Cinema Cafe with Ruth Bader Ginsburg & Nina Totenberg | 2018 Sundance Film Festival

thank you please please be seated [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] hi everyone I was gonna say I'm here because I had the pleasure and the honor of introducing our guest today and Ruth Bader Ginsburg justice it's an honor for me especially because I've had such a long history of admiration for her for so long and so to be able to be with her today and welcome her to our festival I think she's going to enhance the quality of our festival just by being here so I'm happy to introduce her and and let me just say that there are many reasons to celebrate and honor her I would be here for a long long time if I listed all the attributes that she had but let me just state a couple the fact that she was born in poverty near property and rose up through the ranks from lower ladder on the on the lower rung on the ladder so to speak to rise up to become a woman in a world of law emanate dominated by men and to continue to rise so she became a Supreme Court justice and to watch her and what her her qualities are which the fight for justice and equality of the two main things that I can think of but I can't think of any greater honor than to be able to introduce a person I so admire Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg [Applause] oops sorry I'm here to welcome you to cinema cafe my name is John 9 I'm a Senior Programmer of the festival I'm very grateful for our guests joining us today I wanted to just I think this is obviously a highlight the festival for all of us and I say that because over the 10 days of this festival a lot of the focus is on the films and the screening of new independent work but I think from our point of view also those films incite conversation and we've always seen the festival as a place that is a place of dialogue it's a place of ideas it's a place for us to process the work that we're seeing and sort of reconcile what that means for our lives in our society so we're really really happy to be hosting this conversation and I want to thank our moderator for the conversation Nina Totenberg Nina Nina Totenberg who many of us know from her voice several times a week on NPR and those select few carry our things around in the Nina Totenberg so thank you so much Nina and thank you Justice Ginsburg thank you all for coming I for one am delighted to be here with Justice Ginsburg she is perhaps the most recognizable justice on the Supreme Court though she under weighs them all even the women probably by about 40 pounds so even before she became the second woman to serve on the nation's highest court Ruth Ginsburg quite simply changed the way the world is for American women for more than a decade until her first judicial appointment in 1980 she led the fight in the courts for gender equality when she began her legal crusade women were treated by law differently from men thousands of state and federal laws treated women differently from men they restricted what women could do barring them from jobs rights even from jury duty by the time she first put on judicial robes however she had worked a revolution so let's start with what's going on in the world of women today you were the architect of the legal fight for women's rights today the issues are both the same and different different is that front and center is the question of sexual harassment how to treat various kinds of behavior what should be a fireable offense a lesser offense can offenders redeem themselves whether peers in the workplace can date and on and on but what I want to know first is whether when you were a younger woman not a judge or a Supreme Court justice where you ever subject to inappropriate behavior and how did you handle it the answer is yes every woman of my vintage knows what sexual harassment is although we didn't have a name for it but if I can just preface my remarks about sexual harassment with my first introduction to Nina Totenberg and I think it must have been 1971 I was teaching at Rutgers Law School Nina called me and said I'd like to ask you a question what does this equal protection got to do with women I thought the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment is about race how does it apply to women and that's that was our first conversation and we have been close friends ever since the attitude to sexual harassment was simply get past it boys will be boys well I'll give you just one example I'm taking a chemistry course at Cornell and my instructor said because I was a uncertain about my ability in that field he said I'll give you a practice exam so he gave me a practice exam the next day on the test the test is the practice exam and I knew exactly what he wanted in return and that's just one of many examples this was not considered anything you could do something about that the law could help you do something about until a book was written by a young woman named kitty MacKinnon Catherine MacKinnon and it was called sexual harassment in the workplace and I was asked to read it by a publisher and give my opinion on whether it was worth publishing it was a revelation the first part described incidents like the one I just mentioned and the next was how this anti-discrimination law Title 7 which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race national origin religion and sex how