Documentary Filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn

DATE February 20, 2004 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Errol Morris discusses his new film, "The Fog of War"
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli in for Terry Gross.

Our guest, Errol Morris, directed the film "The Fog of War," one of a strong
crop of films nominated for an Academy Award this year as best documentary
feature. Terry spoke with him in January before the film was nominated.

"The Fog of War" is edited from over 20 hours of interviews with Robert
McNamara, who served as secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and
Johnson. He was one of the architects of the war in Vietnam, but now says
that by the time he left the Johnson administration, he had become
increasingly skeptical about the war.

McNamara left the Johnson administration in 1967 and became the head of the
World Bank. He has remained an enigmatic figure. For many years, he wouldn't
speak about his role in the war, but that silence was broken by his 1995
memoir in which he discussed what led to his growing skepticism. Yet, he
disappointed his critics by not apologizing for his role in that war. In
Morris' film, McNamara reflects on the lessons he's learned from Vietnam and
World War II, in which he helped plan the fire bombing of Tokyo.

McNamara was the youngest ever secretary of Defense, age 44, and is now 87
years old. The films Errol Morris investigate the obsessions and motivations
of their subjects through intensive interviews. His films include "Mr.
Death," "Fast, Cheap & Out of Control" and "The Thin Blue Line." Here's a
clip from the beginning of "The Fog of War."

(Soundbite of "The Fog of War")

Former Secretary ROBERT McNAMARA (Department of Defense): It's almost
impossible for our people today to put themselves back into that period. In
my seven years as secretary, we came within a hairsbreadth of war with the
Soviet Union on three different occasions. Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days
a year for seven years as secretary of Defense I lived the Cold War. During
the Kennedy administration, they designed a 100-megaton bomb. It was tested
in the atmosphere. I remember this. Cold War? Hell, it was a hot war.

TERRY GROSS, host:

You know, one of the things that really astonished me watching "The Fog of
War" was that McNamara was really lively, anecdotal, interesting. And I
always thought of him, among other things, as cold and kind of inaccessible.
In other words, that you'd never get anything out of him. Give me an example
of something he said that really surprised you.

Mr. ERROL MORRIS (Filmmaker): Well, the most surprising thing was
discovering that his role in Vietnam was different than I had thought.
Remember, the Vietnam War was known to many people as McNamara's war. He
became not only associated with the war, people thought of it as his war, as
though he was the person primarily responsible for it. He was the hawk. He
was the guy who pushed other people towards escalation, to bombing, to troops
on the ground. You want an explanation for how we became mired in Vietnam?
Look no further than Robert S. McNamara. And yet, as I got deeper and deeper
into the story, my view of him and his role in history changed.

GROSS: Now in talking about his role in Vietnam, he certainly gives the
impression that he tried to talk President Johnson out of the war, tried to
start decreasing our presence in Vietnam. Do you believe that that was
consistently his point of view with Johnson?

Mr. MORRIS: It's a tortured story. I believe that, if Kennedy had lived, in
all likelihood, there would not have been extensive bombing and half a million
ground troops in Vietnam. It's one of those great mysteries that can't be
really answered for certain, but the story leans in that direction. There is
considerable amount of evidence to suggest that's the case.

One thing that's really interesting--I sometimes say, well, this revised story
about Vietnam that emerges in "The Fog of War," it's not necessarily a better
story. It's just a different story because it raises a whole set of different
questions. If McNamara was opposed to the war, why did he become a part of
its escalation? Why did he continue to serve Johnson if he disagreed with his
policies? Why did he stay on until 1968? And why, when he left the
administration, did he remain silent? War went on '69, '70, '71, '72, '73,
'74, '75. Between two and three million Vietnamese died and 58,000 Americans.

GROSS: It's tempting to kind of go over your whole film point by point and
talk about all the points that Robert McNamara makes, but I think I should let
our listeners see the movie and talk instead about how the movie was made.

But, first, I do want to just get to a couple of the very interesting points
that McNamara makes in the movie. And one of them is in talking about World
War II where he served under General Curtis LeMay and he participated in the
planning of the firebombing of Tokyo in which 100,000 civilians were killed.
And he says something very interesting about war criminals. Why don't we hear
this excerpt of your movie? This is an excerpt of Robert McNamara speaking in
Errol Morris' documentary "The Fog of War."

(Soundbite of "The Fog of War")

Mr. McNAMARA: I don't fault Truman for dropping that nuclear bomb. The
US/Japanese war was one of the most brutal wars in all of human history:
kamikaze pilots, suicide. Unbelievable. What one could criticize is that the
human race, prior to that time and today, has not really grappled with what
are I'll call it the rules of war. Was there a rule then that said you
shouldn't bomb, shouldn't kill, shouldn't burn to death 100,000 civilians in a
night? LeMay said if we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war
criminals. And I think he's right. He and I'd say I were behaving as war
criminals.

