>> Fay Rosenfeld: Hi, everyone. Good evening. My name's Fay Rosenfeld
and I am the vice president of public programs here at
the New York Public Library. And I have the distinct
honor of welcoming all of you to tonight's final
live from NYPL of 2022. To everyone in this
completely packed room and to everyone joining
us online, thank you so much
for being with us. Tonight we're closing
out our first full year of in person programming
since the pandemic began, and what a year it's been. Luminaries including Ta-Nehisi
Coates, Timothy Snider, Annie Proulx [assumed spelling],
Stacy Schiff, LeVar Burton, Tim Gunn twice, N.K
Jemisin, Elizabeth Alexander, Siddhartha Mukherjee,
Noah Baumbach [inaudible] and much more graced our
live stages and screens. We had staged readings, live
music, literary happy hours, even a city-wide dance party. And of course we have wonderful
things in store for you in 2023 including the return
of our very popular library after hours series which is
a building wide celebration of our collections and
exhibitions and much more. But I confess it's going to
be hard to top what we have in store for you tonight because
tonight we close out the year on the absolute highest of
high notes with none other than Robert Caro and Robert
Gottlieb celebrating work that began in part right here at the New York Public
Library more than 50 years ago. Robert Caro and Robert
Gottlieb are the dual subjects of the lovely, charming, and
illuminating new documentary "Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and
Robert Gottlieb." The film is directed by
the amazing Lizzie Gottlieb who we're also extremely
lucky to have with us tonight. And the three of them will
be speaking with Knopf editor in chief Jordan Pavlin. "Turn Every Page" charts the
50 year working relationship between Bob Caro and Bob
Gottlieb who has edited each of Caro's books since his
first, "The Power Broker." "The Power Broker" was
published in 1974 and much of it was researched
and written right here in this very building. In 1971 Robert Caro
became a resident in the Frederick Lewis
Allen Memorial room, a research study room located
just two floors above us and one of the many incredible
resources we are proud to offer working
writers and researchers. It was established by the Ford
Foundation in 1958 as a tribute to the author, critic, and
editor of "Harper's Magazine" and has been used since then
by authors under book contract who need intensive use of the library's general
research collections. As a funny side note,
library trivia, apparently when the original
gift for the Allen room came in it included a provision that authors must be
allowed to smoke in there. If you'd like to learn
more about the Allen room, I'd point you to Robert
Caro's own book "Working" and the chapter "Sanctum
Sanctorum for Writers." In it he says, "There
seemed to be no document or report you needed that
was not housed somewhere in that great building on fifth
avenue or in one of its annexes and that would not appear with
seemingly miraculous speed." I'm happy to report what while
we no longer allow smoking in the Allen room
or any other room at the New York Public Library, documents are still
delivered with the same speed. Speaking of research, in the back of the room we have
a small collection of materials that Mr. Caro would have
referenced while working on the "Power Broker" as well as
the first edition copy of the "Power Broker" that's
signed by Mr. Caro and was given to the Allen room. If you didn't have a chance to see this collections display
before the event, it will be -- it will be -- you can view
it afterwards as well. Of course if you've never
read Mr. Robert Caro's books, they're all available for check out with your New York
Public Library card which, it goes without saying,
everyone in this room has. Right? At the end
of the conversation, our speakers will be glad
to take your questions. If you're with us in the room, you'll see that there are note
cards and pencils on your seats. You can write your
question at any time. Some of our wonderful
event staff will come around and collect them. If you're joining us online,
you can put your question right in to the chat or you
can send us an email at publicprograms@nypl.org and
we'll get to as many as we can. We'd love to hear from
you wherever you are. I want to take a moment to thank
our esteemed NYPL trustee Mahnaz Ispahani Bartos, Adam Bartos,
and the late Celeste Bartos for their generous ongoing
support of live from NYPL. Their support makes
extraordinary conversations like the one we are about
to experience possible, and for that we are
deeply grateful. I also want to thank and
recognize Tony Marks, the president of the
New York Public Library, as well as distinguished
trustees of the library who are also here
with us this evening. And of course thanks