that could be used as a tool to stop sexual harassment it was eye-opening and it was the beginning of a field that didn't exist until then what did you do about the professor did you just stay clear of him what did you do I went to his office and I said how dare you how dare you and that was the end I assume you did quite well on that exam I don't know when I deliberately made two mistakes [Laughter] [Applause] what are you what are your thoughts about what women should be doing now I deliberately left in a lot of the questions because it is more complicated than people may think at first blush and I wonder what you think of the me2 movement and if you've given any thought to the strategy for women as a group well I think it's about time for so long women were silent thinking there was nothing you could do about it but now the law is on the side of women or men who encounter harassment and that's a good thing in the film industry it turns out that a lot of women aren't being paid as well as men or at least that their agents don't push for them to be paid as well as men there have been a couple of times in your career first at Rutgers law school and then at Columbia when you found out that you and other women and in in a third case female janitors were not being treated the same as men in two cases you sued them in the third case you threatened - weren't you worried that they would fire you being paid the same as men when I joined the faculty of Rutgers Law School Rutgers is a state university and the Dean who was a very kindly man said Ruth you're going to have to take a cut in salary and I said I understand that state universities and don't pay so well but when he told me how much of a cut I was astonished so I asked well how much do you pay so and so a man who was out of law school about the same amount of time I was and the Dean replied Ruth he has a wife and two children to support you have a husband with a good paying job in New York and that was considered that was the very year the Equal Pay Act had passed that was the answer that I got what the women at Rutgers did was they didn't make a big fuss they got together and they filed an Equal Pay Act complaint not even title seven just straight equal pay and so that that suit was filed in 1964 the university settled the lowest increase was $6,000 which in those days was a lot more than it than it is today when I got to Columbia one problem was with the the faculty and because the university didn't give out salary figures I was the law schools representative to the University Senate and the first thing we wanted to get was those figures and then once we did our case was won the the maids janitor situation is I get to Columbia this is what year was it 1972 and a feminist I knew well came to see me to tell me that Columbia had just issued 25 layoff notices to 25 women in the maintenance department no layoffs for any man and then she said to me what are you gonna do about it so I went to the University vice president for business and told him that the university was violating Title 7 and he said professor Ginsburg Columbia has excellent Wall Street lawyers representing them and would you like a cup of tea well that was on a Monday there was an application to stop Columbia immediately to get a temporary injunction there was a meeting at Columbia with feminists at that meeting Bella Abzug was there and Gloria Steinem was there Susan Sontag was there I think that's so impressed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that they sent their chief counsel to argue in favor of the temporary injunction we get to court on Monday morning the Union one of the Columbia's excuses was the Union wanted to have separate seniority lines so that we had janitors and maids and no janitor would be let go until all the maids were gone so Columbia said it the Union insisted on that in in our contract the union representative got up in court and said we can't abide by a contract that violates Title 7 so the Union came over on the side of the maids and Columbia was there all alone and of course they there was a temporary injunction but the most heartening thing about it was the women who who were categorized as maids these are women who really didn't care that they were paid less they expected that but they wanted jobs but they didn't want to be on welfare in the course of that litigation those women grew in self-esteem and two of them ended up being shop stewards that and that was the most heartening part of the maids janitor controversy when Columbia lost and the preliminary injunction was issued Columbia decided well they really didn't have to layoff anyone they could take care of the excess numbers by attrition by not hiring a replacement for someone who left so when they were faced with a necessity of having to drop about ten men before they reached the first woman they found a way to avoid laying off anyone you know there's no doubt in all of these situations who is the backbone of the opposition the legal backbone it's you so how come they didn't fire you my troops at the law school were hugely supportive and I think the university knew I was untouchable for that reason whatever I did the faculty was behind me even if they disagreed and that the one time we had a serious disagreement was in the the pension case so in those days when women retired they got less than