Chapter 1: What is the main focus of Andrew Jarecki's documentary, The Alabama Solution?
Pushkin.
Hello, hello, revisionist history listeners. As many of you will know, we did a seven-part series last fall called The Alabama Murders, the story of the death of a preacher's wife in the shoals in northwestern Alabama 35 years ago and the tragic reverberations of that case. I honestly think it's one of the best things we've ever done on revisionist history.
And almost the exact time that our series dropped, HBO aired a brilliant documentary called The Alabama Solution. The revisionist history series was about the death penalty in Alabama. The Alabama Solution was about the prison system in Alabama.
We have record numbers of people leaving out of here in body bags. They don't want the public to see what's really going on on the inside. How can a journalist go into a war zone but can't go into a prison in the United States of America? The state is selling one lawsuit after another. There's no consequences for their actions.
There's an argument that there is some systemic problem within all of our facilities, and I wholeheartedly disagree with that.
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Chapter 2: How do The Alabama Murders and The Alabama Solution connect?
The two projects fit together almost perfectly. So I called up the director of the documentary, Andrew Jarecki, and said, do you want to sit down for a conversation? And he said yes. And so we got together at On Air Fest in Brooklyn for a long talk about Alabama and filmmaking and all kinds of other things.
If the name Andrew Jarecki seems familiar to you, it's because he's one of the preeminent documentarians of our time. He did Capturing the Freedmen, The Jinx, a brilliant, brilliant guy. Here's our conversation. Andrew, welcome to Brooklyn. Thank you. Thank you for doing this.
The reason you and I are on stage is that back in the fall, we released a seven-part series on revisionist history called The Alabama Murders. And almost at exactly the same time, you released a documentary on HBO called The Alabama Solution. Our series was about a capital crime. punishment case. Your series was about the Alabama prison system.
And it was this marvelous instance of two works that overlapped but didn't overlap. And I texted you and said, we should have a conversation. And here we are. And I found your documentary extraordinary. And I was just telling you backstage, I'm not someone who listens, watches a lot of documentaries, but I have seen all of yours. Captioner Friedman's Jinx. This is the best in my mind.
Thank you.
And I was curious, I would like you to start, tell us how you came to do a story about the Alabama prison system, because I suspect it's not a straight line. You didn't sit down one day and say, I want to do a story about the Alabama prison system.
Yeah, I think nothing's a straight line, certainly for me. And I was noticing also your podcast around that same time, and I was sort of I was kind of holding back because I thought, is this going to influence what we're working on? You know, um, just because it's hard, like when you're making one thing and then somebody else does something else.
And especially if it's a smart person, you're like, uh, what if they do this better or what do they have an idea? And then I'm drawn to that idea or something like that. But I did get to listen to it and it's, it's really superb and, and, and, and, and extremely familiar to me. So I, um,
You know, when I was making Capturing the Freedmen's, I had reason to go into Dannemora Correctional Facility in upstate New York. And I found that the visit was so punishing just as a visitor. Everything about it was so difficult and brutal. And then when I saw... the waiting room and I saw how people were being treated there. I just thought, I think I need to get deeper into this prison.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Andrew Jarecki face while making The Alabama Solution?
And I could tell that he was sort of thinking about whether he wanted to say this thing that he was going to say to me. Because he knew if he said the right thing, I would come back. And if he didn't, maybe I wouldn't. And he said, if you come back, I'll take you on the death row at Holman Prison, and you'll see it's a slave ship. And that was a very important kind of moment for me.
That was seven years ago. And I think it's the reason that line was the reason I went back because I just thought, well, whatever this is, I have to see. And then I went back and you'll see in the film, we sort of get access until we don't.
But in the course of going into Easterling prison, we start hearing from these men who are saying, look, this visit you're making here, I'm not supposed to be talking to you, but This is a curated visit, right? They're showing you just what they want you to see. But see that building over there? That's where they do solitary confinement.
They're men that have been in there for five years or seven years at a time, seeing nobody. And see that building over there is the Y dorm. That's the behavior modification dorm. And somebody was just killed there by a guard. And we just started to understand how bad it was. And then last year, thing that happened is, you know, we get kicked out.
And then we thought we didn't know how we're going to tell the story until we discovered that there was this network of people inside who had contraband cell phones and had access to a charger or were borrowing a charger from a friend and would have to put the cell phones up when the guards came. But it was our only window into this very secretive system.
Had anyone, I want to pause on that for a moment. Because one of the many remarkable, the most remarkable thing about the documentary from a technical standpoint is that it is largely shot in FaceTime, right? Or in video calls. Various things, yeah. I don't know what percentage of the movie ends up being. 30. 30% of the movie is just the prisoners FaceTiming with you. Has this been done before?