GROSS: Robert McNamara speaking in the documentary "The Fog of War."

Errol Morris, when he said that to you, were you surprised to hear his
thoughts about what makes a war crime a war crime?

Mr. MORRIS: Yes, particularly because this part of the interview happened
very early on, probably within the first half-hour of my first interview with
Robert McNamara.

The movie doesn't tell you--there's no flashing light that goes on and says,
`This is really something new, this is really something extraordinary.' So
much has been written about the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan in
1945. Comparatively little has been written about the firebombing of 67
cities in Japan before we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And here we have
McNamara, who was involved in these firebombings, speak of them as a war
crime. Very powerful, because aren't we all used to thinking of World War II
as a just war? After all, good and evil were well-defined. We were on the
side of good; they were on the side of evil. And, yet, here is Robert
McNamara telling us, `Yes, that was true, but there is conduct within a just
war which is criminal.' Very, very powerful and very interesting.

GROSS: He reaches several conclusions and has several lessons that he feels
like he's learned from his involvement in World War II and the Vietnam War.
And one of his conclusions is you need to empathize with your enemy, but he
says about Vietnam, `We didn't know the Vietnamese well enough to emphasize
and put ourselves in their shoes. We saw the war in Vietnam as a cold war;
they saw it as a civil war.' And when I heard him say that, I thought, you
know, what a true and interesting lesson to have learned and to impart to us.
But then I thought for a second, `Isn't that what the anti-war movement was
saying all along, that, you know, this isn't just the cold war, this is a
civil war? Why are we involved there?' I mean, isn't that something that
people were shouting at him for years?

Mr. MORRIS: Yes. This is a movie with one interview, but sometimes I think
there are actually two characters: the 85-year-old McNamara speaking to the
45-year-old McNamara. And one of the questions...

GROSS: Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I mean, as a viewer, that was my
impression, too, yeah.

Mr. MORRIS: And one question that keeps coming up again and again: Is this
the same man? Are these two different men? Well, in one sense, of course
they're not. But are they the same? And in what way are they different, if
they are different?

You're absolutely right. Many of the things that McNamara says could've come
out of anti-war demonstrators. It could've been things that they said
verbatim in 1965. People who really hate McNamara--and there are many--when
they hear about the lessons, they say, `Why do we want to hear anything this
man says? Shouldn't he remain silent?' My answer is an emphatic no. He has
been so much a part of history, and the stories that he tells about history
are really interesting and important stories. And they're stories by a man
who knows.

BIANCULLI: Errol Morris speaking with Terry Gross last month.

More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BIANCULLI: Let's get back to Terry's interview with Errol Morris whose film
"The Fog of War" is one of the movies up for an Academy Award new week as best
documentary feature.

GROSS: You know, you're talking about him being like the 85-year-old McNamara
talking to the 45-year-old McNamara. And I felt, as a viewer, that there were
two versions of me watching the movie, just as there were...

Mr. MORRIS: Well, that's really interesting.

GROSS: Yeah, and I'll explain what I mean 'cause, like, when he talks
about...

Mr. MORRIS: By the way, it's also true in my case...

GROSS: Oh, really?

Mr. MORRIS: ...I might add.

GROSS: Really? Yeah.

Mr. MORRIS: Yes.

GROSS: So--well, let me give you my example. When I was watching the movie
and he says things like during the war in Vietnam, his family was so stressed
out, his family got ulcers. I can't remember if he got ulcers, too, and that,
you know, his family was just, like, sickened by all of the stress. And one
part of me thought, `Wow, that's really interesting that it was so stressful
on your family,' and that elicited a very sympathetic response from me. But
then the other part of me was saying, `Well, I should think so. The whole
country was divided by this war. The country was at war with itself.
Americans were dying, Vietnamese were dying. So many lives of Americans were
totally changed by the war and...'

Mr. MORRIS: America was totally changed by the war.

GROSS: Right. So, in that sense, I was thinking, `Well, you know, sure,
you'd have ulcers. I mean, jeez.' So I just felt myself having this constant
dialogue with myself about my reactions to him and what he was saying. Tell
me about the dialogue you had with yourself making the movie.

Mr. MORRIS: My feelings about Vietnam haven't changed over the years. I
demonstrated against the war as a young student because I found the war
appalling. And now many, many years later, I still find it appalling.

