[applause] new start. [inaudible] so much of this book is actually based on the interview, interviewing people. And so i am going to be upfront. I am really intimidated by this guy. As the white guys that passed the asian litmus test. The next time i think i ran into him i was working with wayne at monaco and john was there and wayne congratulated him and winning the macarthur fellowship. And then i was actually i started working on the film. Because what we did was we gave donna camera to just film has everyday life for a whole year the style was making the producers quite nervous. I liked the final cut but people werent sure how it was going to fly and i cant remember who it was but johns name came up as something to look at the film and give his feedback or stamp of approval so we sent it to john i think i got a call from you. I was very short. I think the first was it was great. The second one was im never going to ride on a city bus anymore and look at a kid the same way. The rap music at the end sucks take it out. He kept the cut as it was. Anyway. The next sort of deal was he brought me on to uc berkeley they built the program at the graduate school of journalism. He brought me in to do some consultant. I finally got a look at the methodology ivbeen there for quite a while. We were just sitting around talking and he said im going to write a book i dont know about you all but that that is a lasting that crosses my mind is that im going to write a book. But here it is. In so, i want to introduce john and he is going to read a couple of passages. This is amazing to be here. This is the party i always wanted to have half of the people that worked on the project is here. What a great way to bring this book into the world. Just to set the stage i assume many of you may have seen part of it. I will read about four pages of the book to give you an introduction to what the syrians are all about. I worked with him for about ten years. I then tend to be a better teacher and a better human being. This is about four pages. Just settle back and let me see if i can make it through this. Selma alabama was in a state of siege. Finally on march 720 sunday. Two days later Henry Hampton sent out along the street together with his friend the reverend james reed in a thousand other marches. The walls of the State Capitol in montgomery. The quarter mile ahead weighted heavily. Famously brutal posse. He was on Church Business sent by his unitarian employers. Slowed by the heavy sealed leg brace since he wore. That hard time keeping up with the group. And began to worry begin to worry what may happen if he fell behind and felt easy prey to white thugs. Then he realized that a half a dozen black citizens had formed a protective circle around him moving towards the troopers on the other side at his base. Only 48 hours before the same lawman determined that they would never have a voice in alabama. Hundreds of peaceful men women and children and local whites cheer from the sidelines. And the information joined hundreds of other northern ministers in violation of the federal judges order. Questing the bridge. They saw the helmeted troops. It had beat john lewis. He suddenly stopped and knelt down while the others led the deputy the demonstrators they were standing around so they would not do a clear target. When they did not know is that they awaited their destiny was a king who brokered structure deal. They desperately needed to the federal courts. The leaders were there to violate the federal judges injunctions. With the sinking feeling. They would lay their lives on the line. They ended it with the retreat. All to avoid pissing up the president. They didnt know what to think. With the clarity of the Civil Rights Movement. Unfolding there. There was a horse a harsh lesson. They wouldnt live to fight another day. But as they trudged back. In the jumbled tactical strategical moment henry thought to himself someone would make a great story out of this. Twenty years later two decades later in the useful days how many times a day picked up. I logged 99 of flights. Mostly puddle jumpers. To film the aging foot soldiers of the movement. Tonight he looked haggard but he wanted to talk for the next couple of hours we drove around in a miserable freezing rain hit always been soft spoken. At this time we could barely hear it. We have a bite to eat at chef chandlers. Unpaid lab bills mounted the roof. Half the staff was an angry revolts. To complete the civil Rights Television series. I could see that the great story that someday someone would tell was grading them down. They would run out. At the mercy of the Corporate Executives who never intended him to tell the messy story of the Civil Rights Movement. All the energy went to the fundraising he hated. He have just turned 45. The latenight drives have been amok. His epiphany and my own days that same winter. In south africa. We pondered whether he could of been elected resident. And ask where did he get that zinger the ark arc of the moral universe. Around midnight we hauled him up the stairs to the black side office. Gandhi in the corner in the great rambling mess of a desk. He spread out a dozen of rejection letters from corporations and foundations sink into his chair. One of the just give us the money. With the ethics series. Nearly all in the can. Theyre hard at work. They are pouring in. We had run and a money. It was the end of the line. It should have an easy six years before his naive first attempt to produce the great story of civil rights had ended in humiliating failure. His second try was going down in flames. He knew and i knew if we laid off the staff on monday morning and turned off the heat lifestream would expire forever. The next day henry arrived at the Office Around noon and told me have gotten up and onto his bank and risking personal financial ruin for the sake of the story had mortgaged his house. He have just enough cash to pay the payroll. Until