Best Of: Life in the Mojave Desert / Director of ‘The Uprising’

From W.H.Y.Y. in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley in Los Angeles. Today, two storytellers take on tales of resistance and rebellion. Author Claire Vae Watkins lives in the Mojave Desert, just like the protagonist in her new novel, in an area being developed by an energy company wreaking havoc on the environment. The locals protest, but the novel explores whether they actually have the power to defeat a corporate project already underway. And director Paul Greengrass' new film, The Uprising, examines what happens when people reach their breaking point. It takes us to 1381, when the peasants of England revolted against the king. Greengrass first noticed the parallels to today during the pandemic. Also, film critic Justin Chang reviews the new drama, Filipiniana. That's coming up. On Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Terry has our first interview. Like the main character in her new novel, Claire Vae Watkins lives in the Mojave Desert, near Death Valley. Also like in the novel, the desert around her is being developed by an energy company for solar energy. Solar might sound like clean energy, great, but solar on this grand scale is wreaking havoc on the desert ecosystem. Like many frontier territories, the desert attracts misfits, loners, drifters, and as Watkins puts it, weirdos. In the new novel, each of those types is represented in a small community of people protesting the, quote, green energy gold rush. But really, what can they do? What power do they have to defeat a corporate project already underway? Is protest futile, delusional, self-serving? There's a lot of questions this novel raises. Like, how could a mother decide? How could a mother decide to live in the desert when her ex-husband and child have moved across the country for a better job and better schools? How has Rose, the new novel's protagonist, been shaped by having had a mother, father, and stepfather who were each addicted to alcohol or drugs? Twelve-step programs have always been part of her life as a witness or participant. Watkins' new novel is titled Yellow Pine. That's also the name of the solar desert project in the book. Her previous novel, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, is her most autobiographical book and quotes from the memoir My Life with Charles Manson by her father, Paul Watkins. The cover describes Paul Watkins as Manson's number two man. His role was procuring teenage girls, recruiting them to join the Manson family. Claire was six when her father died of cancer. In reviewing her new novel, former Washington Post book critic Ron Charles wrote, Among the swelling collection of books confronting our imperiled planet, Claire V. Watkins' fiction remains defiantly alive. Her stories and novels are rooted in the American West, that awesome expanse of dunes and deserts that uninformed observers would call empty. Where life has adapted to the damning conditions of heat and drought, Watkins finds characters burned away to their elemental anxieties and desires. Claire V. Watkins, welcome to Fresh Air. Thanks, Terry. Happy to be here. Thank you. Happy to be here. Happy to have you. So, can you describe the part of the desert that you live in and what the environment is like? Sure. I live in the eastern Mojave Desert, about halfway between Las Vegas and Death Valley, in a little town called Tacopa, where I grew up. It's not for everybody. It's about 100 people. That will be the understatement of the interview. Yeah, it's for about 100 people. And it's really beautiful. Just, like, staggeringly gorgeous landscape and scenery. Huge, huge mountain ranges. There's a little river that goes through town, the Amargosa River. It's mostly underground, a subterranean river, but it surfaces in these hot springs, and there's just this, like, explosion of life around the river. So, where you described it's also around, where you grew up, and it's also where the main character of your new novel lives. So, now I want you to describe how it's being developed. Yes. So, the vast majority of land in this part of the country is public land. So, it's owned by, in theory, all of us, but it's administered by the federal government. And it has been sort of in the crosshairs, I would say, of what boosters like to call the green energy gold rush. So, it's been sort of in the crosshairs, I would say, of what boosters like to call the green energy gold rush. It's extremely sunny. It's a good place for solar development, in theory, for that reason. It's also kind of being besieged by other types of energy development, like geothermal and mining. I mean, mining has been happening out there for a really long time, although the scale is getting bigger and bigger. The aquifer has been pretty dramatically depleted, and, you know, there's not a lot of water in this area to begin with. And in the best of times. So, the natural resources are really being pushed to the brink in a pretty dramatic way. And there's been a long, long history of environmental