as well to all of you, our wonderful supporters
and friends near and far. It is a joy to bring live
from NYPL to all of you. "Turn Every Page: The
Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb"
opens in theaters here and in L.A on December 30th. You are absolutely going
to love it, as you'll see with this first clip
which we're going to watch before the
conversation gets going. It is a few minutes long and
after that Jordan Pavlin, Lizzie Gottlieb,
Robert Gottlieb, and Robert Caro will
join us on stage. Thank you and enjoy the evening. [ Applause ] >> Jordan Pavlin:
Thank you, all. So incredible to
see this response. I am very honored to
be here of course. I have revered these two
gentlemen for the entirety of my adult life and,
Lizzie, as you know, I couldn't love this film more. It's a tribute not only to
these two literary titans, but also a love letter
to the world of books. I want to ask you, Bob, you've
written that you carried for many years a key in your
pocket and that it was almost like a talisman to you. And that, of course, was a key to the Allen room
in this library. So can you speak a little bit about how the Allen
room changed your life? >> Robert Caro: Sure. The Allen room is a room
in the public library up on the first floor on
which there used to be sort of little half carrels
for 12 writers at a time. When I started "The Power
Broker" we were really broke. We were living up in the Bronx. I didn't know any other writers. All I knew was that the book
was taking year after year. No one seemed very
interested in it. And I was wondering what I
was doing that was so wrong that this book was
taking so long to write. One day I found -- saw an
article in "New York Magazine" that there was this room for
writers at the public library and all you needed
was a signed contract. It didn't matter how
small the contract was for which was appealing to
me because I had what I used to call the world's
smallest contract. So I applied. I got in to the library. And almost the first day
there I would say I waited until everyone else left about
six o'clock at night and I went around to see who
the people were. And because their names would
be on the take out slips of the books they had there. And there was the name
Tuchman, Barbara Tuchman, the writer I idolized, and
Joseph P. Lash who wrote "Eleanor and Franklin" And James
Thomas Flexner whose four volume biography of George Washington
was really a model for me. And I had been there only
a couple of days when I got in to a conversation
with Flexner and he asked me this
question which I dreaded because I felt it
made me look stupid. "How long have you been
working on your book?" And I said, "Five years." And he said, "Oh,
that's not so long. My Washington is
taking 14 years." And all of a sudden
I felt like a writer. >> Jordan Pavlin: Lizzie,
a question for you. These are obviously two
exceptionally private men. They've devoted their
entire lives to telling other
people's stories. How did you convince them
to participate in this film? And also when did you know that
you needed to make this film? >> Lizzie Gottlieb: Well,
I -- as I say in the film, I grew up -- our house was
always filled with writers who my father worked
with, dinners and people coming to stay. And I had never actually met
Bob Caro in all of that time. And some years ago I heard Bob
Caro give a speech about working with my father in which he said
very many wonderful things, and he also said that they
had these towering fights. And somebody said, "What
do you fight about?" And he said, "We have
very different feelings about the semicolon." And it just came to me
like a bolt of lightening. I thought I have
to make this movie. And I was so convinced of it that I called my father the
next morning and said -- as if it was a done deal, I
said, "I had this great idea. I'm going to make a movie
about you and Bob Caro working on the final volume of
the Lyndon Johnson book." And he said, "Absolutely not." And I just kept asking
and asking and sort of braved his ferocious paternal
no until finally he said to me, "Well, you can ask Bob
Caro, but he'll say no. Here's his phone
number and his office." So with a lot of trepidation
I called Bob Caro and he was so lovely and gracious and
he said, "No thank you." But he very generously said that
he had seen a film I had made and liked it and
that I could come and speak to him in his office. And I did and during
that time he said, "I've never actually seen a film
about a writer and an editor and I think it might
be meaningful." And he agreed to do it. I think he thought it would take
me six months to make this film, and it has taken me seven years. >> Jordan Pavlin: And Bob
Gottlieb, why did you agree? Why did you say no and
then why did you say yes? >> Robert Gottlieb:
Automatic no because who wants to sit around being filmed? Not me. On the other
