What does it actually take to find footage that was never meant to be seen?Rosemary Rotondi has spent 30 years doing exactly that and the stories behind Attica, John & Yoko: One to One, and Gabby Petito are jaw-dropping. In this episode of The Archive Room, archival producer Rosemary Rotondi takes us behind the scenes of three landmark documentaries. We cover secret NYPD surveillance footage of John and Yoko Lennon, the erasure of archive footage by upstate New York towns that wanted to forget Attica ever happened, a film crew threatened while trying to shoot drone footage at the prison, a box of unprocessed Lennon audio no one had ever listened to, and the truth behind the Gabby Petito police body cam including what happened to the officer in that footage two years later. If you work in documentary film, love film history, or want to understand how archival storytelling actually works, this is essential listening. On this week's episode of the Archival Room, we welcome Rosemary Rotondi. She's a vastly experienced archival producer, having worked in this industry for many, many years. And we focus on two films specifically, Attica and John and Yoko One to One, which is now streaming on Apple and various other platforms. If you like these deep dives into films and how these producers find and source archival footage, Please do support our little podcast by subscribing. You'll get updated as soon as a new episode is released. And if you can comment and share, it really does help the algorithm promote the show. Thanks ever so much and enjoy this week's episode. So, welcome to the Archive Room. My name's Dominic Dare and this is my co-host, Sandra Coelho Today's guest is Rosemary Rotondi. She's a New York based archival producer and researcher with over three decades experience in documentary film. Her credits include Attica, Stanley Nelson's film about the 1971 prison uprising, which received an Oscar nomination for best documentary feature. She's also worked on One to One, John and Yoko, which is now streaming on Apple and the Netflix show, American Murder, Gabby Petito amongst dozens of other productions over the years. Her work on Attica also earned her a nomination for Focal's International Researcher of the Year. So Rosemary, welcome to the Archive Room. Thank you for having me. This is so wonderful. Listen, so we like to place everybody when we kind of first meet them. So could you just give us a bit of a backstory of how you ended up getting into this industry? Yes, it really fate played a hand in my life, I have to tell you. I worked as the assistant to the development director of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. That's where I grew up. And I wanted to come to New York City. I really wanted to move here for many years. And I wanted to go to NYU and get my master's in cinema studies and study film at NYU. So I used that as my way to... foray into getting to New York City. And when I was about to graduate from the master's program, you know, I thought what I was going to do was go to work for HBO, which was, you know, up and running at that time and, making, a big splash at that time. And I thought that's a company to get, you know, in the working with. And I thought that's what I was going to do. Well, literally the week I'm going to graduate, got a call from a colleague at the ICA in Boston, where I hadn't worked in over two years. And they said, we have a program with WGBH. It's every Friday night at 10 PM. And we present experimental artists videos. And so they said, we need an archival researcher for a 45 minute film by Daniel Reeves. who at the time, along with Bill Viola and other people was a big video artist. He is to this day too. And I said, what's archival research? And they said, know, when documentaries, when you see the vintage footage and the archival footage and you're gonna have to go to archives. And I was like. Well, that sounds really fascinating. And it was also the week I was graduating and I was feeling kind of like, you know, aimless at this point, like I'm going to have to start my life now. And so I took that on and I fell in love with it. And I did that off and on. That was probably off and on for six months. And then it showed the, you know, in the following year on WGBH. And it was a beautiful documentary, experimental film. with experimental elements in it, and avant-garde elements in it, as well as straightforward shooting. And I just grew to love it from there. And I just Yeah. never stopped. It's amazing how many people we speak to who just literally kind of ended up here. Yes. it's something that, know, partially this podcast is to kind of try and open up our world because there isn't an easy path in. What would you say would be the first project that you really cut your teeth on? So, you know, what was the first big project that you that you were brought in on beyond that? Yeah, I worked for Daniel for about seven or eight years and he did several other projects that had archival elements in it. So I continued to work with him. And then I started to work, you know, slowly over time, building my career credits with other people. And I think that the let me say one of the first big ones that I worked on was I worked with Barbara Sonneborn on a Academy Award. nominated film that she had done about losing her husband to the Vietnam War. was called Regret to Inform. And that was a, that's a really tremendous film that really holds up. And then after that, I would, you know, I was trying to find my way in our industry because there wasn't this and there wasn't a community per se. I started to meet others in our community by attending things like Footage Fest and things like that. They were called different names back in the 90s and the 2000s, but I would start to attend that slowly, meet the other people in my field because I felt kind of isolated and in a real niche industry. so Looking back, think that I started to really feel I was cutting my teeth in the industry when I started to work for Stanley Nelson and I worked with him on five or six projects in a row. I'm thinking back to like, you know, the nineties, I, you know, I work on projects, but not for very long periods of time. There weren't a lot of people that were using