it -- more to it, but that's the basics. >> and union dues can be very substantial. i was talking to one checkout cashier at safeway in the district. he was wearing a button, and i asked how do you like the union? he said, well, they take about as much of my paycheck as taken out in taxes. that's how he saw it. i said, well, why don't you find another job? he said, if i could, i would. so there's obviously concern, these dues that are flowing from these low-paying workers and mid-level workers to very well-paid presidents of unions, and these are all available online, the data, how much the union bosses work from the lm2 forms. >> yeah. i'd also add right to work is a great policy. we strongly supported it at heritage. beyond right to work, i mean, sort of beyond the obvious i think that you have some very good suggestions there. there's a number of states where unions have exemptions from

antistalking laws. so pennsylvania, a number of other states, special exemption from anti-stalking laws just for unions. and that allows the unions to put a lot of pressure not just on employers like dave, but on individual employees. and i think those exemptions ought to be removed. there's also a lot of exemptions from the anti-extortion laws for unions. so there's another rico violation being prosecuted in upstate new york in the syracuse area where you had, basically, the building and construction departments were going and doing s like pouring -- things like pouring sand into the heavy equipment in a lot of nonunion place operators and basically telling them, hey, you've got to the hire them, or we're going to see to it the project doesn't get built. the union's basically -- [inaudible] but we have an exemption from

the federal anti-extortion laws, and you can't prosecute us from doing this. and the kicker is they're right. they may be prosecuted under the state anti-extortion statutes, but that's something at the state level. states could clarify that being involved in a union suit does not exempt you from labor union laws. and threaten their business and livelihood in order to get them to join a union. toughening up the laws at the state level is very obvious policy that would protect a lot of employees and employers from this sorts of abuse. but with that, thank you everyone for coming. thank you, dave, very much for sharing your story with us. and dave will be outside signing copies of his book, and copies will be available for sale, and i'd encourage everyone interested in these issues to buy a copy. >> it makes a great birthday present. [laughter] [applause] >> could i say one last thing? about the devil at our doorstep. this isn't just about my, um, story.

i didn't want to be an author. i felt compelled to be to help everyday americans. in my first book, "the devil at my doorstep," that was our general battle. this one includes stories of people across the country that read my first book and wrote me about their stories. and it talks about employees in california who are intimidated by the sciu, union workers in michigan and other states. and i'm tickled to death that the story is getting out finally. and that the grassroots movement is actually coming from people who are union workers that are tired of being abused and intimidated by their labor bosses and their money being used for politics that they don't agree with. so i hope you'll buy it, i hope you'll tell everybody because i'm prejudiced because it's my book, but i think every american should read the book. thank you. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> booktv is on facebook. like us to interact with booktv guests and viewers, watch videos and get up-to-date information on events. facebook.com/booktv. >> coming up next on booktv, tony kushner, author of the screenplay for the motion picture "lincoln" and lincoln scholar harold holzer, author of a companion book for young readers, discuss the research and the decisions made in the creation of the film's script. they're joined in conversation by daniel weinberg, owner of the abraham lincoln book shop in chicago. this is about an hour. >> welcome to virtual book signing. i'm daniel weinberg and, as always, we're here at the abraham lincoln book shop in chicago, and it's a gorgeous day. we actually have a few people here with us, and we're happy to have c-span join us. thank you very much to be here.

and illinois channel has been a here and liz taylor from the tribune literary book section is with us, and we appreciate all of them being here, also voice of america is covering us today as well. just before we go on i should tell you all that while we're live, and this is not for c-span, unfortunately, but while we're live you can e-mail in questions. we hope you will. give us your first name and where you're from, and we'll shout out to you and try to get it on air as quickly as we can. if you're watching the archive, you can always ask us if we have signed books still. you certainly don't want to be with the screenplay of the "lincoln" movie after it's signed -- after it gets to be an oscar winner and you don't have it signed. so get it now while you can. and if you're on c-span and would like to be a part of us, i

hope that you will by getting to virtual book signing.net and leaving your e-mail and be a part of the virtual book signing family. also i should let you know that next month we're not going to have a author in. instead we're going to launch our new live broadcast artifact whisperer. that's moi. and we're going to talk about, it's for collectors and by collectors, we'll have collectors on air or taped. we'll talk about artifacts that we have at the time here in the shop and stories behind them. because artifacts, historical artifacts were made for some human desire and need, and it's up to us and the collectors to find out what these are. so i hope you will join us for that. we'll have many other segments, what it's worth. we'll ask you as a collector to e-mail into us maybe a description and an image of a

prized example you have, and we'll try to put that on and tell the story about it, and you can ask questions as well. so artifact whisperers next month, our premiere, and again for everyone who comes to virtualbooksigning.net so you can get on with us as well. well, the "lincoln" movie is out, i've heard, and so here we are with two authors and two books that are related directly to the movie. tony kushner, of course, lives in new york city, the recipient of of two pulitzer prizes -- or a pulitzer prize, two tony awards, an emmy, the critics' choice for best adapted screenplay and, of course, he's up for an oscar in just nine days. and, frankly, it should win, at least here in the abraham lincoln book shop it certainly should because it made a different statement than anyone else has in all of these years on lincoln on film. and made the biggest difference, i think, than other films that