men per month because they live longer right so they were actually equal well the whole idea of Title 7 is you don't lump categorize people and it's true that on average women live more than live longer than men but there are some women who die young and some men who live past 200 so how did they treat where they matter at you over that yes they were concerned that they would get less per month and they would otherwise when they retired so do you ever worry with the michu movement about a backlash against women let's see where it goes so far it's been great yes and there there was a book what was her name the one who wrote the book called backlash Philippi yes but when I see women appearing everyplace in numbers I'm less worried about backlash and I might have been 20 years ago so we're here at Sundance Center of one form of the Arts so let me ask you do you remember the the first movie that you really loved and if there's have some movie in the last few years that you really loved the first movie that's an easy question it was gone with the wind I don't know whether I would have loved it if I saw today but I saw it at least five times what about now it's hard to pick out one film of course well I'll just say the most - most recent film I saw I don't get a chance to go to the movies very often but one was three three billboards didn't a fantastic film and the other was call me by your name which is a beautiful beautiful film I have to find out where in Italy it took place some people here may not know about your devotion to other art forms like the Opera you once told me if you could be anything in the world you would have been an operatic diva so why weren't you because I'm a monotone but in my dreams that's a recurring dream is armed on stage at the Metropolitan Opera and I'm about to sing Tosca and then I remember that I am a monotone what is it about opera and music in general that has so captivated you that on any given night in Washington at least once or twice a week I would guess you're at the Opera or the symphony or some other musical performance most recently in Wednesday night of this this week I was at the dress rehearsal of a new opera called proving up I was turned on to opera when I was 11 years old I was a grade school kid in Brooklyn and my aunt took me to a children's performance of a most unlikely choice for a first opera it was not Gioconda these were operas condensed to one hour there were costumes there was bare staging and there was a narrator who was also the conductor of an all children's Orchestra that man's name was Dean Dixon the year was 1944 Dean Dixon left the United States at the end of the 40s and commented that for all the time he'd been conducting no one had ever called him maestro why because he was african-american so he went off to Europe and he was the darling of every major orchestra there he married well and some 20 years later he came back to the United States at the end of the 60s just to visit and every major symphony orchestra in the country wanted him to be a guest conductor and that illustrates for me the enormous change in our country from the middle 40s to the late 60s anyway I got hooked on opera at age 11 I began to attend the rehearsals at the city centre in New York what does it do for you what does music do for you what is it doing what does beautiful music doing it takes me out of my immediate concerns out of worrying about how I'm going to write this opinion so that it will be understood by the audience it is enchanting and I tend to listen to the music both in chambers either CD or the one classical station we have and in DC sometimes I have to turn it off because I have to think really really hard and can't have any distractions you know if you walk into the justices chambers I think any of you in this room would be quite surprised Supreme Court justices are allowed to have artwork from the National Gallery anything that they want that's not on the walls of the National Gallery so they can say I'd like this or that and it's loan to them until the until the the National Gallery may need it for an exhibition or something like that and most of the artwork is on the is what it's fairly traditional artwork you walk into her chambers and it's all extremely modern artwork what is it you love about modern art well first I shouldn't but my colleagues taste runs in two directions one is portraits portraits of long dead men and the other is out outdoor scenes it's it's not just the National Gallery I have two paintings from the National Gallery I have five from the Museum of American Art and I was allowed to go downstairs at the gallery to see the huge collection of Mark Rothko's they have and you would not recognize my paintings as Mark Rothko's because he changed his style so very much in the 5 then I have from the Museum of American Art come from something called the Frost collection it's a collection of United States painters in the WPA period roughly from 1933 to 1945 and so I have 5 of those and I have one from the Hirschorn the film that's being premiered here today about you I thought I'd ask you about a little bit now neither of us has seen it so there's and you don't want to talk about it because you haven't seen it so I thought I'd ask you about the process of being followed around by cameras for a while you're used to public appearances and even