pbs and the Ford Foundation came in with the a Tipping Point grant he was seldom at a loss. That is our guy. So why write a book . The documentaries are too hard. I have never intended to write a book either during my time in the Civil Rights Movement in the south nor when i was working here and i kept very important notes. Henry died in 1948. About five years ago i began looking around i thought eyes on the price there should be an operating manual of how to do this and how to make these giant complex series that are about equity and equal justice in the expansion of a democracy and i assume someone was writing a book about that. But no one was. I started out. Fortunately there is an extraordinary hearing into the archive at the Washington University in st. Louis where i was able to look at the uncut from all of the interviews that we did probably 200 interviews i was able to look at all of the companys Companies Tax statements. I was able to find the diary of hoovers i was able to go back into my own files and find legal depositions from legal cases that i was involved in in mississippi and georgias a bit so bit by bit i piece it together. I just come off an extremely difficult train wreck of a documentary that ended in utter failure and i thought writing in the book has to be easier than making any film. How wrong i was. Its a very different process. It took four years not fulltime but four years of working at it. Its a different animal. Its a very different animal. You can pack an enormous amount of information into a book that can never get on screen into film. But you are up against it in direct experience. I try to write a chapter about freedom songs. The movement that we wouldve walked into cannon fire. It is just a bunch of words to songs. You can put those folks in that church up on the screen and turn the volume up and you are transported but writing a book is somewhat refreshingly solitary. I missed the collegial of making films together with the one of you in this room. In the physicality of making films is quite something you are in and out of vehicles at first light you are loading all of this and blasting onto the next location. Setting up lights, cameras and if youre lucky you finish up by 9 00 at night. He just barely make it back to the hotel. Then you turn around the next day you do it again. They are both incredibly satisfying. I have a question. Some of you guys have the book and you can read the text in the front. The Landmark Television series that re flame dash reframed the Civil Rights Movement. What is interesting about that in the concept is actually in reading it it sort of the structure of the book as ive kind of seen it. There are all interconnected. Henry, john, the Civil Rights Movement is all kind of interleaved it together. And eyes on the prize. So if i was going to attack Something Like that i might just do one i might just do civil rights how did you come up with that structure . It wouldve been a lot easier. This is not the original. The original title was messy history. And then i come up was true itself. This is the whole bunch of northerners making films about civil rights in the american south. It was mostly people from california and new york i want to raise the question could we get this right. Its also not the photo that i wanted on the cover. They said it was going to sell thats fine with me. My only problem with this photo was driven by men and women. It was odd to me. I started out to do the book without myself in it. Im not want to put myself in the foreground. It seemed disingenuous. I had dropped out of college in 1964 to the mississippi and decided not to go back to college. I was certainly an activist in a person when i drop dash micah joined the staff. And it seemed very odd to write the story without acknowledging my own involvement in both of those. I love doing complicated stories. Im just cursed with always wanted to tell through four stories at once. One of the things that made the book hard its really easy to do flashbacks. They also understand what Flash Forward is. It was difficult beyond belief for me. As you will see its all over the map. Echoes to the murder to the 1955 are filming in 1987. And then back here. In 1963. Its all over the map. Youll had to tell me whether it succeeded or not. Henry is such a largerthanlife figure so can you talk a little bit about what tree to him and a little bit of his back story. His back story is really crucial i think. Before i do that i could call out a whole lot of people in this room. I want to mention to people. They worked with us at the very beginning of this project. When they were getting directed by everything. They were just incredibly graceless in the early funders they are gods gift to us. The people at colossal pictures who suffered through making the logo and i think still have not been paid. I will give you a free copy of the book. Its interesting when he died a great loss for all of us i thought Henry Hampton if you took the smarts in the warmth and you combined that with a young steve jobs if you can imagine that creature. He was the smartest guy in the room. Also the fiercest visionary in the world. At the time i was working on that. I was also doing a lot of work with the young steve jobs back here in california. And harry was an awful lot more fun to be with. There was a driven similarity between the two. He was born segregated st. Louis missouri on the 1940s. And grew up at about the most privileged life that a young black man could have his father was a director of the homer phillips hospital for colored. Henry had it all as a young man. The africanamerican version growing up. In a 1955. Two things happen. This young man who was a star athlete was actually going to a Catholic High School two things happened. First was the murder of emma tilt. Where a young man traveled from chicago down to money mississippi to visit his uncle he talked fresh as a set a couple