Marc Levin Episode Transcript

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[00:00:01] I'm Aaron Berg, many things. A son, a husband, an immigrant, a dad. I'm also a Jew and I fought every stereotype there is about us. I was a bodybuilder, a male stripper.

[00:00:15] I worked in the sex trade. I became a stand up comedian. And I realized that to be Jewish is to be bad ass. Join me and celebrate all the bad ass Jews out there. And let me tell you, there are a ton. Business moguls, game changers, assassins. They come from every walk of life. This is bad ass Jews. And I'm your host, Aaron Burr.

[00:00:45] Today on bed as Jews. My guest is a filmmaker. But not just a film maker, he is a film maker in a class all by himself. One of the foremost documentarians of our lifetime, he's directed and produced a number of films and series that have won both awards and critical acclaim. It is my honor to welcome Mark Levin to Bad as Jews.

[00:01:08] Mark, how are you today? Good, Erin, good to be on the bad ass tube network.

[00:01:15] Now, you just imparted this knowledge to me that you became a godfather, I godfather. See what I did there? I messed it up. A grandfather. First time now a man of your age, 32, clearly started having kids at a young age. Grew up in the hood. I'm kidding. Mazel tov is obviously in order. Boy, girl to girl, boy and a girl. The magic combo twins. Very rare in the Jewish world.

[00:01:46] Yes, it's true. Although my wife, a good Jewish woman from Long Island, had twins, Sarah and Daniel and my daughter, who did marry out of the faith, a Italian professor at Bard College, Franco.

[00:02:01] But also they have had things better. And Davide.

[00:02:07] Oh, they by the way, a great espresso machine, the fire matter. I've had it several times and I've been down on Canal Street. It's lovely. It makes a very heavy espresso. The dopier was fantastic.

[00:02:20] It's a joke. DC, what I did there, I took an Italian word and twisted it. Yeah. You're a New York Jew. Born in New York. Born in Manhattan. That's right. Barmitzvah.

[00:02:31] But I was bar midfoot in Manhattan by a very famous Jewish leader named Mordechai Caplin, who started the reconstruction movement in Judaism. My grandfather was a leader in that movement and the president of the East Midwood Jewish Synagogue. So there are some Jewish roots, although my parents are pretty much, you know, ignored religious.

[00:03:03] Celebrations explain the difference of reconstructionism versus reform and conservative and how did that affect your life?

[00:03:15] That's good question. I don't know how it affected my life, except that my grandfather's influence really. Somehow. That's where my interest in my own Jewish roots in the history of Judaism. All of that, I think, comes from my grandfather and his emphasis and his leading our family in both Hanukkah and Passover. My understanding of Reconstructionism is that it was an attempt to not just do away with Hebrew and some of the traditional rituals, but to keep them, but to somehow make them relevant to the modern world. So, I mean, they had women, some of the first women rabbis. So it was a modernizing, but it didn't want to let go of Hebrew and traditional prayers. It wanted to just put them in a different context that was much more contemporary.

[00:04:11] And I think that although you may not realize it initially, you're a very outside of the box type Jew.

[00:04:20] When I look at your body of work and I look at how you've developed and grown, I think that there may have been some influence in being raised as a reconstructionist versus, you know, I was raised reform rife with guilt and and rife with all these other things that went with this traditional Judaism. But you had this outside of the box type approach to it and not by choice. Obviously, it was passed to you by your family.

[00:04:49] My grandfather, especially my grandmother, my father's mother and father, my parents were political activists. They were not interested in going to temple. I mean, I went to Hebrew school. Was bar mitzvah really because of my grandparents? My parents were radicals. They were involved in the labor movement. They were involved in the civil rights movement. And I grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey. I was born in Manhattan, but I grew up in a working class Italian American neighborhood. It's funny what you say, because one of the first memories I have, even thinking of myself as a Jew, was when one of my good friends on the block where there were no Jews, it was all working class Italian Americans.

[00:05:34] One day said to me, Mark, you're not a real Jew. And I was like, What do you mean? He goes, Well, you have blue eyes and you're friends with us. And, you know, you're not like, you know, Emet, the stereotypical.

[00:05:46] And I didn't you know, I might have been eight or nine years old, but I didn't know quite what to make of that. Was that a compliment or was that an insult? But that comment stayed with me.

[00:05:58] And how did you take it initially? Because there is that want to be like, oh, OK, I'm accepted. But there's also this driving desire inside you that is like I'm different than these people. Did you take it as a compliment and did you take it as an insult, which could later be deemed as a form of anti-Semitism if you looked at it now?

[00:06:18] Absolutely. I took it as a pass, like an entree, you know, like they are letting me into the club. And it's interesting that I mean, the Italian Jewish connection is one that, you know, just like the black Jewish Connection. Those are two worlds I've been fascinated by. You mentioned Godfather earlier. You know, the whole history of organized crime in the 20th century is the Italians and the Jews. Yeah. And when you want to talk about bad ass Jews and, you know, I met a number of them, you know, murder rank was Jewish. You know, that whole thing. The Lansky, Loni's Wilman was from New Jersey, you know, so that world I kind of came in contact through my work and then the Black Jewish Connection, you know, which which is such a key thing also.

[00:07:07] So I took it. As a past that I was allowed in, that I could hang with my friends and be accepted.

[00:07:16] I had a similar thing when I was about fifteen and I started kind of hanging with a lot of bad ass guys and we got into a lot of trouble.

[00:07:23] But I was the only Jew out of that group and there was that acceptance and it kind of made you feel like, oh, I don't need to hang out with my Jewish friends that are all doing great things. I can go and see this other part of the world. That, to me, was this unforeseen underbelly and was very exciting to me. Did you feel that there was more excitement hanging out with these, you know, working class Italian guys than being like, I'm going to go after Hebrew school and just go play dreidel in a parking lot somewhere?

[00:07:55] Yeah, it's funny because in Elizabeth, the Jewish neighborhood, which I didn't know about until I went, my parents forced me to go to Hebrew school was actually the wealthy neighborhood. And so I used to bike there. But I, you know, these beautiful houses, beautiful lawns. Whereas you're right, I hung with my friends, you know, on Orchard Street in Elizabeth. And we were little rascals. We were little delinquents, you know. And that was much more exciting to me. Definitely.

[00:08:25] So growing up, when your father would see this type of stuff, what was it problematic from your parents angle or were they accepting of it because they were basically activists at the time where they thought you needed to see more of the world than this insulated religious perspective?

[00:08:44] Oh, yeah. No, they weren't. Look, the FBI came to my house. I mean, looking for my parents. You know, my parents were were cool. They were way ahead of their time. They took me when I was 10 to the march on Washington with my sisters, you know, when Martin Luther King spoke.

