to this.

It's a little bit off-putting,
you know, in a party situation.

I say I write obituaries, but
sometimes, if I'm in the mood,

I say I am an obituarist,

and the reaction is almost
always sort of pulling back

as if I were, uh, you know,

uh...contagious.

You know, they think
it's one step away

from an undertaker's job,

with all due respect
to undertakers.

Sometimes people laugh.

Sometimes people
look at you in shock.

Sometimes people go,
"Oh wow, I love obits."

Sometimes people go, "Oh,"
and go on to, you know,

go on to talk to somebody
more interesting than me.

In Italian, they say--

it has the prefix "necro" in it.

It's like "necrologista,"

you know, "necrologica."

So it could be worse, you know,

I just say I write obituaries.

Huh, that's interesting.

Yeah, what can you tell
me about his parents?

Beginning with their names.

Now Jane as the usual spelling,

there's no Y in there
or anything.

And what did your husband's
father do for a living?

A congressman from where?

From Illinois, from Illinois?

A Democrat, I take it?

This is interesting.

He might be worth something.

Dan, have we looked
for Herbert Ellis?

He was a British
surgeon commander.

- When did he die?
- Yeah, you're right.

He died October 4th,
it's too late.

Death strikes suddenly
and unexpectedly,

and you don't know who
you're gonna be writing about

from day to day when
you're on the obits desk.

Literally, I show up in the
morning and I say, "Who's dead?"

And somebody puts a folder
on my desk and that's,

you know, that's
what I do that day.

This is Julie Harris,
by the way.

You know, I tend
to sort of fall in love

with the people
I write about anyhow.

It's sort of how
I respond to people,

whether they're alive or dead.

Starting the day getting
a name you've never heard of,

knowing that you are going
to have to have command

of this person's life, work,

and historical significance
in under seven hours

is equal parts
exhilaration and terror.

Every single day,
I have to fight down panic,

and I've done this
a thousand times.

It can be a teacher
of belly dancing,

an expert on exotic chickens,

an underwater cartographer.

These are literally
people we have all done.

The coverage I had initially
seen--and I don't even remember

where it came from--
just said "arranged."

I'm expressing skepticism
about whether he actually

wrote the songs or just
put his name on them,

but that's hard to prove.

If my suspicions are
right and we do the obit,

and we say he co-wrote,
people will come out

of the woodwork and say,
"No, he didn't,"

but he's never been taken
to court, as far as I know.

So maybe my skepticism
is misplaced.

I was leaning away
from doing him,

and now I'm leaning
toward doing him.

- Are you?
- Yeah.

Now Richard Rich,
I actually flipped through

Mary Wells's book,
and she does credit him

as a very creative
advertising writer.

Certainly in its day it was one
of the big advertising agencies.

It was a very big advertising
agency, and they were famous

for doing some very
bold advertising.

The editors are besieged
by people who don't understand

being a worthy person
and a virtuous person

does not make you
a newsworthy person.

Often, they'll get a phone call
from someone saying,

"My uncle subscribed
to The New York Times

all his life, and it
was a religion for him,

and it would just be so
gratifying to the family

if he could have an obituary
in The New York Times."

I'll bet there's 10 or 15
calls like that every day,

and they're utterly sincere.

I think he's worth
a short, you know?

- Just for the record.
- Wendy's Hot and Juicy campaign.

Benson & Hedges, Alka Seltzer.

Pieces of pop culture history.

We have to decide
if we want him to go back

to the lawyer
for Waylon Jennings.

Well, you know, a lot
of people persuading--

Yardley's concern,
as I understand it,

is that if you write the story,
you'd have to get into

the uglier aspects of it,
and my feeling is, "So what?"

My feeling is that
makes it a better story.

The question is who can do him?

I can ask Paul
to knock that out.

- Yeah, why not?
- Have Paul look into it.

Bruce is gonna
continue with Wilson.

- Yeah, right.
- Sounds good.

The one thing all
the subjects have in common,

besides being dead,

is that their lives

had an impact
of one sort or another.

The word "impact"
is infinitely elastic.

That impact can be of
world-shaking importance.

You know, when Brezhnev
died, that was the end

of a particular era in one of
the great social experiments

of the 20th century,
the beginning

of the decline
of the Soviet Empire.

And then you get to the guy
who invented the Slinky,

and he had an impact too.

Millions of people bought the
Slinky and took pleasure in it.

If you weigh in one hand
Slinky and in the other hand,

Soviet Union 20th century,

obviously one hand
is gonna dip way down here

and the other hand's
gonna be way up here.

But I'll bet
a lot of people turn

to the Slinky first
to read about it.

Hello there.

"He crossed the Atlantic
because it was there,

and the Pacific because
it was also there.

He made both crossings
in a rowboat

because it too was there,

and because the lure
of sea, spray, and sinew,

and the history-making chance
to traverse two oceans

without steam or sail
proved irresistible.

In 1969, after six months
alone on the Atlantic

battling storms, sharks,
and encroaching madness,

John Fairfax,
who died this month at 74,

became the first lone oarsman
in recorded history

to traverse any ocean.

For all its bravura,
Mr. Fairfax's seafaring

almost pales beside
his earlier ventures.

Footloose and handsome, he was
a flesh and blood character

out of Graham Greene with
more than a dash of Hemingway

and Ian Fleming shaken in.

At nine, he settled
a dispute with a pistol.

At 13, he lit out
for the Amazon jungle.

At 20, he attempted
suicide by jaguar."

- Thank you!
- Very well done.

How does it feel to be--

I take property
of this little bit.

Well done, John, well done.

The explosion that ensued,

readers just went nuts.

"This is the original most
interesting man in the world."

"This is the most bad-assed
obit I ever read,"

which is fascinating
for two reasons.

One, when does anyone ever use

the adjective "badass"
to preface anything

that appears in the pages
of The New York Times?

And two, it's kind of
a tacit commentary

on this old but still prevalent

Victorian sensibility that obits

have to be demure, respectful,

lachrymose, God knows not funny.

Heaven forefend if there's
a laugh line in there,

and this was an obit
that broke all the rules

and proudly announced
obits in the 21st century

can be just as rollicking
and swaggering

as their subjects.

Okay.

Was he married before
he was married to you?

And how many times?

Okay, and that marriage
ended in divorce?

Huh, and what was her name?

Not the daughter,
the first wife.

Okay, on to survivors.

Your name is Melody
with a Y, right?

Do you want the Jean
in there or no?

One daughter, and her name is?

Does she go by Miller as well?

We usually draw the line
at names of--

you know, 'cause some people
have 26 grandchildren.

So three granddaughters, okay.

Any great-grandchildren, okay.

Unlike a beat writer
who is used to covering, say,

Congress or the Supreme Court,

or the New York Philharmonic,

we don't have this bristling
Rolodex of sources.

You spend your day
juggling phone calls

to families, friends
and associates,

speed-reading clippings
printed out from online sources,

and tenderly handling
these yellowed,

crumbling clippings
from the morgue.

God willing, the families
who've contacted us

have provided a phone number
so that we can call them

and do the basic leg work
of confirming the death.

Where, when, the cause,
who were the survivors?

Sometimes in their exhausted
grief, quite understandably,

families forget to provide
contact information.

So you spend precious hours
with the clock ticking down

working public records databases

to try to find a phone
number for someone

or even a phone number
of a neighbor.