in their own genre, i don't think, have the same impact as this one does. he's the or author of "wonder bar" coed kitted wrestling with sue on. his plays include angels in america, home body kabul and caroline or change. his screenplays include angels in america for mike nichols in munich for steven spielberg and, of course, today's book is the screenplay for the "lincoln" movie. and there's a forward by doris kearns goodwin. 164 pages, $15.95 for the paperback, and you can order while we're live or a little later on as well we'll have signed copy cans for you. as well we have harold holzer, and i think this is his third or fourth time on. senior vice president for external affairs at the

metropolitan museum of art, co-chair of the u.s. lincoln bicentennial commission, may it rest in peace. has authored or co-authored 44 books on lincoln and the civil war and is a specialist in imagery and the go-to guy for the media on anything lincoln. he has a nice artifact collection, too, for that matter, and hopefully we'll get you on artifact whisperer. he's won the never vines freeman award here at the chicago round table, three achievement awards from the lincoln group of new york and also the james robertson young readers' award from the round table of new york, and that really goes right to the book he's done today, which is his latest book, "how abraham lincoln ended slavery in america: a companion book for young readers."

it's a division of harpercollins,224 pages, illustrated, and it's $16.99, and we can get you this signed as well in first edition. well, thank you both for joining us here at the shop, and have a ton of questions, and i hope some will come in as well. first one is one you may have heard before, but it's first time here, and that is that we now know that john favreau, obama's speech writer, has decided to become a screen writer. so as a screen writer, do you think you can become obama's speech writer for a change? >> i don't think i would make a very good political speech writer. i think that the requirements for that job like patience and willing to be severely edited and writing on deadline and so on -- >> you put some wonderful words

into lincoln's -- >> well, you know, i did my best. as i said before, i think that we have a president at the moment who's really capable of writing very beautiful speeches all on his own, a couple of really wonderful books. so it's nice to have a real writer back in the white house. >> all right. well, just another screen writer coming out though. >> maybe after he's done being president he'll become a screen writer. [laughter] >> could happen. >> he's young. >> if anyone is interested, i'm available to be either his presidential speech writer or a screen writer. >> or president. >> maybe you'll follow john quincy adams and go back into congress. tell us about your relationship with steven spielberg and how the film and you as a screen writer, you're the third one on the movie, and how did it change from what spielberg was doing in the first place and what he asked you to do? >> um, steven originally was thinking of this as being sort

of a general film about the civil war, and then met doris at the point she was of working on "team of rivals." by the time he asked me to take a look at "team of rivals" and consider adapting it, he had really moved from thinking of it as being a film about the entire civil war to being a film very specifically about lincoln which is where i think his heart was always. he's said many times that as a kid he, he was of fascinated by lincoln. he was very, um, frightened when he was taken to the lincoln memorial as a little boy, and he thought this figure was this kind of giant, scary figure, and then he looked into the face and sort of felt that it was a very kindly face, and it sort of had a big impression on him. so i think he -- when we first started talking about lincoln, he tells me one of his earliest memories of lincoln was cutting

out a black cardboard silhouette of lincoln on presidents' day in second grade, and when we had our first meeting with daniel day lewis, we were at a pub after the first day's meeting was done, and daniel and i were talking about a window, and it was twilight. and daniel was just sill silhouetted against the window, so steven took a picture with his phone and e-mailed it to me that night, and it looks like abraham lincoln. so it sort of made a circle for him, i think. this was something that he'd always wanted to do. >> so how did you approach your part of the project? and you certainly had to do a good deal of research in the lincoln literary field. what were the major influences that you had? >> i came to the abraham lincoln bookstore. i did, actually, and left with a carton full of books. i, you know, i began reading what seemed to me the sort of major lincoln texts.

i began reading through the library of america collection of essays -- not essays, of speeches and letters. i read a few general histories of the civil war, and, um, sort of -- i've always loved 19th century literature, american, english, russian, french. and i sort of, you know, pick and choose american novels from the period and english novels from the period, sort of get more fluent in 19th century spoken language. and i began to figure out how to narrow the story down to something that seemed to me to be, um, containable within a feature-length format which is only about two and a half hours. but that was significant enough and in a way emblematic enough to stand in for, i mean, to sort of dig into major themes of the

lincoln administration. because at time that i, after i read a few books, i began to realize there were certain themes that were going to repeat themselves. they repeated themselves during the four years that he was in the white house. and so i began to zero in on the last four months, and then with steven after i'd written the can account of the passage of the 13th amendment, we decided to focus entirely on that. >> harold, you also were brought in very early as a consultant, and tell us your experience with that. >> the first experience i had came, i guess it was 2006 when along with a group of lincoln historians organized by doris, um, we all met at a hotel in new york city with steven spielberg and tony kushner for the first time. and or were given two wonderful meals in an all-day session and

asked, just bombarded with questions about lincoln. what he looked like, what he sounded like, what his relationships might have been with his sons and with his wife, with his cabinet ministers, how he walked. it was extraordinary. and also thinking process questions, writing style questions. and my now-friend tony was taking notes with a fountain pen dipped in ink, and i thought this is -- we're talking too fast, this is never going to work, it's meaningless. of course, now he knows more about lincoln than any of the historians there, any one of us. so i think there was a computer at work somewhere, probably his brain. but that was the beginning. and i've known doris for years, was just enormously flattered that she asked me to participate. there were some terrific people there, jim mcpherson, um, borit and many others, and we