hand, automatic yes because she is my
darling daughter. I don't think I've
ever said no to her in we won't say how many years. >> Jordan Pavlin: And have
the two of you been surprised by how passionately the
film has been received? >> Robert Gottlieb:
Whom are you asking? >> Jordan Pavlin:
The two of you. Both of the Bobs. >> Robert Gottlieb: Well,
I'm thrilled for her. I mean that's my interest is
this movie is her, not me. And him, of course. >> Jordan Pavlin: Does
it surprise you to see? >> Robert Caro: I am
surprised, as a matter of fact, because I thought it
would be of interest only to people inside
the world of books. I think it is a great
achievement of showing what goes in to a book, but I thought
only people in publishing or who were involved in books
in one way or the other would like it, but it seems to
have gone beyond that. >> Jordan Pavlin: Well,
I think it suggests that we're all inside
the world of books. It's very inspiring to see it. Okay. Can we cue the
next clip please? So, Bob, you have
said that in order to really show political
power it's imperative to show its effect
on the powerless, to show the human cost of power. And now we've just seen
this wonderful clip about Robert Moses' 627 miles
of parkways and expressways in New York City
and its suburbs. Can you speak a little bit
about the chapter in the "Power Broker" that
is called "One Mile"? >> Robert Caro: Sure. So I was trying at that time,
you know, I'd read books on urban planning and all and
they'd all have the phrase in there "the human
cost of highways." Not one of them tried to
show what the human cost was. But at the time I was
interviewing the people, some of the 15,000 people that Robert Moses
displaced for that 1 mile. I had decided how
would I do this. I would take -- he
built 627 miles of road. I would take 1 mile and
show the human cost of it. And I decided to take 1 mile
of the Cross Bronx Expressway because it was -- he
just ripped it right across 1 mile of
apartment houses. I think he tore down,
if I remember the book, this may be a wrong
number, 53 apartment houses that were housing 15,000 people. And of course a whole
neighborhood of 60,000 people was
destroyed in the process. And when I was interviewing
these people over and over again I would hear
the same word which was lonely. They had had a life with
friends in the synagogues. The women would sit
on the streets then, you know in benches,
and they'd talk. They had friends they
had known I think I wrote that they had known in
kindergarten and they had known as they were growing old. And all this was gone. So this -- at the same time I
was interviewing Robert Moses and I asked him one day about what he thought the human
cost of that one mile was. I'll never forget him
saying, "Oh, they just stirred up the animals up there. That's all. So I just stayed -- I just held
-- actually I just held firm." And I was thinking, "No." If this book is going to
tell the story of power, it's not going to just tell
the story of Robert Moses. It's going to tell the
story of those people that were the human cost
of what Robert Moses built. >> Jordan Pavlin: You've also
talked about how important it is in biography and history to
establish a sense of place which is taken for granted in
fiction, but not necessarily in nonfiction because
place is emotional. Place is -- it's people. It's about the formation
of identity and character. So can you speak a bit about why
it was so critical for you to go and spend time in the
Texas hill country in order to write about Lyndon Johnson? >> Robert Caro: Well, that's
-- you ask good questions. But they're not questions
that I can answer too quickly. So when I started on
Lyndon Johnson I realized that I wasn't understanding
the people of the Texas hill country. This is at the time the most
isolated and remote area of the -- one of
the most isolated and remote areas of
the United States. You could drive sometimes. You'd drive. I know I would drive out there. I'd say, "You know,
no car has passed us in either direction
for half an hour." And you'd interview
the people there. Let's say you found
there were more -- a lot of widows for
some reason who had -- a woman who had known
Lyndon Johnson in college or in his early days,
political days. And the directions would be
something like, you know, you drive out of Austin
23 miles and watch for the cattle crossing, turn
left at the cattle crossing and then you would drive for
a number of miles, maybe 17 or 18 miles, and at the end of those miles there
would be a house and that's the person
you came to interview. And that was a woman who live
there, and you would realize in those 17 or 18 miles you
didn't pass another house. So there was such incredible
loneliness there I didn't know how to come to grips with that. And then they would show us,