injustice. You know, Yellow Pine and where I live is not far from the Nevada test site, where the federal government detonated almost a thousand nuclear bombs until 1992, when I was about in the third grade. So, it's a place that's been, like, treated, like a wasteland for a really long time. And that story has been very cooperative and convenient for extraction and exploitation of the natural resources. So, I was worried that while I'm really convinced that we need to decarbonize the economy and the need for renewable energy is obvious to me, I was really concerned that there would be some really serious sacrifices being made that didn't seem right. Right to me or fair. And that I don't think will actually help us transition off of fossil fuels. So, in the novel, there's a small group of protesters who want to stop this development of the desert. But the novel really does ask the question, like, what's the point? They're not going to win. There aren't a lot of people around to watch. There's not a lot of media around to report it. They're in the desert. So, what are your thoughts about that? Well, yeah. I think at one point they say, you know, it's not a blockade because we're not delusional. But they are still very principled. You know, they can tell that this is wrong. And so, I think it's a matter of morality. Taking action, even though you don't have a real grounded expectation of being successful, I think there's still value in the action. To watch and witness and be able to say that, you know, you saw what was there. I mean, that's what drove me out to Yellow Pine, was that I wanted to be able to say that I saw it before it was gone. And I guess I kind of just feel like if you only engage in an action that you're certain is going to be successful, that's pretty cowardly, really. You know, I mean, we want to be strategic and effective as activists. But there's no guarantee in any of this stuff. And that doesn't mean it's not still a worthwhile, way to spend your life. You grew up near where there are a lot of atom bomb tests and also near where there's a big disposal site for nuclear waste. Yes. So, how aware of that were you when you were growing up? I was painfully aware of it. I don't remember a time when I ever didn't know about Yucca Mountain, that nuclear repository that you're referring to. I mean, and that's another win, you know. There's a lot of very, very gnarly waste going into that mountain today, but not nuclear waste because of people stood up and said no, you know. So, yeah, my parents were involved in activism against nuclear testing and against Yucca Mountain and against water projects. And I remember feeling really hurt by it as a kid, feeling like, so they think that's okay to do to me? Like, I'm just a kid. You know, it made me feel like we were expendable people or that we didn't matter. I mean, that's the story usually of this type of exploitation is like there's no one there anyway. It's an empty place, you know, and that it's already dead. And that's a really confusing thing to be told when you're a lively kid who, you know, I understood that was wrong and I didn't deserve it and I didn't deserve it. No, no one does. And, yeah, I had a sense of clarity about it that I don't really think has gone away. Were you able to hear the blast go off? Like, did you know when it was happening and were you warned by the government when it was happening? So by the time I came along, the detonations were underground. They were happening in a subterranean way, which was ostensibly better because it wouldn't, and be, you know, releasing- For the atmosphere, yeah. Exactly, yeah. But the problem is, of course, that that's where the water is there, is underground. Oh, right. Yeah. So, no, I didn't hear them or see them. My mom had as a kid. She would go up on the roof of her trailer. She told me stories about going up there, and they would put, like, sunglasses on to be safe. Oh, God. We're listening to Terri's interview with author Claire Vae Watkins. Her new novel is called Yellow Pine. More of their conversation after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Let's get back to Terri's interview with author Claire Vae Watkins. So, in each of your last two novels, the main character decides to live far away from her young daughter. In the new novel, the couple has been living in Nevada, but they've been growing apart. They divorce. The husband gets a job in Philly, close to his home. And they agree it would be best for the daughter to go to preschool there in Philly. But Rose stays out west, moves to the desert, and works on a fundraising job with an environmental group. She's kind of relieved to be away from her ex because they've been drifting so far apart, but it's painful to be away from her daughter. In your previous novel, I Love You, But I've Chosen Darkness, the main character goes to the desert where she grew up and decides to stay. And leave her husband. And leave her young daughter behind if they don't want to stay in the desert. What got you thinking about what it means to live