Liz Carpenter Documentary: Her Daughter Tells Her Story, Part 1

Documentary First, Episode 245. Christian Taylor talks with Abby Ginzberg and Christy Carpenter, co-directors of Shaking It Up: The Life and Times of Liz Carpenter, in the first of two parts. 48 minutes. Released March 1, 2025.

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What does it take to tell your own mother's story on film?

Christy Carpenter spent years going through her mother's papers. Liz Carpenter, as Christy says, was "a complete pack rat," and some of the boxes go all the way back to college. Christy was planning to write a book. Then her old friend Abby Ginzberg, a Peabody Award-winning documentary director, called and said she'd like to make a film instead. "She's too funny," Abby remembers thinking. "We need to put her up on the screen. Then you can put her in a book later."

In Episode 245 of Documentary First, the first of two parts, host Christian Taylor talks with Abby and Christy about Shaking It Up: The Life and Times of Liz Carpenter. Liz was a Texas journalist, a key aide to Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson, and a leader in the women's movement. Christian worked in media and broadcasting in Washington in the early 1980s, and she says Liz blazed a trail for her. Abby and Christy met as housemates in London in 1969, during a junior year at the London School of Economics. Abby tells how she left the law to make training films for workers, where "all I had to do was make people be able to stay awake," and why she believes her Peabody came from choosing a story nobody else was telling.

Then they get honest about what a film like this costs. They raised a little over half a million dollars, much of it from Liz's and Christy's friends, and gave their own time for free. Archival rights, Abby says, "have gone through the roof." They talk about why an archival producer is worth every hour, the Glenn Miller and Isley Brothers songs they couldn't give up, the Johnny Cash song they couldn't get, and how Christy's notes on her mother's papers pointed their archival producer to the footage.

In this episode, you'll learn

• Why Liz Carpenter meant so much to Christian as a young woman in Washington media
• How Abby went from criminal defense lawyer to documentary filmmaker
• Why Abby credits her Peabody to picking a subject nobody else had filmed
• How Liz's 100th birthday led to the film
• Why Abby pushed for a film before a book
• The three chapters that shaped the story: journalism, the White House and the women's movement
• How childhood friends helped pay for the sizzle reel
• What archival rights cost for festivals, for PBS and in perpetuity
• Why you can love a song, budget for it and still be told no
• How two editors helped weave the story together

Questions and answers

Who made the Liz Carpenter documentary?

Shaking It Up: The Life and Times of Liz Carpenter was directed and produced by Abby Ginzberg and Christy Carpenter, Liz's daughter. Christy had spent years reviewing her mother's papers, and Abby likely first met Liz when she and Christy were housemates in London in 1969. Christy says it took roughly three years, the last two of them "really hard work."

Who was Liz Carpenter?

Liz Carpenter (1920 to 2010) was a Texas journalist who covered Washington from the early 1940s, then went to work for Lyndon Johnson and became press secretary and staff director to Lady Bird Johnson. She later helped found the National Women's Political Caucus and campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment. Christy says the film tells her story in three chapters: journalism, the White House years and the women's movement.

How much do archival rights cost for a documentary?

Abby Ginzberg says archival costs "have gone through the roof." Their rights for a year of film festivals cost over $60,000 or $70,000, and upgrading for public television doubled it. They licensed footage for five years for the PBS broadcast, because rights in perpetuity roughly double the cost again. Photos from the LBJ Library were free to use, but sometimes cost money to get in higher resolution.

Why hire an archival producer?

Abby and Christy say the film depended on material spread across the networks, C-SPAN, presidential libraries and smaller archives. Christy says keeping track of who owns each item is "tedious work that takes an expert." Abby puts the going rate at $50 to $60 an hour, and says they also hired a separate music rights producer.

How did Shaking It Up raise its budget?

Christy Carpenter says the budget was a little over half a million dollars. Her childhood friends came through early, including one who paid for the sizzle reel and another who gave the largest single donation. Abby says every dollar came in as a charitable gift through nonprofit sponsors, including Austin PBS, and that she and Christy were never paid for their own time.

Why is music licensing hard for documentaries?

Christy says they wanted certain songs, like Glenn Miller's "String of Pearls" for Liz's arrival in Washington and the Isley Brothers' "It's Your Thing." For Lady Bird's whistle-stop train tour they used "Hello, Lyndon," but the Johnny Cash estate wouldn't license his music. Abby says she has been told no on many pieces of music, even when she offered to pay.

Chapters

Times match the YouTube video.

• 0:00 Liz Carpenter, a Trailblazer for Christian
• 6:44 From Lawyer to Documentary Filmmaker
• 10:58 A Peabody for Telling an Untold Story
• 14:18 Housemates in London, 1969
• 17:33 Liz's 100th Birthday Sparks the Film
• 20:37 Christy Carpenter's Path to the Paley Center
• 24:42 Why a Film Before a Book
• 27:33 Raising the Money From Friends
• 31:15 What Archival Rights Really Cost
• 34:10 Music Rights and Being Told No
• 37:26 Finding Liz in the Archives
• 40:58 Building the Story With Two Editors
• 42:46 DocuView Deja View Picks

Watch the film

Shaking It Up: The Life and Times of Liz Carpenter is on PBS. Learn more at lizcarpenterfilm.com.