Sometimes I think: `Am I being too easy on McNamara?' Other times I think:
`Am I being too hard on him?' One undeniable aspect of the man is that he
produces these very, very strong feelings, and yet I feel privileged to have
been able to talk to him and to make this movie. I started these interviews
before 9/11. The first interview with McNamara was in May of 2001. I never
thought that this would be a movie about now, that this would be a movie about
today. And yet, as I continued to work on the film, the themes, the stories,
the history that McNamara describes became more and more and more relevant to
what is going on in the world today.

GROSS: There are some people who have seen the movie who think that in the
movie, McNamara is still doing a bit of, you know, lying, deceiving,
exaggerating to suit his case. I interviewed McNamara in '95 after his memoir
was published. And when I interviewed him, I guess, you know, all my
instincts were, `Ask him why he hasn't apologized if he knew all this in
advance. Ask him if he thinks he owes America an apology or an explanation.'
And, you know, I haven't listened back to the interview, but I think that's
where I kept heading. And I'm wondering if your instinct was ever to do that
yourself because the movie isn't that. You're not saying, `Well, then
apologize,' you know. You're letting him speak, you're letting him tell his
story, and a lot of interesting things emerge, and those things are very
lively and attention-getting. I mean, you want to hear it. And whether you
end up completely believing it or not, you want to hear it. But was there
ever an instinct in you saying, `Get him to apologize,' you know?

Mr. MORRIS: Sure. Absolutely. But...

GROSS: But did you kind of suppress that and just, like, let him talk, or did
you keep kind of getting back to that?

Mr. MORRIS: Did I kind of suppress it? I like the idea of suppressing it.
Maybe. It's interesting because when you say there's something missing--if
people say, `Well, McNamara didn't go as far as I would like,' or, `McNamara
really didn't apologize,' or, `McNamara didn't really confess,' I would ask
myself: `What is it that they want to hear? What exactly are they looking
for?' And I ask myself: `Do I want to hear McNamara apologize for the war?'
And here's my answer: Not really.

GROSS: Mm-hmm. Why not?

Mr. MORRIS: Because I don't think there is any apology for the war in this
sense: How do you apologize for the death of 58,000 Americans and two to
three million Vietnamese? I think he's done something far more interesting.
He has gone back over the history of the war--don't forget, this is the man
who ordered the Pentagon Papers to be created. If you like, it's that same
instinct to go back over the past, to look at it, to try to understand it.

For the totally unsympathetic, the people who will hate McNamara no matter
what, they will look at this attempt to go back over the past as
excuse-making: `Oh, yeah, sure, he's going back over the past, but he's going
over the past just to provide a gloss on the past, to make himself look
better.' My answer is no. When he suggests that he and LeMay were war
criminals in World War II, and he tells a story that is so different from any
other story I've heard about that period, I don't look at it as an attempt to
whitewash the past but as a sincere attempt to go back over the past, to think
about the past.

GROSS: Your interview with McNamara, as it is in the movie "The Fog of War,"
starts with him having to pick up where he left off, I guess, because, like,
the tape or the film had run out, and he has to, like, pick up in the middle
of the sentence. In fact, let me just play this little excerpt.

(Soundbite of "The Fog of War")

Mr. McNAMARA: Now I remember exactly the sentence I left off on. I remember
how it started, and I was cut off in the middle, but you can fix it up
someway. I don't want to go back and introduce the sentence because I know
exactly what I want to say.

Unidentified Man: Go ahead!

Mr. McNAMARA: OK. Any military commander who is honest with himself or with
those he's speaking to will admit that he has made mistakes in the application
of military power; he's killed people unnecessarily, his own troops or other
troops, through mistakes, through errors of judgment, a hundred or thousands
or tens of thousand, maybe even 100,000. But he hasn't destroyed nations.
And the conventional wisdom is, `Don't make the same mistake twice. Learn
from your mistakes,' and we all do. Maybe we make the same mistake three
times but hopefully not four or five. There'll be no learning period with
nuclear weapons. You make one mistake and you're going to destroy nations.

GROSS: That's Robert McNamara in the very opening of "The Fog of War." And
my guest is the filmmaker Errol Morris.

You know how I was talking about how I had two reactions to a lot of the
movie? I had two reactions to seeing this part of the interview, especially
at the very beginning. Part of me said, `Wow, he's being kind of manipulative
here. He knows exactly what he's going to say. He's saying it. You know,
he's so kind of conscious of himself as an interviewee.' But then the other
part of me said, `Yes, he should be. He has something really important to say
here about, you know, lessons about nuclear weapons and being, you know, in a
position of power in the nuclear era. This is really important. I'm glad he
remembered what he wanted to say.' Tell me why you wanted to lead with this,
in a way, very self-conscious moment of him saying, `I'm going to pick up
exactly where I left off. I know what I want to say'?