kicked around so many summits. the highlight of the meeting for me, and this was really -- i don't want to undersell it, it was an extraordinary experience -- the highlight came when both tony and steven spielberg, um, were asked by us -- we didn't ask any questions million the very end. we actually waited because there might be a third meal but we were, ultimately, disappointed. [laughter] we said how, how would you film the gettysburg address that would be different from, say, gregory peck's seven tore yum presentation in blue and the gray or sam waterstone's whispering it in lincoln, the miniseries. and they went on the this flight of imagination that a camera back in the end of the crowd, leaves falling from the trees in november, noise, wind obscuring the words, not everyone paying attention, children rolling hoops on the outskirts of the crowd. and only then, maybe at the last

minute would there be a huge close-up of lincoln's face, and you hear the final words. and i thought this made it all worthwhile. rather than listening to each other. because we just heard the difference between a screen writer and a director and mere chroniclers of fact. but then the next thing that happened, obviously, was that disney and dreamworks asked me this early -- early in the summer to do a young readers' companion book and sort of expand on the evolution of lincoln's views on opportunity and equality, and they did evolve. he was a flip-flopper in the best sense of the world. and so that was -- of the word. and so that was important too. >> you're skipping one important step which is that after, i think, two years had passed and i had a first draft, um, sometime after the first draft we contacted you and asked you and jim mcpherson as well as doris to serve as historical advisers for the film, so you were one of the first people to

read -- when stephen final said, okay, i think this is getting close to the shooting script, we need to show it to the historians and have it checked -- >> and then we met a couple of times. >> we met a couple of times. >> which was great. even though the script came with a lock, and it was like get smart, if you opened it, smoke would come out. >> two pages watermarked with the names. but, you know, one of the things that's been happening recently in the age of the internet is the people in l.a. go through dumpsters and find discarded drafts of scripts, and then they publish them on the internet. famously, oliver stone's movie "w" the entire script appeared online the day before they started filming which is really a nightmare. nothing leaked for the lincoln set. we really kept it under lock and key. harold was a little shocked when he got the script and every page had his name in big gray letters across it. >> report to his supervisor, his

parole officer. >> you spoke about gettysburg, and a question came in about this, and it brings me to that dream sequence which i really loved. lincoln had, of course, for those who don't know a dream that was significant to him before significant events in his life like the gettysburg address or the battle of getties burg. or his death, for that matter. he talked to the cabinet that day how he'd had the dream the night before, and that was a great surprise near the beginning when you had that beautiful scene of him on that ship toward an indefinable shore. but before that scene, just before was lincoln with a couple of black soldiers, a couple of white soldiers and talking to them, them to him and reciting the gettysburg address to him and portions of it. and to me, it seemed -- and i have a shrink in the audience

here -- that that was part of the dream that he had himself. that his dream sequence, he remembered that last part, told it, but the earlier part was something he was proud of and saw perhaps being embedded into the culture already. and so here we have, um, mel from cleveland saying, tony, did you ever consider having the movie open with lincoln doing his gettysburg address? well, yes. >> well, originally when my first attempt to narrow the story down, i started in september of 1863 which is around the time the secretary of the treasury began to make it very sort of publicly known that he intended to challenge lincoln from within the cabinet for the republican nomination in '64. and so when we began in 1863 in september, very rapidly i discovered that i could write an

entire feature-length script, and i did, and it only got me through about january of 1864. so it was impossible to start that far back. but starting in '63 in september gave me the chance to actually do the address. and what harold was remembering is accurate. steven and i threw out a lot -- steven's very interested in acoustical trickery, the acoustical shadows, the battle on one side of the hill when people couldn't see it on the -- hear it on the other, and when lincoln's words the wind changed direction, some people said it was hard to hear. i was struck by the account that mentions two boys that climbed onto the platform and heard the whole thing. so in my 1863 version i did have him giving the address, but you're under the platform with these two kids, and they're listening. they can see the bottoms of his feet, and they can hear intermittently some of the words, and they're shocked when it's over in two minutes, and then he walks off.

and that's the way you hear the address. i never really -- i was absolutely determined that -- [inaudible] as magnificent, as perfect a prose poem as the gettysburg address is, i think the second inaugural address is the greatest political speech of all time. it's just one of the most beautiful prose passages in the english language. and does so much in such a relatively small space. that's what i really especially, you know, the last part, but i really wanted the whole thing in. that was important to me, to hear him do it. and i'm really happy because i think that daniel, the way that daniel does it is a shocker. you know, you think because it's so clipped and sort of almost modernist, you know, and the war came, i mean, has this kind of steely precision and economy until he gets to the theological part where it becomes a little more -- [inaudible] that he must have done the sort of whispering, you know, sort of -- which, of course, would

have been inaudible. >> inaudible to anyone. >> what i loved, what i thought daniel did and it was a complete surprise to me, it never would have occurred to me, i was jealous that daniel thought of it. lincoln went to the theater as often as he possibly could, that he would use 19th century stage language, the big sort of rhetorical gestures when he spoke and that i think even daniel does it as somebody who isn't an actor, who's a politician, who isn't doing them with an incredible grace, but with great authority. and i thought that was a sort of new wrinkle into what we know about -- >> it was good because he was so contemporary, he was very spare with his gestures, but that he would suddenly do a grand gesture -- >> right. >> -- and it would look awkward but also dramatic. so with -- i'm going to cover your face for a second. with malice toward none and charity for all rings very true as an emphasis that he would make. particularly at that event which may have been, except for one

lincoln-douglas debate, the largest crowd he ever spoke to. >> even including some of the soldiers that he addressed in the field -- >> he didn't address them, when he reviewed them, he would just walk by. on the gettysburg address, and we were both struck by that scene, i like your narration of it being the extension of a dream. but because there were no african-american troops permitted to fight at gettysburg, the governor for some strange reason chickened out at the last minute in assigning ucst -- usct troops to the battle, we don't even know if there were any african-americans at at the gettysburg, but the idea of an unfinished work is directed clearly at whites noting their presence among us. and so to have the device of an african-american soldier knowing it and almost saying to lincoln you're on record here -- >> you've made a promise. >> it was fantastic.