DocuView Deja View picks

• The Vote (2020), American Experience, written and directed by Michelle Ferrari. Christy's pick, about the last push to ratify the 19th Amendment, told in two parts.
• Porcelain War (2024), by Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev. Abby's pick, about Ukrainian artists who keep making porcelain figures during the war.
• No Other Land (2024), by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. Abby's second pick, made by Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers together in the West Bank. She says it made her cry many times.

See every guest pick on the DocuView Deja View page.

About the guests

Abby Ginzberg is a Peabody Award-winning director and an inductee of the Silver Circle of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and has been making documentaries about race and social justice for more than 35 years. A former lawyer who practiced criminal defense, she won the Peabody for Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa (2014). Her film Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth to Power won the 2022 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary. Abby's bio

Christy Carpenter is Liz Carpenter's daughter and the film's co-director and co-producer. She grew up in Washington, D.C., graduated from Brown University and earned a law degree, then worked in early interactive media, public relations and communications. She served as EVP and COO of the Paley Center for Media and as CEO of the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute.

Related conversations

The conversation continues in Liz Carpenter Documentary, Part 2, on who Liz was, how Abby and Christy balanced the portrait with the politics, and how the film got to PBS. For more on archival footage, hear Phil Maher on home movies, and for another PBS film's funding story, Erik and Chris Ewers on Ken Burns' Thoreau.

About Documentary First

Documentary First is a weekly podcast about the people behind documentaries and how the work changed them. Host Christian Taylor, director of the award-winning The Girl Who Wore Freedom, talks with filmmakers, distributors, entertainment lawyers, actors and more, from Ken Burns and PBS American Masters creator Susan Lacy to first-timers, across nearly 300 conversations. Each week brings one of two formats: a long-form conversation with the people behind films for HBO, Netflix, PBS and independent film, or The Deep Dive, where Christian takes one insight from a recent conversation and follows it wherever it leads. Listen Notes ranks the show in the top 5% of all podcasts worldwide. New episodes every week.

Follow the show | Support on Patreon

This episode is sponsored by Artillery Sports. Use the code DocFirst for 10% off your first order at artillerysports.com.

Full transcript

Christian: Welcome to Documentary First, an inside look at documentary filmmaking. I'm your host, Christian Taylor, and a documentary filmmaker myself. I'm recording this podcast today on February 20th, 2025. And if you're a regular listener, you'll know this feature of our podcast where I share the date we are recording is new. But I feel we're in a new world since January 21st, 2025. And I wanna give a little context for our discussion today. Today I am joined by two amazing women, Abby, hold on, Abby Ginsburg and Christy Carpenter. So sorry, ladies, welcome. So nice to have you here. These ladies have created an incredible documentary that I am delighted to introduce to you guys today. It's called Shaking It Up, The Life and Times of Liz Carpenter. And it is a powerful documentary in my opinion about a lady who was a trailblazer. In fact, I was saying earlier and absolutely very emotionally that this woman, I she really blazed a trail for me because she was just a mover and a shaker in Washington DC for the women that were in media. And one of the women that she worked with was Helen Thomas. And Helen Thomas was one of my idols when I was in media and broadcasting in Washington, D.C. and trying to make it there as a young woman in a male world, because in the early 1980s, that's exactly what it still was. So I really very much looked up to Liz as I was learning about her life and I didn't even know about her. So thank you, ladies, for making this film and welcome to Documentary First.

Christy Carpenter: Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Abby Ginzberg: Yeah, thanks for having us.

Christian: Yeah. And Abby, just want to say, Abby, you are a trooper. She is right now in Hanoi, in Vietnam, right? Yeah. And it's 1230 PM,

Abby Ginzberg: I am. Yes. 1240, 1145, not quite 1230.

Christian: 11.45. my goodness gracious. Well, thank you so much for being a trooper and being here with us. I know you must care about this film a lot to be able to be here and talk about it. We are here talking about this as it's about to be released on PBS, right? Yeah, that's exciting. Congratulations for that. That is a big accomplishment.

Christy Carpenter: Yes, it's going to be on, we hope lots and lots of scheduling decisions are still being made by stations, but it's an a la carte choice for them. And we're getting fantastic pickup around the country for the documentary. we're excited to march for Women's History Month.

Christian: that's. That's wonderful. All right, well, let me read a little bit before we get into deeply. I wanna read a little bit about the film and about who you ladies are. Just give a little bit about your background and then we'll dive in and let you introduce yourselves. All right, so founded by film co-directors and co-producers, Christy Carpenter and Abby Ginsburg, Liz Carpenter Film Partners was created for the purpose of developing the documentary film, Shaking It Up, the life and times of Liz Carpenter. The collaboration brought together two passionate minds with unique skill sets to tell the story of a Texas trailblazer, key aid to President Lyndon Baines Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson, journalist and women's rights activist Liz Carpenter. Co-director, co-producer, Christy Carpenter is the daughter of Liz Carpenter. She has devoted several years to reviewing the voluminous papers, oral histories and video materials of her pack rat mother. augmenting her own personal memories. Her very deep knowledge of her mother's life, friends and former colleagues, as well as her media savvy and passion for history, offer an exceptional resource for this film. Prior to undertaking research on her mother's papers, Carpenter served in New York City as the EVP and COO of the Paley Center for Media, the premier institution dedicated to advancing the understanding of media, its artistic value, business dynamics, historical importance and social and cultural impact. Sounds amazing. I didn't even know about that, but now I want to know more. Additionally, she served as the CEO of the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute, a center for thought leadership on significant state, national and international issues. You sounds like you combined both of your mother's passions in your career. That's pretty amazing. Co-producer and co-director Abby Ginsberg, a Peabody-a-winning director and Emmy Silver Circle inductee, congratulations about those, has been producing compelling documentaries about race and social justice for over 35 years. Honored with induction into the Silver Circle of the National Association of Television Arts and Sciences, in recognition of her 25 years of commitment to the film and TV community, Abby has created an impressive portfolio of award-winning films. Her film, Barbara Lee, Speaking Truths of Power, won the 2022 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary and is available on Amazon Prime, which I cannot wait to watch. And now we don't even need to get to documentary deja vu in order to have a recommended film. We'll have to put that in our links. So that's just amazing. And now to learn more, everybody, you can go to visitlizcarpenterfilm.com. We'll put that in our show notes. But anyway, everybody, we have two powerhouse ladies here. And we're gonna put links for all of the places that they worked in our show notes as well. But here I want them to just unpack a little bit about who they are and what they did. And Abby, I would like to start with you. Please tell us a little bit about your amazing work in film, how you started. I mean, it just sounds like, you know, it's incredible. It sounds like you're a trailblazer yourself. So how did you get started in this crazy business?