Mr. MORRIS: Well, among other things, he's a control freak.

GROSS: Right (laughs).

Mr. MORRIS: And it's interesting to be reminded of that fact at the very
beginning of the movie.

GROSS: At the very beginning, yeah. Uh-huh.

Mr. MORRIS: In fact, at the very beginning of the movie, we see him in 1964
doing pretty much the same thing that he's doing in 2001.

GROSS: Well, Errol Morris, thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. MORRIS: Thank you for having me.

BIANCULLI: Errol Morris speaking with Terry Gross last month. His movie "The
Fog of War" about the military policies of former Secretary of State Robert
McNamara is nominated for an Academy Award as best documentary feature.

I'm David Bianculli and this is FRESH AIR.

Coming up, Nathaniel Kahn on his documentary "My Architect" about his father,
the great architect Louis Kahn. The film is nominated for an Academy Award.
Also, Geoff Nunberg considers one of President Bush's favorite phrases and we
say farewell to the HBO series "Sex and the City."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Commentary: Origins of the words `thug' and `assassin'
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli sitting in for Terry Gross.

In his State of the Union speech, President Bush referred to the Iraqi
insurgents as thugs and assassins, a phrase he's used a lot lately. But as
our linguist Geoff Nunberg points out, those two words have interesting
historical resonances.

GEOFF NUNBERG:

People have this persistent idea that words carry within them the germ of
their origins, like those seeds hidden in Egyptian tombs that are ready to
sprout thousands of years later. It's as if there's something in the
chromosomes of the word `serendipity' that betrays its origin in an old name
for `salon,' or as if `seersucker' still carries the traces of the Hindi words
for `milk' and `sugar' that it was derived from. That doesn't make a lot of
logical sense, and yet there are times when words really do seem to have a
racial memory of their own.

Take the way President Bush has been describing the Iraqi insurgents as thugs
and assassins. He's used the phrase at least 18 times, including his remarks
at his Thanksgiving drop-in in Baghdad and in the State of the Union address.
It isn't likely that Bush's speechwriters knew that both those words
originated out of earlier Western encounters with the East which have some
striking parallels to the present situation. The words just seem to come up
naturally, as if they were conforming to some linguistic law of return.

The original `thugs' were the disciples of Thuggee, a criminal secret society
in northern India whose members waylaid travelers and strangled them with
scarves. The British finally managed to suppress the thugs in the 1830s after
a 10-year campaign of mass arrests and executions. But the name `thug'
entered the language as a term for a ruffian or cutthroat.

As it happens, the original `assassins' were also the members of a secret
order, a Shiite sect who controlled northern Syria during the time of the
early Crusades in the 11th century. The sect was founded by Hassan
i-Sabbah, a Persian ascetic who ruled from a stronghold and who was called
the old man of the mountains. The name `assassin' is actually derived from
the word `Hashishin,' or `hashish user' after a story that Hassan i-Sabbah
gave hashish to his fanatical disciples before sending them on suicide
missions to murder his political enemies and drive unbelievers from the land
of Islam. That story was repeated by Marco Polo, among others, but there's no
evidence that the sect actually used drugs. Probably both the tale and the
name `Hashishin' were invented by the Sunnis to disparage the sect.

But as with the thugs, the memory of the assassins survived in the West. In
languages like French and Italian, the word `assassin' ultimately became the
simple word for `murderer,' and in English it became a word for somebody who
murders for political motives. And apocryphal or not, the association with
hashish made Hassan i-Sabbah and the assassins a mythical touch point for
Western artists and poets who had made a cult of intoxication. When Rimbaud
wrote, `This is the time of the assassins,' he was referring not to murderers
but to his own experimentations with hashish. And William Burroughs wrote
a piece called "The Last Words of Hassan i-Sabbah," which were supposedly,
`Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.'

The historical parallels here may be curious, but they're really not that
eerie. It's true that the campaign against the Iraqi insurgents recalls the
British campaign against the thugs, and Hassan i-Sabbah and his assassins do
seem to prefigure Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, particularly if you tell the
story selectively. But you could pick out equally apt parallels from most of
the West's confrontation with the East over the last 900 years. And for that
matter, it isn't that surprising that we borrow Eastern names to describe our
own criminals, since that's where the West has always looked for its
archetypes of fanaticism and treachery.

And, of course, the White House didn't seize on the phrase `thugs and
assassins' because the words sounded exotic but because they sounded familiar.
Referring to the insurgents as thugs is just shorthand for saying that they're
no more than thugs. Sometimes it's convenient to criminalize the war on
terror. There's the implication that the difference between the good guys and
the bad guys is as clear as it would be if we were eradicating gang violence
in an American city. It's of a peace with the other words the administration
has used to try to bring moral clarity to the venture, like `liberation,'
`freedom' and `democracy.'