It was a weekend,
it was a Sunday,

I think, that we found out.

I got a call from
the office that said,

"David Foster Wallace has died,

and we don't have an advance,
and we need an obit,

can you do it?" and I did.

You know, I'd read
a little bit of him.

You know, I didn't
know his oeuvre,

but one of the things that

I thought was important
was that since

he was only in his
forties to find out

the circumstances of his death.

We'd heard he committed suicide,
but we didn't know for sure.

He was living in California
at the time.

But I knew--I'd found out
that his parents

lived in
Champaign-Urbana, Illinois,

and so I went to the--

I just dialed
all the Wallaces

um, until I found his parents.

I didn't expect them
to talk to me, but they did.

And his father explained
that, you know, his son

was suffering from
serious depression.

It had gone--he'd had
electro-shock therapy.

It was a horrifying,

horrifying story.

But, you know, it was...

...it was really explanatory,

and I think, and I think

it worked well for readers,

I mean, to explain why
this immensely talented

and obviously--

if you read his work,
you know he's obviously--

this is a guy who obviously
lives inside his own head,

you know, with
a great intensity.

And I hope the obit explains

some of--explains some
of this to people.

We got an email from
somebody saying that

his father had helped save

the Spacelab, I think--Skylab.

It was such a preposterous
claim, I thought,

"This is just ridiculous."

Many times, people send in
notes about their loved ones

that grossly exaggerate
their accomplishments,

because maybe that's the way
Daddy used to tell the story,

or maybe they heard
the story that way.

This just seemed ridiculous,

but when Dan finished
the morgue run

and brought back the clip file,

there was an article
about how this guy,

who had never been to college
but was sort of a tinkerer,

saved this mission.

There was some failure
of heat shields

that threatened this
whole mission in space,

and he basically
helped come up with

this sort of ingenious
tinkerer's fix.

A parasol that could
be shoved through

this hole and then opened up.

You know, he bought
fishing rods,

and he assembled this thing
with a team of people

in two or three days
and it worked.

It was the article in
the morgue that convinced me

that this preposterous
claim was legitimate,

was actually true.

We could document it.

Yeah, Jack Kinzler.

In the morgue,
we found a drawing

of how this thing worked,
and this was on the front page.

That just made it that
much stronger of a story.

You ready?

So this is the Times Morgue.

At the height of it,
it was manned by 30 people.

Now one person.

Three shifts a day,
seven days a week,

almost 24 hours till 3 A.M.

You had the cutters,
the indexers,

the filers, the refilers.

We clipped from about
28 different publications

along with the Times.

Before we moved,
there were approximately

10,000 drawers of clippings.

If it went into the
new Times building,

all the floors would pancake.

It couldn't stand the weight.

So how much have
I actually seen here?

Virtually nothing, I mean,
it's not even a question.

I mean, look.

I mean, how could
you read all that?

It's just one drawer, there's
thousands of those drawers.

And it's just--it's impossible.

Yeah, I mean, when you
come in here, it looks...

it looks pretty chaotic, but no.

Everything is organized
specifically in certain areas.

Clippings generally over here.

You've got people clippings,
you've got subject clippings,

you've gut
geographical clipping;

This is the 36 volumes
of the Iran Contra hearings.

I don't know, we like
to keep the paper copy

because we don't know if
the online is gonna work.

Card catalog for the clippings,
card catalog for the pictures,

stretches over here
still and over there.

People have to figure it out for
themselves to a certain extent.

Stretching all of these
cabinets are pictures,

but not really, because
there's also clips on top.

Ninety percent of the subject
photographs are in here.

Biographical photographs,
90 percent are out there.

Biographical pictures,
five people to a folder.

Sometimes if it's like a big
deal person it's one number.

As I tell everyone,
this is not rocket science.

This is very straightforward,
but there's no rhyme or reason

really to, like, why
there's a picture somewhere.

So next to City Planning
Commission, France housing.

So this picture's of houses.

U.S. Navy Marine, ships,
the ZuiderKruis,

Central Intelligence Agency.

Key thing is put it back
on the right spot.

If you misfile it,
man, it's gone.

You misfiled it,
it is gone.

And so now, specifically
with obituaries,

what happens a lot of times
is that, you know,

we'll have a picture
that's like 50 years old.

It's kind of the typical
thing where, okay,

you're thumbing through
the card catalog,

and I might've been looking
for some other Seeger.

And I see Charles Seeger,
and I know Charles Seeger,

"Oh, that's Pete's pop."

So I was looking through it
just purely for my own interest,

and...

wow.

There's, like,
the Seeger family.

"Professor Charles Lewis Seeger
with wife and children

giving an open air concert
at camp in Washington

in their tour like
minstrels of olden time."

June 4th,1921.

So there's Peter.

That's Pete Seeger.

I always kept saying,

"Hey, when he dies,

you should use--or you should
look at that picture,

because no one's
gonna have that,"

and no one did have it, because
we paid ten bucks for it.

Times, wide world, 1921.

You know, once it ran in
the paper and on the website,

the whole world sees it, and so,

it changes the story,

and it changes
your perspective.

Here's Pete, two years old
and his family is already

going down South
trying to figure out

old songs, and so that's--

literally his life is there

from the very beginning.

You always have
somebody check to see

if there's stuff in the morgue.

You know, the fear
of missing something

is sort of a defining aesthetic.

Every researcher knows that
the thing you're looking for

leads you to the thing
you weren't looking for,

and is much better than
the thing you were looking for.

You know, it's like water
on the roof, you know,

you just don't know where
it's gonna come through.

It just--it's a story, you know,

and you follow
the story to where

it has its greatest power.

In the research of any obituary,

I'm always looking for,

for striking details,

'cause A, they're fun to write,
B, they're fun to read,

and C, they tell you stuff
about people's lives

that may seem like off the,
off the main narrative

of why you're writing the obit,

but it bolsters the narrative.

Bill Haley and his Comets!

I wrote the obituary
of the bass player

for Bill Haley and the Comets

when they recorded
Rock Around the Clock.

Rock Around the
Clock was recorded

the year after I was born,

and it's been a staple
of my lifetime.

I wrote a little bit too
much and they were cutting,

they were cutting my obit,
and there was something

in there that I really wanted
to keep, and the thing

that I wanted to keep was that
his father was a hog butcher.

He grew up poor in North
Carolina during the Depression,

and his father was a hog
butcher, and I thought,

"You know, that's a detail
that's worth keeping."

It contributes to a narrative,
it somehow tells you

about the life
that this guy lived.

Thinking of obituaries
as something

that can make you
laugh as well as cry,

I think that's a fairly
recent development.

Like many other kinds
of stories at the paper,

they used to be dull,
dry, responsible,

very well fact-checked,

but not terribly
thrilling to read.

In the old days, there
was no part of an obit

more formulaic than
the lede paragraph.

John Doe who died when,
who died of what,

who died where,
who died at what age.

Those facts can often
be very intrusive,

stop the narrative.

You're always wrestling with
a way of folding them in

without interrupting the flow.

Clearly, you can't throw it out,
but you're trying to write

a story, not just
deliver a resume.

What I strive to do and try
to get our writers to do

is to think big picture
in a sense.

There is a kind of form
that we adhere to,

but we also like to bend it,

and we like to experiment
where we can.

We try to even inject humor.