you know, how hard they worked, how hard it was to pull water up from the wells,
a bucket at a time. You would say, "I don't
understand these people at all." And since I don't
understand them, I don't understand
Lyndon Johnson. We're going to have
to move there. And of course Ina said
legend -- now legendary line, "Why can't you write a
biography of Napoleon?" >> Jordan Pavlin: So good. Okay. One last question for you
before we go to the next clip. You are of course famous for
your painstaking research. But at the beginning of your
career when you were starting out as a reporter at "Newsday"
you actually had a reputation for being a very
fast rewrite man. So what changed? >> Robert Caro: Well, actually,
Jordan, nothing changed. It seems no one will believe me
since my books take seven years. I am a very fast writer. I do a lot of drafts,
but I write very fast, but what you can't do fast, and
it's the reason my books take so long, is the research. You simply if you're in an
archive and you want to -- you have a mass of papers and you remember my
first editor's admonition "Turn every page. Don't assume a damn thing. Turn every page," then you
say, "Well, if I'm going to turn every page, this
is going to take so long." You can't rush that, and that's
why my books take so long. >> Jordan Pavlin:
They're worth it. Okay. Can we go to
the next clip please? So, Bob Gottlieb, you have
edited the greatest writers of the 20th century. No editor in America has had
a more profound influence on the literature of our time. And it's also completely
clear to anyone who knows you that you've had an
absolutely great time doing it. So I'm curious to know what
do you think are the qualities that make you so outrageously
suited to this work. >> Robert Gottlieb: I don't
know what my qualities are. I know that I'm a reader. I was born a reader. I probably was reading
in the womb, although there's
no way of checking. That's what I did. I was a quintessential nerd
before we knew that word. And that's what I still do. I read. I read. I read. And then I order books
and then I open the packages and I'm very excited
and I read them. >> Jordan Pavlin:
That's a good life. >> Robert Gottlieb:
That's my activity. >> Jordan Pavlin: Okay. Follow up question to
this is I would love to hear you speak a little
bit about how you see the role of an editor, about what -- how an editor can best be
of service to a writer. And also how an editor
can potentially be harmful to a writer. >> Robert Gottlieb:
That's a lot. I'll try to do it
in one sentence. Look. Editing is just
plain common sense. If you're a reader,
you're reading along, and then something stops you. You say, "What's
the problem here?" There's something
maybe not wrong, but there's something off. So now let's look at this
and see what it may be. And then if you think
you've figured that out, you find if you're clever
enough a tactful way of expressing that
to the author. And sometimes it
works totally well, and other times I don't want
to say there's resistance, but sometimes you just don't
make sense to the writer. You haven't said
it in the right way or you haven't been
convincing or you, the editor, are just wrong and the author
had it right from the beginning. Editors go wrong when they
try to make a book or for that matter a magazine piece
as I know from the "New Yorker" when I was there --
when they try to make it in to something that it isn't. The point of an editor is to
try to make something better of what it is, and the moment
the editor starts trying to change that is in to
something else, there's trouble. And it's the editor's fault because it is not
the editor's book. It's the writer's book. So your job as the
editor is to help. I'm saying this again. It's to help the writer make
it more and better of what he or she wanted and has down
on paper at that point. So that's just common sense
really, and it's based on -- there's no rules. There's no anything. It's based on your
lifetime habit of reading. And when things go well,
which they generally do because I'll interrupt myself,
there's been a myth that editors and writers are frequently
or always at odds. That is almost never the case. I can't think of two, three,
experiences in my life of editing where I was
at odds with the writer. Sure over specific things,
but not on the basic things. It just can't work. You have to like
what you're reading. You have to see how
it can be helped. You have to -- you have to explain it sensibly,
calmly if possible. And hope that it
will get better. I don't know what editing is. It's just, as I keep saying -- it's just common
reading sense applied in a relationship
that is wholesome. And as I say again, most editor/writer
relationships are wholesome. And if they're not, those
two people should not be working together. >> Jordan Pavlin: Well, I