public interviews but how was that and and did you dress any differently did I dress for the camera No I think Betsy and Julie wanted me to be just as I am well you'll see in in the film as Nina told you we neither of us have seen it yet but I have great expectations I know the film crew played for you a video of your own self being portrayed on Saturday Night Live and your children told them that you had not ever seen it so what did you think of your portrayal on Saturday Night Live I like the actress who portrayed me I think yeah and I would like to say Ginsburg sometimes to my colleagues you know this brings something up at age 84 you're going strong as you can see everybody she hasn't dropped a stitch and every liberal in America is prepared to throw their bodies in front of in front of you to protect you you are a rock star there are songs about you t-shirts mugs you're down known simply as the notorious RBG this must be fun for you but how do you suppose your colleagues feel my colleagues are judiciously silent about the notorious RBG so let me go back to when you weren't a rock star and you were at Cornell in undergraduate school and you met your Hut the man who would be your husband Marty Ginsberg now back then men far far outnumbered women at Cornell so what was it about Marty that struck your fancy first men outnumber women there were four men to every woman at Cornell in those days so it was the ideal school for the parents of daughters because if you couldn't get your man at Cornell you were hopeless well the remarkable thing about a Marty to whom I was married for 56 years is he cared that I had a brain no guy up until then was the least interested in how I thought so marty was a revelation to me and throughout my life and I certainly wouldn't be here today were it not for money because he made me feel that I was better than and I thought I was when I went to law school I was concerned in those first few weeks whether I would make it marty was telling he was a year ahead of me he was telling all of his buddies my wife will be on the Law Review well that's just how he was he had a great sense of humor and another very important strength he was a wonderful cook and he said that he owed his skill in the kitchen to two women at first his mother and then his wife I thought he gave his mother a bum rap but he was certainly right about me and now there is at the Supreme Court gift shop a book called supreme chef that Supreme Chef is Marty Ginsberg the spouses of my colleagues when Marty died thought that the best tribute they could have to him would be a collection of his recipes was a great gourmet chef he wasn't just a great chef I mean he really was stupendous and at the same time that he was one of the country's leading tax experts and one of the funniest men alive so but you went to Harvard Law School together he was a year ahead of you and you were just one of nine women in a class of over 500 you were on Law Review you had a 14 month-old daughter and then Marty was diagnosed with testicular cancer the doctors threw the book at him what they had at the time which was massive radiation I knew everybody says the surgery massive surgery first and radiation and he was pretty sick how did you manage to get through that time what was the routine that you established for yourself how I got through that time was mainly his classmates and mine Harvard Law School was supposed to be fiercely competitive our experience was quite different my classmates his classmates rallied around us and helped us get through that very difficult time Marty's routine with radiation it was massive radiation there was no such thing as chemotherapy then so he get the radiation come home be terribly sick fall asleep and get up about midnight I had between midnight and 2:00 when he went back to sleep to whatever he was going to ingest that day he would eat between those hours how my routine was I'd went to my classes I had note takers in all of his classes I went to Mass General when he was at the hospital and I came home fed my daughter she went to sleep and I studied what I could couldn't for that time Marty would get up he would have some not very spectacular hamburger that I made and then I would go back to the books again so I learned to get by on very little sleep two hours a night and was about in that's what our routine was like and I must say that Marty attended two weeks of classes that semester he got the highest grades he ever got he was very close to the top in the class and that was because he had the best tutors in the world his classmates who took notes and then came to the hospital and later home to give him tutorials so when he graduated you he got a good job in New York you moved to New York you went to Columbia for year last year you graduated tied for first in your class there but and you had lots of recommendations for clerkships but most judges wouldn't even interview you indeed even Supreme Court justices wouldn't interview you so tell tell the story of how tell how did you get finally get a clerkship I had a teacher at Columbia Law School Gerald Gunther who later moved to Stanford he was in charge of getting clerkships for Columbia Law Students and he was determined to get a clerkship for me he concentrated on one judge in the Southern District of New York trial court judge who was