Abby Ginzberg: Okay, so one thing that's similar about both me and Christy and I is that we both went to law school and then didn't really practice. We're old enough that in those days there were not a lot of, know, broadcast journalism was not in my mind. mean, Christy might have had a nurse, but it wasn't in my mind and they didn't really have courses in documentary filmmaking. So literally I went to law school because I couldn't do science and I couldn't go to medical school and I wasn't interested in business. So I went to law school and about 10 years after I graduated and I had taught and practiced criminal defense law and also practiced some occupational safety and health law, I really felt like I needed a new career. I was like, okay, I did this for 10 years. This is good. I'm glad I did it. Now what am I gonna do? And there was some way in which, because I had done jury trials and was very sort of attached to storytelling as a part of sort of being a lawyer, that I just moved over to telling stories. I actually started making training films for workers. That was my first sort of gig. And I did that for a couple of years. again, the bar was very low because workers hated to have to watch training films that were boring and didactic and whatever. So if you added a little humor and you hired interesting people to maybe be the actors, you could actually get people's attention. So I got started, as I say, just all I had to do was make people be able to stay awake and I was golden. And then I moved into documentary filmmaking. And as a documentary filmmaker, you know, either stories came to me and it became clear I would be a good person to tell a certain story or, you know, I went out looking for them and found them. And there's throughout my entire career. there's been a connection to this early life as a lawyer because many of the people whose stories I've chosen to tell, I got to meet when I was a lawyer. So if I tell the story of a really interesting, you know, African-American jurist, but who happened to be the first black attorney in the civil rights movement, in the civil rights department of the Department of Justice, I met him when I was a lawyer. And so if you look at my resume, you'll see a lot of lawyers and judges who I thought their stories inspired me and I thought they could inspire others. And so what I would say is that there's kind of a direct line from the people whose stories I've told before to Liz Carpenter, whose story was inspirational for me, even though I knew her, was, you know, she was an inspiration. And, and I thought, you know, what I had learned as a documentary filmmaker combined with what Christina was her daughter and her archivist, we could really do something quite profound. that's what, you know, there's a direct line from the other work I've done to this film. And, you know, I would say it was actually an honor to have the chance to tell Liz's story. I'm really glad that we did. you know, and we're sharing, I mean, one other thing I would say is that often the people whose stories I tell are below the radar. They tend to be working with part of... know, organizations and people that you have heard of. mean, Sultan Henderson, my Black judge, had a whole story about Martin Luther King. Liz has an amazing story about her connections to the Johnsons and others, but her name is not a household word. And so that's part of our goal here is to, you know, shine a spotlight on this woman that's not a household name and hope that more and more people will be inspired by her.

Christian: That's one of my favorite things to do too, is to tell untold stories and lift up those voices that would otherwise not be heard. It's just a beautiful thing that you're doing for sure. Now you definitely have a gift obviously of doing that because you've been awarded these amazing awards. Talk to me about what you think makes your work different and why have you been honored? it your storytelling, your different way of viewing things? Talk to me about that.

Abby Ginzberg: I I'd say, in part, I've been lucky. And no, that's not entirely true. In part, I've made good choices about the people, hey, I know what I'm not being frozen here, about the people whose stories I'm telling. My thing is gone. Okay, so I won a Peabody Award for a film I did on a South African anti-apartheid activist lawyer and judge. And I mean, again, nobody else was going to make a film about Albie Sachs at the time that I did it, which was in 2014. He has subsequently become part of many other documentaries. But when I chose to tell his full story, nobody had ever heard of him outside of South Africa and a handful of people in the United States. So I think that the reason that that film was acknowledged with a Peabody is because his story was amazing. People hadn't heard of him. And we did a competent job of telling it. So I think that's kind of, you know what I mean? There was nothing exceptional about it other than really the choice to tell his story. And what an amazing story it was. Let me just say something about him, which is he was a guy who was part of the anti-apartheid movement living in Mozambique and he was blown up in a targeted attack by the South African security forces. And he lost an arm in the side of an eye and managed to survive. That was amazing. And he survived and he's still alive today as one of the oldest members of the ANC, you know, who's still with us and still trying to teach us the lessons that Nelma Mandela wanted us to know. So that, but again, I think, you know, I think you get honored when you pick a good subject and you tell the story well. And I think that's sort of the goal I've had for every film. You know, I always have a reason for why I'm picking somebody to tell their story or why I'm a subject that I think needs to be told. And then our job as the filmmaker is to tell it as well as you can.