agree completely of course. And also I, you know -- sometimes people ask
me this question and, honestly, I have no skills. My only skill is reading. >> Robert Gottlieb:
That's what we do. >> Jordan Pavlin: Also,
though, the relationship between an author and an
editor is intensely personal and private. And I think that is part of
the magic of this film is that somehow you
were able to capture that with extraordinary
intimacy. I am wondering, and this is
a question for each of you, first what is the
most surprising thing that you have learned
about each other in your 50 years of
working together? And also did you learn
anything about each other that you didn't know
watching this movie? >> Robert Gottlieb: Did I
learn anything from the movie? Yeah. I learned to turn to
Bob to answer the question. >> Robert Caro: What
was the question? >> Jordan Pavlin:
I just we'll go to the second part
of the question. Did you learn anything new about
Bob Gottlieb watching this film? >> Robert Caro: Well,
actually I would say no. I mean I learned, you know,
something about his boyhood or childhood, but the
essential things I learned from when I was trying to pick
an editor from his comments on "The Power Broker" because
what happened was my agent said the important thing -- "I see
by reading your manuscript that the only thing you
care about is writing. So my job is to find you
an editor you can work with the rest of your life." So she set up appointments
for me with four editors, all of whom were
famous in the industry. And the first three of them took
me to either the Four Seasons or whatever the equivalent
of the Four Seasons was then and basically said they
could make me a star in which I had no
interest in that at all. Bob didn't go out to lunch which
was one thing, and he said, "You know, but we can
have a sandwich at my desk and talk about your book." So from the very first, you
know, a lot of the things that Bob said about the
book in that conversation or in subsequent conversations
I didn't agree with, but the thing was that he
was talking about my book at the same level at which
I was thinking about it, at which I was writing it, which basically I've never met
anyone else besides actually my wife Ina who could do and while,
you know, if you listen to her, would I learn anything
new about him? I don't think I learned anything
new about him, but what I knew from the beginning was
the important thing. I think he just -- you
know, he talks about editing in a way no one else can. He thinks about it in
a way no one else can. And while you may not agree,
we can spend an entire, and we have -- spent
an entire day fighting over whether there should
be a semicolon or not. Bob just doesn't get the -- >> Robert Gottlieb: Everything
I know about semicolons of course I learned from Bob. >> Robert Caro: So why are we
-- I think you've got it now. >> Jordan Pavlin: Can either
of you speak just briefly to you've had an accomplice
all these many years at Knopf in our legendary managing
editor Kathy Hourigan who I know is here tonight. Kathy Hourigan started at Knopf
in 1963 and she has been by both of your sides through the wars
and through all of the triumphs. Do you have anything you
-- just about her role? Because that is certainly
a role that if the role of the editor is mysterious
to the general public, the role of the managing
editor is totally unknown. >> Robert Gottlieb: Well,
we're talking here, Kathy, we're talking about a very
close friend of both of ours. And you could say she has put
us -- put up with us both. The reality is that she
is there to get it done. She is, to use a
word that Bob and I and Lizzie all think is
extremely important -- she is industrious to the nth
degree, whatever that means. I don't even know what the nth
degree is, but it's pretty far up the alphabet so it
must mean something. It's really hard to talk
about a relationship like this because it's so extensive
and yet it's so separate because we have not spent
a great deal of time with each other except
when we're working. Like many writers who are
totally involved with themselves and their work all day, in
the evening he needs people. I have had people bombarding
me all day and what I need to be is quiet at home
with my manuscript pages that I'm either making
marks on or throwing to the ground in outrage. Not rage. We won't go in
to my feelings about that. We've never socialized
except when we're together. I don't like going out in
the evenings unless I -- the other part of my life
which has to do with dance. For many years, I was at
dance performances every night getting away. You'll notice as far away
from words as you can get. But he didn't want to be -- he
didn't want to socialize either. We knew we were there for each
other when we needed each other, and we always enjoyed it except when we were shouting