far away from your young child? Well, I live far away from my own young daughter for most of the time. She's with me on breaks and on summer vacation. So, that's a sacrifice that I've chosen to make. And I think it's for her good. I think it's for the greater good, the good of the family system. And I think it got me thinking about right sacrifice and wrong sacrifice. You know, parents have to sacrifice for their kids. And I also noticed that when there's too much sacrifice, it can get pretty dark. You know, we get into territory of like martyring ourselves. Or not living our lives in the name of our kids. You know, and it's so much pressure for a kid to have to bear. Like, they didn't ask for that. They didn't ask to be born, you know. So, I'm just interested in the process of a parent letting go. And in the case of, in the book, you know, trusting that the other parent is trustworthy and has got it. And I'm really lucky that that's my situation. So, your previous novel, I Love You, But I've Chosen Darkness, the main character goes to the desert. So, your previous novel, I Love You, But I've Chosen Darkness, starts with this postpartum questionnaire. And it's a multiple choice questionnaire. I want to read some of the questions. One, since my baby was born, I've been able to laugh and see the funny side of things. A, as much as I ever did. B, not quite as much now. C, not so much now. D, not at all. Two, I have looked forward with enjoyment to things. C, not so much now. D, not at all. And so on. And so, Rose comes up with answers in essay form to all these, like, A, B, C, D, multiple choice answers. She counters it with her own real answers. So, did you have to take a survey like that? I did, yeah. Questionnaire? Yeah? Yeah. That was the first piece of writing that I did that became that book, I Love You, But I've Chosen Darkness. When my daughter was born, I took this questionnaire. And I found the. The language just very confusing and baffling and funny, accidentally funny, unintentionally funny, I thought. So, yeah, then I thought, well, this should be an essay test. And then I started writing these little essays in response to the questionnaire. My doctors definitely described me as having postpartum depression. And I, you know, I followed their advice accordingly. But I don't really think that's exactly what was happening. I think I was having a kind of. An existential crisis. I think it was like a spiritual confrontation with myself. Having had this child and doing something really, like, heroic, a lot of the other stuff that I was doing in my life sort of suddenly seemed really meaningless. Can you say more about what this was about, this existential crisis? I was a really ambitious young person. And I was striving a lot to do everything in the right way and in the right order. Like, I was a straight-A student. I did really well in school. It helped me get out of my kind of crazy family scene. And I was kind of in a survival mode, I think, looking back on it. You know, using, like, my education and eventually my profession, like, as a university professor, to get safe. And even using intimate relationships. As a way of getting safe. And then all of that was kind of culminated in having this child. And I think I was telling myself a type of, I don't know, almost like a messianic story. Where, like, once I arrive at this place and I'm middle class and I have a husband and a child, all will be good. And it wasn't. I was still myself. And I still had, like, deeper stuff that I needed to confront. That couldn't, the, you know, solution wasn't outside in, like, external validation or money or prizes or prestigious jobs. It had to, like, come within. So when she was born, that was really the beginning of me starting to, like, dig in deep with myself. And I think the way Mary Oliver phrases it is, like, live your one precious life. I want to ask you about your father. Mm-hmm. Because he joined the Charles Manson family. And for people who don't know Charles Manson, why don't you describe Manson? Most people would probably describe him as the leader of a cult, a cult of young hippies who were, as Joan Didion says, participating in the paranoia of their times. And eventually, spectacularly so, it culminated in these murders in Los Angeles. In 1969. My dad was a teenager. For him, in the beginning, the family was all about music and sex and drugs. And he'd come from a pretty gnarly household. And I think. Your father. Yeah. And Manson, too. Not incidentally. Yeah. So, yeah, Manson was a lot older than most of them. A lot of them were young women. And a lot of them had been, like, given to Manson as children. So, it was a really exploitative scene, it sounds like. What I would say to people, if they're not familiar with him, he became this, like, boogeyman. Joan Didion described it, the day of the Manson murders, as the day the 60s ended. And it became this fable, this allegory about how, like, the countercultural impulse was dangerous and could only lead to, you know, murder and mayhem. And it scared a lot of people