Christian: Yeah, what I heard you say was what stood out to me in this was that award came, you feel based on story, subject, and timing. The timings.

Abby Ginzberg: and craft and the craft, it requires a certain amount of craft so that every good film is inevitably dependent on whoever did the shooting, know, the filming, the editing, the music and the graphics. mean, those are kind of, those are the elements of what we, you know, what makes a good film. And so if you've got a good team or good people that fill each of those roles, your film's gonna look good and it's gonna sound good and the music's gonna work.

Christian: and craft.

Abby Ginzberg: And so that's a big piece of what we try to do with every film is try to put together a strong team so that what ends up on the screen is pleasant to watch and interesting to listen to and so on.

Christian: Yeah, you made a good stew. Well, that's wonderful words of wisdom for the people that are listening to this podcast right now. So thank you for sharing that. Now you mentioned that you knew Liz Carpenter. So talk to us about how you knew Liz and clearly if you knew Liz, that meant that you knew Christy. So that will lead us into how you and Christy came together. And then I do want to know that. And then I'd like to know a little bit more about Christy. So take us into that.

Abby Ginzberg: So, so Christie and I have known each other since we were housemates in London in 1969. And I met Liz, I think I met her there and then I've met her several times after that whenever we were all in the same state. Because Liz lived in Austin and Christie lived sometimes in California. Anyway, when we were all together, we would get together. And that's how I met her. And, and what I want to say about Liz that was sort of remarkable in my life. is that although many of my friends had working mothers, none of my friends had a mother like Liz Carpenter, who was as accomplished, you know, as as much of a trailblazer as she was. I mean, many women in my life as I was growing up, you the mothers worked, but they didn't work like Liz Carpenter worked in the White House as a right-hand person to both Lady Bird and Linda. That was not an experience I had had anywhere else. And so I really admired that because there weren't very many role models for me, know, I mean graduating from college in 1971, graduating from law school in 1975, it was like wow, think about somebody who graduated from college in 1941 or you know, so it was a whole, it changed my mindset a little bit I think meeting Liz and I think it really imprinted on me. And so I'm gonna let Christy tell the story of how we came together but the fact is we've known each other well and for many many years. before we ever collaborated on a piece of work like this. So, Christy, take it away.

Christian: That's wonderful. All right, Christy, it's your turn. All right, lovely. Before we get, well, I tell you what, let's jump into that real quick, but then I want to learn more about you. So tell us how you did meet. She said you were in London and you were housemates. So how did that come about?

Christy Carpenter: Well, we both, she was at Cornell and I was studying at Brown and we both just not knowing each other, we both decided we wanted to do a junior year at the London School of Economics. so we met right at the beginning. had been, my mother and I actually was with my mother, had been in Europe right when I got the letter saying I'd been accepted at the LSE. And so my mother and I were heading back to London anyway, so we ran around.

Abby Ginzberg: you

Christy Carpenter: and found an apartment. I mean, found a, it was a house, but two, a basement and an upper level of a house. And so I needed roommates. I wasn't gonna work financially if I didn't have flatmates, as they're called. And so got connected to Abby and she moved on in with him. had two other girls and that was, you know, that was the beginning of everything. And I'll just say, one of the first things we did that year was, and go to a demonstration in front of the U.S. Embassy where every American student was protesting the Vietnam War. And who was there but Bill Clinton, who was doing the second year of his Rhodes Scholarship. So we also got to know Bill Clinton, who on occasion would sleep on our living room floor. anyway, but I digress just to give you a piece of color. so, yeah. So in terms of the film coming about, in 2020,

Christian: Yes, that's fantastic. That was pretty fun.

Christy Carpenter: It was my mother's, September 1st was my mother's 100th birthday. And she was born five days after the adoption of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. And so it was a centennial of the amendment, her 100th birthday. So I wrote an article, sent it to Abby among other people and Abby read it and called me and said, I think I'd to do a documentary about your mom. And I had just come off of several years of. going through my mother's extremely voluminous papers. She, as you said before, she was a complete pack rat. And so...

Christian: Why would you not be when you have a life like your mom? I like I said, I worked in Washington as well. And every time you have an event, is a photographer there and they're taking photos and there's all these, and I mean, if you're there as long as she is and you have all of these things that they give you, you're going to have a lot of stuff and that's important stuff.

Christy Carpenter: Yeah, well, she started early. lot of us, mean, some of these boxes are full of college things. She didn't know she was going to be famous. She had an aspiration to make her mark in the world, but I mean.

Christian: She, I mean, she was meeting LBJ when she was 22. Now, come on. mean, you he was, he was in, he was in politics, I guess, and it said in the 10th congressional district, right?

Christy Carpenter: Yeah, I know, but... Yes, which was Austin, Austin, which was her hometown and where she went to the University of Texas. So but anyway, she was she was stuff and stuff away from the beginning. This was just a natural impulse she had. And so anyhow, I come through just lots and lots of stuff, finding all kinds of treasures. And, and so I was I was thinking that I because I like to write so I was thinking that I might write a book and I may still do that. But when Abby called and said like do a documentary, I thought

Christian: That's just crazy.