at each other. >> Jordan Pavlin: And there is of course one other
extraordinary woman who has been essential in
your process, and that is Ina who we all owe an enormous debt to for making this work
possible in many ways. >> Robert Caro: Yes. Well, you know, you know
don't where to start. So we was, you know
-- there are things that I found out
only afterwards. We were living in the Bronx. You know, we had sold our house. You know, when I quit being a
reporter it's like I lost my -- didn't have a salary anymore. And, as I say, my first
advance was $5,000 which they had given me $2,500. >> Robert Gottlieb:
That's not us financially. That's -- >> Robert Caro: That is correct,
and we moved to this apartment in the Bronx which
we truly hated. And I remember when the "New
Yorker," when I finished from the "New Yorker," both "The
Power Broker" and it was for -- anyway they had never published
that much of a book before so it was substantial and
I told Ina and she said, "Now I can go back
to the dry cleaners." And I didn't even know that
for years she had been changing shopping centers because we
couldn't pay the bills there. I still remember the rent
on my apartment there. It was $363.70 a month. And there were many months
in which I was worried that I wouldn't be able
to pay that or not. So she sacrificed in that way. Second way is that she's a
brilliant writer herself. She's written two
books on France which are really
they're now classics because the first
one came out in 1994 and it's still selling,
"Road From the Past." And she gave up that in turn
to research and the reason -- Ina had never done research
before, but what happened, I had hurt my back rather
badly playing basketball, for those of you in the
audience who are 30 years old. Do not try to play
intramural basketball anymore. But there was a time
I couldn't -- went on for quite some time when I couldn't really
get out of bed. And so Ina had to start doing
research and the way that worked out is I knew the Mineola
court house, you know, by heart from being a reporter. So Ina would drive from the
Bronx to Mineola and I'd say, "Go to the phone booth
on the second floor." And when she was on the second
floor I'd say, "Now turn around and there are the
two swinging doors to the county clerk's office. Go in there and turn to your
right and about three aisles down you'll find so and
so and what we are looking for is such and such." And Ina became great at that,
great at doing research. And she's been doing research
and helping just as I can say. So the women of the hill
country were very hard to get to talking. They -- I used -- I often think
I could get anybody to talk to me, but these women
who'd lived these lives of complete isolation weren't
used to talking to strangers and weren't about to tell me
stories about Lyndon Johnson. So Ina -- we had three
fig trees on our property in the hill country and
Ina made fig preserves and would take the jar of
fig preserves to these women which is an act of friendliness,
and after that they would talk. If I was to -- we don't
have enough time here for me to tell you all the ways in which Ina has been an
integral part of these books. And the way she's
always encouraged me. You know, when I
said it only before about the one mile chapter
and I said, "Oh, I'm going -- you know, I'm going to find
out what this neighborhood is," so at the time, as I
said, we were broke. You say, "Oh, this is
going to take months." In fact, I figured
about six months. You know. So you say you've got to learn the history
of the neighborhood. That's hard. Then you've got to
interview all these people who lived there before. You've got to find
where they've moved to and then go and talk to them. That's going to take
about six months. So you see that's six months
more of living, you know. And I would say to Ina,
"This is the situation." And she would always
say, "Go do it." So that's the person
I'm married to, and she's sitting
out here somewhere. Forget I said all
the nice things. [ Applause ] >> Jordan Pavlin: Okay. Can we go to the
last clip please? [ Applause ] I find that tantalizing,
but not entirely satisfying. And I would just like to
try to get to the bottom of the great semicolon debate. Do you think -- can
you just sum up, Bob, in a sentence why you
hate the semicolon and why you find it so useful? >> Robert Gottlieb:
That is a libel. I do not hate the semicolon. I love the semicolon
and I use semicolons and I honor semicolons, but
only when they're appropriate. He agrees with me. >> Robert Caro: No. Not at all. Actually, but it's a very
-- you know, it's a very -- to tell you the truth, if you
talked about that, it would talk to the heart of what's
been going on between us for
all these books. It's not, you know -- it's true. Bob thinks I use
too many semicolons. I could say, "Well, it's part