off of the kind of thing that the hippies were up to. And it gave their enemies a lot of ammunition. Well, Manson used the whole, like, free love, sex, drugs, and rock and roll kind of thing to totally exploit women. Young girls, teenagers who had just come to California, who'd maybe run away from home, who had no direction. And so, your father became. From his procurer, he was the one who found the teenage girls and brought them into the Manson cult. And I think it's fair to call it a cult. And I should say, your father was not involved with the murders. He wasn't even in town, I think, at that time. Yeah, he was out in Death Valley. So, that's kind of where the mythic, like, presence of the desert in our family, it was almost as if, like, the desert saved him from being involved. And Manson was the one who first sent him out to the desert to find a hole for them. To wait out Helter Skelter in. Do you know how your father ended up being Manson's procurer of teenage girls? Well, the way my mom told it, it was because he was very good looking. And he was young. He was young enough to enroll. He enrolled in Pacific Palisades High School, briefly, to meet women. It sounds like in my dad's book he writes about, and it's a tricky thing because it's a co-written book. I don't know how much of this is actually him. And he's not a writer. I don't know how down for me to ask, you know. But he writes about it as being just, like, a wonderful time for a kid who's, like, come of age in a really violent, repressive, like, 1950s, abusive, scary house. Your father turned against Manson and was one of the main witnesses who testified against Manson. Do you know how he decided to do that? When he wanted to leave the family, at first Manson said, OK, that's fine. then he changed his mind, and they were in, like, a struggle for a while. And they were out in Death Valley at the ranches. And eventually there was a night that he describes in his book where he opened the door of the cabin where he was staying with a couple other people who had also defected from the group. And Manson was like squatting there with a knife between his teeth. And so he thought he would be killed. And he walked that night across Death Valley, basically probably around like 50 miles or so. But he fled for his life and then went to the police, went to the Inyo County sheriffs. And I think he was trying his best to get safe. He had heard about the murders, but at that point people had been kind of like gossiping or alluding to them. I think he was just like getting, you know, a very, very hard word. reality check and realizing that this was not the like loving paternal guru that he thought he had. What did your mother know about his involvement with the Manson family when they met and fell in love? You know, my grandma met my dad first the night before. He was a bartender and she had gone out to the bar. And I think she told my mom something like, there's a really cute bartender out there. He was in some cult. But he's really cute. And you should go and like, chat him up. And my mom did that. And my understanding is they talked about it right away. I think everybody in town pretty much knew. But she was okay with it? Yeah, I think she understood that people make mistakes and can be lost. I mean, she definitely like made her share of mistakes. I think some of this was that eventually they got involved in like 12-step recovery, you know, where you. Part of the medicine from recovering from addiction is to be honest. So I think they had a pretty profound philosophical and spiritual tradition that was helping them navigate the complexities of what I mean, that's just being a human. I want to ask you about solitude. As you write, there's a difference between solitude and being lonely. What do you like about solitude? And were you always comfortable? Yeah. I started surfing recently. So I'm like, I got a lot of surfing metaphors going on. You really got to kind of try like stay in the pocket of not becoming isolated or too lonely or misanthropic, which is a risk for me feeling like other people are bad, like a malevolent force that I want to avoid. I don't like it when I get into that way of feeling. I don't like it when I get into that way of thinking. Ideally, solitude helps me be with others, but I have to be able to retreat from them. I also, you know, most of the peopling I do is in reading and in books. And I have to remember that those aren't real people either, you know, as real as they can seem. Do you feel that one of the downsides of being with other people is comparing yourself to other people, fearing you're coming up short? Or do you feel like you're not? Or feeling like you're competing with them in some way? Yeah, that's a real hazard. I mean, comparison, I think is, especially for an artist, I think it's pretty much useless. You know, I try not to do it at all. I've had times in my life where I have kind of been on a like, comparison is like a drug I'm trying to kick. Because I'm me, you know, I'm me. I really, for some reason, for me, it's Zadie Smith. I