>> and these soldiers, of course, the african-american soldiers in that scene are veterans of subsequent battles. they were not at gettysburg. >> right. if they were captured -- [inaudible conversations] >> poison spring for pillow massacres where the confederates just decided they wouldn't take prisoners if they captured black soldiers, killed them in very brute always or reenslaved them. >> i do want to say hello to the denobody shah civil war museum, a spectacular museum. if you've never been to it, you should. it's just up north of chicago about an hour and a half, and they're online with us today. and as well my hometown, highland park public lie prayer, hello, neighbors -- library. welcome. so appreciate all of you being online as well.

someone's asked peter from milwaukee, was there a character in the film that was especially difficult to write for? >> huh. no one has ever asked me that. lincoln. [laughter] i mean, that was the hardest challenge, but once i started doing it, once i got over the fear of doing it, it became easier. although you have to be very careful when you're putting words in the mouth of abraham lincoln. >> what about someone like seward? >> i loved writing him. it's the difference between -- silly comparison. seward, obviously, was an immensely gifted politician and an incredible figure but not, i think, i hope his ghost will forgive me, not a genius on the level of lincoln and had in a way for all his sort of peacock vanity the wisdom and clarity to recognize the difference and to sort of --

>> at the point where you portray him, he understands that lincoln is -- >> and even sort of -- yes. and one of the things that really, you know, you put quotes on your notebooks and on your, the wall of the writing desk. one of them, actually, bob dylan after he does his little riff on lincoln, the last two lines are i'll let you be in my dream if you let me be in yours which i thought was lincoln yang in an interest aring way. but -- interesting way. francis, his wife very early on, he says our railsplitter is -- [inaudible] compassion i think is the word he used every day. and it's a tremendously interesting insight.

this guy who has this tremendous authority and power but also has this kind of, i mean, harriet beecher stowe talked about his feminine, i forget the bridge cables, but they bent. this kind of yielding, compassionate, into spective side, and he come -- combines both. and i think seward found that unnerving. and then it peoples to me in everything that i've read really began to fall like one of the first great lincoln obsessors, he sort of fell in love with lincoln. and he was jealous and envious and competitive but also, you know, absolutely aware that he was standing next to somebody who was unbelievably greater and smarter than he was and was happy to be his sidekick, his lieutenant. so he was a lot of fun to write. >> someone -- and a question that doesn't usually come up, and i'd like to, both of you to talk about this a little bit, is his dad, thomas lincoln shows up

in here. and i think it's spot on. i would have nudged it one way myself, but you say slavery troubles me as long as i can remember in a way i never troubled my father, though he hated it in his own fashion. no small dirt farmer could compete with plantations. he took us out to kentucky to get away from them. he wanted indiana kept free. he wasn't a kind man, but there was an urge for fairness, for freedom in him. i learned that from him, i suppose, if little else from him. >> when got the relationship in there -- >> in a nutshell. >> in one speech, right? >> and i think you did as well. and i think, tony, you nudged it toward the economic. that's one of the reasons he left, because he could not compete with the free blacks that were coming up -- >> with the slave owners. >> yes. >> yeah. >> exactly. >> and i -- >> and you go more -- >> well, there was this religious fervor that came from

his -- >> they split the church. >> -- his baptist, pigeon creek baptist church where they had sort of an anti-slavery preacher every week. but when the service was over, young abe would stand on a tree stump and imitate the sermons and remember them almost perfectly, and invariably his anti-slavery father would belt him on the side of the held to get him home. >> i think some don't think that -- >> i think a lot of it though, a lot of it as the movie says is, you know, lincoln was always very careful to say particularly about his kentucky neighbors in their place we would have felt the same thing. >> sure. >> it's not that northerners are more morally right -- >> it's like in the inaugural address -- >> exactly. then he says -- [inaudible conversations] >> that's right. >> but even in '58 and '60 if we

were in their position, we would do the same thing. anyway, i love that passage. >> it was important to me to make a distinction that there's a way into anti-- you know, the abolitionists' moral, ethical abhorrence of slavery and then there was the sort of whig position. i mentioned before, i was a medieval studies major, and one of the jokes in the department is, you know, when did the middle ages end, and the answer is who said it ended? [laughter] and it's hard to know, well, what day -- on what day did the middle ages, when does it become the renaissance? in the middle of this, i thought you could make a case that the middle ages ended during the american civil war. i mean, this is this moment when a pre-capitalist, pre-contractual form of societal organization runs right into the

demands of the industrial revolution and is clearly so utterly out of sync with it. and a lot of the people that lincoln was surrounded by are people who really rejected slavery, i think, on that, on that -- at least as a beginning on that basis and whatever kind of moral repugnance they felt budget necessarily what they preceded from. it was a different kind of anti-slavery politics. and it wasn't rooted in a deep con very sans or friendship or familiarity with slaves or with former slaves or freed slaves. he really was somewhat -- he lived in many illinois where there weren't very many because of the black laws. you know, there was an insulation. so i think that i wanted to sort of bring that out, and i think -- >> it was complex. >> it's a legitimate point. >> complex. >> a scene that i think, um, shocked many be people was