Christy Carpenter: great, this will be a good way to tell her story because she was a colorful, larger than life personality. And I knew from the material I was going through and taking copious notes, a lot of times I would know when an interview was done or where she was on certain occasion when there was likely to be news footage. So when it came time to task our archival producer with

Christian: Yeah, for sure.

Christy Carpenter: the chore of going out and finding as much material on Liz as she could find. I was able to provide her with a lot, a lot of leads. Plus I had found copies of old videotapes and things as well. So that helped us get off the ground.

Christian: Now, you're skipping ahead a little bit. Can we go back? And I'd like to learn a little bit about you. you know, we just, I'd like to meet you and learn about your impressive history. So you and your own right of following your mom just looks like you made an amazing career for yourself. So she said you went to law school as well. Clearly went to the London School of Economics. So tell me a little bit about you.

Christy Carpenter: Yeah, well, so I grew up in Washington, D.C. because my parents both came to Washington in the 1940s and the early 1940s and ended up getting married. They were both from Austin, knew each other in high school and so forth. so I was born in Washington and grew up there. I never lived in Texas until the last 12 years. So but anyway, it was a completely politically minded household. There was one conversation and that was politics. And my parents were very busy people who who practiced journalism together until my mother went to work in the White House. And so I was surrounded a lot of times because my parents would have a lot of parties and they'd take me places. So I got to, you know, I was around a lot of politicians and, you know, high level people in the executive branch and, you know, and you know so forth and judges even on occasion diplomatic corps, you know the usual Washington mix of people and so I was steeped in that arena. So when I got out of college graduated from Brown University, I went to law school because I thought that I wanted to spend my career doing public policy in Washington. And that's the baseline credential you have to have. You really have to have a law degree in Washington. And if you're going to do anything like that, and particularly as a young woman at that time, you aren't going to be taken seriously unless you had a graduate degree. I mean, you're going to be given the secretarial shift, you know, if you didn't have more in the way of credentials. But so I did do that for several years and then got very interested. in a new media technologies, cable television. And then Warner Communications created the first cable system, I mean, the first interactive cable system called Cube. And that really fired my imagination, the notion that you could communicate back, not just be a recipient of information through the television screen. So I went to work for them. I went on to work on several other, iterations of interactive services while they were developing. then went into communications in kind of a different mode, first in public relations and then handling communications for several different trade associations. One of which, well, two of which were in California. So I moved to San Francisco, which is where Abby was. And yeah. Yeah, and then anyway, long story, I'm trying to keep the story short because I have a kind of a motley resume here. But I ended up going getting a job opportunity to join the Paley Center for Media a number of years later. And that was just perfect for me because it was media. And, you know, the other piece of my upbringing was I was surrounded by journalists and people in the media. So that was another thread of my. upbringing that found its way into my career. I put on all kinds of, when I left, were putting on 400 forums a year on different aspects of media between the Beverly Hills location and the Manhattan location. So that kind of takes me to virtually the tail end of my career.

Christian: Yeah, it's interesting. It's kind of like you guys were a match made in heaven for this film. And really you were destined to do this. And it sounds like really the groundwork was laid out by the time that Abby said, I'm ready to do this. Let's make this film. Go ahead, Abby.

Abby Ginzberg: Yeah, I just want to say one thing. Christie said, I'm writing a book about my mother. And I thought, no, no. Liz has been on, you know, she's been filmed too many times. She's too funny. We need to, you know, we need to put her up on the screen. Then you can put her in a book later. So that was really my feeling was that this was, you know, her, her personality lent itself to wanting to be shared on the screen. So that was, that was my, that was my main resolution to let's make a movie.

Christian: It did. Well.

Abby Ginzberg: you know, that let's.

Christian: Yeah, I think you made a great call because you can write a book for sure. And I definitely think you should because there is so much information that I know did not get in the film. And I'd like to get into that in a little bit because I know, you we talk about in filmmaking about, you know, killing your babies when you make a film and trying to cut things down. And I'm sure there were a lot of things that didn't get into this film, but you know, I'm sure there's so many stories that you could have included, but that can go in a book. So Abby. Talk to me a little bit about when you called her and she said, I'm writing a book and you're like, well, no, let's make a movie.

Abby Ginzberg: I don't know that I really, you know, that it was a fully formed concept yet. But once we started talking about it, I could see the film as long as we could get our hands on the video interviews with Liz. Because the big goal that we both had was can we, you know, lean into Liz telling as much of her story as possible. And we were able to. I mean, I think it's one of the strengths of the film is that you really end up getting to know her. you know, and her waxiness. mean, her strengths and her weaknesses.

Christy Carpenter: Yeah. And I knew that the main theme was Liz as a trailblazer. And I knew it should, and talk this over with Abby, it needs to go into three chapters, journalism, the White House years, and then the women's movement. So that was an early part of the discussion, was the overall structure.

Abby Ginzberg: And having a three act structure for any documentary is really good. So we sort of started with that and that really helped us.

Christian: So how long did it take from we need to make a documentary to, know, here we are, it's going to be released. How long did that process take you?

Christy Carpenter: Well, roughly three years. you know, I mean, you know, at the beginning it was, was searching for more stuff, trying to put together, you know, put together some things. I mean, so, so it was like maybe the takeoff was on the slower end, but then it was two years of really hard work.

Christian: Yeah, and you had probably done previous research, a lot of research before that. yeah. Yeah. And so Abby, what is your process then once you start? What happens next? What was your process?