want to be like, why am I not doing what Zadie Smith is doing? And it's like, well, you're Claire, babe, you know, Zadie's gonna Zadie and George Saunders gonna George Saunders and you just do Claire, you know, that's enough. I feel, I feel best when I can inhabit that and let everybody else just do their own thing, too. It's been great to talk with you. Thank you so much. Likewise, Terry. Thanks for having me. Terry Gross speaking with Claire Vey Watkins. Her new novel is Yellow Pine. The new drama, Filipiniana, follows a teenage girl who's just started working at an upscale resort in Manila. It's the first feature from Filipino writer-director Rafael Manuel, and it won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. It's now playing in select theaters, and our first feature is from the Filipino writer-director Rafael Manuel. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review. at the Sundance Film Festival. It's in theaters now, and it marks the arrival of a remarkable talent, a Filipino writer and director named Rafael Manuel. In a way, Filipiniana is an ideal thing to watch in a nice, cool theater at the end of a brutally hot summer. It's been a while since a movie so powerfully captured the sweltering heat of the season, or established such a vivid sense of place from its opening moments. It begins on a tour bus, making its way through the crowded streets of Manila, where a local guide tries to teach the bored-looking passengers a few words in Tagalog. Mabuhay. Mabuhay is how we greet one another here in the Philippines. Mabuhay, in English, long live. Manila is in the midst of a drought. Early on, Manuel shows us weary residents lining up for water rations, and then cuts to a shot of sprinklers irrigating an enormous golf course. That's a bluntly true story. Early on, Manuel shows us we have arrived, along with that bus full of tourists, at an upscale resort, a lush green oasis of luxury in one of the most densely populated cities in the world. For the rest of its 100 or so minutes, Filipiniana will never leave the resort. It's a realistic yet satirical portrait of life inside a hermetically sealed bubble. Our guide is a 17-year-old girl named Isabel, played by the Indian actress, and she's a great actress. She's a great actress, and she's an intensely watchful Jory Bell Agoto. Isabel has just started working at the driving range as a tea girl, whose job is to tee up balls for golfers, one after another. It's a tedious, ridiculous task, one of many that keep the resort in operation. Some workers are forced to spend hours waiting in the ponds, fishing out errant golf balls. It's mostly through Isabel's carelessness. We follow her as she wanders this carefully manufactured paradise, which is dotted with non-native trees that have been trucked in from afar and meticulously planted. Isabel has a rebellious streak, and she can't help breaking the rules and sampling the resort's amenities, whether she's dipping a finger in a guest's strawberry cake, taking a shower in a spa, or simply basking in a few minutes of air-conditioned bliss. Manuel also introduces us to a new resort, which is called the Isabel. It's a new resort, and it's a new resort, and it's a new character. A significantly more privileged young woman named Clara, played by Carmen Castellanos. Clara, who lives in New York, is visiting the resort with her uncle, who wants her to move back to the Philippines and help him run his golf equipment business. Her uncle insists it's her duty to support her country and fight what he calls brain drain, the flight of young Filipinos seeking better opportunities abroad. But Clara is really reluctant, probably because, like Isabel, she can see that people are being exploited and marginalized in the name of development and progress. Filipinana has just a few spare dribbles of plot. From time to time, we hear ominous whispers of a young girl who's gone missing on the golf course. Isabel is given a seemingly simple task, to return a stray golf club to the disturbing, and even devastating revelations along the way. But what distinguishes Manuel's filmmaking is how much of the story he conveys visually, through texture and atmosphere, framing and blocking. He shows us the resort from a seemingly infinite number of angles, shooting in long takes and seldom moving the camera. But the filmmaking never feels static. Every shot of Filipinana positively churns with life. Early on, Manuel unleashes a playfully choreographed sequence worthy of the great French director Jacques Tati, in which the resort workers' perfectly synchronized movements, setting a table, stacking chairs, and cleaning a pool, are brilliantly set to music. It's a rich dose of comic fantasy that serves to underscore the situation's grim reality. Filipiniana is an impeccable piece of world-building that genuinely challenges us to imagine a better world. Justin Chang is a film critic at The New Yorker. He reviewed the new film, Filipiniana. Coming up, we hear from award-winning director Paul Greengrass. His new film, The Uprising, tells the