But, of course, Baghdad and Tikrit aren't Chicago or Dallas, and when you put
words like `thug' and `assassin' into an alien context, they tend to go
native. When somebody mentions assassins in the American context, you think
of troubled loners like Lee Harvey Oswald or James Earl Ray. But in Iraq, the
word conjures up the alien specters of Japanese ninja or Bulgarian agents with
poison in the tips of their umbrellas. And calling the insurgents `thugs'
doesn't bring to mind "The Sopranos," but rather "Indiana Jones and the Temple
of Doom."

That's why Westerners adopted words like `thug' and `assassin' from the local
languages in the first place. It was a way of marking the setting as alien to
Western moral norms. It's the problem the translators are always wrestling
with when they try to bridge those gaps of worldview. Either you try to make
strange words sound familiar or you wind up making the familiar ones sound
strange.

BIANCULLI: Geoff Nunberg is a linguist at Stanford University's Center for
the Study of Language and Information and the author of "The Way We Talk Now."

Coming up, "My Architect." This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Nathaniel Kahn discusses his 2003 film "My Architect"
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

Nathaniel Kahn's 2003 film "My Architect" has been nominated for an Academy
Award as best documentary feature. It's about his father, famous architect
Louis Kahn, and Nathaniel's relationship with him. But it was not a
traditional father-son relationship. As Nathaniel explains in his
documentary, Louis Kahn had three families. The architect and his wife Esther
had a daughter. But Kahn also had two other children out of wedlock with
women colleagues. One of those women, Harriet Pattison, is Nathaniel's
mother. Louis Kahn, who was in his 60s when Nathaniel was born, visited
Nathaniel's house regularly but never lived there. The architect was found
dead in a Penn Station rest room at the age of 73 in 1974. Nathaniel was 11
at the time.

In the new documentary, Nathaniel tries to make sense of his father's secret
family life and to examine his achievements as an architect. One piece of
vintage footage in the film shows Louis Kahn in 1971 lecturing to a master
class in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.

(Soundbite of "My Architect")

Mr. LOUIS KAHN: And when you want to give something presence, you have to
consult nature, and that is where design comes in. If you think of brick, for
instance, you say to brick, `What do you want, brick?' And brick says to you,
`I like an arch.' And if you say to brick, `Look, arches are expensive, and I
can use a concrete lintel over you. What do you think of that, brick?' Brick
says, `I like an arch.'

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. L. KAHN: And it's important, you see, that you honor the material which
you use. You don't bandy it around as though you said, `Well, we have a lot
of material around. We can do it one way; we can do it another.' It's not
true. You can only do it if you honor the brick and glorify the brick instead
of just shortchanging it.

BIANCULLI: Some of the buildings designed by Louis Kahn include the Salk
Institute in La Jolla, the Kimbell Art Museum in Ft. Worth and the National
Assembly Building in Bangladesh. Terry spoke with Nathaniel Kahn in
November and asked what distinguished his father as an architect.

Mr. NATHANIEL KAHN (Filmmaker): He returned a sense of weight and kind of
primitive power to architecture, and I think so much of modern architecture
had become very light glass, steel, about skyscrapers. And Lou was
interested ultimately in buildings that would be around and that would last
and that would be spiritual; and certainly he was interested in materials,
very much in materials and ancient materials and heavy materials--brick,
concrete; not so much about glass and steel. Very much about creating modern
buildings that have the feel and presence of ancient ruins. And I think
people find that his buildings are not only intensely spiritual experiences,
but they also work for what they were planned to do.

So the Salk Institute for Biological Studies is a really good laboratory. It
works as a library. The Exeter Library in New Hampshire is a strange,
mysterious building, but it also works as a library.

TERRY GROSS, host:

Before making this movie, what was your father's place in your world? Let's
start with growing up, for instance.

Mr. N. KAHN: Sure.

GROSS: Your father died when you were 11.

Mr. N. KAHN: Yes.

GROSS: What was his place in your world when you were growing up?

Mr. N. KAHN: My father's pla--I mean, my experience of him was very
mysterious. He sort of floated in and out of our lives. I would see him
maybe once a week, something like that. But, yes, he would show up around
dinnertime. But it was--you could never set your watch by Lou; he would just
kind of show up at some point, and he'd usually call at the last minute and
say he was going to come to the house. And my mother would go into a flurry
of activity making, you know, a special meal, and it was a very, very exciting
thing, and I always felt as a kid I'm the luckiest guy around because my
father is an exciting thing. He's not just a dad who falls asleep on the
couch and watches TV, this is an artist who takes time out to come and, you
know, show up in our lives and he's somehow almost a magical person, like
Merlin, you know. He was already really, you know, an older man, so he had a
tremendous boyish kind of energy and quality. But he was also very warm, and
he'd show up in our house and it was a tremendous amount of fun and then he'd
disappear. We'd actually drive him back downtown to Philadelphia and leave
him off at his wife's house, so...