of the rhythm of my writing and I think it's important
the way I establish a rhythm," but the thing that matters
a lot more than that is that if Bob is not
one of these editors that if he says something -- let's say a semicolon
should be taken out. And you say, "No." He's not like many editors
going to go on to the next page. Say, "Okay." You're going to have
to argue with him. He's going to have to try to
persuade you and reason why that should not -- that
should not be a semicolon, but a comma or a period. You are going to
have to answer that. That is going to make you
think about why you used it. And it's going to make
your, in my opinion -- Bob has made my writing -- it's better because as you're
writing you are thinking about why you're doing things. I'm more than if you had an
editor who simply let you go. >> Robert Gottlieb: Who
wants to turn the page. >> Jordan Pavlin: Okay
I -- we're going to -- you all have questions and
I have your questions here. We're going to go to
the audience questions. I just have one last
question and it's for Lizzie. You two have, you know, had
some fairly epic battles about cutting in addition to the
semicolon which can be painful which can sometimes
be anguished. Lizzie, I am wondering
were there things -- I mean you worked on this
film for seven years. It's under two hours. Were there things
that you had to cut that were especially
painful to cut, and did you have a
guiding question or maxim that was clarifying and helped
you to make those decisions? >> Lizzie Gottlieb: Those
are some great questions. And, as you said, that's
something that just popped in to my mind that I
thought I should say that I have not I don't think
said publicly about this film, but I did have one battle
with my father in the making of this film and it was that
he thought that at the end of the title there should
be an exclamation point. And he said, "It's a command. Turn every page." It's an exhortation. >> Robert Caro: Get
the word right. >> Lizzie Gottlieb:
I'm so sorry. It's the wrong word. It's an exhortation. And it is an exhortation, but
I felt that for those of us who text all the time, we
overuse the exclamation point. And I felt that it might
seem a little hysterical. >> Robert Caro: See, that
never occurred to me. That never occurred to
me because I don't text and I'm not sure I know
what it is to text. >> Lizzie Gottlieb: So I
just wanted to say that. There were a lot of
things we had to cut out and it was quite painful. Do you want me to answer that
question or the maxim question? >> Jordan Pavlin: Both. >> Lizzie Gottlieb:
Are you sure? Okay. Of the things
we had to cut out, and I think this might be
an appropriate one to talk about here at the
library, one of the things that every time I watch the
film I find painful to not have in it is we did an
incredible interview with Andy Hughes who's the
head of production at Knopf. And he spoke about the
quality of the paper they use and how much Bob Caro
cares about the paper and about the cloth
binding that they use on all of Bob Caro's books. And it's very hard,
as I understand it, to do now because books
are not bound in that way and the paper quality
is not always, you know, allowed to be as good as it is. But he says they wanted the
Johnson books to look at the end of them like a singularity
of effort and he says out of respect for Bob Caro
and for the readers who devoted so much of their time to these
books they don't want the quality to degrade just
because time has marched on. And I find that so
beautiful and touching and such an incredible thing
about Knopf and their dedication to these books and to all books. >> Robert Gottlieb: You
know, let's remember, though, a great deal had to be cut out
of "The Power Broker," but none of it had to be cut out
because it wasn't worthy. It was just a limit to how much
we could put inside one volume and bind it. And we, Bob and I, over
the years talked often about how much we actually cut. And we finally agreed that we
had cut 350,000 words out of it. That's a lot of words. And that's like five
novels worth left it. And I would have been very
happy to have all of it in, but we couldn't do Robert
Moses in two volumes. I think I said to
Bob, "I could -- we can sell Robert Moses once,
but we cannot do it twice." And then we didn't. It was ugly, but it wasn't ugly
because it was contentious. It was ugly because we
had the same problem which was we didn't want
to lose this material. So the tragic life of an
editor, but there it is. You might as well
know what it's like. >> Jordan Pavlin: And,
Lizzie, what was your maxim? >> Lizzie Gottlieb:
Well, I made this movie with two extraordinary
women who are here tonight, Joanne Nerenberg and Jen
Small, and over the seven years of working on this film we
had sort of some north stars. Of course we have Robert