story of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. I'm Tanya Mosley. Director Paul Greengrass makes films about the choices ordinary people make when they're trapped inside forces they cannot control. He's taken us to the streets of Derry as British soldiers opened fire on civil rights marchers in Bloody Sunday, aboard a hijacked plane on September 11th and United 93, and onto a cargo ship seized by Somali pirates and Captain Phillips. His new film, The Uprising, takes on a story familiar to generations of English schoolchildren, the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. In the film, the play cut the popular interest of the Peasants to a population in half, making workers more valuable than ever, but the ruling class is determined to keep them in their place. When the government imposes a brutal tax to finance its wars, tens of thousands march on London. Andrew Garfield stars as an unnamed farmer called the Plowman. He's buried his wife and children and is deep in debt on land that no longer produces a crop. As the revolt gathers around him, his private grief becomes political rage. And in this scene, the radical priest, John Ball, played by Jamie Bell, offers the Plowman a new way to understand his suffering. God has taken much from you. God left my fields long ago. No, he has not left you. It is his plan. His plan? Why would God have a plan to cause us such pain? The sickness was his punishment for the crimes of the rich. So why do we suffer also to show us the truth and fill us with rage? Surrender to it. We never set you free. I saw The Uprising earlier this summer and since then, just weeks before the September 10th release, the film has taken on a surprising new frame, The Rise of Robin Hood. Paul Greengrass, welcome back to Fresh Air. Very nice to be here again. So Paul, I am very curious about this connection between The Peasants' Revolt and the story that we know of Robin Hood. Tell me about it. Well, the film is about The Peasants' Revolt, which is one of the greatest rebellions in English history in 1381 in the middle of the medieval world. And it's from that period that the legend of Robin Hood emerged. And the two are connected because both of them speak to a bitterly divine story. It's about a divided world between the rich and the poor. And one of the things that occurred, you know, Robin Hood was really just a moniker for an outlaw prior to 1381. But after The Peasants' Revolt, that was when the ballads and the legend of Robin Hood got going and became wildly popular in medieval England because it spoke to people's desires for a better world, a fairer world, against, you know, the rapacious rich and the rich. And so in the story of this simple farmer, he eventually becomes an outlaw and he becomes an outlaw at a time when the Robin Hood legend was getting going and it got going because of the world that The Peasants' Revolt took place in. This is a story that you grew up learning as a schoolboy. It came back up for you, though, during the pandemic. Correct. Take me to that place where you're thinking about this story coming back up for you. Well, I've been thinking for a while about doing a sort of story rooted in English history and about sort of resistance and a sort of freedom fighter type film. And so when the pandemic came and we were all locked down, it just became natural. What I wanted was to do a story about an ordinary person, an ordinary farmer caught up in tumultuous events, events that would feel, I think, although it's set in the medieval world, would feel very familiar to an audience today because I think in many ways when you think of the turbulence in our world today, it is driven by these great inequalities and the rage that people feel about elites and all those things that wherever you are on the political spectrum, I think we recognize that that's what's going on in your country and mine and Europe and beyond. And it just seemed to me that this story really spoke to that. You know, I was really struck by the fact that, I mean, we lost more than a million people to COVID in this country and these characters in this film are living that same reality. It is after losing an unimaginable amount of people to the plague. And one of the things that really struck me is how numb they seem to feel. Yeah. And this was the first time the plague came to Europe. It wiped out literally half the population, literally. And the same in Europe. And so in the decades after the plague, people were left, as you say, numb. And then this gathering rage at a system that seemingly privileged the rich and the powerful over the weak and the defenseless. And, you know, the economy faltered. Government didn't seem to work. And in the end, all it took was a spark. And then suddenly you had this enormous rebellion, almost overnight. It was extraordinary. And within days, a huge army mob gathering, whatever you want to call them, tens and tens of thousands of people marching on London. And they besieged the city and they got in. And what followed was. It all took place really over five