[00:09:01] No, they and my father were at that time, you know, before they kind of abandoned the working class revolution. My father worked on the Jersey Central Railroad. And my father worked in a Westinghouse farm factory. So they literally were, you know, in with the working class.

[00:09:22] And they encouraged us to be part of our neighborhood. And I think some of that definitely had a profound influence on me.

[00:09:32] And then how does your dad move from that into what he went to next?

[00:09:40] Both my parents became professionals and they got us out of Elizabeth. I think they were worried I was gonna become a little juvenile delinquent. And we moved to Maplewood, South Orange, you know, suburbia. My father left. I think he and my mother became disillusioned with, you know, kind of the radical working class struggle in terms of the way they had imagined it when they were younger. My father became a journalist, a filmmaker. My mother became a clinical psychologist.

[00:10:16] So I think it was a natural evolution. You know, they grew up as their kids grew up.

[00:10:23] I worked with my dad. I mean, my old man was was an original. All everybody, you know, who knew a11. You know, he was a one of a kind. He was, you know, more youthful than most of my friends. He was. You know, I have on my Web site one of his, like, you know, underground films, which was called The Way the Eagle Shits.

[00:10:49] Yeah. His thesis on how we need poor people that we can't, you know, that our system can't work without poor people. So they encouraged me. And but I think on the on the bad ass side, because because my mom was more of a bad ass than my dad was, my dad opened his arms to everyone.

[00:11:10] My mom, you know, was a killer. You know, she sensed, you know, when there was somebody that she didn't trust.

[00:11:18] And I think that the just the street culture like you were talking about when you grew up, because my sister and I, my sister, a year younger than me versus my two youngest sisters who grew up in Maplewood. We ended up in New York City. We ended up on the street. My sister ended up in city government housing, but working on the street with people in New York. I ended up on the street. I think that Elizabeth, New Jersey, you know, you wouldn't call it urban, but it was street culture, you know. Capture the flag on the street, always hanging out on the stoop. Somehow that influenced me, whereas my two younger sisters live in suburbia, you know, and have a different relationship with, I guess you would call working class and ethnic communities than I do.

[00:12:12] So your mom is more the bad ass of the two. But your father instilled something in you that makes you carry on his life's work. How does that begin?

[00:12:24] Well, I think, you know, in Protocols of Zion, which is the film I did on the rise of anti-Semitism after 9/11, and that's in the beginning when we were just bullshitting. I said, you know, I've gotten it from all sides. What was surprising when I made that film is that those in the Jewish community who came after me, you know, basically saying, why do you even bring this up? Why do you even talk about this? Anti says it's Semitic tract that's been around for 100 years. You know, we don't want people to know it. You're just, you know, legitimating it even if you think you're criticizing it.

[00:13:02] So I was kind of shocked by the conservative Jews that came after me. Obviously, you had the other side.

[00:13:10] And in that film, I you know, when I look at it today, I think I don't think bad ass as much as lunatic, you know, that I went to the National Alliance headquarters with Sean Walker, the head of the neo-Nazi party, that I was in the middle of the Palestinian neighborhood in Brooklyn after she ksee was assassinated by Israeli intelligence and they were, you know, carrying on and so forth.

[00:13:39] But I think that urge, you know, at the end of that film, I stand with my father at my grandfather's gravesite in Brooklyn.

[00:13:48] And my grandfather had this funny saying, you know, which is when we were kids. What does God mean? You'd say, you know, what does God mean? And he's and I'd say, I don't know what what does God mean? He says, we'll take the word God. Take the first two letters g o go take the second two letters D..

[00:14:09] And go do. And then added an O in there. Good. Go do good. God means go do good.

[00:14:19] You asked me, you know, from my father the legacy that my father was a hope aholic. My father was someone they believe in storytelling, in journalism and that everyone had the potential to improve themselves and to contribute. And I think that part of his spirit lives in me, just as my mother, who was a fighter against all authority and was a fighter against anyone that threatened her family. I think that lives in me also. And that's where the bad ass comes.

[00:14:57] Do you? And we'll get more into this, obviously, the situations you put yourself into. Do you feel fear at any time when you're immersing yourself into one of your films, whether it be gang bangers, whether it be Nazis?

[00:15:13] Is there a sense of fear that washes over you or are you genuinely inquisitive?

[00:15:19] I am inquisitive. But there's fear. I mean, when I look at protocols now, I think I was out of my mind. I mean, I think that was a post-traumatic, you know, reaction after 9/11 of just wanting to understand what the hell is going on and why are all these people saying no Jews died in the World Trade Center? That's absolutely insanity. At the same time, you know, like you mentioned, you know, gang war banging in Little Rock.

[00:15:46] Yeah, I was apprehensive about going down into the middle of this Little Rock, Arkansas, which at that time had a higher murder per capita than New York City. And it was all because of this gang violence from L.A. and Chicago, Bloods and Crips, Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings.

[00:16:09] And yeah, there were I mean, we got caught in a drive by that scared the shit out of me. I mean, I remember sitting you know, we were at a Crip house that we had been documenting and we were there with the coroner and coroner, Steve the and the voice check. So we thought in the middle of the day. So it's like, hey, we're here with an official. You can't get safer. We brought some pizza. We're all hanging out. And I just remember that red car, you know, pulling up aside because I was in the driver's seat. Daphne and I were about to leave and a hand reaching out with an automatic weapon and just firing. And I just drove under the steering wheel and, you know, just yelled, Daphne, are you rolling or rolling? Are you? Yeah, I was scared. I would I was shaking the whole time after that.

[00:17:03] Thank God nobody was seriously injured. But I'll never forget that this 11 year old kid came up to me and said after that, he said, you know, are you ever going to make a real movie?

[00:17:15] Yeah. It kind of looked at him like, wait a second, what are you talking about? This is about as real as it gets, man. You know, you guys just survive this. Drive by some by some bloods. And he goes, no, no. You know, I'd be with popcorn and in a movie theater, you know, actors, you know, like a real movie.

[00:17:33] And that conversation stayed with me and I think partially inspired me to do slam, you know, some, you know, I don't know, eight or nine years later. Right.

[00:17:42] And that progression slam is a huge moment in your career, obviously, if people haven't seen it. It's the story of a young African-American man whose talent for poetry has basically hampered by his social background, won the grand jury prize at Sundance in nineteen ninety eight.

[00:18:00] How to come together? And how did that film boost your career?