I mean, I don't know of it having been done before because it was such an unusual situation, not only because the men had access to cell phones, but because they had collected all this material over years that showed what was really happening in the system and showed episodes of, you know, really shocking episodes.
I mean, when I saw it, I thought, you know, this is like watching Tiddick at Follies. You're looking at a whole segment of the population that's just been abandoned and not just abandoned, but also harmed.
And then we discovered that there were these men inside who were leaders, who were really civil rights leaders who had been managing like a nonviolent protest movement for years, even before we got there. And so we had the benefit of, you know, it was like talking to Mandela on Robben Island on a cell phone.
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Chapter 4: How did contraband cell phones impact the documentary's storytelling?
We barely see him because he's dead 10 minutes in, right? Whatever it is. And yet, my concern over him and feelings for him sustain me through the entire movie. This is what I'm... In a million years, I would never have thought I could tell a story like that where... My main character is someone the audience knows almost nothing about and who exits. And yet I still care an hour later.
That's what I'm trying to get at. How did you do that?
Well, I mean, you know, as a young storyteller, I think you're going to evolve. You know, you're going to learn more about how to tell these stories. And I'm looking forward to that. But I think, you know, a little goes a long way. We do see pictures of him as a child.
Chapter 5: What unique filming techniques were used in The Alabama Solution?
And I think that's extremely powerful. You know, when you see somebody who you've been trained to believe is going to be a hardened, terrible criminal... But we sort of know really what he was was a drug addict. And now you see a picture of this young man with his hair shorn and his face pale and wearing a jumpsuit that's exactly what everybody else in the prison wears.
And he becomes totally homogenized and dehumanized. And then you get to see a photograph of him as a child, you know, with a smile and just seeing pride on his face or him starting to play Little League or something like that. And then you're just reminded that I have somebody in my family who is playing Little League and then 10 years later was a drug addict.
you know, was playing little league and 10 years later was an alcoholic and his life was falling apart. So you make a connection to those people that goes beyond whatever their, you know, their, their crime was.
But you're bringing up an interesting point that I've not talked about, uh, regarding this film, which was that there were people who came to test screenings of the film and literally said the following, uh, I'm uncomfortable if I don't know what crime they committed.
So could you have some kind of a device where as soon as I see somebody on screen, there's some kind of a chyron or a little designator on the bottom that says murder one or that says burglary or that says... And I was so instructive to hear somebody say that, right?
And of course, you could have the debate with them or you could say, so you're saying that it's okay for a prison guard to beat somebody to death. You're going to make the evaluation of whether that's reasonable or not based on whether they had a burglary charge or an aggravated burglary charge. Yeah. And then they always say, well, no, no, no, of course, of course, of course, of course.
But they're revealing that they're propagandized. They're revealing that like nobody, everybody wants safety. Everybody wants their family to be safe. Everybody doesn't, you know, people don't want, people to rob their store or whatever. But this idea that, that anything goes, if somebody is a criminal, we're just going to suspend our humanity. We're going to suspend, right.
And that's, that's the basic idea of sort of the constitution is you have this absolutely minimal level. You're not supposed to be treated to, cruel and unusual punishment, which is already kind of a, you know, I know it when I see it kind of situation, you know, but well, if they committed a crime, then maybe they should just be locked up forever.
You know, does it make sense for, you know, there are plenty of countries where the maximum sentence for any crime is 10 years because you say somebody commits a crime when they're 19 years old. It's a completely different human being 11 years, 12 years later. You know, maybe 10 years is enough to reset that person and try to bring them back into civilization.
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Chapter 6: How does the documentary address systemic issues in the Alabama prison system?
You know, it's a little different, right? Because in your, I mean, maybe you'll choose to go and have coffee with Steve Marshall once a week if you really enjoy his company. But, you know, most of the people that are in your film are kind of already... you know, you're not going back to Alabama much and you're not going to go talk to the, to the people that are in the story.
But these guys are like, they're in my life happily. I feel very lucky that they're in my life and Charlotte's life. Yeah.
Yeah. Andrew, we are out of time. I want to thank you very much, both for coming to On Air Fest and singing with me and also for the movie, which has, you know, as the best art does, has left America a little better off than it was before. Thank you so much.
Really appreciate it.
Revisionist History is produced by Lucy Sullivan, Benda Naff-Haffrey, and Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Karen Shikurji. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence. Original music by Luis Guerra. Mixing and mastering by Jake Gorski. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
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