You have to walk
a very fine line,

because you're talking
about dead people,

and you don't want to offend,

but you're also
there to somewhat--

you know, you're there
to educate and illuminate,

and even entertain your readers.

You know, it needs to be
sort of seductive.

I don't know if you would
be automatically inclined

to read the obituary of the bass
player on Rock Around the Clock,

and it's therefore
my responsibility

to try and persuade
you to do so.

If you're interested
in rock and roll,

what does that word
"percussive" mean?

Why was that important?

You're trying to weave
a historical spell in a way,

and enchant the reader,
and do justice to a life.

You have the chance
that you can't repeat.

It's a once-only chance
to make the dead live again.

"Irving Cohen, who was known
as King Cupid of the Catskills

for his canny ability to seat
just the right nice Jewish boy

next to just the right
nice Jewish girl

during his half-century
as the maître d'

of the Concord Hotel,
died on Monday.

He was 95."

"Candy Barr, an exotic dancer
whose hardscrabble life

became Texas legend
as she befriended Jack Ruby,

who killed President
John F. Kennedy's assassin,

dated a mobster,
shot her husband,

went to prison for drug
possession, and starred--

unwillingly, she insisted--
in a famous stag film,

died on Friday
in Victoria, Texas.

She was 70."

Well, hello.

I have two daughters, Phyllis...

Cocktail sauce
in the fried shrimp...

"Eugene Polly, an inventor
whose best known creation

has fostered blissful sloth,

caused decades
of domestic discord,

and forever altered the way
consumers watch television,

died on Sunday in
Downers Grove, Illinois.

Mr. Polly, the inventor
of the wireless

television remote, was 96."

"Her three successive
names were signposts

on a twisted, bewildering
road that took her

from Stalin's Kremlin where
she was the 'little princess'

to the West in
a celebrated defection,

and finally to decades
of obscurity,

wandering, and poverty.

At her birth
on February 28th, 1926,

she was named Svetlana Stalina,

the only daughter
and last surviving child

of the brutal Soviet tyrant
Josef Stalin.

After he died in 1953,

she took her mother's
last name, Alliluyeva.

In 1970, after her defection
and an American marriage,

she became
and remained Lana Peters.

Ms. Peters died of colon cancer
on November 22nd

in Richland County, Wisconsin.

'You can't regret your fate,'
she once said,

'although I do regret my mother
didn't marry a carpenter."'

"Zelma Henderson,
a Kansas beautician

who was the sole
surviving plaintiff

in Brown v. Board of Education
of Topeka,

the landmark federal
desegregation case of 1954,

died on Tuesday in Topeka.

She was 88 and had lived
in Topeka all her adult life."

One of the things obit writers
are often asked,

with real anger
and real pain is,

"Why doesn't your page represent
more women and minorities?"

And what I tell them
is the short answer--

this is gonna sound flippant

and I don't mean it to
in any way--

is "Ask me again in
one more generation."

The longer answer is this:

Obits are an inherently
retrospective genre.

Unlike the rest of the paper

which is reporting on
what happened yesterday--

or in the internet age,
what happened five minutes ago--

we are reporting on people
who were in their prime,

moving and shaking,
changing the world

40, 50, 60 years ago.

However we feel about it now,
and however modern society

and modern sensibilities
have evolved,

the harsh reality of our culture
is that by and large,

the only people
who were allowed to be actors

on the world stage
40 and 50 years ago

were overwhelmingly white men.

One of the really striking
evolutions that's happened

just in the 10 years
I've been doing this job

is I have seen more women
and minorities

creep onto our page

because now this sliding window
on past history

that obits look through
is moving up and up and up.

When I first started,
we were writing

about the World War II era--
overwhelmingly white men--

the Cold War, ditto.

We are now edging into
the civil rights era

and the people who made
the women's movement.

Will you take camera two,
please, Roger?

Can you hear me now, speaking?

Is that about
the right tone of voice?

Yeah, and I think
it probably all started

on the night--
on September, 26th, 1960.

Yeah, well, I mean,
I think that's--

I think a lot of
the obituary will--

is gonna try to make that point.

A couple of questions, one is...

I know your husband
was the first person hired

as a television consultant
on a presidential campaign.

How did that come about?

I mean, how did one become
a communications consultant

or television consultant

in the days when very few
people had televisions?

I mean there were
probably only five

or six people in the world

who actually thought
about this stuff at that point.

Yeah.

It's hard to imagine now,
you know?

When he talked about
the Nixon-Kennedy debates,

were there particular things
that he liked to discuss?

I mean, I saw
in the C-Span program,

he mentioned that
the most important thing

that he did was to insist
upon a single stem podium.

- I'm on this side?
- Let me see a tight shot

on camera one, please.

I think I better shave.

They were playing chicken
with each other

it sounded like.

And Rogers at the last second,

put this Lazy Shave
or, you know,

Halberstam calls it Shave Stick,

and a couple of other people
have called it

something called
Lazy--Lazy Shave.

It's really funny.

You remember what Halberstam
wrote about this?

I just read it this morning.

"Kennedy asked Wilson
if the press was out there,

and Wilson said yes,
and Kennedy said,

'Fuck 'em, I won't do it.'

He was not about
to be ambushed by Nixon,

but Wilson insisted that he
needed some kind of makeup,

mostly to close the pores
and keep the shine down.

And Kennedy asked
if Wilson could do it

and Wilson,
who knew the neighborhood,

ran two blocks to a pharmacy,
bought Max Factor Crème Puff,

and made Kennedy up
very lightly.

'Do you know what
you're doing?' Kennedy asked.

'Yes,' Wilson said.

'Okay,' Kennedy said.

Wilson was impressed
by how relaxed he was

on such decisions.

Max Factor Crème Puff
instead of Shave Stick

rode the future leadership
of the United States

and the free world."

You know you can actually see it

if you watch the debates
with that in mind,

you can actually see it.

And Nixon was not terrible,
you know, in those debates.

But, you know, he looked--but...

Yep.

He looked great,
he looked great.

And you know, the story

about how all
of these people began,

immediately after the debates--

that the motorcade began
attracting bigger crowds,

and young women
started coming out.

I think it had to have been
a complete revelation

about the power of television.

Yeah, and you know,
there had been a few TV stars

but the idea that exposure
on TV that way

might confer instant celebrity
was, you know...

He did.

I will try and give him
an eloquent sendoff.

I'll do my best.

Well listen, it was very nice
talking to you.

You know, I'm sorry about
the occasion, and once again,

please accept my condolences.

Thanks very much.

Bye-bye now.

Okay, we're good.

I'm working
on the story of a man

named Richard Rich,
known as Dick Rich,

in the advertising world
of the 1960s.

I wasn't familiar with his name,

but the images that
he created are everlasting.

No matter what shape
your stomach's in.

His work was mostly very visual
and edgy at the time.

The question he asked
of every piece that he did

was, "Will it play in Japan?"

Meaning, is it visual enough
to convey its message

without words.

His theory of advertising
was kind of prescient

in the sense
that this was in the '60s,

and he was already anticipating
the global marketplace.

That every human on the planet

could understand a visual joke
of a certain kind.

That was pretty unusual.

I mean that was
pretty forward thinking.

All these guys were pioneers
in their own way.

The question now is,
can freedom be maintained

under the most severe attack
it has ever known?

I think it can be.

And I think
in the final analysis,

it depends upon what we do here.