[00:18:06] Well, that film, you know, was like a wave that I rode for a good 10 years, I mean, it was a for me it was a breakthrough. First I was, you know, a documentary filmmaker. So here I had done, you know, a film that was won a dramatic award at Sundance. And the Camera d'Or at Cannes. It changed my life totally. It opened up doors to the scripted world to working with a lot of different talent. Did two other features after that TV series, Street Time after that. Did Brooklyn Babylon, which was a meditation.

[00:18:41] I mean, it's funny. You you know, I think I went to Howard or one one of the black universities or colleges to show SLAPP. And I remember coming out after the film showed and then all of a sudden there was like like that's Mark Levin, this middle aged white guy from New York. I mean, I think that everyone thought I was like a young black director and this was at a black college show. Everybody was stunned. And I think the next two films, feature films I did in a way, were tried to explain that question of how did you wind up making this film?

[00:19:17] Cercas, you're delving into territory that would otherwise be taken over by like somebody like a Singleton or somebody at the time. Right. These people that had really encapsulated the world of African-American people at that time and it had moved beyond blaxploitation films and and become its own genre.

[00:19:37] And here comes this Middle-Class Jew. And by the way, out of all the people that are involved in this call right now, you would be the least likely one that we would choose to be involved in a drive by if you've seen arrest of the guy on the court. You look at Mike. It looks like he just came from one in Washington Heights. But you don't look it. So you break out of this mold. You you go in.

[00:19:59] There's almost this thing where you immerse yourself into a totally different culture and then take it on and peel off every layer of it masterfully, masterfully.

[00:20:11] I appreciate that. I think I think two things. One, I you know, when people's ask. OK. So how did you end up doing this? I think the two films I did after that, White Boys and Brooklyn Babylon were attempts as godfathers and sons also to understand the relationship, especially the relationship between blacks and Jews, you know, which is the core of the love story, Brooklyn, Babylon, and certainly part of the Chess Records story in the Chicago Blues. In terms of the chess family and Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf and Etta James and that and what came out of that and White Boys was, you know, what's a white what what's a white boy doing in the middle of the earth? And that was that was big.

[00:20:57] And, you know, it's I, I it was never premeditated. That's all I can say is it just kind of happened. I mean, in many ways, gang war was the beginning.

[00:21:09] And I have to admit, I was resisted when Sheila Nevins, who was the head of HBO documentaries at that time, said, you know, why don't you and Daphne Pincus and the producer, you know, go down to Little Rock? Clinton had just been elected. Daphne had seen this article in the Times that it had the highest murder rate per capita because this is in gangs and the crack. And I was resistant. I was like, you know, colors had already been made with Sean Penn. I was like, what new is there to say about gangs? Right. And you know what? What am I going to do? And I remember she's looking at me and saying, you'll come up with something. I'm sure of it. And that was the initiation that drive by gang culture and me see starting to see it, I guess.

[00:21:55] Bones Malone also my relationship with Bones, but starting to see it differently, starting to see hip hop differently, rap differently. That really began to change me and starting to realize how many young people, not just black, brown and white and not just guys, girls, too, were lost and had no families and had no community.

[00:22:23] And, you know, and and seeing that that was an eye opener for this scene in bang in in Little Rock where they jumped the girl in is one of those moments. That's it. Like I know I was jumped in to a gang. I was a 15 year old kid and I remember it. But to watch a girl jumped in is one of those things that just sticks on the brain. And to be able to capture it like that, it's ballsy to put those moments on camera.

[00:22:51] Do you think that you would still be able to do that now without having the these labels thrown at it? We're like it's misogynist that a woman would want to be involved in this type of world. Do you think that.

[00:23:05] Happen now, that type of documentary. Could it be made now?

[00:23:09] That's a good question. You know, it's a very good question. I don't know. In fact, I had a conversation just yesterday on a project about a rapper getting out of prison who had converted to Islam and wants me to do a documentary. And I brought up to, you know, him and his team. I was like, you know, are you you know, in the world we're living. And obviously I support Black Lives Matter and the whole movement for racial and economic equality. But I know the sensitivities now that you're talking about.

[00:23:46] And I said to them, I said, look, you know, they're like, you know, do you want to do it? And I said, look, first of all, you guys just need to understand that somebody is going to call you up and said, what the hell are you doing? You know, you didn't hire a black director. You didn't hire a Muslim director. You hire you hire his older white Jew. What is wrong with you? I said if you guys are willing to take that on.

[00:24:09] I said, then let's sit down and talk. So I think, you know, there's no doubt you're making a point. I think it's important. Obviously, diversity and and racial equality, but it's always the risk. If we ever get to that point where it's like, oh, you know, we're Jews, so only we can tell a Jewish story. Right. Or we're men and we can't tell a woman story or a black director can't tell a white story. I mean, we never want to get to that point because the whole point of art is that there's finding some universality.

[00:24:43] I agree percent. So what if that was painful to see her beat up?

[00:24:48] Yeah, I have to tell you, you know, being there watching that, I had to turn away. I mean, yeah, that was just painful to watch, you know.

[00:24:59] I mean, it's it's one of the keystones of your work is these great uncomfortable moments. So going on to slam.

[00:25:06] What what allowed you to take the creative risk that was necessary to make slam?

[00:25:16] I was making a documentary that went on to win the Emmy for HBO, Thug Life in DC about how all the young blacks in the nation's capital were being locked up. Yeah. And while there, I got to know the warden and I got to know, you know, some people that worked in the system. So when. I teamed up with Unary and Richard Stratton, two producers, and we were trying to come up with an idea of a film we could make. I said maybe I can, you know, see if we could get some access.

[00:25:51] And I'd seen saw Williams at the Poets Cafe in New York City, the New Rican Cafe. And I was blown away by him. You know, I'd never seen a slam poet quite like Saul Williams. You know, he had this regal, princely look. And it was almost Shakespearean. And yet he was like from a brother, from another planet. It was just mind blowing. So the simple idea of a guy like that who, you know, plays a character, gets busted on a small drug deal and thrown in the D.C. system.

[00:26:18] Could we get into the D.C. jail? So what happened is just amazing. The woman who ran, who was the head of the Department of Corrections the day I came into her office. The Congress had a hearing that Newt Gingrich wanted to defund Washington, D.C., completely because they had reelected Marion Barry, who had been busted for crack. Right. So these Republicans were like, this is outrageous and we're going to punish Washington. And this woman who was known as iron panties, you know, so I went in there like, you know, like, well, how am I going to commit it?

[00:26:54] She just shut me up. She said, You see that?