Christy Carpenter: Well, had done going through all these papers and, you know, as I said.

Abby Ginzberg: Well, I mean, the first process was you have to raise some money. And Christie really knew where the bodies were buried in terms of people who wanted to support this film. This film could not have been made without Christie's personal context. Often, I know where the bodies are buried for money. I didn't know it in this film. And Liz's friends, people who knew her, friends of Christie's, et cetera.

Christy Carpenter: Well, yeah. And my childhood friends really came through at the beginning. mean, God, mean, first thing Abby says, we got to make a sizzle reel, you know? And so I called a childhood friend of mine and she said, how much you need? told her and she said, you got it. And you know, another friend came through with the largest donation, single donation we got. So very quickly, right at the beginning. So that really helped us get off the ground.

Christian: And what fundraising arm did you use?

Christy Carpenter: What do you mean fundraising arm? Yeah. Oh, well, we...

Abby Ginzberg: What do mean?

Christian: if people were donating, where were they donating?

Abby Ginzberg: So they were, okay, well, we had two things, but I mean, my films are all sponsored by a nonprofit, happened to be called Cufno Communications and much of that early money, you donate to Cufno, Cufno takes a certain percentage for being the nonprofit sponsor and then we get the money and we just start spending it. So they, would all, I would say every dime we received was charitable one way or another, because we had three sort of sponsors. We had,

Christian: I see, I see.

Christy Carpenter: every time. Yeah.

Abby Ginzberg: We had Coughno, we had Austin PBS, and we had Tamek. Say the name of the group.

Christy Carpenter: Well, what is now East Texas A University was the, the historian, a woman's, woman historian who is there, an American history historian more broadly, Jessica Brennan-Ranowski. I was talking to her from the get-go about it, about the film as she became an associate producer and she pulled in her university to help us in a wide variety of ways, including acting as a fiscal sponsor for foundations.

Christian: And so then how big was your budget for this?

Christy Carpenter: a little over half a million dollars.

Christian: Yeah. then, and then, so, you know, ultimately most of that, when you're dividing up your budget, Abby, you know, do you budget for, is it for archival? You know, what is the biggest chunk of your budget when you're making?

Abby Ginzberg: mean, the budgeting for shooting. mean, so there were X number of shooting days where you had to have a, know, director of photography, sound engineer, and sometimes a production assistant. So, know, I mean, I don't remember exactly how many days we had, but let's say we had 10 days and you figure out what a per day rate is. So say it's, you know, 3000 a day. One other thing I think it's worth noting here is that basically Christy and I donated our time. So the reason we raised, we raised, you know, let's say 500 plus thousand dollars, but there's, you know, somewhere between 150 to $200,000 of donated time, given that we had not been paid throughout the course of making this film. I mean, that this ended up being a labor of love from us. If we had had to wait to pay ourselves, this film would have been delayed a long, much longer time. So it was worth it to both of us to like, let's just get this puppy done. And we did it. So we volunteered basically. huge numbers of hours. mean, that's not even, we can't even imagine how many. But this is going to an $800,000 film with, you know, somewhere between 250 and $300,000 worth of donated hours. So we raised the money that we needed in order to pay every single person who worked for us. And, you know, yes, and let me just say one other thing, because we're still paying these bills.

Christy Carpenter: Yeah, immeasurable.

Christian: Yeah. So, right. Donated time, yeah. That's wonderful.

Abby Ginzberg: have gone through the roof. So we pay initially for film festival rights for a year. That was plenty expensive, like over 60 or $70,000. And then we had to upgrade each of our rights for public television broadcast. So that doubled it. And so it is, I mean, really you are as an independent documentary filmmaker, you are raising money to pay NBC, ABC, CNN, and C-SPAN.

Christian: I know.

Christy Carpenter: C-SPAN.

Abby Ginzberg: for the rights to use it. It's been is one of the most expensive. It's truly outrageous. And so that just becomes a cost you cannot get around because you have to pay for the rights. I mean, there's some fair usage stuff we got, but basically we're paying for the rights. And it's expensive. mean, so you don't have to pay for the rights to a photo that's from the LBJ library. but you sometimes have to pay to up-res it to get it to look good. So it's like you're ending up, the money is flowing out the door for archival gardens from the time you began.

Christian: Yeah. Well, and you also have to pay for an archival producer. What are the rates for archival producer these days?

Abby Ginzberg: The rate, ours was actually, I would say, I'm going to give you the basic going rate. It's between $50 and $60 an hour. We didn't pay quite that.

Christian: Well, and I will tell you, if you're listening to this film, this podcast, a lot of people don't understand the critical role that an archival producer is. A lot of people don't have an archival producer, but your film was heavy, heavy archival, and it drove the film. And I really feel like you have to have that archival producer in order to really organize it. because you also have somebody, know, a rights and clearance producer or an arc producer should be able to do, you know, all of that. And we've had an arc producer on here before that's mentioned, you the importance of that. But I'm assuming in your film, it was a critical role.

Christy Carpenter: It was critical. somebody to keep track of the ownership of each of these items was, that's just tedious work that takes an expert.

Christian: Yeah. And you know, the, when you talk about the rights for these films are these archival things are, are they in perpetuity once you get them for broadcast or did you have to? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Five years. Yeah. And then

Abby Ginzberg: We couldn't afford it. We got five years for the PBS broadcast. I mean, I just want to say if you're paying, another $50 for five years, if you want them in perpetuity, you're probably paying closer to 100. The perpetuity thing doubles the cost. And we just weren't in institution to do that.