archival in the way they're using them now. And so to supplement my income, and I'm sure a lot of people relate to this, I worked as a temp. I worked as a temporary secretary for the Time and Life Building and for HBO. That's so fascinating. And that was really saved me. I was able to keep with my love, my passion, and build up my credit slowly and continue to support myself doing that. Absolutely. So, if we can fast forward to today. You know, we come to a project like One to One, John and Yoko. When Yeah. you're working on a pretty much 100 % archive driven documentary, how do you... Let's talk us through the process you do when you first get on. You know, how do you organize your materials? What's your structure look like for your work? Sure. Well, Kevin, it was interesting with Kevin because Kevin was in direct touch with Sean Ono Lennon and the archivists that run the Lennon archive. So Sean only wanted to work with Kevin directly. So he handled the, which Sean had was transferring, preserving, you know, working on the audio being much better. And he was allowing him also to listen to like the telephone phone calls, which are quite amusing in the film. The phone calls about Yoko trying to find the flies for the film Fly and things like that. What he came to me for is he said, you know, they were obsessed with television and they were obsessed with watching television, you know, like 24 hours a day. Kevin was saying that, Yeah. you know, they were massive television watchers and I'm a very big John Lennon and Beatles fan, so I knew that too. And he said, you know, they loved watching TV. So he said, I would like you to present to me what the commercials of 1971 to 1973, maybe the experimental artists they were following from 1971 to 73. what was on the news, what was the most important things going on in the news, 71 to 73. And then I also went down to the municipal archives and I found the New York police department's surveillance footage of them, which Sean Ono-Lennon was able to find also matching footage, color footage he found in his archive. I found the black and white footage of them that didn't have sound. He found one with color that had sound. But it was NYPD surveillance footage of them at rallies here in New York City protesting the Vietnam War and marching in marches and just of all the anti-Vietnam War protesters. So that was really amazing to realize how much they were being surveilled. Of course, they were trying to also kick him. John Lennon out of the country. So I got all the news reports about his ongoing deportation case. And it was really fun for me. Cause it was way to go back in time to when I was a kid to like relive watching all of these commercials. That was hysterically funny. And then also going to like Jonas Makis' film of them from 71, 73. He took a lot of great footage of them at anthology and that's anthology archive, but also on DVD still. And it was, I also got to revisit like the experimental artists that were working at that time that were colleagues of Yoko's. So for me, was like this really wonderful immersion in that time. Kevin is just like a really enthusiastic, really kind person with whom to work. So he was very enthused with everything I was finding him. And our crazy American commercials too. He just thought those were the most hysterical things on the face of the earth. He just loved that. It's brilliant. immersive is the word. I was born a couple of years after that, the film transports you through archive to a time and a place that is just so incredible. You're there, you know, and then it's counterpointed with these amazing clips that you found for commercials and game shows and contextualizing history as we go. It's a wonderful film. I mean, one of the clips that stands out, had to ask you about it, maybe it's a famous clip, but there was a couple of things really that, firstly, I didn't really know how charismatic Jerry Rubin was. I mean, he's an incredible character. He was on TV here quite a lot. He was on like the Mike Douglas show, which is about as bland and, you know, a talk show as you could possibly get. He was, he was making the rounds and he was, I think, considered, you know, entertaining because, you know, I don't think, unfortunately, a lot of those kind of shows took him very seriously, but he was on the Dick Cavett show. He was on Mike Douglas show. He was on the Merv Griffin show. He was on a while there, he escorted kind of John and Yoko, you know, to a lot of these he really came through. also, you know, the footage of the guy, and I forgot my notes here, the guy that was going through, well, yeah, Dylan's trash. Crazy. Wasamere? The one who was, God, yeah, was stalking Bob Dylan. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. and then Yoko, they have the phone call that, know, Sean Ono Lennon let them use from the archive of Yoko actually calling him to say, you knock it off? That was amazing. That was incredible Yeah, yeah. Incredible. to me that she would get so involved. It's, you know, I think it's the intimacy that you really get to know. I came away from the film feeling like I learned a lot about history, which was amazing. I also Yes. Yeah. felt a much, a huge amount more compassion for John Lennon because you really, yeah. And her too. mean, what I loved about it, and I wasn't expecting, because you know, I'm like you guys, I'm sort of like a fan that was waiting to see what Kevin had done with the things I was not involved with. But to bring in Yoko's story about the kidnapping of her daughter was just, I had totally forgotten about that and that she didn't meet her until, I think her daughter was 34 years old. Check. I mean, for that long, for you to miss your. daughter that was taken when she was about five, five to seven years old in there and how often they talked about it in their interviews. I had totally forgotten that too. And then that song that she wrote about being in the hotel room and I dream about my daughter and you know, you know, that that was really, I I thought it really brought a lot to people's attention about Yoko and how important she was. Absolutely. And the misogyny that she faced from all sorts and all angles at that time as well, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Horrible, just absolutely horrible. Yeah, the racism that she suffered. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, and there's humour in there as well, where, you know, with this kind of they're trying Thank you, Ammar. to wrangle the flies, you know, they're Yes. trying to get these flies for an art exhibit, and it's an ongoing theme. It's fantastic. my God, those phone calls were such a find. And you know what? They hadn't processed those. They hadn't gotten around to processing them. So the lead archivist at Lennono Archive called Kevin one day and he said, I just came across this box of unprocessed audio. When you're here in New York City, you we should probably sit down and listen to these or, you know, maybe you want to use them. And it was material like that. Yeah. That was another thing that unfortunately the level of paranoia about which they were correct. They weren't being paranoid that they would be surveilled on the telephone. You know, they started recording all of their phone calls. Yeah. and you could literally hear the click, of people temping into the line that Yes. they show in the film. Yeah, a fascinating portrait of a period of time. I think it's handled with such great kind of skill because it's not easy to make a film. Is it Yeah. Yeah. just in terms of the process? When it's an archive driven tale, is the narrative drawn before? Or is the narrative figured out by the archive that you find? How does that relationship work? Oh, that's really interesting. know, Kevin wasn't, didn't know what I was going to find. I was just, I, we were working with a shared dropbox and I would be dropping things into the dropbox every single day and titling them what they were. then in the comment section having, where it came from, how we would license it. And I would, when I can, I always draw attention to parts I think are really interesting. I'll say, I encourage you to listen to, Mark, in, in ins and outs, and I'll give like the exact, ins and outs of something to listen to or watch. And he literally didn't interfere or, or like say, you're way off or, you know, nothing, nothing, everything I sent. said, God, I love it. I love it. I love it. And he and the editor were just really, they just said they were having a ball, working with the stuff. And so it gave me like a lot of creative freedom. Like I, at the time, I really was like, I really wanted to bring some attention to the experimental avant-garde artists that were working at that time, people that Yoko works directly with, but also people that she didn't. And so I was also bringing in material like that just in case it might help in some way. Some of that, of course, ended up in the film and of course a lot of it didn't, but that was really a fun thing to revisit that period of time. It was such a fertile time for artists. You could live in New York City for less than $100 a month and if you had a job working at a coffee cafe for one day a week, that was your rent money right there. You didn't have to be working all the time to support yourself. So there was just a lot of extraordinary people that were working. So yeah, the creative freedom he gave me on that was really rare, you know? I didn't get like a visual needs list. With many clients, I have a visual needs list that's pretty strict. And I will say to them, but if I see something that I think is going to be interesting to you that's not on your list, would you like me to upload it? 99 % of people say yes, do that. But some people are like, no, really please keep strictly to this visual needs list that we've given you. Yeah. And it's interesting, so I'm just thinking about, something like Attica could you give us a little backstory on the film? Give us Yes. a kind of rundown of how you were involved and what the film's about for people that didn't know. At that point, I had done a film for PBS with Stanley Nelson called Boss, African Americans in Business. And that was a great project and it's very much worth watching. And it was mostly archival. And so I happened to be in the right place at the right time because he'd been trying to get Attica off of the ground for 20 straight years. It wasn't finding any interest. And then Vinny Melrota, who at then was at Showtime's documentary department, which sadly since has been dismantled, Vinny is now the head of the Obama's archive. And so at that time Vinny reached out to Stanley is what I understand and said, I've always wanted to work with you. Do you have a project that would be appropriate for Showtime? And Stanley presented this. And at the time it was probably, was being also discussed as a two part. It would be a film that you saw was the first part. The second part was going to be the McKinley hearings. So I was doing a lot of research on the hearings as well. Unfortunately, that was not able to happen, but thank God it was a two hour film that was able to happen. So, okay, now I started literally a month before COVID kicked in. So I was able to get out with the co-director Tracy A. Curry, and she was the producer too. We were able to visit two of the television archives on site in New Jersey to go through their film archives of Attica and get some things ordered. Then COVID happened and we weren't able to, I was not able to visit anymore archives on site. So I had to work very, very closely with my reps who thankfully came through, you know, a lot. And I also had a year and a half to work on this. And Wow. yeah, yeah. And we worked all together through Zoom. You know, we would meet two or three times a day on, two or three times a week on Zoom. And Stanley was just very specific about what needed to be covered. I was finding a tremendous, lot. amount of materials, because thankfully this was a very highly covered tragic event. But Mm. the other thing that was weird is none of the archives upstate New York in Attica, Buffalo, Rochester, any of the cities around Attica, which is kind of a town that's time forgot kind of place, 98 % white. The prison is the number one employment center in Attica to this day. And they had all tossed their materials out. It was awful. Wow. It was awful. Every single place I went to, I think I found less than a half a minute from one place that they'd