Artwork Title: I Could Tell My Own Story
Artist: Peter Neudel
Transcript
– OK, so first off I have these tapes. It’s like hundreds of films, maybe 300 films. Yeah. What’s that? Paracelsus, oh, I forgot about that movie I made there. That was a great movie, yeah. This is Lenny. This is the film we made about Lenny Zakim. God, this is like a walk down memory Lenny. My name is Eric Neudel. I am a filmmaker. I have been a filmmaker since 1971. Some 53 years ago is when I started.
I was born in 1947, just after World War II ended. I first lived in Boston, Massachusetts in the West End. During that time, that was a Jewish community. Culturally, everybody spoke Yiddish, almost closed community just tucked into Boston.
And then we moved to Tewksbury. That was our big move. My parents were able to afford a small house on South Street, and I stayed there until I graduated high school. That was a completely different era in American life. It was a time when nuclear families and women’s roles were very different. There was still a lot of segregation, racism. There was still a lot of prejudice in that time, and I experienced that myself in my early life.
Again, I was the only Jewish boy in that town with no other Jewish boys. I became devoted to school, which became the epiphany. I was class president. I was head of the radio club. I got my license quite young to operate a ham radio. I wanted to be a writer. And in fact, I won the National Scholastic magazine writing contest.
The biggest change in my life, I went to Brandeis. And at Brandeis, the whole thing opened up. That year I won the Cramer fellowship, and they sent me to the University of Edinburgh. And from then on, I just traveled. I studied on the train. I hitchhiked all the way from Greece through Turkey and Yugoslavia into Venice. And I realized this is a very big world on a very small planet in a huge universe.
After college, I got a call from WGBH, and they needed someone to be the janitor. So I went in and they liked me there. It turns out WGBH was very invested in me, and they gave me this tutelage. Eventually, the program managers wanted to start a news program. They said, well, will you be the newsroom librarian? And I said, all right.
The job was clipping newspapers. I read 25 newspapers a day. Soon they decided, well, we need a film unit for the newsroom. We just can’t have people sitting at a desk talking. We need to go out and get some stories. So they asked me, would you be the sound recordist? I knew nothing about it. And right away I was being trained at all this stuff.
These incredibly skilled technicians, sound recordists, and camera people. I also was pretty quickly put into editing. When I hit editing, everything came together. It suited me. I was good at it. So all the major series that came through the new Nova series, FRONTLINE. Presentation of WGBH Boston, this is FRONTLINE.
And soon I was the editor for the place. I could borrow equipment from WGBH. I thought, these films are good, but they lack something that I want to say. I knew I could tell my own story.
– [LAUGHS]
– So what I’ve learned is you’re going to doubt yourself in life. Every time I undertake a project, the first thing I say to myself is, I’m not sure I can do this. And every time I’ve been able to do it. You’re going to weigh yourself through the weight of other people’s expectations and thoughts about who you are and what you are but it’s all worthless.
What’s really worthwhile is what you think of yourself. And the reason I’ve learned this is because I’ve watched people with disabilities. I watch people with serious struggles and poverty and wars. You’re going to have these doubts. You have to be able to generate that sense of calm within yourself that you are valuable.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Video Description
A small white house with a yard and trees. Hummingbirds eat at a feeder hung at the front of the house.
The man puts videotapes into a box.
He points at more tapes in a box.
Text: I Could Tell My Own Story.
Photo of Eric as a baby and a child.
A photo of Boston’s West End in the 40s. A narrow street with 19th Century buildings and cars parked along one side.
Teenage boys in white t-shirts and slacks hang out on the steps of a small grocery. Another photo shows women with babies in buggies. They also hang out near a grocery.
Photo of Eric with two siblings. They sit on the front steps of a white house.
Photo, the teenage Eric lies on the floor and writes.
Eric as a young man with friends.
Text on a TV screen reads WGBH Boston.
The logo for NOVA.
He films a man on a bus. An old film starts to play with a countdown sequence. It shows a woman in a wheelchair at the top of a staircase.
Video shows people as they put on or take off prosthetic legs.
Text: A film by Peter Neudel. Credits: EDITOR, Peter Neudel, CAMERA OPERATOR, Nick Gould, Peter Neudel, FILM ARCHIVIST, Yamila De Filippo, MUSIC BY Lautaro De Filippo.