00:00Julie, you must have had a complicated situation because your film is about a sitting Supreme
00:08Court justice and the justices don't usually allow this sort of coverage.
00:13How did you convince Ruth Ginsburg?
00:16Yeah, absolutely.
00:17She actually never said yes.
00:18It was just like we were sort of making the film and ultimately she started to participate
00:22in it.
00:23You know, several months into filming, her assistant actually sent us a list saying,
00:27like here, here's 12 things the justice is going to be doing over the next year that
00:32she thought might make interesting filming opportunities.
00:34Even though at that point she hadn't even committed to an interview or...
00:38Did she suggest you follow her to the gym or did you propose that?
00:42And we had that in mind from like very early on.
00:45We were like, oh yeah, and like the dream is we'd go in the gym and have her working out
00:48but like thinking like, is that ever going to happen?
00:50Like, no.
00:51So we didn't ask, we didn't even approach that with her until really, really near the end.
00:57She sort of had gotten used to our presence and understood that we were doing something
01:01pretty comprehensive and like we were like, do you think we might be able to maybe go
01:08in and see your workout?
01:11And she just paused as she always does.
01:13One of her signature conversational maneuvers is a long pause and then she just said, yes,
01:19I think that might be possible.
01:20I'm glad you got it.
01:22When we told her trainer that that was how he was like, what?
01:25We didn't want to just do a whole film about RBG tattoos that people have, even though that
01:30is amusing and is part of our film, but like that we really wanted to take a pretty deep
01:34look into her career, into some of the pretty intense sexism and discrimination she had faced
01:42and how she forged through it and how that connected with what she'd done and kind of looking
01:45at constitutional law.
01:47Another subject that people are like, oh yeah, it's a, you know, a theatrical doc about constitutional
01:52law.
01:53Like you're going to really get butts in seats with that.
01:58When you complete a film and you decide to show it to your subject or your contributor,
02:05do you do anything to prepare them or do you sit nervously to the side of the room?
02:11Obviously showing Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the film that we had made about her life was incredibly
02:18nerve wracking.
02:19Her first time seeing it was at the world premiere at Sundance.
02:22We very much did not want to show it to her in advance because we sort of didn't want the
02:28public information apparatus of the court involved in trying to make any changes and actually
02:34she never asked to see it.
02:35She just said, sure, I'll fly out to Park City and see the film, you know, which was great
02:40but set us up for like the most nerve wracking 97 minutes of our lives.
02:45Betsy, my directing partner and I were like, you know, four feet away from her during the screening
02:49and we were just like staring at her through the entire film.
02:52We could hear her comments because we were really close.
02:55So I was wondering, you know, she talked and she whispered.
02:59Classical music starts at the top.
03:00She's like, oh, I like the music and then like it goes on, she's laughing.
03:04She laughed at her own humor as well as some others and at one point, like she, Nina Totenberg,
03:10who's also in the film, was sitting next to her and she leaned over and asked for a tissue
03:14and Betsy starts hitting me, she's asking for a tissue, she's asking for a tissue.
03:17So it turned out to be like, you know, like kind of like the greatest payoff of all time
03:25to have this kind of incredible, iconic lady like watching our film about her and really,
03:31really like grooving on her.
03:32What did you learn kind of following Fred Rogers or Ruth Ginsburg or Quincy Jones about aging
03:44that you might not have realized before?
03:46Obviously, aging is a big part of RBG, the film and the Supreme Court justice whose lifespan
03:55a lot of people in America are quite focused on these days.
03:59I actually think there's some pretty big comparisons between the way that your dad and RBG have dealt
04:07with not only being in their 80s, but also dealing with really serious health issues, the health
04:13issues that come up in your film and Justice Ginsburg going through both colon cancer and
04:18pancreatic cancer.
04:20There's a soundbite that I love in our film where Justice Ginsburg says like kind of like
04:24the good thing about having colon cancer and pancreatic cancer, which you're like, you know,
04:29it's amazing to see a positive side to that, is it's really given me such a great appreciation
04:33for the joys of being alive.
04:35That's like a profoundly wise thing to say.
04:38It's like a sort of like a Mr. Rogers level wisdom.
04:40And if that's your mindset, like that's a pretty good, that's a pretty good way to look at life.
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