Winter 2011 Tca Press Tour

PBS

WINTER 2011 TCA PRESS TOUR

FORGIVENESS: A TIME TO LOVE & A TIME

TO HATE

Helen Whitney, producer, director and writer (THE MORMONS, FRONTLINE “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero”)

Terri Jentz, film subject

Daniel Glick, film subject

Liesbeth Gerritsen, film subject

Thane Rosenbaum, film subject

The Langham Huntington Hotel

Pasadena, California

January 8, 2011

© 2011 PBS. All rights reserved.

All TCA Press Tour transcripts are prepared immediately following press conferences. They are provided for your convenience and are not intended as a substitute at press conferences. Due to the speed with which these transcripts are prepared, complete accuracy cannot be guaranteed.

HELEN WHITNEY: I'd like to thank all of you for coming and introduce myself as Helen Whitney. I'm the producer/director/writer, and I'd like to introduce the panel, Thane Rosenbaum, Terri Jentz, Dan Glick, Liesbeth Gerritsen. And we welcome your questions.

QUESTION: Ms. Whitney, how does something like this come to be made? Where does the idea for this come from? And I know the Fetzer Institute is involved, in what way, and how does it all come together?

HELEN WHITNEY: In this particular case, a man approached me, who ultimately became my executive producer, who was passionate about this subject and offered it to me, total artistic control. I think Fetzer at that point might have been involved. I'm really not sure, and the reels for drama for me was I was coming off a very large show, and I was craving something small, something focused, and this size of this scale of this film was something I had to come to terms with, and I did, and in about three months, I said I'll do it, and I really was hooked. I found that perhaps in the last 35years I have of all my subjects, this one seemed to resonate most deeply with strangers as well as my colleagues. And once I got in to answer your question obliquely I couldn't get out. I found it so fascinating, and I also learned along the way that I, along with most other people, didn't really understand what forgiveness was about, and there is very little consensus about what it's about, and I found that enormously exciting, because it was complicated and I could complicate everybody else's view of forgiveness, and then just the last piece that drew me in, because I was reluctant at the beginning, was the fact that there really is this new forgiveness alive in the world which has left the pulpit and hit the streets, forms the language of therapy and restorative justice, and it's blowing through the world, and claiming to heal countries as well as entities. So it's a long answer to your question, but it came about through Paul Dietrich, my executive producer's passion for the subject and my initial reluctance, and then I think if anything, my passion exceeded his.
QUESTION: Why was Paul Dietrich interested, and who is he, and how did you sell this to PBS? How were you able to persuade them that this is something they should be interested in?

HELEN WHITNEY: I didn't have any difficulty persuading them. When I spoke about it to WETA, they were excited immediately, and they know my work. The spiritual landscape is my beat. I was an obvious fit for this program. It's what I've been doing for the last 20years.

QUESTION: And the first part of the question, about Mr. Freidrich [sic].

HELEN WHITNEY: Mr.Dietrich? This is not his day job. He's a global financial analyst and investor, and he cares a great deal about spiritual ideas. He's Catholic and fascinated with the subject, and he was able to draw me in and interest me.

QUESTION: Hi. Just dovetailing off what you just said, I guess the subject is really from all of our religious upbringing and different perspectives. I'm a lapsed Catholic with a Jewish father who is nonpracticing. He's agnostic. It always was bizarre to me the evangelical take that anyone, even Hitler, if he came to a preacher and said I'm sorry for my sins and he could be saved, that notion of being saved. And I'm wondering, do you touch on that? I know the Amish have their beliefs and evangelicals feel very strongly that anyone can be saved if they say they believe in Jesus in a public forum.

HELEN WHITNEY: In the act on the Amish, that is touched about in quite a significant way, and the word is not so much "saved" as "unforgivable" and "forgivable." And for the Amish and for most evangelicals or people who take the Bible very literally, there's plenty of meat to chew on in terms of anything is forgiven, except for that mysterious clause to sin against the Holy Spirit, which very few people understand what that means. So in the Amish section, what I wanted to do was to look at something, because we all know what that story is about, about a neighbor coming in and killing, I guess, five of their children, wounding ten, and it was a neighbor, and they instantly forgave him without conditions. He had to die, but had he been alive, they would have forgiven him. While it was an act that transfixed people, their forgiveness, unconditional forgiveness, everyone can be saved, which is what you're asking me, there were other voices, and there were fascinating other voices which raised questions, not only about the psychological sort of appropriateness of it, but more significantly, the Jewish divide on that question of immediate forgiveness and anybody can be forgiven right up to Hitler, and also a violation they felt, many Jews do feel, of that important order of forgiveness, which is in laid out steps: acknowledgment, contrition, reparations and then finally forgiveness. We do tackle just those very questions you raised in that initial act.