Christy Carpenter: no no no no no. FF-

Christian: Right. And then, and then you had music, you had music. The sound for me is a, it's really difficult because it's hard to track down who owns things. Once you track them down, you've got, you've got sinking and you've got publishing. And then talk to me about that. Was that just as challenging?

Christy Carpenter: Yeah, it's difficult and challenging, no question. And we did have a composer, an in-house composer for the film as well, to fill in the holes. But there were certain pieces of music that we really wanted. Like when Liz comes to Washington, we really wanted Duke Ellington's string of pearls. we wanted, it's your thing. Pardon me? Glenn Miller. excuse me, I misspoke. Thank you for correcting me, Glenn Miller.

Abby Ginzberg: you

Christian: She wanted she said

Abby Ginzberg: So anyway.

Christy Carpenter: And we wanted it, the Isley Brothers, Your Thing. These were ideas that our first editor, Eli Olson, had had those pieces of music, and they were so perfect. We just couldn't part with them. So.

Christian: Well, and then you had on the, you know, Lady Bird's train whistle train tour, there were the LBJ individual songs, right? I had never heard those.

Christy Carpenter: Yeah, was a Jerry Herman of Hello Dolly wrote Hello Lyndon. And we use that and we use some, you know, some music that was very train like my voice that sounded a lot like Johnny Cash wasn't Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash wouldn't license. I mean, not that he's alive. His estate would license it. Anyway.

Abby Ginzberg: What the hell's So, yeah, but the answer is all that takes time, effort, and then we had a separate music rights archival producer who was very helpful as well. it's, you need experts for this. This is not something that two neophytes can just sort of get started and start doing. No, we need people who know what they're doing and know how to deal with the different licenses and know how to beg for cheaper rates and. you know, most favorite nation status and all this stuff that I don't even know what it means. Yeah. So we, we,

Christian: Right. Right. And I would say, you know, I would say this needs to be considered in pre-production. A lot of people, you know, don't think about that in pre-production, but I think, you know, if you're doing a documentary film and you know you're going to have archival, you need to include the art producers, you know, the music art producers in the beginning. You need to include their fees in the beginning. You need to involve them before you ever begin. And when you're laying out the story, you need to know from them, how much time is this gonna take? Where do you think you can get these things, et cetera, et Do you agree with that?

Abby Ginzberg: Absolutely. and you know, there are things you may not be able to get. mean, music is very flighty, you know? I mean, there are a lot of people that don't want you to use their music for reasons that I've never understood since we're offering to pay. But, you know, so just because you love something and actually have budgeted for it doesn't mean you get to use it.

Christy Carpenter: Yeah. Don't factor it into your budget and your plan.

Christian: You

Abby Ginzberg: I mean, there are a lot of hoops you have to jump through to make sure you can use it. And I've been told no on numerous pieces of music. You know, just like, no, we're not licensing it.

Christian: So talk to me about the places where you go to get, where did you go to get your archival for this? Your music, your photos, your videos.

Christy Carpenter: I've just dozens and dozens of sources. It's not one place.

Abby Ginzberg: And we didn't actually go to the National Archives, as it turned out. mean, because we knew, you know, it's like various archives had a lot of the material. I think it was ABC that had most of the whistle stuff. The presidential libraries were helpful to us. know, their presidential libraries have, they at least have the pictures of the presidents. So when we needed some stuff of Johnson or Lady Bird, was, you know, LBJ Library was quite helpful.

Christy Carpenter: I mean, the archival...

Christian: such as

Abby Ginzberg: And that's public domain if you can find what you need there. Some of it.

Christy Carpenter: Well. Yeah, they had they all the White House photographer photography, but other things they have we did have to we did have to pay for licenses because they have stuff that is not, you know, is not public domain as well. So but they were very helpful. The LBJ library, I had a relationship with them and I had, you know, I'm doing all the archival research going through my mom's papers. And so they were very helpful.

Abby Ginzberg: Thank you.

Christian: Well, you know.

Abby Ginzberg: And yeah, I mean, just to answer this, it's like, whoever your archival producer is, and again, Suzanne Mason, who was our archival producer had, you know, had a head start because Christie would say, I think my mother was on X show on this date on this station. That really helped. Or we knew she was on David Frost. Great. Well, it turns out there isn't like a station that has the David Frost material. You have to go to some backup archive called Real and in the years, but we were able to do that. So it's like either we knew there was a specific piece that we wanted, or we knew there were interviews on C-SPAN. I mean, we had a pretty good head start, but because this stuff was spread so wide, you really had to have a relationship with each one of the major networks and each one of the major archives. And it took a lot of time and a lot of patience from our archival producer to get where we needed. And we got a few, we got... help from a, Chris you have to tell her the name because I can't remember it, the people who did this story of the National Women's Conference. There was a video produced.

Christy Carpenter: yeah, I'm sorry, I don't remember their name, but there was a couple that did a documentary on the National Women's Conference that was a very important historic conference in 1977. And they had done that documentary. And so we were grateful to get a hold of it.

Abby Ginzberg: That just does it for you.