[00:27:00] These people don't know anything. They've got to learn a lesson. How many days do you need? I said, give me seven days. She's you know, she said, I'll give you seven days. You know, in two weeks, you get down here seven days in the D.C. jail, you can shoot. No insurance. No. You know. It was just a moment where she was so disgusted by the Republicans turning on the nation's capital and the local government and defunding them and defunding her Department of Corrections, that she basically just it was a catharsis.

[00:27:40] And she happened to be there at just the right moment and we got permission.

[00:27:45] And, of course, that unlocked everything to be able to shoot in a real jail. And, of course, the climax of that film, when you talk about, you know, brass balls, I mean, that was real because we did some mistake or we stayed too long or something and she got pissed off and it was, you know, and this was the climactic scene, soil in the yard, you know, where these two gangs are going to get it on. And he's caught in the middle. And at first she called the whole thing off. You know, I'm very disappointed in you. I had to go in there like the vice principal, get down on my hands and knees and just just let us do it. And she goes, OK, you know, you got an hour. And this was the climax of the whole film. So so I pretty much did that live and meaning. Yeah. Yeah. We had shot some inserts earlier, but he went out there and did that Amethyst's rock performance.

[00:28:39] And there were people in that. You are. Because that was part of what the problem was that we were at the end of our seven days and there were detainees who weren't happy. You know, we worked with some of the detainees and some of the staff. But there were people that were like, it's time to get these guys out of here. So that was that was the real thing.

[00:28:59] And that and that Tohme so stunned everybody that as it does in the movie, that it actually defuze the situation we were in and allowed us to operate that final day or two.

[00:29:11] There's this thing to your life that if it is art like, are you aware of that? The through line of your life is basically this artistic tapestry. Do you feel that when you're living because of the choices that you make, that you've encompassed this whole being as an artist? Everything that you do and touch becomes art and is reflective of your life in those moments and these magical moments happen.

[00:29:44] Why is that?

[00:29:46] Well, it's funny you say the magical moments, because that's true. And I've been very lucky. I mean, that's karma or in the Jewish faith. It is the raising of the sparks. I mean, I am I lived in Jerusalem actually ages ago for a little while and was fascinated by Jewish mysticism. And I think somehow, you know, I like to feel that that's there is some karma involved because there have been I remember when we did slam and and, you know, I remember somebody saying, you know, it's once in a lifetime and it was but that you can't don't expect to capture anymore magic moments. You know, that only happens once. And, you know, we just did. I promise that with LeBron James school in Akron, where there were so many magic moments, we just did a stock that on my mind.

[00:30:43] So. I don't know. You know, it's funny you say Art. I think that growing up in Elizabeth gave me more of a I guess you would call it the working class attitude that I never saw myself as an artist.

[00:30:56] You know, saw myself as as a filmmaker, as a crafts person, as a storyteller. But the word art itself I wasn't comfortable with. I guess I thought it had a pretension or it was for elites only and not for, you know, the people. And I guess that changed somewhat with my wife, who is out of the art world in the museum world.

[00:31:22] And I studied art and restored art or life. My daughter does the same now. And I and also there was a government program that that that was established. I don't know if you remember the Seeta arts program back in the late 70s, it was a like a mini WPA where artists were actually hired by the federal government. And you had to work with a community group, but then you could do your own art. And I was hired in and put in charge of the media group.

[00:31:50] So I was working with 500 artists in New York City. And that was the first time I began thinking about myself in any way as an artist. And it was the poets which comes back to slam that I was of all the artists that I was most comfortable with somehow. They were the ones that seemed to speak the same language as I. And the characters that I met were most connected to the same world I was.

[00:32:18] So Jerusalem. How long we therefore. I lived in Jerusalem from.

[00:32:30] After the Yom Kippur War, for about almost a year, Israel Kaavya.

[00:32:38] Is there a big change? Can you land in Israel? Is there this shift in the way that you look at everything else in the world because you're on the land that is promised? Do you feel a shift in your being?

[00:32:57] I felt the shift in.

[00:33:01] I think the classic American Jewish experience, which you referred to before at Hebrew school and, you know, in a nice suburb like El Morro, Elizabeth here.

[00:33:14] The bus drivers reduced. The cops were Jews. You know, that's what everybody was, a Jew. You know, the coffee stand outside, you know, on the street corner. So the working class, they the universality of the experience. And just forgetting whatever religion you are, this idea that monotheism, you know, that that this rock in Jerusalem, you know, that the Dome of the Rock is on in the Wailing Wall is on and that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, you know, that these three faiths, I guess, you know, I would say I had somewhat of an epiphany sitting there that that here somehow this rock brought out this transcendent insight into humanity, that there's more. And there is this kind of one unifying divinity. And then moments after that insight, somebody else said, yeah, and it's ours that, you know. And that contradiction, you know, in the highest in the human spirit. And no, it's ours. And all the wars and fights that have been fought and obviously continued before, it was just so striking and powerful. So, you know, they call it Jerusalem syndrome. And, you know, but there is something about living in that city, as I did for almost a year that was magical. And it wasn't just Jewish. It was, you know, at that point when I was there in 74, you could go to the you know, to the West Bank, you could have dinner in the best, you know, Arab Palestinian restaurants. It was I mean, obviously, there had just been a war, the old Kippur War, but it was nothing like it is now. And I did go back with protocols, I guess, you know, 60, 70 years ago.

[00:35:08] And I was just stunned by the change, you know, in Jerusalem especially, you know, the expansion and just a whole change in Israel, period.

[00:35:18] There's something very similar. You talk about the universality of art. And Richard Pryor went to Africa and he had this great line in one of his specials where he said there was no end words because we were all the same. And he said that about Africa. It's amazing to see a Jew go through the same thing in their homeland where it's like everybody's the same. It's all. Everybody is Jewish. And he's prior Saturday in Africa. Everybody's black person driving who is black. And a really interesting thing to see the similarities. So this leads me to my next question.

[00:35:53] Did you find something in hip hop that you found profound at an early point in the culture because hip hop was newer? When when you were making films at that time, it wasn't what it is now.

[00:36:09] And it wasn't just this exploitive thing that that people can just write off, you know? And there wasn't this godlike syndrome to hip hop artists. What was it what was it for you then?

[00:36:23] Well, first, I'll be honest with you. First of all, you know, I had been into jazz, you know, and still love jazz and, you know, still saw it as kind of the apogee of the creative art, meaning that, you know, you you you workshop, you study, you practice for years.