I think it's time
America started--

You know, you can see that
Kennedy's suit fits better.

He looks vigorous, relaxed.

What kinds of programs
are we for?

- We are for programs--
- Nixon's sweating,

he looks grim.

Every time he speaks,
his eyebrows knit.

...to all Americans
their equal chance.

I respect the sincerity

with which he makes
that suggestion.

Mr. Vice President, I'd like
to follow Mr. Novins' question.

He insisted on
a single stem podium

because he knew that Kennedy
was more physically robust

and graceful than Nixon,
and he didn't wanna--

- he wanted to show off.
- I guess the question

is whether, you know,
his behind the scenes work

contributed to Kennedy's victory
in this debate.

I think it clearly can be
demonstrated that it did.

Kennedy acknowledged that
the debate won the election.

That one debate.

It's probably a refer,
I don't think it would be--

we can promote him
as a front page story.

Yeah, I would agree with that.

- When's the meeting?
- Four o'clock.

All right, give me a--you know--

I mean, if you could
write something.

Yeah, yeah, I will.

You know,
it's frustrating

'cause you never meet them.

I mean, the fun thing
about being a journalist

is meeting all
these interesting people,

and, you know, it never happens

by definition.

I really admire people
I write about generally.

It becomes a little
love affair in a sense,

and they're important to you.

And I think you bring
that feeling,

that warmth,

that you develop over time,
to all these people,

to the specific one you're doing
at a given time.

Sometimes the backs of
their books are on my desk,

and I'm often being
looked at by the person

that I'm writing about
and, in a way,

I feel their presence
in the sense that--

not so much, you know,
telling me anything,

but telling me
not to misrepresent me.

You know, "get me right.

Do me right."

The music is so wonderful.

I'm coming to the bell.

You can't go fast.

Manson Whitlock was
a crotchety old gent

who for 40, 50, 60 years,

when this was a routine
and ubiquitous thing to do,

repaired typewriters.

He worked on manuals lovingly,
electrics grudgingly,

and computers not at all.

And when he died in 2014,

he was holding fast
to the old ways.

And there seemed to be
just enough work for him

that he was able to hang on.

I started to think,

what sounds
do a typewriter make?

Because it's this music
that this man,

like the last member
of a community

that knows the old songs,
was helping to keep alive.

Now that he's gone, what's
going to happen to that music?

The finality of that?

Or this?

Just a minute, George.

Bill, how long is the Wilson
obit supposed to be?

Eight hundred words, maybe?

Yeah, 800 words
sounds about right.

We were talking yesterday
about whether or not

this should be an obituary

that has an ordinary news lede

or an anecdotal lede, and

I think my first attempt,
anyway,

is gonna be to write
an anecdotal lede,

to talk about the history first.

You know, to create
the moment in history that--

in which this guy
was significant

rather than to begin
with "William P. Wilson

who did such-and-such, died."

We do anecdotal ledes
occasionally

when, you know,
when it calls for it,

so I think I'm gonna
give that a shot.

So have you written
the lede yet?

I haven't because,
his being in advertising,

clever writer, kind of puts
a special demand

on the obit writer
to try to at least suggest,

you know, that quality
of cleverness.

So I'm struggling with the lede.

Trying to figure out
how to get, you know,

jiggling tummies
and crushed cigarettes

into one sentence
that's coherent.

And I can't figure it out yet,
and it's already 3:30.

One of the many perks of working
at The New York Times,

free coffee.

We write obituaries
according to the scale

of the individual.

So we make these calculations.

We actually put word lengths
on human beings, you might say.

A reporter will often
come to us and say,

"How many words do you want
on this person?"

And we'll say, mmm...600?

Maybe 800.

Nine hundred tops,
because if you go over that,

you are making a statement.

If you write 1,000
or 1,400 words on someone

who you originally thought
is worth,

in terms of news judgment,
800 words,

to write 1,400,
you're going overboard

and you're sending
the wrong signal,

in a way, to the reader.

We're not making judgments

about anybody's worthiness
as a human being,

but we are making
news judgments

about newsworthiness,
and so the most prominent,

the kings and the presidents
and the movie stars

who just capture
the public attention

are gonna get a big obituary.

Maybe a page, maybe two.

I think the Pope's obituary,
Pope John Paul,

went something
like 15,000 words.

So they are signals,
they're visual cues.

Size of pictures.

Number of pictures.

Someone may be worth
two pictures,

some may be worth three.

It's the one department
in the paper

where we can't rely
on a staff of, you know,

excellent photographers.

We have to rely on what's there.

Sometimes there's
virtually nothing

that we can find on them,

and so we'll be desperate
to find even a head shot,

because we like to run
a picture of every subject

with every obituary, if we can.

It's almost a parlor game
in some ways.

Who deserves to be on page one,

and not only who deserves
to be on page one,

but where on the page?

Above the fold--l mean we still
have these conversations.

One day the newspaper
will be no more

and "above the fold"
will be a term

that will have to go
to the dustbin.

I don't put
the obit on page one.

It's a judgment call
that the managing editors make.

I propose it, and we have
a 4 o'clock meeting

for the print paper every day

and the various
department heads gather

with various other people,

and they essentially
are pitching, selling,

a story that they think
should be on the front page.

And sometimes it's automatic,

it's a story that
no one would disagree

should be on the front page,

but sometimes an obituary is--

it provokes some discussion.

We've had some
very lively discussions

about whether someone is worth--

worthy of page one.

In most cases, the obituary
doesn't go on page one.

We might get what
we call a "refer,"

which is essentially
a little blurb

at the bottom of the page,

which is the next best thing
to a front page obit.

Another little visual cue,

which I don't know
if readers are onto,

but it's the obit
that has the verb,

which is the word "dies"
or "is dead," is the lead obit--

it's the most prominent obit
of the day.

The lead verb governs
the rest of the page.

So you don't have to say
everybody is dead.

It's pretty clear that
if you're on the obituary page,

you're dead.

We don't use euphemisms
like "passed away,"

"taken away by the angels
to heavenly rest,"

"was clasped
to the Lord's bosom,"

"surrounded
by his loving family,"

any of this sort of
Hallmark card language

that softens the experience

or gives emotional cast
to it that's,

in our view, inappropriate
to the newspaper.

Every one of us is going to die,

and that's the word in English
that we use for it.

I grew up in Clear Lake, Iowa,

and this is the Clear Lake
Mirror from 1930.

And my great-grandmother
is the subject of this obituary:

"As the sun sank below
the western horizon

Tuesday, April 1st,
the soul of Mrs. H.E. Palmetter

was loosed from its moorings,

and she passed over
the great divide.

It was a fitting instance
that as the sun ceased to shine

in the evening,
the life of this noble woman

ceased its work
and she was at rest.

In a lonely grave
in the silent city,

her body calmly slumbers,

careless alike
of sunshine and storm.

But over it too the sunset
will glow with purple and red,

and the fleecy clouds roll by

and far above it will shine
the brilliant stars of heaven."

What we do now is, of course,
the opposite of that

and, um, I don't think
a lot is lost,

but it certainly says
how the culture has changed.

As anyone who's ever read

a Times obit
will have encountered,

we do have to have
the requisite second paragraph

that says either
what the cause of death was

or "the family
confirmed the death,"

or words to that effect.

Now, why do we have that?

The reason is simple,
but it's ironclad.