GROSS: He was married.

Mr. N. KAHN: Yes.

GROSS: He and his wife had a child.

Mr. N. KAHN: Yes.

GROSS: He had two other children...

Mr. N. KAHN: Yes.

GROSS: ...you and he also had a relationship with the architect Anne Tyng
and had a daughter with her.

Mr. N. KAHN: That's right.

GROSS: So he had kind of three families, one official, two unofficial.

Mr. N. KAHN: Yes. Right.

GROSS: Were you supposed to be a secret? Did other people in his life know
about you and were you allowed to tell your friends and even your teachers
that this famous architect was your dad?

Mr. N. KAHN: Sure. I was allowed to. I think it was a kind of secret.
Maybe it was an open secret. I mean, I think people who were close to him
certainly knew these things, but he never went out his way to tell people, you
know, `This is my alternative family. These are my three children.' That
just never happened. We did not cross paths, you know? But I was a kind of
secret, yes, but it was complicated also by the fact that he was a famous man
and I knew that.

GROSS: Let's talk a little bit about the circumstances behind your birth.

Mr. N. KAHN: Sure.

GROSS: Your father was already married...

Mr. N. KAHN: Yes.

GROSS: ...when you were conceived. Your mother--how did she know your
father?

Mr. N. KAHN: My mother was introduced to him. She was living in
Philadelphia, introduced to him, and I think fell in love with him instantly,
though she was 28 years younger than he. And I think that it was, you know, a
love affair that lasted until the end of his life, you know, which was only
really about 12 years. They met in around 1960 and he died in '74, so 14
years. And, you know, she was an artistic person, was interested in landscape
architecture, went back to school actually after meeting him to become a
landscape architect. And I think it was a tremendous kind of flowering of her
life to meet this man who was interested in her, who's older than she and with
whom she could share such tremendous kind of artistic connection.

GROSS: What are some of the things she went through when she realized that
she was pregnant, that he was not going to leave his wife to marry her?
Abortion wasn't yet legal.

Mr. N. KAHN: Right. True.

GROSS: Having a child out of wedlock was still considered a very damaging...

Mr. N. KAHN: Yes.

GROSS: ...thing, I mean, something that was going to kind of ruin your future
in every way and embarrass everybody who was connected with you. So what are
some of the things that you know that she went through...

Mr. N. KAHN: Well...

GROSS: ...when she was carrying you?

Mr. N. KAHN: ...I'm here because of her courage. I think it's really that
simple, and, I mean, you know, it chokes me up to think about it. I never
quite said it that way before, but that's true. There were certainly many
pressures on her to do something alternative, whatever that would be. Not
have me, give me up for adoption--these were very real choices that were
discussed and that she was pressured to consider, but it was really her
friends and the two friends in the film, I'm pleased to say, because they
agreed to do this, to talk about these events which were very, very difficult,
and they really encouraged her. And they said, `Listen, if you want to have
this baby, you go ahead. Do it.'

And it's a marvelous scene because the woman who says it in the film, she has
a marvelous sort of Bostonian accent, and she said, `Well, we never knew what
Harriet would really come up with, but in the end, it was all right and here
you are. And she loved you, and she loved Lou and that was the love her life
and she did the right thing.' You know, that's the way she--so she was kind
of had this Yankee belief somehow that, you know, that if you work at it and
you preserve, it'll be OK, so...

GROSS: And also this belief that this kind of love was actually
life-enhancing.

Mr. N. KAHN: Yes, and that you can't turn your back on that. And I think
that my mother clearly was very much in love with my father. I think she
expected a different outcome. I know. That's in the film. I mean, this is
one of the most difficult interviews to do in the film was with my mother. I
interviewed her twice. I had to go back. I didn't have the courage the first
time to ask her the real questions, and the second time I went back actually
alone without my cameraman. And, you know, I was sort of pushed to do that by
wonderful team which I want to talk to you about because they're all women and
they said, `Nathaniel, you didn't really get from your mother the truth.
You've got to go back.'

GROSS: What did they want you to ask about that you hadn't asked?

Mr. N. KAHN: Well, I think really several things. One certainly was really
to talk about how my mother felt about my father not following through, you
know, not being there for her and the other, of course, was this story which
I've been told since I was a young boy that my father was going to come and
live with us. He was going to get a divorce and come and live in our house.