[00:36:44] But it's all about that improvising in the moment, that combination. Charlie Parker, you know, Charlie Christian. I mean, that that became my model for what art was, you know, the best of art. So when hip hop first came out, when the message came out and, you know, I kind of dismissed it like disco, I did think. But then meeting Bones Malone in 86, you know, who is this young kid that was writing for the news connection and who had been a graffiti artist? He's the one that started kind of educating me that this this idea of appropriation, you know, in other words, that we live in this consumer society that's bombarding us with advertize mitts and messages and billboards. Hey, and why can't my name be on a train? And why can't my name you know, why does it have to just be Coca-Cola or Pepsi Cola? So then, you know, that was that was new, that it wasn't just defacing the train. You know, it was some kind of statement of saying, hey, we're here, too, and we want our moment. And then in the music world where again, where I first thought, well, you can't learn to play an instrument like these great jazz musicians, you know, who spent their lives perfecting their craft. But then, you know, Chuck D and others begin to open my head, too. Well, we're not even. Music anymore in school. You know, they got rid of that and we're going to use the technology and the media scope. That's our instrument. You know that. That's what we're playing. So the mash up concept and then and then the reverence for. And the power of words. You know, going back to poetry, spoken word. You know, I think those were things that that I kind of dismissed at first when it was just party music and became much more aware of and somehow much more comfortable in that world than I was in other, you know, kind of musical worlds.

[00:38:40] So it shows in the choices you start to make creatively. Danny, Danny Hawke, am I saying it right? Because I was a huge fan. Yeah. When I started, I started doing standup. I was more impressed by spoken word than one man show stuff. And he was right on that level with like an Eric Bogosian for me. And Danny had taken his voice to the street. And as a white boy, I watch white boys. I can't find it anywhere. By the way, I've tried to order it on websites. I think I got it sent to me on VHS tape from Danny's Web site years ago. It is almost impossible to find. So if you can. I want to. And I'll send you a link, please.

[00:39:19] I'll send you a link to show the white emersion in2 that type of black culture. And then how you single handedly we're able to go into it. What does that feel like? And how do you come to work with somebody like Danny? How how do you spot Danny and go? This is a movie I want to make.

[00:39:41] Well, like you, I saw Danny in that time period in 98, 99, and I was blown away by his performance. You mentioned Eric goes in.

[00:39:52] You know, I was amazed. It was hysterical. He he had gotten the voices down the way he put it all together. So after slam, you know, there were a lot of opportunities. And somehow that script landed on my desk. And I just remember reading it one night and I was howling. I was just, like I said, the rich travilla. So we got to make this movie. You know, this guy is brilliant. Yeah.

[00:40:19] And, yeah, it's it you know, the fact that that movie didn't succeed, that was obviously also a major disappointment. What you just said at one point, I know I went on Rotten Tomatoes and it had a zero.

[00:40:33] It was it's like the worst film ever made. But no, I'm proud of that film. I think Danny's great in it. Dash my HOK is great in it. Mark Webber, Piper Perabo know it got a bad rap.

[00:40:45] We got in a fight with the distributor, which, you know was probably a mistake, and they were going to, you know, show us, you know, that here's how this industry works and you fuck with us, your movie is going to be dead.

[00:40:59] But I have tremendous respect for Danny, and I know that that was a joy making that movie. Yeah.

[00:41:07] Now, how do you bounce back from something that you love, making you like the way it turns out and then it doesn't have that success? How what's the bounce back? Is it something instilled from your father where it's like you just keep going? You just you just keep going?

[00:41:26] Well, I think something else is at work. I think that certainly you just keep going. My father's those sign off on everything was a Vontae, which is Italian, you know, move forward of one day. You know, Vontae, popular people move forward. That that was his mantra. So sure. But I think. I guess I don't know when you would you were coming of age for me, that bohemian underground kind of world had a lot of power and it still does. It's harder now to think, you know, of it. You mentioned artists. You know, the idea of artists who aren't rich and famous, who aren't millionaires, who aren't celebrities. In other words, we've now come to equate, you know, artistic success and celebrity and money and fame and everything. But when I grew up, whether it was William Burrows or or Jack Kerouac or Henry Miller or Charlie Parker or Billie Holiday, these were in my mind, these were giants. But none of them, you know, were rich. None of them were famous or celebrities. So my point is just that.

[00:42:43] I think there's a part of me that is always. Been a little afraid of what?

[00:42:51] I guess you would call big time success like celebrity success. And knowing myself how I could become as big an asshole as so many others have become. Given all that and that there's something about staying true to kind of the underground ethnos or just being real and being an a person. So not that I wished for. I wished white boys had been a smash, obviously.

[00:43:21] But I think that protected me in a way in that I was able to accept failure. I was able to accept a lack of commercial success as not meaning that that that, you know, my vision was wrong and I was comfortable.

[00:43:39] I was comfortable going into a club. Look, it's great to go into a club and the waters part and on Kessler, who is the producer of Slam. He owned the club. He was a nightclub owner. And, you know, when we were on that tour, it was amazing. We'd get out of the car and 100 hundred people in front of clubs, whether it was New York, whether it was London when it was bare. And you go in and then you go to the VIP room. And that's all great. And I loved it. But there's also something about being in a place where you're at a bar, you meet someone you and I meet and I'm a nobody. Yeah. And it's just us, like we're talking now. And it's what comes out of the moment, not, oh, you made that or you did that or where you got a gig for me. Or maybe, you know, it's just a different way.

[00:44:29] And I, I, I, I embraced the anonymity. I liked that. I liked being out there without having to carry you know, I did this. I did that. No, no. I'm just hanging out tonight. I like this music. What about you?

[00:44:44] There's something about being, for lack of a better term, a man of the people, because it gives you this grounding and and you're able to create stuff that will mean more to more people, obviously, than being this big, grandiose studio head.

[00:45:00] And then you end up jerking off in the plants and going in prison and getting shifted around because it covered that I didn't even have to name a name. And you laughed at that. How do you decide when a project is something you want to direct versus something you just want to be involved in, like as an IEP?

[00:45:19] Well, now am I looking more to epee and only in it? You know, it allows me to do a variety of projects directing as a young man and woman's game. But, you know, those things that just personally kind of consume me like like let's take freeway crack in the system film.

[00:45:41] I did, you know, six, seven years ago, I was just consumed by trying to make sense of this whole idea that our intelligence community was somehow involved in allowing drugs to come into this country.

[00:46:00] And both the heroin epidemic of the 70s and the crack epidemic of the 80s and 90s, you know, were blowback, which is the name of my company, where blowback for out of the Cold War and an intelligence community that was willing to work with the mob, was willing to work with death squads, was willing to work with, you know, some of the worst of the worst as long as they were anti-communist and that they killed some communists. And then those characters knew how to use that and leverage that in protection so they could get in the drug running, gun running, etc.. So I was consumed for years because I think a part of my mission has been the 60s. The generation I came up with, you know, has been blamed for every fuckup and a lot of them we are responsible for. But this idea that the drugs, it's the drug war that took us and drugs can be bad and I lost some friends to drugs. But this drug war is been my crusade to see it end. It's the internal war that I've kind of put myself on the front line of, whether it's in the street with gangs, whether it's with gangsters, whether it's in prisons.