kept accidentally. Most of it was tossed, maybe because it's a history they want to erase. Maybe they don't want But I think most of it is because these are very small media centers and they don't have the space. They don't have cold storage. They can't afford it. They don't have the space. So they were either filming over things eventually, or they were just literally tossing things out. There was one archive, which is in Buffalo, the Buffalo Media Broadcasters Association. They thought they might have some stuff in their archive. And we waited like four months before they could get into it. Cause COVID kept delaying them getting into the archive. They were, anybody that they were getting to look for me would get sick and not be able to work. Well, they found their, their reel news reel from, you know, that week. And it was all about hockey. And it was all about, it just, it was really depressing. You know, we just couldn't believe it when we finally got it and we brought it to a place to watch it. And it was all about hockey and winter sports and how bad the weather was. And, you know, it was just flowing. like, so I was working at that time with Erin Walsh at NBC and Erin, she's such a tremendous human being. And so she said, you know what? I found something that's from, an affiliate in upstate New York and it doesn't look like it's ever been looked at or, you know, we've never really paid attention to it. It was that entirety of that section of Stuart Dan going into the yard, walking through the yard, being a part of the negotiations table. It was like two to three minutes. It was that. gold. So she had not put in the extra mile, I would not have been able to have access to that. I think that's incredible. mean, did you get, did you manage to get stuff from the state? Did the state or the prison provide material? They were not good. No, I wrote to them many, many, many times and they would write back saying, well, we might have some photos to share with you. And then they would never respond back. Then there's a museum, Attica prison museum and Tracy and co-producer, Sushana DeBrile, they flew up. They flew up to do drone footage over the prison, which they got expressed permission to do. and they had an appointment at the museum. The museum allegedly had audio tapes. This is what I was told. And I was dealing with the woman and she was nice with whom to deal at the museum. And she said, I'll show them whatever we have. But I believe we have some audio cassettes of audio from that week. And, you know, we were very interested in that. And anyway, Tracy and the drone operator and Shoshanna got to outside the prison and they were doing the drone and people started driving over. Who the hell are you? What are you doing here? Cops, but also just people that live in Attica. Well, they saw these three black people and they were like, what is going on here? and we saw the drone. so Tracy, of course, was producing the license to do the drone footage. And they felt very threatened. And then they went to the museum after that. The woman said, I won't allow you to come in. So that was that. So they left at home full 24 hours early because they didn't safe there. Yeah. Gosh, that's, that's chilling. It's very chilling. Yeah. And sadly, some of the people that participated in the film, Tracy did all of the interviews and because of COVID, believe it or not, those interviews, she was in New York City and those interviews are done by hired camera people that, followed the COVID rules and went to people's houses to interview them. I don't think you would ever know that, but that's, it was, as you know, crazy trying to get things done then. And a couple of those people got very harassed after watching the film. And one man who was the son of one of the guards that got murdered, he said he wished he'd never participated. He got so much harassment and frozen out by people that stopped talking to him because he participated. And he said nothing. He said nothing about being on any side. He was talking about his dad and really weeping about the loss of his father and finding out at like, you know, 11 years old. I think that's what he was, what he was told by his mother that she'd seen his father and he was dead. You know, that was very, very sad. So it had that kind of repercussions for people that bravely participated. There was a lot of photography and stills being used in the film that I... When I watched it. The still of them, or the naked prisoners. Yeah. Yeah. mean that was quite... That's such a powerful image. How do you go about finding stills? And did you find any video content that... Well, video, you know, the video content, the actual shooting from the tower, which was also, You could have used... Yeah... Yeah... put out, when they did that, they put out like anybody in the town that had a rifle could show up to participate in that. Yeah. And those came from an upstate New York, New York state archive. And they had those eight millimeter black and white reels. that did have the audio and thankfully they were terrific people running that archive. And they allowed Stanley to get those cleaned up and re-transferred and re-digitized and everything. And then we gave them a copy of that, so they'll have it for future researchers. That was really amazing. And of course that adds a lot to the horror. at the end, and then those photos, Sandra, you're talking about, both were all stored at Duke University, and they are a part of the archive of the lawyer that handled all of the lawsuits after that event. And she represented, I think, well, I'm not sure how many, but 12, minimally, of the survivors. And that, of course, took over 20 years to get settled, you know. They dragged that out, dragged that out, dragged that out. But there were hearings afterwards and she was the lawyer. And so everything was stored in her archives. And when something has been a lawsuit, it's automatically here becomes a public domain. So Duke University shared those photographs. Yeah. You know, talking about this kind of legacy of a film like that, how do you approach the fact that you're going to show pictures of potentially people who've died in an incident like this? What sort of judgment call do you have to make