GROSS: This is what your mother kept telling you.

Mr. N. KAHN: Yes. Yes. And so my mother, when she decided to have me, it
was a very, very difficult time. And I think one of the things that she held
on to through all those years was that he would get a divorce and come and
live with us. So I think that's--and that he really planned to do that. And
that was kind of a story that my mother and I held on to together.

GROSS: My guest is Nathaniel Kahn and his new film is a documentary about his
father, the late architect Louis Kahn.

Let's talk a little bit about your father's architecture. Now he didn't
really come into his own as an architect until he was about 50 which is pretty
late in life.

Mr. N. KAHN: Yes.

GROSS: And he died at the age of 73. So he didn't have a whole lot of time
to really do work once he found himself. And you say in the film it was
apparently a trip to Italy and then to other parts of the world where there
was truly ancient architecture that helped him find his style and his voice as
an architect.

Mr. N. KAHN: Yes.

GROSS: And he tried to use elements of that in his design to get some of the,
well, spirituality that architecture had...

Mr. N. KAHN: Yeah.

GROSS: ...and put that in his design as well. And the kind of crowning
achievement of that in your father's work is the capitol of Bangladesh in
Dacca.

Mr. N. KAHN: Yeah. You travel there for your movie, and I wasn't aware of
this until seeing your film. It's a really magnificent, inspiring building
which I'm going to ask you to try to describe.

Mr. N. KAHN: Sure. Well, his building, the capitol of Bangladesh, is on the
Bangladeshi money as we put the White House on the back of our 20-dollar bill
or the Capitol. I think it's on the 50. I haven't seen a 50 in a while. It
is a phenomenal building. He built them a capitol that is like nothing else
in the whole world. It's a little bit hard to describe as a building because
it looks both like it could have landed from space and that it's always been
there, that it could have been built yesterday or it could have built a
thousand years ago or 10,000 years ago. It has an absolute timeless quality.
It's made of concrete, but it doesn't have that kind of heavy, you know,
Soviet look at all. It's a very soaring building as well. It's mysterious.
So the building looks like a ruin and yet also like something modern at the
same time.

GROSS: So what was it like for you the first time you laid eyes on the
building?

Mr. N. KAHN: When I first saw it, it was interesting. You know, it occurs
towards the end of the film, we traveled throughout the world looking for
people who knew my father, seen his buildings, finding these enormously
emotional moments of a son looking for a father, and suddenly I got to
Bangladesh and I knew this was the last building of my father's that I'll ever
see for the first time and I wanted to see it right. So we had a guide there,
and I said, `Listen, I don't want to see it out of the side window or
something. I really want to see this building because it's so massive and
beautiful.' So I said, `Blindfold me.' So he did, blindfolded me, we drove
through the streets.

You could hear all the tremendous noise of Dacca. It's a city of many, many
millions with absolutely no infrastructure. So we arrived in front of this
building. I didn't know quite where we were, got out of the car and I started
walking across the street. He was guiding me, of course, and then I felt
grass under my feet. The ground was soft, and this silence started to kind of
fold around me. The city was sort of receding and I could feel this presence
in front of me. And he said, `Are you ready to see this thing?' and I said,
`Not quite.'

I sat and took it in, and then I said, `I'm ready.' And he took the blindfold
off my eyes and I burst into tears when I saw that building knowing it's the
last building I would ever see of my father's for the first time and realizing
the enormity of that achievement in the middle of this extremely poor country.
It was at that time a new country. In fact, it was started when it still
Pakistan. The war intervened, building stopped, Lou kept working here without
being paid in Philadelphia slaving away on this capitol that he knew he had to
build and give these people, and here it was, finished 10 years after his
death. A monumental achievement and the capitol of a country, a national
symbol, everything he believed architecture could do, that building does.

BIANCULLI: Nathaniel Kahn speaking to Terry Gross in November. His movie,
"My Architect," an examination of his late father Louis Kahn is nominated for
an Academy Award as best documentary film.

We'll be back with my look at HBO's "Sex in the City." I'm David Bianculli
and this is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Final episode of "Sex and the City"
(Soundbite of theme song to "Sex and the City")

DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

After six years on HBO, "Sex and the City" presents its final episode this
weekend along with a one-hour retrospective special. HBO isn't releasing the
finale for preview, but as a TV critic, I have a good idea what to expect
anyway.

Since its premiere in 1998, "Sex and the City" has sent its protagonist, Sarah
Jessica Parker's Carrie Bradshaw through a series of adventures, epiphanies
and relationships. The show has gotten lots of attention for sparking fashion
trends and even more attention for pushing the TV envelope. If there was a
sexual topic that wasn't discussed or explored by Carrie or her friends, I'm
not experienced enough to know what it was.