[00:47:22] And even when we did prisoners of the war on drugs, we had guys making meth in prison, you know, guy giving a chemistry course in prison. Dennie on how you make good. Craig, you can't stop it in a maximum security prison, you know, forget it.

[00:47:39] So I think when you have a passion like that, the idea that Rick Ross Freeway, Rick, was.

[00:47:46] You know, this character that the Nicaraguan this Nicaraguan dealer somehow connected with Gary Webb, where the whole book, Dark Alliance, that was a project I just felt personally I had to be on that journey.

[00:48:01] I had to see for myself.

[00:48:02] I went to Nicaragua, you know, I dealt with and I I came to the conclusion that not that it was some sophisticated plot hatched on the seventh floor of Langley CIA headquarters, because these guys don't have that together. But it was the blowback, the unintended consequence of getting in business with the killers and gangsters of the world who are willing to kill communists.

[00:48:33] And then they've got to kind of get out of jail card.

[00:48:36] And that's really part of the story of how these drugs became such a scorch. So that was something I personally wanted to be the tip of the spear.

[00:48:47] I mean, this you have a mission in your work, right? You have an agenda because you deal with criminal justice reform, education, prison. Is the attempt of the work equality or is it to just negate the horrible influences in the world? And if so, can movies do that?

[00:49:10] That is a good question. You know, what movies can do is a good question, although I think both of us would say, you know, there are movies that moved us and that was watching The Notebook.

[00:49:23] And my wife kissed me the other night. It was very exciting. I don't know if you're seeing it. She tends to love this Ryan Gosling. I put a wig on sometimes, but you.

[00:49:33] So, you know, look, I would say.

[00:49:38] You know that.

[00:49:41] My mission is to certainly see, though, the war on drugs and certainly to see this criminalization in this criminal justice system, we have reform to see our democracy saved, all of those to see economic equality. I mean, look where we're at.

[00:50:00] You know, in terms of, you know, the rich getting richer and everybody else getting fucked. All of that. But I think as a storyteller, it's to try to move people. I think when I was younger, it was trying to shock people and also trying to expose, you know, in other words, to rip back the veil or the cover and expose. And I think in the last 10 years, maybe it's since starting with Brick City, I've been looking more for people will. Well, OK. So what can you do? What what can you do about it? You know, and where are people who are actually making a difference? You know, that's what attracted me to Cory Booker. It's attracted me, you know, to Michael Tubbs out in Stockton.

[00:50:49] So I think in that sense, my my sensibility has changed a little, that I'm I'm not as anxious as I was, you know, for 20 or 30 years to. Oh, there's that. There's the front line. I better get right in there. It's happening in Portland. I need to be right there. Why am I not in Portland?

[00:51:07] You know, with these young people now more too. OK, so what comes after that? And how do you build something that's better? That can't be perfect. But going back to my grandfather's, you know, epigram, you know, go do good. How do you do good. You know? And at one point. OK. Shocking people, you know. Getting them out of their status quo to think differently. Exposing corruption. The secret government, which is where I won my first Emmy with Moyers. You know, that was Oliver Stone. I mean, Oliver North testifying. I sat right behind him with demented fantasies of like, you know, what could I do to whip? And little did I think that the guy I remember going back and watching Nightline that night at a hotel in Washington. Because I thought, OK, that's the end for the Reagan administration. And then this guy became a hero.

[00:52:00] Yeah.

[00:52:01] So, yeah, I don't know how films can impact people, but I am moved when I hear that people are moved or inspired or moved to action or get involved in some way or learn it even in going back to anti-Semitism and protocols. When I invited Shabazz, the leader of the New Black Panther Party, to the premiere at HBO. A lot of Jewish community, again, was upset. What are you doing? You know, this guy's the biggest anti Semite, you know, going.

[00:52:35] And he came out of the film.

[00:52:39] I'm not going to say he was converted, but I will say that he he said something like, well, maybe some Jews did die in the World Trade Center, which he had been a total denier, you know. So the dialog, the creative dialog, the opening of people's minds, opening their hearts. Yeah, sure. That's part of the mission.

[00:53:01] These things don't go away because we see this. This was years ago, but you'll still see him popping up this anti-Semitism, which is odd to see from the black community as someone that's been immersed in it. I do a ton of black shows. You worked in the black to see that come up is weird, like the Nick Cannon thing that happened recently. And we're shocked by it because we feel like Jews and black people, although the suffering is not the same and the struggle is not the same, we feel like there's a camaraderie there. So to me, it's like, how is that going to go away? That's an important thing. But the way that you align yourself with people and companies that are capable of change your relationship with HBO for years at HBO was at the forefront of making hard hitting television. They did basically cinematic quality television that shifted the landscape of TV. You were there for years. How was that and how did you have carte blanche? Are you like, greenlight this? I want to make this.

[00:54:04] No, no, no. I mean, Sheila Nevins, I'm sure you've heard the stories. You know, she was a she is a mythic character, probably one of the great influences in my life. And but but not an easy woman to get along with. And you would go in and pitch one thing and you walk out and you'd be doing another film.

[00:54:24] Although, I mean, on Shmita, it's funny because it just the word I remember sitting where there were talking about what are we going to do? And she's like, oh, look at this blouse I'm wearing. I think it was made in Vietnam. And look at. My slacks. I think it's made. And she's, you know, like maybe we should do something. She's just kind of free associating. And I just looked at it. I was like, Sheila. I mean, come on. This is an old story. I mean, you know what? You just woke up to that. Manufacturing is, you know, all over. You want to do something on the Chemeq, the business. And she looks at me and she goes, Shmita.

[00:55:02] That's a great title. Yeah. And I said, Yeah, but what's the film? And she was like, you'll figure it out. So I had a great relationship, but I'm sure I walked into that meeting with another project that was pitching. I walked out and I thought, I'm doing a film on Chemeq.

[00:55:20] OK. Where do I start? But the black Jewish thing that you brought up, the Nick Cannon thing that came to my attention, I mean, you know, it it's fascinating. And I you know, I'm in business with you know, on the Stockton thing.

[00:55:36] I joined forces with a company that is black owned by Kevin Garnett, the, you know, future Hall of Famer Bob Bennett, Mike Moringa. And you know it.