ethically and who makes that? It was Stanley and his editor, Algernon Tuncel that made those decisions. And I'm at a point now, and I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I can look at images like that and just be clear and just non-emotional about it. I've worked on, I think now about three really heavy films where I was exposed to really intense, photographs or footage and I, you just have to like keep it moving. And so would bring everything in and we would have everything documented and uploaded. And, the firelight films, interns would have everything in the EDL and, know, everything for Stanley and Algernon to look through. And they made all of those calls. Believe it or not, Getty Images had some of the naked photographs, not a lot, but they had some of them as well. But the majority of all of that came from the lawyers archive at Duke University. And Stanley had been told about that probably five years before to, you know, I mean years before when he was trying to get this going and other ways. You know, so he knew about that. So that was great. Yeah. How do you as an archive producer working on a project like that, how do you cope with it? for your mental health it must be quite hard to look at that content, you know? I know, you know, that's what I mean, Sandra. It's like, I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but at this point I can be really, I'm just very clear headed about it. And I have built up, I think an ability to be able to do that as part is what I'm called upon to do. And just move through it without getting emotional about it. And I worked on another series called Last Call for HBO, which was by Anthony Corona. And it was about a gay serial killer here in New York City. I mean, the photographs from that, I mean, were just incredible, just awful. And again, you just, as part of your job, you have to upload them and document them and, you know, get them ready for the director and the editors and the producers to look through. you know, that's just part of our job. Yeah. I, I, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's my age and I could detach now in a way that's, helps me to do my job without suffering for my job, but it really is, you know, very sad and etiquette for me, you know, remains like, you know, one of my favorite, favorite things to work on. I just feel so proud of it. I'm so proud that Stanley's work was recognized finally with an Academy Award nomination. He had not been nominated before in 35 years. It's a huge achievement, a worthy film. If anybody hasn't seen it, it's a must. I it's just not only gripping, it's shocking, it's got so many different elements to it. And it's sadly still happening and it remains a really important film about American culture and American racism and our terrible prison system. So many of those men that were interviewed that were survivors, they were in there for pretty minor things. That was also a time where marijuana was just considered to be like The worst thing on the face of the earth, and if you were caught selling it, you would get like five to 10 years in prison. Just insane things. People stealing food because they were broke and hungry, and you'd get five to 10 years. But the aftermath, which I wish that Stanley had been allowed to do, the aftermath was, those hearings were quite fascinating, but also the aftermath of how anybody that participated was tortured after, beat up, and their lives afterwards were not any better. I mean, if you've seen the Alabama solution, know, nothing's really changed. I Yes? No. mean, it's truly behind closed doors. Yeah, yeah, powerful film. You know, kind of should be shown together. Yeah. And it was, it was great to listen to Richard Nixon's, audio. And, there was just so much more that he was saying, you know, like there was a part I was hoping Stanley would be able to use, but it would, would have been too much where he was imitating his, one of his black security guards. And he said, and I went up to him and I was asking him, what does he think about what happened at Attica? And then he imitated like in a step and fetch it way, the guy's response saying, well, I guess president Nixon, did what they had to do. And he imitated him in like, you know, blackface voice. I was like, Stanley, can't you get that in? And he's like, no, he's like, just couldn't. fit it in. It's not about Nixon, you know, although it was, I mean, the way he encouraged Rockefeller to do what he did because Rockefeller wanted to be president. Yeah, I mean, it's incredible. someone just said to me after seeing one to one, you know, the parallels between Nixon and Trump. just, you know, Dang it! it is history repeating itself. And I hadn't quite Yeah. realised because it's just pretty much how much you know, how how awful, truly awful Nixon was. It's it's Yeah, I agree with you totally. Yes. Yeah. a changing world. So, let's change the tack a bit but let's go to something like the Gabby Petito film. Sure. I'm fascinated because that's a lot of that is police body cam footage. how do you approach that kind of a project when it's heavily involved in relationship with the police and finding stuff like that? What was your approach on that film? Yeah, that was a year long project and I had two incredible people I was working with on that. Now the police footage, the director, Michael, just started. Could you just tell us, could you just tell us the story? Sorry, just tell us the story of the film quickly if you don't mind. So people know. Yeah, Oh yeah. yeah. Sadly, this was the top five media stories of 2021 internationally, not just in the United States, but internationally. And it was about a would-be influencer vlogger, Gabby Petito from Long Island, who set off across the country with her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie. And she wanted to create a travel vlog. And so she was a very hard worker. She was a really great artist. She was going to go to college for art painting in particular, illustration in particular. She was really, really had a lot going for her. And they took off on this trip. And basically, sadly, at some point of the trip, Brian's mental health deteriorated greatly. Brian had struggled with mental health issues his entire