Rick Goldsmith is the co-director and co-producer of “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.” The critically acclaimed film, nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary in 2010, is showing at the Traverse City Film Festival this week. After a packed screening at Lars Hockstad Auditorium and a riveting live Skype conversation with Daniel Ellsberg, we sat down with Goldsmith to talk about the origins of the film project, the lasting legacy Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers have had on America, and why Goldsmith made this film especially “for young people.”
Rick Goldsmith
Traverse City Film Festival: You have almost all of the major players from the Pentagon Papers period involved in “The Most Dangerous Man in America.” Was it difficult to secure interviews with all of these individuals, or did they react positively to the project?
Rick Goldsmith: That’s a good question. Dan, of course, was the most important person to get on board, and that took some work. He was involved in a previous film of mine (“Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press”), but this was a whole different project. I cut a trailer together based on the outline of my notes and sent it to him. It took about six months before he would agree to participate. We had to earn his trust, and rightfully so.
Once Dan was on board, he was able to connect us with many of the other important players. We secured the media interviews, like the New York Times, on our own. The only one who didn’t respond, which was disappointing, was Neil Sheehan (the NYT reporter whom Ellsberg first entrusted with the Pentagon Papers). But we did get Hedrick Smith from the New York Times, who agreed to be in the film if we would tell the story of the media’s role in the Pentagon Papers and not just have it be entirely about Dan.
Dan Ellsberg with press in 1971
TCFF: That may have been a blessing in disguise, because those scenes with the media picking up the story and taking on the Supreme Court are some of the most exciting scenes in the film.
RG: I agree. And I think we handled it pretty seamlessly from an editing perspective, so that the audience hopefully doesn’t notice the shift from Ellsberg’s story into the media world and then back to Ellsberg.
TCFF: What has reaction to the film been like so far? It was nominated for an Oscar, so it must be mostly positive…
RG: It’s been great. We have distribution and it’s been shown around the country, which is wonderful. Documentaries aren’t necessarily money-makers, unless you’re Michael Moore, but I think we’re above water now. It may just be by some change, but we’re getting there. (laughs)
TCFF: What do you think Dan’s lasting legacy has been on this country from releasing the Pentagon Papers?
RG: (pauses) I think the main legacy is the notion that people can and should stand up to their government. He’s talked about issues of power so eloquently and in terms people can understand. He affirmed the feeling in our gut that we can’t trust it on blind faith that what our government is doing is good for us. We’ve got to challenge it, we’ve got to be skeptical all of the time. There are five fingers to our democracy, and we’re used to just one – the executive branch – making all the decisions. But it takes all of them: It takes Congress, it takes the courts, it takes the press, and it takes the public.
What we’ve seen from screenings across the country, and what we saw today, is that people are so inspired by what Dan’s done. He stood up for what was right, and at great risk to himself. Once he started down that road, he never stopped. As Howard Zinn points out at the end of the film, after (the Pentagon Papers), Dan would never again in his life go without being involved in some cause or social justice movement. And he did so with the same energy and passion which he brought to giving the Pentagon Papers to the nation. He’s like the Energizer Bunny – he keeps going and going and going.
Patricia & Daniel Ellsberg
TCFF: One of the most interesting moments in the film is when the defense is talking about jury selection (for Ellsberg’s trial), and they’re advised not to select middle-aged men because they’re more likely to have made moral compromises in their careers that would make them less sympathetic to Dan’s case…
RG: That’s one of my favorite lines in the film.
TCFF: So you have Dan, who is relatively young at the time, and all these other key players who are young. Then now, in 2010, we have Bradley Manning, and he’s very young. Even though they’re not often in positions of power, do you think it’s more likely to be young people who take the risk of speaking out versus older people in power who may have more of an opportunity to make a difference, but also have more to lose and so are less likely to take the risk?
RG: Yes. I do think it is young people who are doing it and have done it all through history. But I think one of your assumptions is wrong – it IS young people who are in the position to do it. Not because they’re in positions of power, but because they’re willing to speak out. If you look at recent social movements, going back to the Civil Rights movement, it’s all young people who were involved. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the dean of this movement when he was 29. It was college students who were arrested in Birmingham, it was predominantly young people who were anti-war, it was workers – young workers, who didn’t have families – who were participating in the union strikes in the 1930s. They were willing to put their bodies on the line, because that’s what young people do. They tend to be more defiant, they tend to not be afraid of risks, and they tend not to have as much to lose.
So for me, even though I’ve seen the audience members at the screenings and many of them are my age or older, I made this film for young people. Because if it has an effect on my generation, it tends to be, “Hey, I really loved that film” and maybe they talk about it for a few days after. But it’s not going to change their lives. But for young people, it can change their lives. If this film can resonate with someone who’s 21, and they go out and do something great and courageous because they saw it…that’s what it’s about as far as I’m concerned.
Ellsberg on the cover of TIME in 1971
TCFF: The reason I ask that question is because many people my age hope to be able to make a decision like that in our lifetime. Young people want to expose corruption, and fight for truth. We just don’t always know how to go about it.
RG: Well, I’ll tell you a very personal story about that. I was working at a mental hospital in 1975, and this young girl who was 17 was scheduled to receive shock treatments there. The laws in California were such at the time that it was really unclear whether the parents could order the treatment or if the girl could decide for herself whether she wanted the treatment. It all seemed wrong to me. I was working the night shift, and this girl came to me a few nights before this was scheduled to start and told me how scared she was. I asked her if she wanted to have it done, and she said, “No, but my parents are making me do this.” So what happened was I got her connected with some people who were fighting for mental patients’ rights, and they ended up demonstrating in front of the shock doctor’s office. It became a big hullabaloo, and the question came up of how did this happen, and she mentioned my name. Which was fine, because I certainly wasn’t trying to hide anything. But I got fired.
This was a big issue then, and I knew it was something I could pay for – and I did pay for it. But the reason I bring this up is because during the making of the film, I thought back on that time and wondered, “Did (what happened with Ellsberg) inspire me?” I don’t know the answer to that for sure, but I would guess that it did. Because this was only three years after the Pentagon Papers, I remembered Daniel Ellsberg and I must have internalized it in some way. I had said to myself, as you just said, that I would welcome the opportunity to be in a position to make that kind of decision. And then this happened, and I did what I thought was the right thing to do. I did it much more clumsily and much less effectively than Dan Ellsberg, but I did it. And I think he influenced that.
TCFF: People sometimes think those moments of decision only come in big, Ellsberg-type packages…
RG: But they don’t. They can be much smaller, like mine. And everybody, everybody, has those opportunities in their lives. They just need to learn to recognize them.
“The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” is currently playing in theaters around the country. The film is also available on DVD. For more information, visit www.mostdangerousman.org.