nights later the store owner and his brother came into the sharecroppers home objected beat him severely and murdered him and shot him. And a fisherman found his body about week later. Now, emma tilt wouldve just vanish into this vast pool in mississippi of which there were hundreds and thousands by that time. But his mother insisted on having an open funeral casket in the present took notice. And also the Mainstream Press begin to notice and then there was a trial in mississippi with 100 reporters attending and it was the equivalent of michael brown. In the National Media attention was the equivalent of social media. Today. Henry was rattled beyond belief by the picture of the savage face. I never heard of emma tilt growing up. Henrys entire generation was the till generation. And i think they discovered the mission with the murder of emmett till and that was a lot of what he was. That same year he was struck by polio his father actually had the soft taxi in trial form in his office but didnt want to use it and henry woke up one morning and couldnt move his legs. Came out of the hospital about two months later as a quadriplegic and worked his way back to regain the use of his arms and one leg. Those two events when he was a 15yearold on the verge of a stunning adulthood. The first time he ever felt rejected. That a formed the rest of his life. He was a guy that inspired hundreds of young filmmakers. It is that he tried to make eyes on the prize. For commercial television he launched it as a giant 26 part series was a complete and utter failure it was was a train wreck partly because neither henry nor anyone else at the time you to make large linked historical it was years before any of these things that we now take for granite and he didnt know he was doing. He was wise enough to go to Public Television which should did not make the ratings demands that commercial television had. And he set off and we spent a couple of years doing it. It is a really messy history. In affirmative action. There is a parallel group that is to yours that is heading up to yell i grew up there. They have to imagine it was like the plains of texas. I went to a great public high school. I got accepted to gail university. He was striding across campus. Like he was already secretary of state. I felt so dumb and ill at ease at the same time this is a very early 1960s. Television was new. It was there. It was in our face. This is even before the vietnam war and the Civil Rights Movement was exploding. They were about to break over america. You turn on the television here these freedom writers. There are people getting shot for trying to register the vote in mississippi. The contradictions in america were so vivid and obvious to us after that. At a Great High School civics teacher. And everything he taught us was now flying apart. You couldnt not do anything. The trigger was that an extraordinary man named bob moses was organizing a project in mississippi. He was the very first civil rights worker. The toughest territory. And bob came up where they were not making any progress registering black voters. They are being arrested by the hundreds. Bob was arrested and beat up. Its all happening in the dark. The nation doesnt know about this. If washington simply no if the party simply knew what was going on down here things would change legislation would get past. Weve to bring the spotlight on to voting in rural mississippi. When they come into mississippi the National Press is going to fall out. They could actually take the case to the Democratic Convention so a whole lot of us went. I was recruited by the fire breathing chaplain at vail. Who is part of that. We forget that the Civil Rights Movement was a church led movement. Where those great thundering progressive voices. Those guys were ministers. Ministers of the gospel. They recruited a whole bunch of us in the fall of 1965. Barney frank was in the group. And then i went down for the sum of 64. Sure enough the National Press did Pay Attention to us. They go from the north. And james cheney. They spent the summer in meridia. Being down there the contradictions became even more apparent that one have seen them from afar. Up in connecticut. And at the end of the summer at the funeral of james cheney. And rather than an a national office. And then i got assigned to someone that winter. Can you talk a little bit about the whole they have a background. And how the two of you came together. Although we didnt meet them. They didnt discover that until years later. I was actually in 1985 i was working with this special effects even. And shooting cocacola commercials and doing a big science series i notice in our full bulletin you actually got printed newsletters that came in your mailbox there was a series to be made by the Civil Rights Movement. This really friendly guy answered the phone. If youre ever in boston come on by. I have to go to boston it was where the first big production meetings were about to begin. I walked to the back of a Screening Room and they attacked it. And that office was right down the hall. And there was john lewis getting beaten halfway to death. Watching that footage had to work on eyes is the price. I met Henry Hampton. We went out for a drink that night. He offered me a job. I took it on the spot. The next day i started work on eyes on the prize. On the top floor of this leaky old town. Can you talk a little bit about that experience of how henry developed whats called the method and you are sort of thrown right into it this was sort of the second try. Not sort of it was his second try. We all knew this was the last chance to do it. And if we succeeded this would be the first and for the moment the definitive documentary. They had been the lawyers in the Civil Rights Movement. The black side method henry hansen was one of the reason he formed a company one of the reasons he set out to tell that story he was uncomfortable with whites alone tel