or six days. And that's really the story of the film. The march on London, getting in, the mayhem, the attempts to fashion a new form of society, a fairer future. All those things, the hopes and dreams of any rebellion. It's a kind of classic movie story, really, and a great adventure. And certainly what I wanted to do was to, you know, not make a dry history lesson. I like my movies to entertain people. Did you write some of the songs in this? I wrote the lyrics in the songs. The lyrics? Yeah, Volker wrote the lyrics. Was this the first time that you wrote lyrics for a song? Well, I've done a few, but it's the first time in a film. Yeah, it was fun. I mean, Volker Bettelmann, I wrote a fantastic score and we just, of course, it's a part of the story, is the story of the rebel march on London. And of course, people would have sang songs for sure and they would have been probably religious songs, mixture of hymns, but also sort of simple folk songs and also protest songs. You know, I mean, if you think of the great movements, you know, I made a film many years ago about Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland. You know, people, people sang songs on the way down in that march. That's what you do. They're protest songs and it would have been no different in medieval England. So we wanted to have that feeling running through it because it's part of the hopes and dreams that lead people to march for change. You know, Paul, re-watching United 93, I mean, it really took me back to that day and I was trying to find the right ways to articulate this to you. It made me feel innocent. Again, it took me to the place I felt when it happened and when we didn't really know what this all meant. And I happened to be watching it with my 19-year-old daughter and I looked over at her at a certain point and she was just sobbing and I sobbed too. And it was the first time in a long time that I've cried about September 11th. Well, it remains a great wound. I mean, it was an intense film to make. It was a great privilege to make it, I think, for all of us who took part in the relationships that we made with those families who lost family members on board. It was the most extraordinary thing. In fact, they're about to have a screening at the Gettysburg Film Festival and unfortunately I can't be there because I'm here in London. I'm in Los Angeles but I sent a message and there's going to be a lot of family members there and there's some actors who took part. And what I said and believed is that those people on board that aeroplane, as that plane closed as it was on the Capitol building with no military aircraft in sight to stop it, it fell to that group of people to meet the moment, and they did. And when we think of the problems and divisions, I'm thinking about my country, but I'm sure it's true in your country too, of today, 25 years later, and the difficulties we have and the divisions that's out there and the inability for us to come together as well as we all might as societies, I did think at that moment of those people facing that situation, unimaginable, they did come together. And I think that's inspiring for your country, but for all of us, I think. I actually want to play a clip from the film. In this scene, passengers on the plane are coming to understand that the plane has been hijacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists and that it is probably not going to land. This is the moment when they realize this. Let's listen. We're okay. We're okay. Hey, this is a suicide mission. We have to do something. We are not going to land this plane. They are not going to take us back to the airport. We're going to die. We're going to die. They're flying this into a building. We're going to die. You should not intend to fly this plane. There's a lot of us. We've got to do something. Can you see how low we are? Is there a weapon? Is there something we can use? Go back. You go back. Stewardess, listen to me. Are you listening? I'm listening. Go back and you get every weapon you can. Get whatever we can use as a weapon. That was from the film United 93, directed by my guest today, Paul Greengrass. You went to the families of those on board and you had conducted more than 100 interviews before you wrote a word. Yeah. What did they give you that the official record? And their details? Their detailed statements could not. I think they gave us two things. One, their encouragement and support, without which we would never have made the film. And then the second thing they gave us was who the people were on the plane, you know, and enabled the group of actors to embody those people. And. It remains, you know, the most, the greatest privilege of my work in life to make that film. And I'm forever in their debt. And I think we all are. They're an extraordinary group of men and women of very different opinions about their society and the world, but brought together by that common shared moment of tragedy. But also of astonishing courage and achievement. I want to talk a little bit about you and growing up. You grew up