Having pushed all the envelopes from more than 90 episodes now, "Sex and the
City" gets to say goodbye in an almost restrained fashion focusing on doing
justice to its characters and settling on an ending that's true to their
personal evolutions and pleasing to the shows loyal fans.

Last week's episode set up the ultimate romantic cliffhanger. Carrie fled to
Paris to relocate for good with Alek, an older, wealthy artist played by
Mikhail Baryshnikov. She's in the city of her romantic dreams with the guy
who seems like her dream lover, and yet, the man that's been in and out of her
life since the series began, a wealthy hedonist nicknamed Mr. Big, is an ocean
away but not far from Carrie's thoughts.

Here's Parker as Carrie, phoning from France to New York to complain to and
confide in one of her best friends Miranda played by Cynthia Nixon.

(Soundbite from "Sex and the City")

Ms. SARAH JESSICA PARKER: (As Carrie Bradshaw) It's hard. It's harder than I
thought. I don't speak the language and it's too cold and rainy to walk
around all day. I've been to every museum, you know, like, twice. I don't
know. I'm just sort of lost.

Ms. CYNTHIA NIXON: (As Miranda Hobbes) Where's Alek?

Ms. PARKER: (As Carrie Bradshaw) Well, the exhibit is taking much more time
than he thought, so, you know, I'm alone a lot.

Ms. NIXON: (As Miranda Hobbes) Come home.

Ms. PARKER: (As Carrie Bradshaw) It's ridiculous. I just got here.

Ms. NIXON: (As Miranda Hobbes) I'm serious. You sound really upset.

Ms. PARKER: (As Carrie Bradshaw) No, I'm just being a baby. You know, I lost
my necklace and I saw these girls having lunch and I just thought how much I
miss you guys.

Ms. NIXON: (As Miranda Hobbes) We miss you, too.

Ms. PARKER: (As Carrie Bradshaw) Oh, this is absurd. I'm in Paris. I wanted
to come here my whole life. This is--I just have, you know, too much time to
think.

Ms. NIXON: (As Miranda Hobbes) What does that mean?

Ms. PARKER: (As Carrie Bradshaw) Can I tell you something and you won't use
it against me when I feel better and everything's great?

Ms. NIXON: (As Miranda Hobbes) Yeah.

Ms. PARKER: (As Carrie Bradshaw) I keep thinking about Big, about what it
would be like if I come here with Big.

BIANCULLI: What's so satisfying about this series is how much the characters
have grown over the years. When the show began, Carrie was a carefree sex
columnist looking for fun, fame and adventure. Miranda was a man-hating,
marriage-ridiculing career woman. As for the two other best friends in
Carrie's inner circle, Charlotte played by Kristin Davis, was a polite and
repressed debutante type while Samantha played by Kim Cattrall was a female
sexual adventurer and defiantly unattached playgirl.

That's all changed. The ladies, like the series, have gotten much more
complicated and serious and "Sex and the City" is much the better for it.
Two of the women, Charlotte and Miranda are married now. Miranda, thinking of
her baby more than herself, has done the previously unthinkable and moved to
Brooklyn with her new husband. Charlotte, struggling with infertility, is
trying to adopt a baby. And Samantha, struggling with breast cancer, spoke at
a fund-raiser last week that provided her and the show with a personal best
scene of pride, individuality and triumph.

What will happen Sunday? I'm only guessing but I'm guessing that Charlotte
gets her adopted baby and that the four women get together around a restaurant
table one last time. As for whether Carrie stays in Paris, well, last week's
episode ended with a cliffhanger as Big, played by Chris Noth, met with
Carrie's friends to seek guidance and ended up getting marching orders from
Miranda.

(Soundbite from "Sex and the City")

Mr. CHRIS NOTH: (As Mr. Big) Look, I need your advice. You three know her
better than anyone. You're the loves of her life, and a guy's just lucky to
come in fourth, but I do love her. And if you think I have the slightest
chance, I'll be on the next plane to Paris. I'll roam the streets until I
find her. I'll do anything, but if you think that she really is happy, well,
I wouldn't want to wreck that for her and I'll be history.

Ms. NIXON: (As Miranda Hobbes) Go get our girl.

BIANCULLI: Will "Sex and the City" end with a big finish? Big in capital
letters? Here's one more prediction. When it's all over, Carrie will end the
series reunited with her one true love, New York. Carrie will always have
Paris, but for "Sex and the City" to end right, it shouldn't end there. "Sex
and the City" wraps up its six-year run this Sunday.

(Credits)

BIANCULLI: For Terry Gross, I'm David Bianculli.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.