[00:55:50] Like you said, there's such a simpatico, but still all the craziness, you know, floats around and new generations come and look. You know, it's easy to look for a conspiracy theory or the success of a lot of Jews in our business, the entertainment business. I mean, look, when I when I went to Hollywood to do protocols, none of the major Jew ish directors or creatives would talk to me.

[00:56:19] They didn't want to engage in that dialog. In fact, I ended up and this one, Mel Gibson, came out with, you know, the his film on on Christ. I ended up through a friend of Larry David's wife at Larry David's house because I was trying to get him on. You know, I thought, oh, Larry, come on, you need to speak to what's happened. And he declined.

[00:56:43] And but I ended up at his house for there was a small fundraiser for Barbara Boxer, the senator and President Clinton came. So it was Larry David says Pacific Palisades. And everybody's gathered around Clinton and Barbara Boxer, only 20 people there. And I'm in the kitchen, you know, kind of looking over the counter. And right next to me is Larry David. And he turns to me, he goes, Who the hell are you? And so I said, you know, Mark Levin and I called you a few weeks ago and, you know, and tried to get you. How the hell do you get in my house? You know, like I got rubber. So all of a sudden I felt like I was on his show. He looks at me, he goes because I came with a woman who had gone to Sheepshead High. Yeah. Where Larry went and he goes, Sheepshead. He goes, none of the girls they would put out.

[00:57:32] I had to go over the Midwood and that was where I could get back. This went into the rap. I mean, I felt that was in his show.

[00:57:40] I picture you walking away and just hear boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Exactly, exactly.

[00:57:49] You are aligning yourself with people that are capable of change. I promise. Your latest project with LeBron James, who is really tantamount to as political as a sports figure as you could be right now, I think because so many people have tried to shut him up and they haven't been successful. How did this come about and where's it going?

[00:58:16] Well, you're right about LeBron and, you know, as a basketball fan, and I have to admit, I followed LeBron career since he was at St. Vee's High School, but I always root it against him because he was never on the Knicks.

[00:58:31] He was always on the wrong team. So that is a problem.

[00:58:34] But seeing what he did in Akron with this, I promise, school, I mean, everybody told him to start. You want to start a school, start a private academy. You can control it. No, I went to a public schools, said, OK, then do a charter school. No, I went to regular public school. So it took two years in negotiation. They worked out a deal with the Akron public school system, all the wraparound services that they provide by Lebanon's foundation. And that means from housing to home for homeless people, medical services, legal aid, G. D courses for parents, I mean, doctors and dentists, eyeglasses. And on top of all that, and this is why I come to really respect LeBron, he said it should be for kids like me, the most at risk kids. So in second grade in Ohio, they give all the kids a test and the kids in the bottom 25 percent are pretty much labeled the at risk kids who probably will graduate. He had a lottery with those kids. So I think his team is Springhill Productions and his foundation. They'd seen a film I'd done Class Divide for HBO, which was actually I thought like a neighborhood film was about, you know, Twenty Sixth Street Corner on Twenty Sixth Street.

[00:59:57] You know where I live near where I live. Where on one side of the street you have the Avenues World School, the newest elite private school in Manhattan for the wealthiest of the wealthiest kids.

[01:00:08] And on the opposite side of the street, you have a public housing that Chelsea public housing. And we took kids from two sides of the street and basically told the story of income inequality, gentrification, but through the eyes of kids and how they saw each other and how they saw that part of Manhattan. Chelsea, which at that time with the Highline and the opening of, you know, all the new buildings, it was the fastest gentrifying area in Manhattan. So they saw that and it was told to the kids ideas guys. And I said to them, you know, if I did something like that with you, the whole idea would be have the kids tell the story. So they bought that. And we spent a year in the first year of the I promise school. And I have to say that was an eye opener because like many people, I guess I figured the bottom 25 percent, you know, these kids, maybe they're going to be slow. They they're gonna they're gonna have learning disabilities, you know, whatever. These are some of the most creative intelligence kids. But they had all the behavior and social and family issues that they brought to school every day. Yeah. And so that series, which is on Quimby now and premiered this spring, we're hoping to go back and do next season and follow now the reopening that all public education is struggling with. But it's a tremendous, tremendous model for, again, going back to the people because I went to public school.

[01:01:52] The waste this you've heard the term, the school to prison pipeline, you know, and we're talking about, you know, gangs and all of that.

[01:02:02] It starts whether you can get these kids there at third grade. They've already know that some people have written them off as failures as as, you know, dropouts, as basically throwaways. And if you get them and you turn on their creativity and get them engaged, it's a whole new world. And it just drives me crazy that right now this government of ours can't even get it together to make a commitment to public education.

[01:02:31] You know, my wife and I watch Bang on a Little Rock together. And she you're looking for what the cause is and what the effect is. And she consistently said it's education. The problem. What's missing is the educate the education system is to blame for a lot of this. And I go, well, what about parenting? Parenting needs to be a verb, but it's the it's the people that are the parents trust their kids with. And the education system has a duty to make these kids better than they are.

[01:03:08] And, Aaron, I think what you just said, parenting, education, I think what I saw in this model is they go together.

[01:03:18] In other words, you have to educate the whole family. You bring the family in to the school ecology. That is part of the challenge, is getting the parents so that they are interested in the work that the kids are doing that they're able to follow. But your wife is is is right. And and that's what I promise is all about, is starting with kids in third and fourth grade kids that probably we're not going to have a shot in giving them a shot. And I just remember, you know, because here we are in media and these kids are all media literate. They've all got their cell phones. You know, they're all on YouTube. You know, they're all playing fortnight. I mean, there that that is their world. They're literate in that world. They may not be able to read or understand algebra, but they are literate in the media world. So they all wanted to work with us, which is great. And there was one kid, Noah, who was one of the toughest behavior issues in the school, had actually been sent to a reform school where he was locked down and he was working on our crew one day and we were going to go from the playground back into the school. And I just said, no, would you pick up the tripod, carry them, you know, take us back indoors? He went, took the tripod, threw it over shoulder, leads us in as we're going in. One of the teachers grabs me and she goes, what did you give him? And I was like, what do you mean? And she goes, I've never seen him ever listen to an adult in the whole year I've been here that the first time I ever saw him do what an adult asks, what did you give him? And I said, I didn't give me anything except he's part of our team. Yeah, he's with us. He's in our crew. He's in our gang. And.

[01:05:05] It's it's an emotional thing to see. And I don't mean this as an insult, obviously. How old and wise you are. Yes. But still in touch with the youth.