QUESTION: To follow on that question, that question was from the religious perspective. From the personal perspective, for anyone on the panel, when is forgiveness healing and when does it feel like you're giving evil a pass?

HELEN WHITNEY: That's for the insider to really be able to speak to the most. There's no hardfast rule, and I keep saying that "Forgiveness is Plural" could have been the name of this show. "Forgiveness: A Time to Love & a Time to Hate." You could be looking at someone forgiving someone for something you think is totally inappropriate. Totally inappropriate. There's enormous complexity, and your question addresses that quite well, and to the outsider just seems either unforgivable, inappropriate, ludicrous or absolutely makes eminent sense to the person being forgiven or doing the forgiving. It is such an intricate, intimate moment.

QUESTION: Do any of the panelists have comments?

TERRI JENTZ: I'd like to comment on that. When Helen approached me to be in the film, I said that I wanted to discuss the issue of forgiveness in the context of whether or not you believed that there is radical evil, and I don't believe that forgiveness can be discussed unless you do debate the question of whether or not some crimes are unforgivable. I do personally believe in the existence of radical evil. I believe I was the victim of it. I can tell you my personal story was that I was very inoculated by New Age thinking shortly after this attack, and I began to feel that I was humming on a very high spiritual plane because I socalled forgave my perpetrator, who, by the way, was never identified. Was just kind of a force that came out of the darkness one night and nearly absconded with my life, and I had forgiven him. I thought that the fact that I never thought about him, never cared to pursue justice was an example of how evolved I was.
What, in fact, happened was during a period of about 15years, I noticed a continual deadening of my will. This ersatz forgiveness had drained me of my own will towards creating something of my destiny, and it wasn't until I woke up one day and realized I have to attach a specific identity to that headless torso of a cowboy that with an ax that night, and until I do that, I'm not going to regain my will. A tooeasy forgiving, a cheap grace almost killed me.

QUESTION: Is it helpful at all when you read things of the neuroscience literature that says sometimes these are not acts of will, they're acts of damaged brains?

TERRI JENTZ: I'm sorry. In whose case? The criminal?

QUESTION: Yeah. In the case of criminals, there has been this whole question of culpability, and if you're looking at someone who has some sort of brain injury or chemical imbalance that causes these things

TERRI JENTZ: I don't subscribe to that as a way to not hold someone accountable. I believe in choice and free will, and psychopathy is actually now in the DSMIV, and that, I believe, was the affliction of my attacker, and psychopaths know exactly what they're doing. In his case, he was a is a radically evil human being, and there is nothing that he has ever done to deserve the softening of my condemnation.

HELEN WHITNEY: Just to pick up on the both of you could respond to the whole struggle realm of unforgiveness and forgiveness. Dan?

DANIEL GLICK: Yeah. I can say that 11years ago if you told me I'd be sitting on the stage with my exwife talking about forgiveness, I would have asked what region of Buddhaland did you come from, because it would have seemed completely inconceivable to me. I guess what I learned, and I think in the film watching the themes run through some of the other stories, is that forgiveness is not a linear path. There are these moments, glimmers of recognition or of forgiveness or of understanding. They come, and they go, and they come, and they go, and it kind of cycles on itself. I think that's a theme that I saw in the film and that I experienced myself.

LIESBETH GERRITSEN: And I would say that being the agent of suffering, then my question became when and if can I ask forgiveness? When is that appropriate? At what point can I do that for myself? And that's a question I'm still struggling with. It's a gnarly question, and it has a gnarly answer for me inside myself. If I could say anything about it, I think I can sort of be when I can sort of be more with what's true about me, first is thinking about what is wrong with me, I think when I can really be with that truth about myself, then I think I can forgive myself. I'm not quite there yet.

QUESTION: Sometimes when we choose to forgive someone or if we're asking for forgiveness, it's sort of like picking at an old wound. In this case, what were you feeling when you were being filmed? Was it therapeutic? Did it bring back old tensions? These are for all of the film subjects. Anyone can feel free to answer.