a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia Law School and took all of his clerks from Columbia when Gerry proposed me and the judge was hesitant he had he said he had a woman law clerk and she was fine he had one but I had a ten four year old child and so he was concerned that I couldn't do the job I couldn't be there when he needed me because I would be taking care of my child if she was second so the professor made an offer to that he said if you give her a chance I have arranged for for a young man in her class who is going to a Wall Street firm if she doesn't work out he'll jump in and take over that was the carrot and then there was a stick and the stick was if you don't give her a chance I will never recommend another Columbia student to you now this is a story I never knew about I thought the judge had hired me because he had two daughters and he was thinking how he would like the world to be for them it wasn't until Jerry wrote a comment in the Hawaii Law Journal telling the story that I I knew how I got that first job that was the challenge for women of my era getting your foot in the door getting that first job once you got the job you did it at least as well many cases better than the men but it was the first job that was powerful hard to get so tell the story about how you used to ride in the car with your judge and another judge the very famous learn at hand who had refused to hire you was in the car also learn attend was one of the greatest federal judges of all time he was a brilliant man my judge lived around the corner from Judge Han and would drive him when Han became an octogenarian judge Palmieri my judge would drive him to the courthouse and then back at the end of the day and when I finished my work on time i sat in the back of death the car as they drove uptown and I would hear this great man learn it and say what ever came into his head sing saucy songs salty songs and I said to him you won't hire me as a clerk but yet you say in this car you don't inhibit your speech at all you have said words that my mother never taught me and he said a young lady I am NOT looking at you men of that age were told don't do inhibit your speech when you're talking to women and you were in the backseat yes so he wasn't looking at so you weren't there right so I will leave to the movie the sort of story of your professional career because we're getting low on time but eventually you founded the ACLU women's project at the same time you were teaching at Columbia and litigating cases all over the country and arguing cases in the Supreme Court you had two children and there's a story I often get you to tell young women who were struggling with so-called life balance issues it's a story about your son James in school my son James who is now a really fine human and and makes the best classical CDs in the world City Year records Chicago when is it clash ACOG Oh classical recording foundation this child was what his teachers called hyperactive and I called lively so I would get called by the head of the school or the school psychologists or the room teacher to come down immediately to hear about my son's latest escapade well one day I think I'd been up all night writing a brief I was at my office at Columbia Law School I got the call and I responded this child has two parents please alternate calls and it's his father's turn so my husband Marty went down to the school I was confronted by three stone faces the principal the room teachers and psychologists and he was told your son stole the elevator it was one of those hand held held elevators the the elevator operator had gone out for a smoke and one of my son's classmates dared him to take the kindergartners up to the top floor in the elevator so Marty's response when he was sold of this grave infraction on my sunspot Marty's response was he stole the elevator how far could he take it well I don't know if it was Marty sense of humor I suspect it was that the school was I was reluctant to take a man away from his work I wouldn't hesitate to call mother away from hers anyway there was no quick change in my son's behavior but the calls came barely once a semester and the reason was they had to think long and hard before asking a man to take time out of his workday to come to the school you know one of your great friends on the court was Justice Scalia with whom you disagreed a great deal but you were also very close friends and people often find it hard to understand that how it was that this sort of the symbol of so-called originalism or textualism or conservatism on the Supreme Court and you were such close friends so what was it about him that made you such close friends I mean he said of you what's not to like but what was it that you loved about him and you did love him in many ways in number one his sense of humor but the first time I heard it was then professor Scalia Spieth it was and some lawyers convention in Washington DC I disagreed with a good deal of what he said but I was captivated by the way the way he said it when we were buddies on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit the only three judges and they know when leaned over and say something that absolutely cracked me up and I had all I could do to avoid bursting out and was laughter so often I pinched myself very hard and so he has a great sense of humor we both really care about families