lincoln slapping his son, robert. how did that come about, that scene? >> with -- okay. i know that i've read somewhere, it may have been in connectly's book -- >> connectly mentions it -- >> somebody else. >> well, i did mention that in lincoln: president-elect that when robert lost the inaugural address, the first inaugural address at a hotel in indianapolis forcing lincoln to jump over the registration desk and throw all these carpet bags up in the right one, that would be a good scene in a slapstick comedy. when he got it back, robert wasn't sufficiently contrite, and one report says that he cuffed him. and that's in public and, you know, he's 17 years old and was drinking, we know, on the train journey. >> yes, right. >> and so that's another story. so i don't know, you know, they were very ip dull gent -- injuly

dent parents, particularly with the young boys. but with robert it might have been different. >> i think there's, you know, the estrangement, the distance between the two of them and the heartbreaking thing is on the very last day of his life they have this breakfast where they talked about law as a profession and robert had a sense that they were beginning the to come closer. but there's a strong sense that robert was sort of handed over the difficult, you know, handed -- given the responsibility of taking care of mary in a way while lincoln rode the circuit, and they were not, certainly not close the way that willie or thad were close to lyndon. and he had a temper, and that's -- i think that's an important thing to point out. there are many, many, many accounts of lincoln not getting physically violent, but becoming enormously angry very quickly, and then it passed very quickly. he got control of it. but he -- >> he also didn't learn to be a parent himself, a father himself.

his dad -- >> yes, that's a good point. >> his dad didn't have -- >> well, he was killed. >> was killed by indians. so it was a string of not having a father figure. >> yes. >> for them. and i think abraham learned a little bit more later on when willie came by. >> parents have abusive parents, they either learn to be abusive, or they learn to be indull gent. it can go both ways. on the subject, my theory about the family is that lincoln actually had two families. he was almost like a man who was twice married and had two different families. he had robert and eddie, and eddie died. when eddie dice, mary got pregnant right away, they had two more sons. and those were the two babies. and when robert was young, lincoln was off on the legal circuit. they seldom saw each other. and when willie and thad had all of his attention in 1860, lincoln was home through the whole campaign season and off to

washington, living in the white house. so they got the benefit of closeness. also just because of the physical closeness. >> his particular, strange kind of closeness. it was -- >> yeah. >> i'm showing a photograph that came out at the time of those who worked on the 13th amendment. here's the congress that passed the 13th amendment. and you see the speaker in the middle, skylar colfax, hamlin at the top and lincoln at the bottom. >> hamlin had almost nothing to do with it. being president of the senate gets you that spot at the state of the union and here. >> and this is a beautiful example of that photo. that's really the 13th amendment was the crux of the movie to me more than lincoln was. that was another actor, the 13th amendment. um, how did you approach of the 13th amendment itself and the actors that were portrayed in

congress dealing with each other? tell us about this. >> well, you know, i mean, one of the things that i was worried about in terms of doing this film is that it seems to me that, you know, if all that one has to say is that at this moment of, like, the most severe national crisis imaginable, i mean, people's government deciding to self-destruct, providence or accident or something intervened, and this completely, um, perfect guy -- and i think this is actually an accurate description -- i mean, a man made for the task perfectly fitted to his time and to his particular task showed up and saved the country, and there's a way of reading the civil war and lincoln that way. people have been doing it ever since the civil war. and, but even if that's true and, you know, i think there's a way in which it is sort of true, what does that say for us now? because i think that barack obama is an extraordinary

president, he's a great president. i don't think that he's abraham lincoln, although we may, again, have been the beneficiaries of a kind of a providential intervention given what we had before barack obama arrived and, i think, helped turn the country around. the important issue, i think, has to be, you know, a democracy doesn't work if it's dependent on every once in a while an absolutely great leader showing up. for democracy to function and to really have continuity and can coherence and progress, the system itself, the people have to work. and i think that by and large in american history we have, it has, the system has functioned. and i think that steven and i both wanted to make a movie in which the real hero of movie is not abraham lincoln, but democracy itself, the democratic process. small d democratic process. and the house of representatives in its own cumbersome fashion is

a big element in that process. and has from time to time succeeded with all of its shortcomings and warts and problems, has succeeded in passing some of the most splendid and important pieces of legislation passed by any body in all of human history. so it's important to remember that. and when it passes the voting rights act and the civil rights act or the 13th amendment, it's not necessarily the people at that a moment were particularly splendid. there were a bunch of thieves then and also some great representatives, and it's that mix of people eventually something works, and there's a reason, as lincoln said, you know, to have great faith in the people and in the process. this is the people's house. it's the house of representatives. >> without lincoln, i'm not sure we would have gotten to that point. he was of a major figure.

>> yes, absolutely. >> i'm not sure what would have happened to this country literally without that man there. >> and that's true too. >> i think you're both right. i think what the movie doesn't show because it doesn't have the time to show is that lincoln becomes supportive of this constitutional change in time for the june 1864 republican convention renamed the national union convention. he strongly endorses platform plank, and in those days people actually read political platforms and took them very seriously. so he commits to the republican party if june. the senate actually votes for the house which is sort of unusual in '64, and then the house votes and votes it, for it with the majority but not the required two-thirds majority. >> right. >> so it's already lost in the house of representatives. then comes the november election and then the second chance with the lame duck where is where the movie picks up.

