Norma Percy, film-maker

0:00BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

0:51My castaway this week is the filmmaker Norma Percy. She's been called the preeminent political documentary maker of her generation. Her films tell the story of the conflicts and political upheavals of our times, from Watergate to Putin's Russia, taking viewers into the room where big decisions were made with the people who were there. Her programmes feature world leaders of all political persuasions, from Bill Clinton and Gerry Adams to Mikhail Gorbachev and Slobodan Milosevic, allowing their own words and their sometimes conflicting perspectives to take viewers closer to the truth. She was born in New York and, after a visit to London at 15, became a committed Anglophile.

1:30She later studied at the London School of Economics and became a House of Commons researcher before a chance encounter with the journalist and producer Brian Lapping led to her start in television. Her productions have won many prizes, including an Emmy, two BAFTAs and four Royal Television Society Awards. In 2010, she became the first TV documentary maker to win the Orwell Prize for Lifetime Achievement. She says, I'm not a big one for issues and I don't do this to change the world, but there are things I want to know and I like to produce evidence for the things I find out. My main motivation for wanting to do what I do is that I want to know what happened.

2:08Norma Percy, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you for having me. Thank you for joining us, Norma. So you've been fascinated by politics and the workings of power since you were just a student. Why exactly? I'm not so sure it's politics. It's secrets, maybe. It's secrets, gossip. It's wanting to know what really happened. And particularly anything that anyone wants to try to keep from research. So that behind closed doors thing, behind the scenes. Yes, I think that's the motivation. Norma, how do you get people to open up to you? For example, the big political hitters. I think you've said anyone worth having says no at least three times.

2:53Yeah, I shouldn't have said it because it probably encourages them to do it. But how do you get them? Well, we say, and we mean it, that we give everybody a level playing field. We ask, what happened? What did you say? How did he reply? We don't point fingers and say, you are a terrorist. genuinely if they are it will probably come out and the viewers aren't idiots and they'll be able to see from what they said and how they described it that they are but we give them a chance to put their point of view and persuading them that we're going to make the program the other side is talking you should as well and it's worth the trouble that you'll have a wide audience because it is trouble to answer our questions because you have to do research in your papers.

3:51You can't just turn up and say, I believe the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is that. You have to say, I was at that meeting when he said. And so you have to research it. It's hard work. But nowhere will you get a fairer hearing. We're not going to make it totally from your point of view. There are ways. You know, people who've been prime minister can get their own account. But their own account, well, you know, everybody looks at it sceptically. That's how they saw it. When we make a multi-sided account, it gets believed. And if you convince them of that, of course it's the most important thing that happened in their lives.

4:34And they want the story to get out. It's time for disc number one, Norma. What are you taking and why have you chosen it? Well, my father died when I was young. My mother, who had started life as a 50s woman who expected to work until she had her children, became a working mother. And we children were sent to summer camp. And one summer she had to work in Puerto Rico all summer. And I went at the age of, I can't remember whether this was 8 or 15, but there was two summers. and I had a camp counsellor who loved the songs of Tom Lear and when we went on these long walks he taught us to sing his songs.

5:23The wonder of Tom Lear is that he takes this very sardonic, surprising lyrics but it goes to very nice, stirring tunes which are just the thing to keep you marching on a long walk. So, it's Be Prepared.

5:48Be prepared That's the Boy Scouts marching song Be prepared As through life you march along Be prepared to hold your liquor pretty well Don't write naughty words on walls if you can't spell Be prepared To hide that pack of cigarettes Don't make book Be prepared, Tom Lehrer. Norma Percy, you were born in New York City in 1942 and spent your early years in the suburb of Long Island. You're the eldest of two daughters. Your father, Joseph, was a research chemist and your mother, Constance, a statistician. Now, as you mentioned, your father died when you were very young. You were just four. He was killed in a plane crash along with 38 other people.

6:33What happened? Gosh, it was extraordinary. I learned about this mostly when my mother died going through her papers and finding the newspaper cuttings and things. He was a chemist working for Colgate-Palmolive. He invented a kind of detergent hand soap and things like that. But he was a very brilliant chemist. And he was going with a group of American scientists after the war to Germany to try and steal industrial secrets. and the plane took off from what was then Idlewild Airport, Kennedy Airport and there's a picture of me and my one and a half year old sister holding his hand saying goodbye to him at the airport which is my strongest memory of him.

7:22I saw that, it's so poignant. Every time I look at it. And the plane took off from Kennedy, it stopped to refuel this plane did then in Newfoundland. Perfectly nice, clear day. And then it took off again and the pilots flew straight into a rock and the plane fell into the sea and everybody on it was killed. And I think it was the biggest commercial air disaster at the time. It was on the front page of the New York Times. But I was four. And, you know, you don't, from the perspective of being four, I don't remember very well. My memories also come from an incredibly detailed baby book that my mother kept.