Many years ago,
a writer here, now retired,

saw word of this woman's death

in one of the European papers.

She was an eminent
Russian dancer.

It was Friday night, too late
to reach anybody in Europe,

so he wrote up
a very reasonable obit.

When our story ran,
the switchboards lit up

with hysterical calls
from this woman's family.

Not only was she not dead,

she was in a nursing home
in Manhattan.

So, after that,
in the second paragraph

we have to not only say
that the person is dead,

we have to say how we know,
and we'd better be damn sure.

That can often be
the most anxious moment

in writing an obit,
which is trying to find--

waiting for the phone call
or the email

from the person
who actually will allow you

to nail this one fact down

and let the thing go to press.

I have very little patience
with people

who don't want to tell me
what the cause of death was.

I don't see what
the embarrassment is

if somebody died of AIDS
or if somebody had dementia

or if it was, I don't know,

cancer of the what--
cancer of the pancreas.

I don't know why people
find the idea of illness

that causes death embarrassing.

But if somebody's younger,
there is a real curiosity

about why someone died,
and I'll...

I'll be a little bit
of a pest about that.

God, I can't believe
these are her clips here now.

Man, what a drag.

These are all
the clips on--man!

On Gertrude Berg.

Someone was asking
for this recently.

Believe me,
this is the first--

I didn't even realize
it was here.

I didn't--I didn't think
to look here, truthfully.

For some reason, and I don't
know why we did this,

we removed famous people,
some famous people,

and put 'em all together
in this cabinet.

Why? I don't know.

I have no idea.

There was some kind
of rhyme to it,

but what happens is that...

as the years
and generations of people

working in this facility go on,

the person who knew
the reason for that is gone.

See, it's out of order
from the sequence over here,

so it just says "VIP,"
and that was me writing "VIP,"

reminding myself
that it was there.

But I rarely look through it,

and I should've looked
through it because,

I'm tellin' ya,

I really wish that I would have
known that this was here.

Who's the one
who does the maintenance

and maintains everything?

Me, I mean,
I'm the last person running it.

Am I the one who knows...

where everything is?

No, 'cause I just
showed you that I'm not.

Do I know more than anyone else
here at this point?

Yeah, but that's just because
I spent some spare time

rooting around
and trying to figure out

why things were where they were,
and how it happened,

and why it was created
certain ways.

So that's the only reason why

I know more
than anyone else,

because I opened all
the drawers, so to speak.

Not all the drawers!

What did I want to be?

You know, I went
through various things.

I wanted to be
an airplane pilot.

Then I wanted
to be an architect.

First I thought I wanted
to be a musician.

I was a fairly serious cellist

from about the age of 12
through college.

I wanted to be a ballplayer.

After that I wanted
to be a mathematician,

and after that I wanted
to be a musician.

It never once occurred to me
that I was gonna end up

writing for a daily newspaper.

An obituary editor?
Now, who' da thunk that?

We all have the great pleasure
of being able

to come out of the closet
in this day and age

as obit writers.

Only a generation ago, maybe
even more recently than that,

obits were very stigmatized.

The obits section has always
been a kind of Siberia

at the paper, you know.

A place where people who were
getting on in their careers

were parked as a, sort of,
last stop on their way out.

The obits section
was where newspapers

typically sent writers
whom they were trying to punish

but didn't quite
have enough on to fire.

They were where you
traditionally got sent

if you were deemed
to be a heartbeat away

from needing an obit yourself.

Happily that has changed
in the last 20 years or so.

If you think about
one of the slang ways

of saying that somebody's died,
we say "He's history."

And what an obit actually does,

which I find very compelling
and very moving,

is it captures that person
at the precise point

that he or she becomes history.

It reminds you--
you're opening the paper,

or if you're online,

and suddenly came upon somebody
you haven't thought about,

probably, in 20 years.

It evokes a whole different
set of memories,

brings you back to
the Kennedy administration,

or it may be your parents--

your parents used to watch
this show all the time,

and it drove you crazy!

But you see the obit
of the actor

who died from that show,
and it brings you back,

and you remember
Mom and Dad watching it.

You get retrospectively
to see how people got

from A to B to C in their lives.

And you get
to interrogate history,

and if you're lucky
you get to interrogate fate,

and the question
we writers tacitly ask is,

"If someone had an idea,

.:: HDMovie8.Com ::.

invented something,
started a movement,

wrote a book
that changed the world,

what occasioned that?"

Was it the slow, deliberate
accretion of free will?

Was everything in the life
geared to that?

Or was it,
as makers of film noir

would have us worrying about,

the intervention
of pure blind fate?

Did someone take
a different route to work

one day in 1947
and, as a result,

had an idea
that changed the world?

How did people
get to be where they are?

How did people
get to be the way they are?

How did the world
get to be the way it is?

"At 8:15:17 A.M.
on August 6, 1945,

Colonel Ferebee,
then a 26-year-old major,

pushed a lever
in his B-29 bomber,

the Enola Gay,
making sure an automatic system

he had activated seconds earlier
had functioned."

I could clearly see
the city of Hiroshima

within my bombsight.

Then I clutched in
and took the run,

and I felt the bump
of the airplane.

"He watched as a single,
9,000-pound bomb

turned nose-down and fell
toward its target, Aioi Bridge,

which he had personally selected
from aerial photographs.

He said, 'Bomb away!'

Forty-three seconds later,

when the bomb had fallen
from 31,000 feet

to 1,890 feet above the target,

the sky erupted
in dazzling light,

and the earth soon seemed
to seethe like boiling liquid.

The bomber, also called
a Superfortress,

veered away
from the swirling explosion

in a steep, 150-degree turn."

"At least 80,000 Japanese
were killed instantly

or would eventually die
as a result of radiation

from the explosion.

And the atomic age was born."

"Thomas Wilson Ferebee,
the third of 11 children,

was born in 1918

and grew up on a farm
outside Monksville,

a town in central North Carolina

about 20 miles southwest
of Winston-Salem.

He attended Lees-McRae College

in Banner Elk, North Carolina,

where he won letters in track,
basketball and football."

He's just a guy, you know.

He was so ordinary, I mean,
he was just a guy who grew up,

played sports, um,
went to the little college,

and, um...

and um, ended up
in the Army Air Force.

My dad was in
the Army Air Force.

My dad flew a glider
and was shot down

in the invasion of Holland

and was a prisoner of war
for a while.

You know, by chance
that happened to him.

By chance this guy
ended up, you know,

as a bombardier of probably

the most famous
bombing run in history.

I'd like to think
that I wouldn't

have pulled the lever,
but who knows?

He ended up thinking
it was the right thing

that it shortened the war,

as I guess most Americans
still think.

Yeah, that's
a wonderful picture.

- We love that.
- Looks great online.

Yeah, it looks really good.

It's sharp, you know?

And, William Wilson's widow
wrote to me

and, well she sent
a couple of pictures

that looked like she shot them
on her camera phone,

phone camera or something,

and they weren't
very good quality so--

You mean pictures of pictures?

Yeah, they're framed
on the wall.

She had a picture of him
with Bobby Kennedy.

- Was it any good?
- But it's a picture of--

But it's a picture of a picture
and the quality is--

I don't know how else--
I don't know how to...

She's also
in the middle of dealing

with funeral arrangements,
and so--

Have we looked
in the morgue for him?