all of this background and the vividness in which it's portrayed in the movie doesn't begin to express my admiration for the fact that you and spielberg picked this moment to focus the movie on. because as i've said before and we've discussed, 16,000 books about abraham lincoln, one book about the 13th amendment. one book, and lincoln himself said this is the harpoon that's killing the monster. of slavery. and one more thing, just to validate what you said about lincoln's interest in being identified with this, when the resolution is shown to him at his desk, he says -- he writes on it " approved, a. lincoln." we presented you with a copy in new york a few weeks ago. and the senate was, the senate and house were outraged. how dare abraham lincoln sign --

presidential signatures are not required on congressional amendments. so they actually, this is a body that was unable to function for four months on this issue, they actually immediately passed a resolution condemning lincoln for signing his name to the 13th amendment. but that's how much he wanted to be part of this. >> it's history. >> and he was a politician. he was a consummate politician. i think some people were -- >> well, here at this moment -- >> that this movie showed him as a politician. >> when he signs that document, it's the same as the emancipation. his name is going into history. he wants to be part of that history. and, of course, it took politics to get this. >> if i could add, the signed amendment bill, his name is on it, yes, i absolutely agree with you that the history, the course of the civil war as it happened is unimaginable without abraham lincoln. it went from, as karl marx said of lincoln when he passed the emancipation proclamation he turned it from a civil war to a revolution. and lincoln sort of knew that

himself. this horrible war ended with slavery has a great deal to do in terms of its legislative history with lincoln. but i think that there's, there's a dialectic here. the country is, perhaps, unimaginable without lincoln, and lincoln is also unimaginable without the country. had the house of representatives failed to pass the amendment, his effort to get it through would have, you know, and it was as we show in the film a mixture of some self-interest and greed and also some dawning of moral principle. and all through his tenure-in con's faith in the people -- one of the most moving things that i know of in civil war history is the percentage of the soldiers', was it 80%? >> 80%. >> 80% in '64, and you think of these guys, a lot of them kids, having a choice between a famous military general and a

civilian -- >> who doesn't -- >> exactly. a general who doesn't make them fight, who's basically running as the candidate of a party that says we'll end the war the minute i get in, we'll just call this off, and these guys go out and 80% of them vote in a way that's going to keep them in harm's way. many of them going into battle meant they were very likely to die. and that spirit of sacrifice, lincoln said i'd rather have the soldiers vote and win the election than lose the election and not have the soldiers vote. that's not can't, that's real. that's somebody saying i have faith in the people, and the people over and over and over again show me that that faith is justified. so i think it's a, it's a dialectical thing. it's not just a great leader who's born and then rules in sort of isolation, it's a person who has the ability and the capacity to engage in this

reciprocal fashion with the people. and we created lincoln, and he created us. i think it's a -- .. the middle ground, the people you could sway, eager for deployment in the future and that is a true story, the story

of the fight for those undecided all democratic votes to bring that amendment to the top, one of the great untold stories in american history. >> for more i dig into those guys, how difficult it gets, what we just purchased, then -- just sold their votes but so were people who were incredibly complicated blend of i wanted job after i lose my seat which is coming in march and a lot of democrats, lost horribly in the last election. look at what our defense, modern-day republicans should be saying the same thing about what they have been defending which have led them to terribly

reduced degree of power. and further into the wilderness of they don't abandon these positions and a lot of democrats were saying by 65, we have ridden the slavery next into hell. >> they were staying. >> one of the narratives of the system is the election was in november. the guys were defeated by saying for 13 months until december. they need to make some good plans but they are staying around in special session. the connection of all these events. >> reality versus art, history, truth, find out what truths is versus are and creative license. there has been some controversy on "lincoln" and other films, i

know you don't want to talk about the other films, 0 dark 30, "lincoln" had a little bit of this, people are asking what about the correctness of this or that. on the academic circles you are going toward manutius most of the time and don't see the art that is necessary in a film. talk a little bit about that problem in producing historical fiction? >> i can object directly to your comment that academics are involved only in the minutia is there's a difference the tween historical drama and history. steven spielberg express it beautifully when he gave the gettysburg address this year. he was the speaker at the 149th if anniversary of the address in

gettysburg and said art goes where history cannot go. that is what we all want a film or a theatrical piece to do, get us closer to the people and emotions and thoughts. >> he is a filmmaker and not a historian. >> and tony is a playwright and screenwriter. i don't want americans or film viewers are people who love history to think that we all have to count quibbles' because they're not as important as the fact that we are revealing the generation had no clue of this and to focus on this amendment, that is unfold. historians get a slap on the face for ignoring it for 150 years. and the political machinations that went into with, the ability that was required, the patients,

i don't think it is appropriate to count the little things and i don't think they are errors. they are decisions by people who write historical fiction or fiction to focus our attention in ways that are dramatic. if we want to get the exact history of the debate in congress we could read the congressional record nor do we think he was visited by an angel. question is when you are an artist and decide to dramatize a historical event you are borrowing trouble because if i write a play about completely made up people i can have them do anything i want and no one can say they didn't do that because they did not exist. when i say i am going to dramatize during a lame-duck session of congress for the

thirteenth amendment five asking for trouble and away, this happened. you can't change what happened but you unchanged what happens on the way to what happened by which i mean you can say did this happen, it is historical, did it happen exactly this way? if the answer is yes it is history. if the answer is yes happened but not exactly this way it is historical fiction. it is grounded in history. the overarching story it tells has to be true. you can't say lincoln did this thing and got it through by two votes eventually passed by 30 votes. and for instance with the congressman voting, we decided that except for the major congressman like that, thaddeus stevens and ashley and so on, the people that are really specific incidents being