in public housing and his graves. How would you describe it? I was trying to figure out what was it. No, I mean, my father was at sea. He was what we would call a merchant mariner, essentially. He was in the Navy as a young, young man in the Second World War. And then he went to the civilian Marines. He was in the Marine Fleet. My mother was a teacher. And but so I would say I grew up in a seafaring family. That's what I would say, which is a particular sort of an upbringing because it involves solitary men who are very rarely there because they're at sea and strong women who have to cope on their own, which would be my mother. And that's, of course, the story of a seafaring family. And, you know, for thousands of years. That's the paradigm, really, of a seafaring family, I think. How often was he gone and what was it like when he came back? Well, he was away for very long periods of time, six months. You know, it could be three months. It could be nine months. One time it was 18 months. And then later on, he stopped the long trips and started to join. And we became pilot. That would be a day or two or three. And back and, you know, because he was really guiding the ships in. Rather than taking the long trips around the world. And how old were you when that shift happened, that change? I guess I'd have been about 11, I think, something like 10 or 11. So, you know, quite an important time. And that was quite interesting when he came home, as it were, because my mother and father had to learn then how to live together. That was quite entertaining for us children. Right, because your mom had the household on lock. She was doing her thing. Yeah. Running the household. Yeah, yeah. So that was pretty tempestuous. I can't lie. Can I repeat something back to you that I've heard you say in an interview? You said directors are made by childhood loneliness and domestic conflict. And you had both. What is the connection to having that type of life and being a director? I would say that it is a strange thing to end up making films. And I think it is to do with childhood loneliness. I do. I think childhood loneliness and experiences. Of cinema, too. You know, I remember as a young boy, my grandmother taking me to the movies and those being very, very profound experiences. You know, seeing Snow White as a young child. I can still remember that. So I think my sense is that if your home is perhaps more conflicted, perhaps than it should be in an ideal world, then the movie theatre becomes a place. A place where you can escape. And so I think later, if you get to start to pursue the life of a filmmaker, you're sort of drawing on those experiences. Those are the profound sort of emotional wellsprings that drive you to make films. And one of the things you're trying to achieve, I think, is to try and create cinematically the intensity. The intensity of the experiences that you have in front of a screen in a movie theatre when you're very, very young. That would be my feeling. When did you know this was your direction? That you were going to be. You were going to tell stories. Because I know that you had a career working, travelling. I mean, I think that when I was a teenager, I found life quite difficult, I think. You were thrown out of two schools. I was, yeah. What did you do? I mean, not bad things. I just was not attentive and wasn't really very interested and truanted a bit. I found living inside institutions quite hard. You know, I was quite rebellious, I suppose. But when I got a bit older, I was very lucky. I had an art teacher who was a very wonderful man who really showed me that using my eyes and painting and printmaking and that it was a safe space and it was a place where I could express myself. And that's where I made my first film. I was very young. I would have been 16 or 17. Oh, what was that film about? It was really a horror film. And it was only about 30 seconds long. But I've shot it with a friend of mine. And I just found myself transported. But I wouldn't say I decided then that I'm going to make movies because who thinks like that at 16 or 17? And then I went to college and came out and started working in television and originally made documentaries. And. Yeah. That really, I suppose, is the making of me because I kind of traveled a lot and saw a lot of the world and began to understand what the world was about a bit more. But I always had a hunger to make movies. It would have been a secret desire, I think, because it would have been a bit preposterous to have said it publicly, obviously. And as a documentary filmmaker. It was a hard transition to make, but I did get there in the end. Paul Greengrass, thank you for this conversation. Thank you for having me. Award-winning director Paul Greengrass. His new film, The Uprising, is in theaters now. Fresh Air Weekend was produced this week by Susan Yakundi. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer this week is Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Anna Bauman, and Nico González-Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mousley.