LIESBETH GERRITSEN: For me, the whole project was very therapeutic, from my perspective, for the family unit. That was a big deal for my children to be interviewed at length, and Helen is an excellent interviewer. For me, I can't say it was therapeutic. It was actually pretty painful. So when you say about picking at a wound, I would say for me that was very true. After watching the film and thinking about it, just recently, because I only saw it last night my piece in it I think there was something about it now where I look at it and I think, wow. I believe you can't be forgiven unless you somehow pay. There's like a payment thing. You can't just ask for it and then you get it. That, somehow, seems wrong to me. So somehow going in there and refeeling that pain, if you will, in a way is also, for me, I needed to do that for myself, and I think that's part of my journey.

DANIEL GLICK: I also saw it for the first time last night. One of the things that I've been struggling with the most is the how the effect of participating in this on my kids, who are now 23 and 19 and were with us this is two and a half years ago when they were filmed and I really worried a lot about what them seeing themselves on screen might do for them or to them, and we'll see. They haven't seen it yet either. For me, I guess I would use the word catharsis. There was a really important peace in telling the story, and frankly, in having Liesbeth tell the story, that I think helped us all move one more step, and again, not linearly through it. But one more step, two steps up. We'll still have a step back, but it moved along. And I say this as somebody who is more used to being out there than here, because I'm a journalist, and to be in this sort of confessional age is not at all my style. So it was a difficult choice to do that. But feeling not only would this be possibly helpful for myself and the relationship with the mother of my children, but that other people realize they're not alone when they suffer similar kinds of problems, indignities, losses, grief.

HELEN WHITNEY: I just would like to follow up with an

interesting story that is germane to your question about

the pain of those interviews or can they be cathartic. I

was filming an entirely different story about infidelity,

I believe -- I'm trying to remember -- but the father of

the man I was talking to was in hospice. And they

thought he was going to die, and he should have died

because he really was in extraordinary pain. And he

refused to die, and that was what was going on. And he

kept being interested in this film that they would come

back and tell him about. And he said, "I need to talk to

her," which was me.

And when I came, and he said, "I'd like to be filmed." And

he was hanging on to this sin that he thought it was. He

was someone who in World War II opened up the camps, and he

was horrified by what he saw. And he was in charge of some

of the German comandants, and he killed one of them. And

he never told anybody. And he led this totally exemplary

life, and he was a judge, and he was a lawyer, great father.

And at the end of his life, he could not get forgiveness.

He held it to himself. He couldn't talk about it except,

you know, inside of himself.

And then when he talked about it with me, we spent a long

time, and he talked about it. He said, "I'm now able to

die." It was actually an extraordinary moment, and he died

soon after. Anyway, that is just picking up on your

question about catharsis.

QUESTION: Is there a distinction in film being drawn

between reconciliation, which is two-part, two-person

process in forgiveness and which does not necessarily have

to involve the forgiven.

HELEN WHITNEY: Yes, and there's a recognition.

Particularly in the second act of the film, all of the

stories we've been talking about are in act one as

forgiveness has entered the secular world in a personal

way. And these are all very important personal stories.

But in the second part of this film, we move into the

land of the political realm. Forgiveness and

reconciliation as it blows through the world of the life

of nations, entities and institutions, and there the

distinction actually becomes much clearer about

forgiveness and reconciliation.

I think that's something that, Thane, you've thought about a

lot in relation to --

THANE ROSENBAUM: Well, it really is an original film.

To my knowledge I've never heard of a film that

confronted forgiveness, which is a word that most people

think they understand and is spoken of very casually, but

it's actually much more complex. And one should not

mistake this film as a, you know, therapeutic, feel-good,

self-help film. It is a very smart film and incredibly

original film. It doesn't answer the questions; it

only asks the question about this very strong moral need

to have acknowledged the damage and injustices that have

happened to people and to also experience the moral

obligation, the moral responsibility to seek forgiveness

for the purposes of providing repair.

So, for instance, in part two what the film addresses is can

a nation feel shame even, you know, 50 years after an

atrocity, when those who are not legally culpable are no

longer with us, can the passage of time and the passing of

generations, can the next generation undertake the moral

responsibility to seek -- to give an apology and to

undertake the meaningful gestures of repair? That is a very

profound idea when you're not dealing with individuals,

you're dealing with a nation's sense of trauma, which

applies both to the cases of individuals. Because you saw

the little piece about Kathy Ann Power when she used the

word "tore," which is really an excellent word because the

film really speaks to this idea of repair. That forgiveness

is the language of memory, and it's the language of repair.