[01:05:19] And still, there's this you know, I think it's reminiscent and I hope it's a generational thing that your father passed and your family passed to you because clearly you're passing it on to your son because he's moving into the same type of realm as you, right? Yeah. As a filmmaker. Yeah. So it's a touching thing to see this Jewish through line of your family that has this ebb and flow to it.

[01:05:45] And there's this personal success, but also this need to share and to go do good.

[01:05:54] So it's amazing how it stayed with you. I have a quick question from Josh. As a Knicks fan, what are your thoughts on the owner, James Dolan?

[01:06:03] Oh, God. I believe that eminent domain should be instituted in that the city of New York should take the Knicks from the Dolan family as a public service.

[01:06:15] I believe he has Kirst, Madison Square Garden.

[01:06:20] If it makes you feel any better, there is a major heroin problem right outside of MSJ right now. I walked by it today. It's horrible. I hope that you don't have to come back too soon.

[01:06:32] Have you seen stuff like this? You've seen people shooting up. You've seen people doing drugs out of everybody that you've worked with. One on one who is the scariest one on one encounter that you've had, whether it be a subject or whether it be in your personal life.

[01:06:49] Sammy Gravano obviously is is a scary individual.

[01:06:54] Yeah, he murdered 19 people, including his brother in law. But I would say that a project that I never finished did Richard SREP and I started. It's called O.J. Joe Stassi original gangster about a guy that's in no mob history book. But Richard, who was a partner with me on a lot of these projects, was a big time marijuana and hashish dealer and got busted and got a 25 year sentence and in prison, got to know quite a few people. And one of them who is literally in the cell next to him was this guy, Joe Stussy. And Richard could never figure it out because the guy was already in his 80s in maximum security prison.

[01:07:40] But he had such respect from all the wise guys, from everybody. And so who is this guy? So amazingly, Richard helped him get out. You know, Richard became a jailhouse lawyer and we and Richard got out and we reconnected with this guy when he was in his 90s. And this guy.

[01:08:02] Claims he was the master behind mind behind the Dutch Schultz hit in 1936, one of the most famous mob hits. He was long his Wellman's right hand guy, the guy that ran New Jersey.

[01:08:13] He was very close to Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky. And he gave me a huge new perspective on the whole Jewish mob connection. He was Italian American, you know, born on Lohri side.

[01:08:29] But he was just so disdainful of the mob bosses that he worked under and basically said if it wasn't for the Jews, there would have been no mafia, there would have been no business. But he ended up running. Meyer Lansky's operation and Santo Trafficante, his operation in Cuba at the sense of city. And he was the guy that every Friday they would take all the mob money at his ass. Anyway, he's the scariest because in his 90s, Richard wrote an article for GQ about us making this film, which, as I said, never got finished.

[01:09:04] And. When it came out, Joe felt that Richard had betrayed him and made him look like and he didn't. But it was because of that headline. Because they had a picture of a bird, you know, like he was singing. And this is a guy that was so low profile. As I said, he's in no mob history, you know. And so we went down there and he turned on Richard and threatened to kill Richard. And that just seeing a 19 year old guy, but with such rage, like, you know, all my life, I never broke, you know, all these mob bosses are scumbags, the whole mob.

[01:09:41] But still, I never talked. And you made it look like I was a rat. And I'll never. And so just to see the rage in a 90 year old guy. And this guy obviously had many murders when earlier when he was known as Hoboken Joe and Scorseses, Boardwalk Empire, you know, that was the era he came up. That was the scariest. I think he was the scariest guy I think I've ever seen. Amazing.

[01:10:12] What I love about your story and the story of your family is it's multigenerational. I never had that. My dad was a lawyer. I went into comedy. He had aspects of comedy in his life, but I've never had that. Your dad did this. You did this. Your son is doing this. You have this family legacy that is becoming what the American dream was intended to be. And that's not a responsibility that you can take lightly. What do you think about the impact of your family? And is it bigger than you? Did you ever picture this, that the Levin family was going to commandeer documentary filmmaking?

[01:10:58] Well, I wouldn't go that far. But my son is well on his ways. He's doing the cagey big ticket documentary on Kevin Garnett with his partner, Eric. And they're also put in a big project together on Hot 97.

[01:11:13] So, no, he's he's out there on his own. It's a great thing to be able to work with my father. Many people I remember Bill Moyers saying to me, you know, Mark, you and Al have such a unique relationship. You know, I'm envious. You know, Bill had children and just never had that kind of working relationship. And I now have the privilege to work with my son as I worked with my father. And I guess, you know, in a way, I mean, it's traditional, you know, back to the shtetl. I mean, in other words, like, hey, you're a you're a shoe maker or you're a butcher. And your father did that. And now you're gonna do that and your son is going to do that. And, you know, although in my family, it's funny because it was my daughter, your Sarah Daniel or twins.

[01:12:10] And my daughter was the one that appeared to be following my footsteps earlier. She she tested into Stuyvesant. She ended up going to Wesleyan, which is where I went, where my father went.

[01:12:21] And my son struggled more in school and was much more visual, was a graffiti artist, was an artist, much more like my wife and into the arts. And somewhere in their early 20s. And I still don't quite understand it. There was a switch that happened then. My daughter now, you know, is in the same field that my wife was in, art restoration, art conservation. She works at the Met and my son obviously is a director, a cinematographer, a producer.

[01:12:50] I don't know where that switch happened and what you say about the family.

[01:12:55] I mean, I that that's a, you know, humbling in a certain way. But I think there is a truth. There is a strength. And I've tried to share my family and my father did. But, you know, and open it up. We have a Hanukkah party where, you know, everybody comes. You don't have to be Jewish. You know, everybody it's it's like a tribe. And what Patrick said. It's funny. I certainly think that the Hebrew school and check it vaka shot, you know, shut up. You know, always making trouble. But that in this community, you know, people have looked to me as a as a Rebbie and that cracks me up, you know, because for most of my life, I thought of myself as kind of being scandalous and outrageous, a little like you, and never thought I would land in a place where somebody would look to me as as as as Patrick said earlier. But now I you know, I'm a little more at peace with it. I mean, I haven't given up, you know, pretending to still be 16. I mean, I'm out here because I can play tennis. I can hit with the tennis pros. Yeah, they got younger kids. I could go windsurfing. I can pretend I'm still a fuckin teenage lunatic.

[01:14:14] I love it. You have taken. A very Jewish tradition, which is to keep the family business in the family. You succeeded at it. You've been provocative. You push buttons. You've educated and you've instilled change.

[01:14:32] And I don't think and you survived a drive by shooting does not get more bad as Jews than that, Mark. Thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it. And I can't wait to come to your party and get a free copy of White Voice in there. And thank you all the guys.