8:06And you come to the entry for the 3rd of October 1946, and it says, a very sad thing happened today. My father died. They told me he was in hospital, but my friends said, no, they were lying, he was dead. And it took a while for me to accept that my friends were right. but my only other vivid memory is of course we moved to New York City again because my mother was now a working mother and had to find a job to support us so I have very few memories of him, I read everything I know my mother would answer direct questions but she closed the chapter and the most amazing thing is that the job that she got She was the statistician for the American Cancer Society who travelled around the world making sure that people coded death certificates in the right way so the statistics really were the same all over the world.

9:14And she was never off an airplane and just never translated to her to be afraid of flying. And she ended up becoming one of the first people to spot the link between smoking and lung cancer. Yeah. In the 50s, she worked on a study which asked a large sample of men between 50 and 70 all about their personal habits, whether they drank and smoked. And the evidence after one year was so clear that they announced the result of the study. It was called Hammond and Horwood, and her name was on the front cover. Again, when she died, we found amongst her papers an essay she wrote that said, My Biggest Disappointment.

9:57She expected, of course, back in the early 50s when they announced this, people would suddenly stop smoking. And sadly, she died in 2004 and it really hadn't taken hold the way it is today. She would have been very pleased. But I certainly knew her as a militant anti-smoker. And she had a big sign up that said, I advise my patients not to smoke in the front of the living room. It's time for disc number two, Norma. What's it going to be? It's Chopin's Waltz in C-sharp minor, which stems partly from my very sophisticated school time in New York. And after school every day we had an activity, and my favourite was ballet.

10:46But I am not the nature's most graceful person. And I remember the moment when the ballet teacher was trying to make us all go twice a week because we would be much better. And then she looked at me and said, it will make everybody really much better. But I'm not sure there's much hope for normal. Oh, heartbreaking. Well, it wasn't so bad, really. I mean, I really realized I'd rather watch ballet than go through it all. But Chopin's Waltz in C Sharp Minor, which was introduced to me by one of my sophisticated friends when I was in high school, also was the music for one of our recitals, of which I can still see a picture of me in a pink tutu, and realize I was kind of in the bottom of the chord de ballet rather than the star.

11:57Thank you.

12:42Chopin's Waltz in C-sharp minor, opus 64, number 2, performed by Katia Bunyatesvili. Norma Percy, after your father's death, as you mentioned, your mother took you and your sister back to New York City to be closer to your grandmothers who could help to care for the two of you. So they both sound fascinating. Let's start with your paternal grandmother, Grandma Percy, who came to live with you. What was she like? She was a Russian immigrant who came over in 1905. And in those days, the American melting pot was you came from where you came from and you didn't talk about where you came from. You became an American.

13:18So she very rarely talked about what it was like in Russia, or I think it was Belorussia in the end. And she was lovely. But she spent a year going to visit relatives in California. And we got a nanny from my mother's childhood who was a real disciplinarian and was my first brush with real authority. How did that go? Well, I thought I won every battle. I mean, the one I remember was at one point I wouldn't finish my meal and she said I couldn't leave the table until I did. But I knew that evening there was a birthday party. It was my grandfather's 50th birthday party and I had to be there and it was her job to make sure I was there.

14:03So I knew I would win in the end. So I guess there you are. If you think out and prepare your strategy, you can win against authority every time. You were made for politics, Norma, right at the beginning, it's obvious. So tell me about your mother's mother then, Lucille. She sounds like quite a trailblazer because she had studied at Columbia University. She graduated from Barnard College, the Women's College of Columbia University, in 1912. She'd studied English, I believe. Yes, she'd studied English, but we found her diaries after she died and they were fascinating when she was a young woman, very lively.

14:40and then they became much more I went to the park with my children and so this amazing education, she never thought to make it into something professional. What was her influence on you? Well, she took me to museums and to the theatre and generally told me to stand up straight and took me shopping the annual visit for the winter coat. But my grandfather's hobby was umpiring at tennis, and he would go to Wimbledon every other year. And his claim to fame was he was chairman of the umpires one year. And when he went to Wimbledon, he umpired the Wimbledon final. And this was the first time a foreigner ever did it.

15:26And he made terrible mistakes, and that was on the front cover of the London Times. and I think it took them about 30 years to ever allow a foreigner to do it again. But nonetheless, he went to Wimbledon every other year and took a grandchild who reached the right age and for me it was 15. And wow, that was an experience. So this is the trip that made you a committed Anglophile. I mean, tell me about it. What do you remember? For sure, yeah. I was interested already but we sat in the international box at Wimbledon and we would get a Wimbledon car and I stood three or four people behind Princess Anne who was going to get her car and then I went to the Wimbledon ball and I had crushes on tennis players the way most teenage girls have them on movie stars but the annual tennis meeting which was after Wimbledon was in Monte Carlo and sitting three tables away was Grace Kelly, who not very long before had starred in my most favourite movie of all time, High Society, and my next record has to be a song from that, which my sister and I knew by heart, and we performed it, this fantastic duet.