Caro who turns every page and we have my dad whose
motto is check -- sorry. Get it done. Do it now. Check, check, and check again. And his other motto is
give the reader a break. So we would sometimes be at
a crossroads and think, "Oh, do we really have to do this? Should we do it?" And we would turn to
each other and say, "What would Robert Caro do?" Or, "What would Bob
Gottlieb do?" So those were sort of our
north stars and it's hard not to then do everything
when you have these guys who you were trying to capture. >> Jordan Pavlin: Great. A question for Robert
Caro from the audience. This is fascinating. Looking back, have you
ever crossed a line, but thought it was worth it? >> Robert Caro: I'm sorry. >> Jordan Pavlin: Have
you ever crossed a line, but thought it was worth it? >> Robert Caro: Crossed a line? >> Jordan Pavlin:
Crossed a line. I think, you know. >> Robert Caro: I'm
not sure what you mean. >> Jordan Pavlin: I think this
person means have you ever -- have you ever taken something
too far in your work? Have you ever crossed
a line in how you spoke to people while you
were researching and interviewing people? Have you ever dug too deep? I think. >> Robert Caro: No, but you
can -- the line can be a -- I'll answer it this way. The line can be a long way away. I'll tell, you know, one story. I mean about Lyndon Johnson. You know, Lyndon
Johnson got to the center by stealing an election. He was elected by 87 votes that were basically cast
the week after the election. And but when I started there
was a line and the line was in all previous biographies about Lyndon Johnson
they either said, "Oh, that stealing was just a normal
part of Texas politics" or, "He didn't really steal
it" or, more often, and this is the line, it's not
quite what you mean by a line, but it's a line -- the line
was no one will ever know if that election was stolen. And I read that in book after
book and I remember thinking, "I am never going to write
that line no one will ever know if the election was stolen if,
in fact, there's a way to find out if the election was stolen." And everyone had told me that
the key was this man Luis Salas who was the judge, the
precinct, the election judge in precinct 13 which is the
ballot box that was found in the desert a week
after the election. Found as in quotes as is
the fact that the 202 votes in that ballot box, 200 of
them for Lyndon Johnson, were cast alphabetically
and in the same handwriting. But I was told that
you couldn't prove this because Luis Salas had testified
on the stand in a hearing that he in fact -- the votes
were all legitimately cast. So I was told I was trying to
find Luis Salas and I was told over and over again
that he had died. Luis Salas? Oh, he's dead. Luis Salas? He's dead. And then one woman said,
"Luis Salas isn't dead." What happened was Luis Salas
was the enforcer for the man who controlled these border
counties where the votes came from and he was this
huge burly man. He had a very -- reputation
as being very mean. He was known as the indio,
and he had committed -- he was involved in another
murder investigation and had fled down to
Mexico some years before and moved from town to town. So if you talk about a line, you
say, "Finding a man who's moved from town to town in Mexico
years later, that's about as far as you can go in interviewing." But I did finally find him. He had actually moved
back to Houston and was living in a trailer. So I didn't want to
give him a chance to say that he wouldn't talk to me so I
just went immediately to Houston and knocked on the
door of the trailer. So he was this big burly
enforcer and I was expecting to be looking up at this
man when he opened the door and instead this very frail, very wizened old man
opened the door and I said, "My name is Bob Caro
and I'm writing a book on Lyndon Johnson." And he said, "Then you
want to know about box 13." And he said, "Well, I
have written it all down." And he took out of a trunk a
manuscript 97 pages long typed in which he had written
the story of box 13. I would say one line in it was, "I lied on the witness
stand to Judge Smith." And then he told about how he
had stuffed the ballot box. So you say if there's a line
that you have to go to -- if there's something that I
believe it's that the answer to most things can be found if you'll just spend enough
time trying to find them. So it's not quite the answer to
your question, but it's my line. >> Jordan Pavlin: Great. And that's a great way
to end this evening. Such a pleasure and a
privilege to be here with the three of you. "Turn Every Page" is
being released nationwide on December 30th. Go see it. Tell your friends to go see it. It's in the service of sustaining literature
and culture. It's important. It's beautiful. It's totally captivating. Thank you, all, very much. [ Applause ]