And nothing?

- He was very behind the scenes.
- Yeah, yeah.

- I mean, she had--
- An advisor.

- Right.
- Call the Kennedy Library.

They could provide something.

I'll bet they have something.

We may want this tonight, too.

Okay.

And Richard Rich.

This one is--

well, this one
is actually more fun.

- That's great.
- He's in the doorway,

yeah, I love that.

You'd have to run it
pretty big, though.

And then there
was this, you know,

kind of handout-y,
Mad Men-looking--

- Peter, Paul, and Mary.
- Or the Mod Squad.

And he's got the cigarette.

Is there a commercial
that we can identify him with

and then show an image?

Well, this mentioned
Alka-Seltzer.

There's a famous commercial,

"No Matter What Shape
Your Stomach ls In."

It's a series
of pictures of, or film,

of people's stomachs,
just from the neck down.

- And then he did--
- It might be '60s.

He did these
Benson & Hedges commercials

where the cigarettes were 100mm.

They were long cigarettes.

So it was all
about the cigarette

getting caught in the doors
of an elevator,

or you know,
poking somebody in the eye

or something like that.

What were they doing
smoking in an elevator?

Well, in those days...

Oh, the disadvantages

of the new
Benson & Hedges 100's.

They're a lot longer
than King-Size.

And that takes
some getting used to.

Crushed cigarettes.

Closing elevator doors

or elevator doors shutting?

Jiggling stomachs.

All these things that
he had to deal with, I'm sure.

The compacting of language

and using as few words
as possible

to say as much as possible,
especially in a story

that's only gonna be
500 words long.

Sometimes those are
the hardest ones to write.

There's a kind of
journalism joke, but true,

about the editor
who says to Reporter Joe...

"Keep it short!

You've got to write it short!"

And Joe saying to his editor,

"I don't have time
to write it short!"

Anyway, I'll just get to work.

I'll just keep struggling
over that lede.

I'm gonna get another cup
of coffee, if you don't mind.

Occasionally you get
a phone call or a letter

from a person who's close
to that person you wrote about

that says, you know,

"Nicely done,
appreciate it very much."

And more often than not
you get a letter or phone call

that says, "Nicely done,
we appreciate it very much,

but..." you know,
"and you got something wrong.

And could you,
for the record, fix it."

And it's crushing,
you know, you feel like, ugh.

Oh, God, it's just--
it's, you know, it's--

it's terrible, it's terrible.

You know, I, um...

You know, every journalist

likes to see
his name in the paper.

You love going home from work
knowing that you're going

to have a story
in the next day's paper.

I was that way my entire career,

until I came
to the obituaries department.

Now, I'm terrified
when I'm gonna have--

when I have a story
in the next day's paper.

I try to check
everything I possibly can.

And it's whatever is
the thing that I don't check,

that's the thing
that I somehow, you know,

missed a little angle on.

That it wasn't a university,
it was a college.

It wasn't a cousin,
it was a brother-in-law.

But, you know, it's wrong,
you gotta correct it.

This shit drives me nuts.

And it keeps me awake at night.

There's so much minutiae
in a life,

such biographical detail that,

you know, even if you can
double-check various facts,

sometimes the original
source is wrong.

We need to be extremely careful
with any claims

that anybody fought
in such-and-such a battle,

in such-and-such a war,

anyone was the first
to do something,

anyone was the inventor
of something,

anyone had such-and-such
an idea first

or was the last to do something.

There's a funny story
about a, um...

about a young reporter
at The New York Times

who--a very gifted guy
who was really gonna go places.

But he was having
a hard time with corrections.

He was having
a lot of corrections,

so he went to a more
experienced reporter,

and he said, "Listen,
I'm having a correction problem.

Do you have any advice for me?"

And the guy said, "Yeah, I do.

Don't put in so many facts!"

Obviously family members

are one of the first
sources you go to.

Particularly
for family information.

However, there--
it is a minefield

because there's such
a thing as family myth.

People believe things
that are not in fact true.

And it may be because
they've been deceived,

or simply because over time

they just came to think that:

"Okay, Dad played football
for Notre Dame,"

and that becomes "Dad was
quarterback for Notre Dame,"

and then that becomes "Dad was
the leading touchdown scorer

for Notre Dame,"
and it goes on and on.

Military service
is notorious for this.

There are certain things

that you instinctively make
a little mark in your mind

that "I have to check this out."

Listen, people have
selective memories, you know?

And um, I don't think
that they make stuff up.

I think that they--
or at least, not very often--

I think they tell the truth
as they recall it.

Families are
very powerful things,

and particularly
after someone dies,

you are trying to remember
some things the way they were,

and some things as better
than the way they were, I think.

I think she called me
"a worthless piece of shit,"

was her response
to the obituary.

There was another fella who--

I wrote about his stepfather,
and he told me

to curl my fist
into a tight ball

and knock all my own teeth out.

So, you can't please everybody.

Often I will talk
to family members

who tell me what
they want in the obit.

And I often have to explain,

"You know, I'm sorry that you
don't want that in the obit,

but a fact is a fact."

We are not friends,
we are not advocates,

we are certainly not
any sort of grief counselor.

We are reporting the news.

We would update
with the latest details

in the second, third,
and fourth graf.

This is just a really quick
web version,

we will make it better
by the end of the day.

Or even before, or even before,
right, Elizabeth?

Even before the end of the day

- we'll make it better!
- The end of the day

- is 6 o'clock!
- Fabulous.

Okay, great,
thank you, Elizabeth.

Okay, obits.

We actually have
a very good story

about William P. Wilson,
by Bruce Weber.

He was, by all accounts,
the first advisor

to a presidential campaign

that was devoted
entirely to television.

He was working for J.F.K.,

and he was in charge
of all the theatrics,

you know, the effects--
the makeup, the podium.

But he was the Kennedy guy.

And they both
had makeup to wear,

but Nixon's was
not very effective.

- He was sweating, right?
- Kennedy's was great,

Kennedy was well-tailored, tall.

Nixon looked a little haggard.

He had a beard that,
you know, needed shaving.

So, you know, it's
a small moment in history.

We think it's a refer
but, you know,

you can certainly
consider it for better.

Okay, thanks very much.

Washington, why don't
we come back to you.

You've got two
big news stories today.

You can pitch both international
and national I think,

whichever way
you want to start.

Okay, let's see,
I guess I'll start with...

The competitive pressures
in journalism

have just picked up
and grown exponentially

in the last ten years
simply because the internet

is just whipping us
like a taskmaster,

and the demand
to get not just a day

ahead of the competition,

but 20 minutes ahead
of the competition

or 20 seconds ahead
of the competition

has editors in an absolute
lather all the time.

We have a 24/7 news cycle
and obituaries are part of that.

We're a news organization and
some deaths are major news.

When Elizabeth Taylor died,
you know, "Stop the presses!"

If it's a competitive obit
that we think we really need

for that next day's paper--

and maybe
on the website sooner--

they will work accordingly.

They may have to forego

certain, you know,
ventures into research.

They may have to just
skip a few steps.

"Can you give us two paragraphs

just to show us
the top of the story?"

"Let us just put like
four paragraphs on the web,

and you can add to it later."

The clock is ticking,
the clock is ticking,

the gun is to the head.

We have to file at six o'clock,
come hell or high water.

One is always
making concessions.