life for which there seems to be no proof that he ever was given help for. One of them amongst them was he used to, she would wake up sometimes at the motels and hotels they were in or in the van and he would be at the edge of the bed talking to someone. So it was pretty pronounced, his mental health issues. And she adored him though, and she was only in her early 20s and made a lot of. excuses for him and covered up a lot for him. Well, at some point of the journey, quite unfortunately, he murdered her and left her out in the desert. And they came all the way back home with her van that she had paid for, that they had created for their trip, drove it back home to Florida, where his parents lived. and no questions asked, he and his parents then proceeded to go for 10 days on a camping trip. And he just said, we broke up and she gave me the van and parents never questioned it. And so her parents realized that all of a sudden they stopped hearing from their daughter that they heard from almost every single day on these journeys that they were going through, through many of the states, Western states and Southwestern states. having this incredible adventure. they called the parents, the parents said, can talk to our lawyer. And that became that saga with trying to find her. But basically at some point they were pulled over by the police because someone had called in a call saying that she witnessed, he witnessed the boyfriend hitting a woman. And so they were called. pulled over and she got out and she gave a long interview about what happened. Again, covering up for him quite a lot. When she had sent her mother photos of her bleeding from where he had hit her, she had like washed herself up in the meantime. And so, you know, the cops didn't see that. And then the cops had very little experience how to deal with domestic violence and were chatting with Brian and joking with him. There was proof of that joking with him about, know, chicks are crazy. And they brought him into town and put him up in a hotel that had a pool and spa so he would be separated from her. And she spent the night in the van alone in the middle of the desert. And it was really like, it became a very big lightning rod case about two things, which is that many cops are just not trained well enough in how to deal with domestic violence calls. And in fact, the main chief officer in the film, the footage that you see, the GladiCamp footage that you see, two years later, he was kicked off the force for domestic violence against his wife. So, You know, they just, they just didn't ask the right questions. They didn't handle it properly. The fact that Brian is the one that's brought in to hang in a hotel was just unbelievable. But Gabby being very young, she also, you know, like what her parents said, we're flying out tomorrow. This is it, the trip is over. We are flying out tomorrow. We are coming to pick you up. She went crazy. It was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to work it out. I love him. It'll be okay. You're not doing that. So to this day, of course, they have to, they live with that. It's horrible. But the second thing it brought up is, you know, this got a tremendous amount of coverage. It just kind of took off. And what was pointed out as well is how little coverage there is of African-American women in the same position. African-American men in the same position. Indigenous people in the same position. These, these are just not. caught by the media, they don't catch the media's attention. And they're just not given the same amount of print and media attention that Gabby was given, who was beautiful, blonde, blue-eyed, all-American girl looking. And so it opened up a whole conversation about that. And so that was like, it was like a two-parter series in that way. Yeah, I said, yeah, I mean, it's a powerful film. You you start to talk about the police body cam footage. I mean, how did you how Yeah. did you get to tell us that that story of how you managed to get that? It was the director Mike Gasparro He was out there a lot filming and he was out there also with Gabby's family filming because they go out every single year to where she was found to, you know, mark those very sad tragic anniversaries. And they he arranged to get the permission for the body cam footage. And then I worked on all of the coverage of the the case La Conez. and of which was a massive amount. And there were so many things I wished had gotten into the film again, there just is not enough time, you know, to do these things. Well, one of them was that one of the things that the people that stood outside of the Laundry's hall, taunting them and yelling at them and screaming at them about, you know, lack of concern and lack of participation. helping with their son and also when he took off and ran away. It's pretty certain they knew exactly where he'd gone within this huge preserve in Florida where they always would go camping and stuff. They refused to help the cops to look for him. They just refuse, refuse, refused everything. you know, people gathered outside of their home, all their neighbors, people came in from outside to gather and yell all day long and to protest them. so anyway, was, there was, there was every day they would bring like laundry baskets with dirty laundry because the name was laundry. And they I see, okay. would get like, would, they would everybody would throw like these laundry baskets filled with like, you know, cleaning liquid and dirty laundry and they'd be all over the lawn. And the Laundry's would come out very patiently, pick them all up. And, you know, there was footage of that, them picking everything up and bringing it into the house that I just thought was pretty unbelievable. You know, powerful. Fox News was really tremendous covering this case. They were staked out their home 24 seven. And this just went on for months. And finally, I don't know how the Laundry's were finally forced to help look for their son who had taken off. But when they entered the preserve, they found their son's body within 20 minutes. They knew his spots, and he was found in 20 minutes. So yeah, Yeah. it's just a really nasty case. Yeah, absolutely. mean, it's on Netflix, if anybody hasn't seen it. And hugely, hugely worthwhile film. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's probably the thing I've worked on that has the most views. was, you know, it was number one for about four to five weeks, but internationally within about two or three months, it had 90 million views worldwide. I incredible. mean, that's how covered this case was, you know, but It's just, you know, it's been a good thing. I think it's good that if people that are young also watch this. I think it was really a tremendously done film about what to watch for too. Yeah, absolutely. mean, just for the people that watching or listening to this that are aspiring archival producers, when you're faced with something that has such media saturation, Yeah. just from a practical standpoint, what do you do? How do you start? Where do you go? Do you go to Fox News first or do you go to footage.net? What's your sort of modus operandi when you come onto a very popular thing like that? I start doing my own research first on the television news archives and I do as much as I can on my own. And then after I feel like I've mined everything from all of them that I can and got the screeners and we've uploaded everything, then I contact my reps at each of the same television archives and I ask them to look. as well and to pull things in for screeners that are not on their websites. And at the time of Gabby, it was still, you not allowed to go in person on site to view footage. So again, like Attica, I really had to rely on my reps to bring in whatever else I was missing. Now, the other thing is this was covered by affiliates. So, and a lot of them have YouTube channels, official YouTube channels. Like if you're an archival producer or researcher, only use official YouTube channels for anything you do. And cause that's makes the licensing process so much easier. So it was very covered and I was able to download footage from their YouTube channels from the affiliates, which had done a great job. So there were several states involved with this, know, every single state that they had traveled through. I was able to download stories of them. And I mean, there were just some tremendous journalists that were working on this, like the East Idaho News did incredible stories on this. And Brian Empton for News Nation did incredible stories on this. And so I was in charge of doing, getting all of that. material and my other two colleagues were getting material from the family who generously gave all of their home movies and photos of Gabby. mean, just they were just so incredibly generous. was unbelievable. So they were handling that. And it was just it was just a lot with, you know, uploading everything to be viewed. Yeah. And it was a three-part series, know, one hour each one. And it's just, my God, was just probably a So what? thousand hours of footage that they had to go through, you know, nationwide and worldwide footage and photographs from magazines in England and, you know, France and everything that had these incredible photos of the Laundry's that for whatever reason, we didn't have them here. And so, you know, negotiating with people over there to get. license those photos. So, you know, with a lot of things we're talking about, these three projects we've been talking about mostly, Mm. I had the beauty of having time, real time. Right, right. And that's a luxury that not many people get. no, unfortunately, you know, one thing I know you're getting across in every single one of, you know, the podcasts that you're posting is people saying that if you please get bring us in pre pre production, and definitely at the production part, it's much better than waiting towards the end and then making a scramble for like, and I really have one week in our budget for you to do. I Yeah. Everything it would take three to four months minimally to do properly. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's one of the hopes for the podcast is that we can open up the world to people a little bit more and understand. know, Yeah, plan ahead. yeah, what are the any other specific tips or ways of working that you would offer out there for archive producer researchers? Yeah, I get asked a lot, how do you get into this field? And I feel really, it's still like, from when I got into it to today, it's not so easy, I think, to just get into. Like for instance, there's no university or college that has like a degree in doing what we do. We have learned through experience. Like it really took me a long time to get my career going where it was really steady. You know, I think it was 10, 15 years that I would work on a project, but I may not work on something for several months. So I'd be temping during that period of time. Um, and I think that I was lucky that all of a sudden we entered into a golden age of documentaries where Yeah. they were really tremendous, serious documentaries being made that were archival heavy. And I happened to be at that point, poised and ready to grab those opportunities and having had 15 years of toiling away, you know, doing it on things that were fantastic. And a lot of indie productions I worked on that are not really well known and seen, but I love them. They maybe got like a four days at the IFC cinema here in New York City or a week at Film Forum, Yeah. you know, things like that I love. I, you know, I am very proud of things like that, that I worked on, but they didn't have like large exposure. So I just think that if you could join like different organizations, like here in New York city, there's Union Docs in Brooklyn. I think that's a great place to join. now it's in Queens. It just moved from Brooklyn to Queens. Union Docs, just so can meet your community and get to know your community. and women make movies. And I think it would be wonderful to always make sure that you have memberships going to documentary.org. I think the best thing is to join the D word Doug Block and Marjane's and Erica's, you know, membership group of people that work It's amazing. in documentary films. Yeah, the D word, be a part of that. I would try to go to Footage Fest. It's not easy. My story also was just fate dropped it into my lap, but I don't know if I would have known otherwise how to do it. Asking to maybe, I suggested to