and we share a love of beautiful music especially opera you describe one of your opinions that that you'll hear more about in the film the VMI case but and your interaction with him because he dissented I think he was the sole dissenters yes and describe that he was the sole in the center I should say because justice Thomas's son at the time was attending VMI so he didn't sit on the case so you know ended up being this old dissenter I had circulated in my opinion I think we have somebody here who knows a little bit about it who will confirm I think it was early in April when we circulated the opinion and we were waiting on the Descent it was time for me to go to my Circuit Judicial Conference at Lake George and Justice Scalia comes into my chambers throws down a sheep of paper on my desk and said Ruth this is the penultimate draft my vmi dissent I'm not quite ready to circulate but I wanted to give you as much time as I can to answer it so I took this draft on the plane with me to Albany the conference was in Lake George he absolutely ruined my weekend but I was glad to have the extra days to answer him I think we must have gone through about 15 16 drafts it was a ping-pong game Scalia would say such things as I refer to the University of Virginia that finally admitted women in in 1970-71 and I referred to to the school as the University of Virginia at Charlottesville he came back with there is no University of Virginia at Charlottesville there is just the University of Virginia and then explain in not quite these words that a kid from Brooklyn would understandably make such a mistake because she knew about the City University at New York at Buffalo anyway in the end in that debate I certainly proved right didn't I it was the VMI is thriving today there are always new books coming out about you one of them is about your your your trait your physical routine which your husband Marty when after you're about with colon cancer told you you were told you you were a wreck and so that you needed a trainer so you got this guy you can tell about the guy and I'll show thee I will show the book which is our be RBG workout which I'm told you can get across the street and you tell about Bryant Johnson who's been your trainer for I guess over about since 1999 yeah so so it was at the end of this bout with colorectal cancer I was in pretty sad shape Marty said I looked like a survivor of Auschwitz and I had to do something to build myself up so I asked around and the District Judge Gladys Kessler told me that there was this guy who was working in the clerk's office who was a wonderful personal trainer that was Brian Johnson and we have been that together we meet twice a week and the space reserved for for the justices downstairs and I tend to be compulsive about my work but when it comes time for me to meet Brian whatever I'm doing I drop it and when you see this routine there are a lot of young reporters in their 30s who have thought oh I can do this easily and they end up exhausted so then the other latest book is the child's version of were the children's young adults versions of the notorious RBG the life and times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg so she's not allowed to it would be inappropriate her to promote books by other people but I figured I could do it well you have hired a full complement of clerks up through the 2020 term that means 20 the 2020 term begins in the fall of 2020 and ends in June of 2021 how's your health it's very good I've had when I was as well isn't it time for you to go my first answer was Justice Brandeis Luigi Brandeis was appointed to the court the same age I was he was 60 and he stepped down at age 83 I expect to stay just as long I know I'm there almost two years longer than Justice Brandeis the next excuse was the the Museum of American Art has taken away my Josef Albers a painter I loved I couldn't think of leaving until I get my outbursts back now I have my Albers back so my current answer the answer that will continue to be my answer as long as I can do the job full steam I will be here so I urge you all to see the movie here and if you can't get in to see the movie here to see it when it's in theaters or on CNN and I have known Ruth Bader Ginsburg for well over 40 years and the person you see here is very dignified and you as you can tell she is also has a great sense of humor but what you may not know about her is that she's a great human being and so when my late husband died and I started to date the doctor I am now married to I remember walking down the hall one day with Justice Ginsburg at something she'd scooped me up to take me to and I said Ruth I've started to date a doctor in Boston and in my mind's eye I remember her head spinning around and what she said was details I want all the details so thank you Justice Ginsburg [Applause] ladies and gentlemen [Music] ladies and gentlemen could you please remain in your seats while our guests exit the building please remain you

Channel: Sundance Institute

Views: 119,365

Rating: 4.7542996 out of 5

Keywords: Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Nina Totenberg, Sundance, 2018, 2018 Sundance Film Festival, RBG, Ginsberg, Totenberg, Ruth, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg

Id: pDXxsRB4s7Y

Length: 67min 17sec (4037 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 21 2018