dramatized was all the other guys, 81 votes, we would change the names of the congressman so that for the sake of showing the vote sequence and keeping it dramatic we would be able to assign this made up congressman's name to this or that made up congressman to this or that vote to keep a sequence, keep reminding the audience this is a very close vote. wasn't a done deal. by the time they started going noting -- no one knew how it was going to end. we engineered that because that is the necessity of making something that has voting sequences, a better job making it very suspenseful, to make it suspenseful in that sense so you are not looking at one name after the other, and only if you're keeping your own scorecard. we made absolutely inconsequential alterations in the actions of fictional characters on the way to an

actual results which is the task by 119 votes or a two vote margin over the supermajority. the great shame is the public conversation about movies becomes keeping a scorecard of this is right and that is wrong and that becomes we are looking at and you are not looking at what is being said, the movie had a huge success now because it is talking about government as -- politics as an expression of a collective will toward civilization, as an expression of the better angels of our nature and the value of government, the value of politics and the way you can achieve progress and revolutionary change through electoral politics. that is why i love the conversation, it gets drowned, what i have to say feels like

nitpicking. none of the aspects have been challenged by anyone in any way that i think have caused anyone to ask whether the movie is accurate. this is an accurate work of historical fiction. >> i should not mention when i heard someone in the film take up a letter and i heard the rustle of it and it sounded like pulp paper instead of rag i started nitpicking. >> after all the paper you have handled you are entitled to stand up and say that. >> we had a big crisis because one of the telegraph seen the telegraph operator ripped a piece of paper, perforated had and i said when was perforated paper invented? we went for the answer never found it but we all agree it sounds like a 20th century sound so we got rid of it. >> who really cares about that? the launch of the church bell. >> that is exactly -- you care

about it in that moment. it wouldn't have mattered if perforated paper -- i guess people who are stationary obsessive, you might be upset. to specify perforation in 1916. then you have a reason to complain. the thing that was wrong was not like getting the exact date of perforated paper but the sound sounded to me like a 20th century sound. it sounded like a noise from our immediate moment and it didn't feel right for the period. i checked every word of the entire script against the 0 e.d. especially words that sounded like maybe. i had a big crisis about is the compound words may be something? perhaps but it is not clear whether maybe was really in use. i don't think they say maybe anywhere. largely they say perhaps and you

want to make it so that it sounds plausibly of that time so that the audience can get lost in that time so little pieces of paper were more nineteenth century feeling. >> i don't think anybody -- i have spoken to hundreds and hundreds of people who have seen this movie and what ever perverse delight people have with little items that would have been written differently or hired them to do the screenplay, nobody has emerged from this film in less than a reverie of being transported into another era, every bit of the ambiance of the nineteenth century as far as it can be reconstructed plausibly. the sound, the light, the feel, the interaction between men and men and men and women which were different and more formal and structured. every bit of that group's you from the beginning and carries

you for room. i didn't realize -- such a social credit. one field that in the movie. >> there are people who have criticized the film and are entitled to their criticism on in terms of interpretation and one of the things that has been asked whether i find surprising about lincoln and it is hard to answer. one of our earlier conversation the astonishing thing is the in exhaust ability of the subject. you can read every five and it's there are six new lincoln books and the good ones always have something new to say. maybe we will say things that true about lincoln, frederick douglass says after the assassination make people saying strew about lincoln but no one will ever say that he knew about lincoln but he was wrong about that. for all sorts of reasons this seems to be one of those in a possible subjects. of course i knew there would be those who absolutely reject our interpretation of lincoln, our interpretation of his role in

ending flavor, his attitudes toward african-americans, that is all legitimate but we are presenting, that is not to say the movie is inaccurate but we present one reading of history with the facts presented as far as we know happened. >> the characters -- >> what we said earlier, we could decide never to read richard iii again because shakespeare left out the part about burying him under a parking lot. let's have some perspective. >> it is the dark, intimate film as well. i love the intimacy being apart especially of the big screen. i think the dvd will show that at home and our love being able to be drawn in and almost in the room itself. >> i watched it on tv. it looks great on television.

>> to that dvd -- >> we don't have much time left. we have questions coming in. something wanted to ask. we talked about this earlier. i want to ask again. here we are, the three of us in the vineyards of lincoln holding on to his coattails for deer life. there's a reason there is no millard fillmore bookshop. when we are drawn in to abraham lincoln's time, have especially, we really fall in love with him. it is easy to fall in love with lincoln after you get to know him. i came to the shop, it's i was born and raised here in chicago in illinois, but it was when i started to study him, that mythology, there is a man and he deserves to be on a pedestal. how do we keep our object to the

as historians when we have a love for the man? >> there are historians who function purely in the anti lincoln tradition and there is an anti lincoln tradition that has existed since the nineteenth century. people like mel bradford and thomas lorenzo blame lincoln for everything from the welfare state to imperialism, atomic power and all this stuff. it seems to me inconceivable that anyone can look at the course of events in the nineteenth century, look at this moment when the moment that the man or the man that the moment or both when american democracy was challenged and might easily have died and not been simple to light the world as lincoln wanted. when americans might have decided to take slavery into the 20th century, it could have

easily happened. we might not have produced a character who emphasized american opportunity or the as magnificently and stirringly and enduringly about what america meant and should mean. the idea that we should be -- pretend ourselves forced to ourselves to be so sophisticated that that is no longer appealing. i am glad since the bicentennial and sesquicentennial of the civil war and the explosion of interest because of the film that by and large people are coming to appreciate lincoln of fresh. that is healthy. >> this is much danger of losing objectivity through determination ahead of time that someone can be great or can't be greatly good, you're left at the end of lincoln's life with a string of public utterances,