Christian: Yeah, well, you know, again, I was just so impressed with all of this archival. The other thing that was interesting to me in the way that you used it, you used newspaper clippings. loved the, this was a technique that you used often where it was archival newspapers and there were a lot of them in there. So it was photos of newspapers. And sometimes you would use the newspapers where there would be clip outs of the newspapers, but you would use either videos or photos with the headlines in them. thought that was a very creative use of using the newspapers as well as putting photos of the time or photos of what was going on. Yeah, video. Yeah.

Christy Carpenter: Well, video, yeah, video images that come to life, they bring the story to life, the headline to life.

Christian: Yeah, I thought that was fascinating. So speaking of the story, let's just jump right into that, because I thought that was masterful storytelling. talk to me about how the story was woven together. Did you write it out and then piece it together? Did the story come together in the edit? Who was driving the story?

Christy Carpenter: Well, I would usually put together story points for the editor that would be, are the key things. When you talk about her journalism career, here are the key things. And then where I knew that there was video that matched up with a particular one of those points, I would tell her. then she was brilliant and she did her magic and would show Abby and me things, the product, we make comments, get back to her. And so that was essentially it. We had a second editor who was also very good, Ken Snyder. so they both serially, one was there at the beginning, one was there at the end, really worked closely with us to... weave it all together.

Christian: All right, well, I want to talk a little bit more about story. I have a lot more questions, but what I'd like to do right now, we're going to break this up into two episodes actually, because I have so many more questions and you guys are amazing to talk to. think we have a lot to learn from you. So if you don't mind, I'd like to invite you to come back to a second episode. Would that be all right with you? Wonderful. All right. Well, what I'd like to do is stop right now, invite you to do our favorite segment, which is docu-view deja vu.

Christy Carpenter: That'd be great.

Christian: Now in this segment, I like everybody to come with a documentary to recommend, and I'm sure that's not gonna be hard because of course Abby has made a bunch. So I know that she has some to, I'm sure she's a documentary watcher, but may have some on her own. And Christy, I'm sure that's true for you too. So who wants to go first?

Abby Ginzberg: you I'll go first.

Christy Carpenter: Well, because I'll probably be shorter on this subject than Abby, who's got a wealth of documentaries she's seen in her life. I'm not in the business, so I watch them, but not as often as she does. Anyway, I'm a real history buff. So I love things like American Experience. And one I'd particularly like to recommend is a documentary that they aired in 2020 called The Vote. at again with the centennial of the 19th Amendment. And it was written and directed by a woman named Michelle Ferrari. And it is the story of the last, kind of the last chapter of getting the 19th Amendment ratified and part of the Constitution. So it really, it overall, took 75 years and three generations of women working to get the 19th Amendment. And it then just squeaked by by one vote in the Tennessee legislature, finally in 2020. And it is a story full of colorful characters. The women like Alice Paul and, you know, Kat Chapman and so forth, who were represented, lot of women who represented different strategies, different tactics. but it took it all coming together to get it over the finish line. And it's just beautifully told. It's told in two episodes each two hours. You can get it on PBS Passport. And so I highly recommend it to people.

Christian: That sounds fantastic. Thank you very much for that recommendation. I can't wait to watch that one. All right, Abby, you're up.

Abby Ginzberg: Okay, I'll say my own personal one, the one that I'm pitching besides Liz Carpenter for last. There are two films that are nominated for Academy Awards this year, and I would be happy if either one of them won. So I want to pitch those two. One is called Porcelain War, which is about people in Ukraine. It's an amazing film done by a US filmmaker and a Ukrainian filmmaker. And it is really the story of people who make of porcelain characters in Ukraine while this war is going on. So you learn a lot about life in Ukraine. You learn a lot about the art and craft of porcelain art. And it's just a really well done and moving. I say all this having not in the context of how we're about to abandon Ukraine, but just to say that this is a beautiful film, very artistic and very contemporary. I'm not sure actually what platform it's on, but I know that it is in contention zone within the next week or two. It's either going to win the Academy Award or not in one way or another, it will be streaming soon, but it's an absolutely beautiful film. And the other film that's for an award, which is also incredibly contemporary, much harder to watch, although of course, the more has moments that are very difficult, is a film called No Other Land. And it is the story of a town in the... want to say in the West Bank, I'm pretty sure it's in the West Bank, where Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers come together to tell the story of the consistent destruction of this town where the Arab slash Palestinian filmmaker lives. And it's an attempt to show cooperation, collaboration, and the tension that these people are living under daily. And it's an amazing kind of verite film about events that are going on constantly and we're reading about it in the newspaper and this is a way of meeting the individuals you know whose lives are so impacted by it so and I don't know I mean it made me cry many times so that's another one that's also up for an Academy Award it has not found you as distribution because it's such a hot potato but I believe it will at some point so those are my two

Christian: Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing those with us. We probably would not have heard of them otherwise. So thank you so much for sharing those with us. Ladies, it has been such a pleasure to talk with you and I'm so glad you're gonna come back. We have so much more to talk about. Thank you and I congratulate you on this film. It is gonna be airing on PBS and we're gonna talk about that in our next episode. A lot of people wanna know how in the world you get a film on PBS. Is that a good thing? Is that a challenging thing? So we wanna learn more about that. I wanna dive more into the story. know, we talked about, I wanna ask you about how you balance the portrait of Liz Carpenter with the politics of Liz Carpenter, because I think you did that extremely well. And we're gonna get into, you know, more about, you know, the editing and just wrangling the story. I just think you did a magical job of that. So thank you everybody for listening to Documentary First, where we believe everybody has a story to tell. and you can be the one to tell it. Bye everybody.