people too that maybe get a job at one of the archives. see, you know, from the inside out, what's going on with, you know, archives and licensing and stuff. And then maybe because you're meeting people that way, maybe that's a good way to be people. You know, I wish I had a better answer for you, Dominic, but it's kind of like, it's not easy. It's really tough, you know, but there's just some good kind of roots in for people. There's a few things in the UK. There's a Grierson trust. I know Netflix has a cohort now where they're training up archival producers. There are a few roots in, you know, so we'll post some stuff in the links in on the channel So listen, we're coming towards the end of our time. Sandra, there was a couple of things that we haven't touched on, would be, Sandra, we have a quick fire round. Quick answers, quick questions, quick answers. Okay. Say what comes into your head. so most powerful archive moment is usually planned or discovered or an accident. discovered in an accident. Did I give Okay. two answers? You could have two We'll let you off. Archive you wish you could open tomorrow. Anthology Film Archives here in New York City. Right. Most underestimated part of an archive producer's role. yeah, that we are a part of the creative team, that we should be credited as such in credits and films. Right now, most of our credits end up towards maybe the bottom of archivally heavy documentaries. And I'm all for us being in the top 10 to 15 credits. I would like to, before I die, see that happen. Yeah. Archive work is more detective or diplomat? that's great question. Detective. You have to be a diplomat when you're licensing, because I do not only the research, but I'm often involved with the licensing too. The phrase that makes an archive producer nervous. I'd love to hire you. We have a week in our budget and this Hahaha! you is an archivally heavy film and we had our intern doing a lot of the pre-research using YouTube. Hahaha! YouTube makes me run screaming, unless it's the official YouTube channels for the archives. Yes. Okay, music archives will reveal more about the artist or the era. That's a great question. I'm to say the artist because I'm working with Sam Pollard on a film called The Lorraine, which is about the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, where tragically Martin Luther King was assassinated. And there's a lot of things from Stax artists, and so I'm getting to listen to a lot of great music. Yeah. it's revealing a lot about these artists that I didn't know. Yeah. Yeah. One phrase that makes your heart sink. We lost the master. We don't control that. The rights have expired. We've lost the master and the license has expired. Doesn't scare me so much anymore because you can pay access fees and sometimes you can find, you know, maybe to whom the license reverted back to. That was brilliant! That was very good! Yeah! Excellent. A round of applause there. Listen, this has just been a huge amount of fun. I know very briefly we always ask people what's next. I know you touched on it, but just tell us a little bit more about the Lorraine project so Sure. we can look out for that one. Sure. I've been working with Sam Pollard on a feature documentary named The Lorraine. And The Lorraine was the motel that was one of the first black-owned motels in the United States. It was owned by a family called Walter and Loree Bailey. And they bought this motel, rundown motel in 1958, 1959. And they made it like a tremendous place for African-Americans to go to. And they installed a pool because African-Americans were not allowed in hotel pools. If they were even allowed to be in a hotel, they were not allowed to use the hotel pools. So the Bailey's built a pool for that hotel. And it's a place where a lot of the Stax artists lived, but also if they were traveling, they would stay there. and Aretha Franklin and people on that level stayed there all the time. And then Martin Luther King stayed there sadly and was assassinated there. But a lot of political activists stayed there. And a lot of people that were part of Martin Luther King's entourage would stay there or have meetings there. so it was a very important part of Memphis's African-American history. Well, then after the assassination, sadly, the Bailey's found that very few people wanted to stay there. So the motel went into bankruptcy at some point. And then it was bought by a African-American lawyer, activist, D.R.B. Bailey. And now it's the National Civil Rights Museum. So Sam's film is about its metamorphosis into the National Civil Rights Museum. Yeah. Well, that's absolutely fascinating. Yeah, it's going to be here in Tribeca. It'll be in Tribeca. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Oh, well, congratulations. Well, we wish it absolute best of luck. But I want to say about Trump that, you know, with losing the NEH, the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, the NEA, I've had several projects get canceled. All of my colleagues have had several projects get canceled. And a lot of incredible artists, filmmakers have had several projects get canceled. So it's been a really tough year for our field because there's Yes. a lot of documentaries that were depending on the funds coming specifically from those organizations that now they have to scramble and make up because those grants could be upwards of $500,000. And for documentaries, that's like a Hollywood budget of 20 million, 200 million. mean, for a documentarian, $500,000 is, you know, yeah. You Wow. know, like hitting the jackpot big time. And so, you know, it's been a rougher year than usual for our field. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. We hear that we've spoken to a lot of people, hear that across the board, and it's a scramble from every which way you can to get a budget together. Lots Yeah. Yeah. of people out of work, lots of archives, licensing deals down. So we recognize I think there's a changing world where, the ability to tell stories can become a little easier in some ways as well. But yeah, no, it's it's real tough for these larger projects. Well, listen, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for your time, Rosemary. Thank you so much It's just been so much fun.