letters, >>es and reports of many many people, some of whom are really reliable or seem to be reliable and some are not and you can compile a dossier, one of the worst people who ever lived or one of the greatest people who ever lived, i would argue for that. if you approach it with an assumption of his on worthiness you are going to find it difficult to understand some of the places that are ambiguous and difficult, as dangerous, as much a threat to interpretation as being too starry eyed, cynicism and a kind of unthinking blankets skepticism and juvenile rejection of any figure of authority as being bad because he or she is a figure of authority is as limited a vision

as a hero worship and is no more adult or sophisticated even though sometimes it is dark and sexy. >> we are in the post cynical age and you have done as much -- a good place to be. >> hard work to be cynical all the time. very tiring. >> something i want to ask before we have to leave this, just to remind myself of that. you are a man of the theater. i know lincoln was shot in a theater. why did have learned about the murder? >> i just want to say the psychotic of the theater. >> you start signing them. >> why in the film do we do?

it actually was another theater. and in the white house right after. >> under guard. and it didn't actually have the box. and his bodyguard and child minder. and turned and looked and tad wasn't in the scene anymore and he saw pandemonium and saw him running around looking for an exit. i wanted to show his reaction. i wanted to show john works -- what john wilkes booth as one of the worst people who ever lived in the movie. also i thought it was really important to connect the

audience to this terrible personal sense of loss and in a way no more heartbreaking figure in the story of the assassination than had to really died from. ten years to do it. if the nation could have one more wish, he could have been the guiding spirit in reconstruction. a part of it i thought was so ironic that fantasy that they. >> something else has come up to me a number of times is the ending of the film. the last scene, leaving for the force and tad and the confederate flag that a souvenir hunter would have gotten and some think it would have ended just before that. what was the collaboration of

the brought those last scenes together? >> surprised by that. absolutely important to show that the assassination happened. i didn't think it was a good idea at all to end with him walking into the twilight because one thing i find obnoxious is the tradition that -- i love walt whitman very much but -- it hasn't been one. lincoln did that. reconstruction was going to be harder than the civil war. i didn't want to do that approach where he strides off into glory. he was murdered by a lunatic. the loss of abraham lincoln as president is the moment reconstruction begins, a catastrophe of absolutely imponderable proportion. i wanted to show that and are also thought that i wanted to make sure that somewhere in the

movie you heard as i said the greatest political speech ever made, a president at the moment of great triumph stand up in front of the country and says we may have paid this horrendous price not because god is on earth are on their side, we may be paying this price because we all benefited, we have all profited from the horrible sin of slavery and we may have to shed blood and lose all of our wealth to sort of correct some kaimac imbalance, it is a stunning thing that a president could speak that kind of truth to a country that has suffered so much and was at this point ready to celebrate victory. that is the way to end and i really at the ends with the inaugural address with all nations, sort of uplifting and broadens the horizon, the

domestic scene into a global scene. >> at the abraham lincoln bookshop i love this to be a trilogy someone asked will there be a prequel to this movie? >> daniel day-lewis and wanted to do anything more with lincoln, i would absolutely drop everything i was doing to do it. >> i think it would be -- having said that, i can't imagine in my lifetime there is going to be another lincoln. and the dramatic figure. and i suspect daniel did what he came to do, and maybe i'm wrong.

and -- >> thaddeus stevens office. and off on one side and conference room. and the treasury department were andy johnson in six weeks, where mary would be kicked out by him state in the white house. and -- >> the entire thing was shot in st. petersburg.

>> the door slammed. it was propped against the statue where robert e. lee took command of the confederate army. >> that was a tough thing to film. hugely interposing statue of robert e. lee. really terrifying thing was the rotunda. the only statue for which washington actually posed. the value of it is beyond imagination. they put some chicken wander -- chicken wire around it and it was like grand central station. and someone was going to swing a boom mike and thank god that didn't happen. we took very good care of him.

>> we thank you for participating. we try to get the next questions on the air and we thank all of you for being with us. if you are on the archives coming back to us. and we thank all of you for doing this and those of you who came in here, the part of this as well. we thank your publishers for bringing you in and we your support out there, to help publishers bring good bosses in like this. >> this book which i discovered a few years ago is a national treasure and enormously important place. i am really thrilled and -- -- you set for april

lincoln:vampire hunter have to do something else lose >> that gave me the idea. >> for the staff of abraham lincoln bookshop, without you we couldn't make these shows exist. thank you for being with us. oven rack applause] >> we would like to hear from you. tweet as your feedbaus your fee twitter.com/booktv. >> i found hidden history by accident because there's a downspout that says alexandria, d.c. and a friend of mine pointed this out to me several years ago when i first moved here and said alexandria was part of the original district of columbia and that was intriguing and since that time kicking around in my head that that was a good project to look at the 50

your time period that alexander end in arlington in the district of columbia. when i was doing research for the book i find three places i would like to take you to give you a sense what it was like to live in alexandria, dec. one was jones point park where you'll find the original boundary marker for the southernmost tip of the district of columbia. the other is the dueling ground where a very famous duel took place between secretary of state henry clay and virginia senator john randolph. the other place i was interested in taking use the infamous waved and at the franklin slave dealers. >> the union army invaded alexandria. one of the first place as they came was this slave can which was an infamous spots in slavery featured in all the abolitionist newspapers of the time period so when the union soldiers came here came to the basement and found