You're always robbing
from Peter to pay Paul

in terms of where
you focus your attention

and how you spend your time.

If you spend even two
extra minutes thinking,

"How can I fit in
such-and-such?"

there'll be a big white column
in the next day's paper

under your name
where that obit should go.

So this is due today, yes?

Uh, yeah, in about 20 minutes.

- Have you got your lede yet?
- Yes, I have my lede.

It's long, I mean,
it's not really a, you know--

"The 1960 Presidential campaign

that pitted Senator
John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts

and Vice President
Richard M. Nixon

was the first to feature
nationally televised debates

between the candidates.

There were four of them,
but the first held in Chicago

on September 26th on the theme
of domestic affairs

is the one best remembered.

It has been estimated
that 70 million viewers or more

tuned in for a close-up look
at the candidates,

both of whom spoke
with an admirable degree

of eloquence and authority
on issues including the economy,

race relations,
and the looming Soviet threat.

Some journalists
and historians have said

that for those
who listened on the radio,

Nixon won the debate.

But there can be
no question that Kennedy,

looking tan
from a California trip,

natty and fit in a dark suit,

graceful and athletic
standing at a podium

with a single narrow pole,

and unflappably cool behind
his lightly applied makeup,

had the more appealing figure,

at least in the minds of voters,
than his opponent,

who had been ill
and had lost weight,

whose bland grey suit
seemed to swim on him,

and who sweated noticeably
under the television lights.

The telecast conferred
a previously unachieved

celebrity on Kennedy

and propelled him
to a lead in the polls

that he never relinquished.

Just days after the election,

Kennedy himself acknowledged
it was the TV

more than anything else
that turned the tide.

The man who negotiated
the terms of the debate

for the Kennedy campaign,

who insisted
on the single pole podium,

who applied Kennedy's makeup,

and escorted him to the bathroom
with scant moments left

before the telecast began,
was William P. Wilson,

who died in Washington
on Saturday at 86."

Now the question is whether
the editors will allow me

to go two fairly
lengthy paragraphs

before getting to the name
of the guy who died.

However, I would argue
that it's in the headline,

and that really,
we are writing about this

because of the history.

So I'm actually
practicing right now

for the argument
that I'm gonna have with Bill

in about 20 minutes, so.

I'm hearing this,
I'm hearing this.

I know you are,
I did that on purpose.

I'm trying to write
an entertaining piece

about history for people
who don't know the history.

I think one of the things
that I haven't nailed yet

is the effect of this debate

on subsequent
presidential campaigns.

I haven't quite
figured that out yet.

I have 20 minutes to go.

A fortunate death for me
is one that occurs,

and you hear about it at 9 A.M.,

and you have all day to be able
to put something together.

The unfortunate death is the one

that occurs late
in the afternoon

when you're getting ready--

thinking about
getting ready to leave.

There's times when you're
starting to walk out the door

and somebody
drops off the perch.

An editor comes over to you
and says, "Not so fast."

Millions of people
around the world

will be in shock tonight--

still in a bit of denial
hoping this story's not true.

Late in the afternoon
a few years ago,

we were putting
Farrah Fawcett into the paper.

She had died earlier in the day.

We were well-prepared for her.

She had been sick
for quite a while,

and we were all
ready to go home,

and suddenly word comes down
through various sources

that Michael Jackson
might be dead.

And, of course, you know,
you drop what you're doing.

He didn't seem to be ailing.

He was getting ready
for a revival tour.

We had done some stories on it.

He seemed to be healthy.

We had no idea, obviously,
this could happen.

Solo and behold, here he is.

Categorically dead.

It was around three
in the afternoon, I think,

when we really knew it for sure.

And, you have to realize,

we have a print deadline
of about 9 o'clock.

I mean that's just--
that's going to the presses.

So for a writer to file a story,

probably 8 o'clock, maybe 7:30.

So, you're talking about
a window of time of four hours

to write the entire story
of Michael Jackson in four hours

starting from, you know, zero.

It was a real team effort
with a lot of help

from people in New York
and people in Los Angeles.

Jon Pareles is a veteran
music writer for the Times.

He's been writing
about pop and rock

for a couple decades now.

He knew so much,

it was in his head already,
in effect.

There was probably
a loud curse on my side,

and then I basically
stared into the computer

and emerged three hours later
with a lot less hair

and a finished story.

I'm sure I put on
some of his music,

which I tend to do,
to just remember and listen

and hear the live person
that I'm writing about.

With someone
like Michael Jackson,

you've been thinking about him
all your life, basically.

He's such a major figure.

He's always going
through a critic's mind,

because people are
always trying to be him,

people are always trying
to learn from him.

So in a way
it's been percolating

along the background anyway,
and when you have to write

the sudden three-hour
Michael Jackson appraisal,

you can just sort of
open the floodgates

and there it is.

That's the thing about artists,

they have a hold
on our subconscious.

They're talking to us,
they're changing the way we see.

They're helping figure out
how we react to the world,

how we react to it rhythmically,

how we think about love.

I always think
about the stilled voice,

the fingers that
don't move anymore,

the fact that you're not
gonna hear anything more

that they could've said.

Art makes you immortal.

Art makes you a permanent part
of somebody's consciousness.

You don't think
that that person

is a physical being like you,

susceptible to aging,
susceptible to disease,

susceptible to all
the millions of conditions

that our bodies
are sensitive to.

You have that perfect image.

You don't want to think
of them as perishable.

Those are the ones that
cause us the big problems

when they're too young
to, um...

too young to really
do an advance,

because you think they're
gonna be around for a long time.

And yet when they go,
they've accomplished so much

that it's front page news,

and you really have to scramble,

you know, to get it done
on deadline.

There's no way to predict.

Once in a while we'll get word
that someone is ailing

so that'll get our attention,

and we'll make sure
we have something ready.

But often we don't--
we just don't know,

or you have a Robin Williams
out of the blue,

or a Michael Jackson,
you know...

Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

That was a Sunday morning,
and that gave us a good,

you know, a few hours
to get this thing ready,

but we still had
to cobble together the life

of Phillip Seymour Hoffman
in a matter of hours.

You know, the websites
just light up.

We get emails
from people saying,

"Why haven't you--
where's the obit?"

And someone died
ten minutes ago,

and we don't have
anything ready yet, so...

I mean, we're only human.

Those are the nightmares,

and those are the things
that keep me awake.

It's like, okay,
so now I have to--

I have to really watch.

I have to watch
all the sports world

and the theater world

and the scientific world,
et cetera about, you know--

and be ready to be surprised
and getting word in email.

I've sat and watched television,

and I'll see a bulletin,
you know,

and I'll go, "Oh, God."

So there's a tremendous
amount of pressure

to be as prepared as you can,

knowing that you'll
never be prepared.

We have about
1,700 advances now,

and it keeps growing.

And that's--
I'm very proud of that,

that despite all the constraints
getting them done,

we're still
building up this pile.

The standard essentially
is if someone is

by all appearances
doing okay--healthy,

and they're still
in the thick of their lives,

and they're still making
whatever they're making--

we don't do them then.

We wait till they're almost--

essentially when
their body of work is done.

Then we can
take it all as a whole

and sort of make
an assessment about it.

The downside of that
is that you then

don't do some very important
famous people

and, you know, buses come along
and airplanes go down,

and you can't--
you have to take that gamble,

because there are
too many others

who are in their 80s
and 90s--

or even late 70s, who can say--

that we have to do first.

So it's a kind of,
you know, triage.

You do the ones
you really need to do,

and then you hope some
of these other important people,

who are sort of in the middle
of their careers, hang on.

Don't go yet.

I've got a bunch
of them on file,

I mean, a bunch
of really popular,

popular people on file.

They're gettin' up there,
so it's not...

It's top secret?

No, I'll tell you who--
Stephen Sondheim,

Mort Sahl, Valerie Harper,
who else have I done?

Meadowlark Lemon.

Who's Meadowlark Lemon--
he was maybe the most famous

of the Harlem Globetrotters.

- How are you?
- Good, good, yourself?

No, but let me take a look.

I don't know--what
I have to do is blow it up,

'cause I can't really see it.

Oh, wait a minute,
wait a minute.

We're actually pulling
a couple advances today.

We've got, um, Jane Fonda,
who obviously everyone knows.

I certainly hope
we won't need it anytime soon,

but always better to have
these things prepared.

This is the key to the kingdom

of two drawers of advance obits.

Historically,
if a reporter said,

"Hey, I'm interviewing
Irving Berlin next week,

and I'd like to see his advance
before I talk to him."

Verboten, they don't show it.

The only people who can see 'em
are us in the morgue,

and the obit editors.

It looks like everyone's dead!

I don't know--
Roy Rogers, definitely dead.

William Rogers I think is dead.

Rostropovich?

I don't know.

The great George Seldes.

We also have
this advance obit on tape."

As in, computer tape.

So try reading it now.

Oh, yeah, here he is--
Ronald Reagan.

So this is the second one,
this is the first one.

And we started it pretty early,
but with Reagan,

I bet you they didn't
have an advance on him.

And remember,
his assassination attempt

was only a month and a half
into his presidency,

so they were probably
really scrambling.

I can bet you
that they had nothin'.

They probably had nothin'.

And whether they voted
for him or not,

they probably were prayin'
that guy survived,

because they had nothin'.

So, you know,
kind of the serendipity

of going through
this kind of collection

is that you just find
the craziest stuff.

We got word that this aviatrix,
Elinor Smith, died.

She was this pilot
in the 1920s and the 1930s.

So, we pulled her clip file.

As you can tell,
there's lots of Smiths.

Okay, Elinor Smith.

And it says clearly
"Advance Obit."

So I said, "Wow,
that's kinda wild.

Like, we still had a...

we had an advance on her?"

Okay, there it is.

Elinor Smith.

Obit written by Leo Kieren,
June 15, 1931.

Since she was this stunt pilot,
this aviatrix,

they didn't think
that she'd live.

She was in high school
at the time.

She was maybe 16 or 17
or somethin' like that.

And she was a big deal
because the Times always,

you know, was big writing
about Lindbergh

and the Byrd expeditions--

flying and barnstorming
and stunt pilots.

"Elinor Smith was born
in Freeport, Long Island,

on August 17th, 1911.

Parents vaudeville actors."

I said to Bill, I said,
"Man, not for nothin',

but this has got to be
the oldest advance obit

we have for someone
who was still alive

up until like
a year or two ago."

This advance
was written in 1931.

We didn't use it for 80 years.

I know it wasn't much use
to stay up any longer,

so here I am.

I hope it's all right.

I made a mistake
in yesterday's obit,

which is actually--
it's a good illustration

of the pitfalls that
are around every corner.

I mean, it's a small error,
but it's an error nonetheless.

I said that Wilson's grandfather

was a Democratic congressman
from Illinois,

and there was an email
this morning with a citation

from a congressional biography
that in fact

he was a Republican congressman
from Illinois.

Interestingly enough--i mean,
I'm kind of shooting myself,

because it was an error
that really--

completely,
completely avoidable.

Really, I just could
have left out,

um, the party designation

and, you know, without
hurting the obit at all.

I just could have called him
a Congressman from Illinois.

Too many fact, too many facts.

Does writing obituaries
change you in some way?

Does it make you
look at history

or people, life, or death
in a different kind of way?

And I think it...

it does and it doesn't.

Yes, does writing obituaries
make you, you know,

think about mortality
and what that means?

Absolutely it does, yes.

Yeah, you can ask me, uh,
if writing about them every day

makes me think
about my own mortality.

I think about it all the time.

There's nothing really...

much more worthwhile
to think about

for people in general, I think.

It makes me think
about death every day.

Which is--when you,
you know, when you...

I mean, think about it,
that's fairly profound.

And it's happening
at a time when,

you know, I'm in my late 50s.

I'm gonna be 60
at the end of the year.

It's happening at a time
in my life when, you know,

when I realize
it's not gonna go on--

my life isn't
gonna go on forever.

I think a lot of people
at my age

begin to consider mortality

and how best to spend
whatever time we have left.

Because you're spending
a lot of time

with the way lives evolved

and what the arc
of a life is like,

it makes you think about...

it makes you think
about you own life

and how it's developed
over time.

And what will
your obituary read like?

What are these defining moments,

and how do they
assemble themselves

into some kind of
coherent story?

It's not so much that I think,
"Well, what will my obit say?"

I don't really care.

I don't think it'll--
it won't be--

if there is one!

But it's not that, but it's--

you're reading
about these various people

and seeing what they did
in their lives,

and seeing the full circle,
the full arc.

It does give you a little bit
of--it gives you some pause

to think about your own life.

Am I accomplishing anything?

Am I gonna have any impact?

Am I leaving anything?

You know, the fundamentals
of human life remain the same.

Childhood,
adolescence, old age.

Life is not a simple arc.

That's what you learn
writing obits.

Life is ups, and downs,
and bumps, and changes,

and scrapes, and reversals,
and tangents.

You're lucky if your life
has a consistent theme,

because most of it is buffeted.

It's a good thing that the Times

generally assigns older people
to write obituaries,

because we've all had, you know,
all the people on the desk,

we've all had loved ones die.

The appreciation of the
universality of this situation

is extremely helpful.

It certainly changes your sense
of what lives are like

and what accomplishments
really mean

and what the experience
of death is.

There's nothing you can do
about dying, by the way.

I just thought
I might point that out.

Did you notice, Dan,
in that email,

that he also wrote
under a pseudonym.

You could probably
check both names.

- I didn't see...
- Lemme, lemme--

lemme send it to you again,

maybe you never got
the original.

Same person, but...

Oh, he's not dead?

He is 93.

Uh, no, we don't know.

I mean, he's--he's got a lot
of black and white pictures,

but he's got a lot,
a lot of color pictures too

that are quite beautiful.

Okay, I'll call Bruce off it.

Okay, Bruce--Bruce,
you're called off that.

We wanna see if someone who
actually knows about this stuff

can write it.

Pretty good story.

Last week was a heavy
death week in my life.

Uh,clips,under
833-364-231.

There's no way
I'm gonna find it!

Yeah, I know.

Maybe on--
maybe on Peter's desk.

Maybe I should
write down the number?

Yeah, that would be great.

We could add it,
if you want.

I mean, he worked there
for a long time.

I think it, you know,
it does--

it does bear mentioning.

- We can add it to the online.
- Yeah.

Okay, that's--
that's what the web is for.

Yeah.

- As long as you're okay with it.
- Yeah, it's okay.

- It's not a correction.
- No, not at all,

definitely not.