16:50Well, did you ever? I have heard among this clan You are called the forgotten man Is that what they're saying? Well, did you ever? What a swell party this is And have you heard the story of A boy, a girl, unrequited love Sounds like pure soap opera I may cry Tune in tomorrow What a swell party this is What frails What rocks What broads What birds Well, did you ever? From the soundtrack to High Society composed by Cole Porter and performed by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. So, Norma Percy, what was your relationship with your mother like as you were growing up? She had had no religious training because her parents in this small town in Long Island had quarreled with the rabbis.

17:43So she was totally secular and we had very little religious education. But she had every characteristic of a Jewish mother. So my rebellion, of course, which is a typically stupid one, was I started smoking at university. Oh, dear. Which, if you could pick one thing to upset her. But, of course, being a wishy-washy rebeller, I thought I kept it from her. When I stopped smoking, I discovered that she must have known all along, because you can tell when you're around a smoker, even if she never smokes in front of you. she chose not to notice. She looked the other way. Yes, or sniffed the other way.

18:29So, I mean, she sounds like a very dynamic character. You obviously had a very clear idea of what you were interested in, who you wanted to be. Did you clash then? In one sense, I was a goody-goody. I wanted to do well in school. Of course, she would have liked me to be a scientist. I think she really would have liked to become a doctor. She worked with doctors. but she got a master's in statistics to work her husband through his PhD and never thought she'd have enough time for her family to be a doctor. She was quite a good mother but I did obviously chafe against this loving closeness of my family because I chose not to go to an Ivy League school.

19:18My parents had met at Cornell but to go to Oberlin. In Ohio? In the darkest Midwest. And I knew that Cornell, which is a huge university, was probably too big and too much for me. I was a quiet little thing. One of your teachers there had a profound impact on you. Who was he and why did he play such an important part in your life? George Lange. He was a Hungarian who made international relations as much fun as gossip. And it was the time of the Cold War, and it was a truly interesting time to be studying international relations. But he had a weekly seminar for honours students that flouted all the conventions of boring lectures.

20:09his wife would make you cookies and he would sneak a gin and tonic to someone who was nervous when about to give a seminar paper. And he knew, you know, when you broke up with your boyfriend. And he really did treat his students as family. And he was the one who advised you to come to the LSE? Yeah. He asked me what I really wanted to get out of graduate school. We all went to graduate school. and I said, well, I guess I want to find out how politics really works and get as far as possible for my family. He didn't stop to think for a minute. He just suggested the LSE, his alma mater, the London School of Economics.

20:55One of my first seminars at LSE was Lady Violet Bonham Carter, Prime Minister Asquith Storter. and she told the most amazing stories. Like when she was a teenager, she was seated next to Mr. Churchill and Mr. Churchill ignored her. She was but a girl. He ignored her through the soup and the fish course and the main course. But suddenly the pudding was brought in. He turned and he fixed her with a stern look and said, I do believe we are all worms going slowly to our grave. But then he perked up. But I do believe I am a glow worm. So you learn that in seminars. It really gets you interested in politics.

21:52But I really hit an interesting time. I mean, my first lecture, Professor Robert McKenzie said, Sorry, I'm cancelling my lecture tonight. Harold Macmillan has resigned, and I'm going to talk about it on the BBC. Honestly, I felt like I was in the centre of the universe. Norma, let's have a break for some more music. It's your fourth choice today. Tell us about this next disc. I arrived at LSE on the night that Harold Macmillan resigned, and the next year or so, London was in fact transformed from the quaint place that I had thought I was coming to study in to swinging London and the Beatles and all they stood for.

22:41So when I went home, and I still thought of New York as home after my first year, but not much longer. Well, I kind of felt I brought the Beatles to America because Hard Day's Night opened that summer in New York and I took my sister and our two closest friends to see it. It's been a hard day's night And I've been working like a star It's been a hard day's night I should be sleeping like a love But when I get home to you I find the things that you do will make me feel alright. You know I work all day to get your money to buy your thing. The Beatles and Hard Day's Night. Norma Percy, you weren't able to complete your PhD because student fees went up and you couldn't afford to continue your studies.

23:42What did you do? Well, I had to get a job. In those days, Labour MPs couldn't really afford researchers. They had a third of a secretary, but there'd been a Labour landslide in 66, and John P. McIntosh, a Glasgow professor, got elected in one of those seats that he had just stood in order to see what it was like. And he was in the middle of writing a book and had a research grant to pay a researcher. So there was an advertisement in the Times, and I was absolutely determined to get the job. And he was researching a book on parliamentary scrutiny of the government. But he used me for everything.

24:25The first thing was to revise his book on the British cabinet, which had been my Bible when I was studying comparative government. So this was really exciting. But the task I liked most of all was he liked to sit in his office and write his Times articles in his books. But he still was interested in the gossip. So I took it as my job to sit in the stranger's bar every night and catch the gossip and report to him in the morning. And the PhD was soon abandoned. But I truly never remember being as happy in my work. I just sort of walked around the House of Commons smiling all the time. You mentioned stories and gossip earlier, that that's part of the attraction for you of what you do.

25:11You just love finding out what happened. I mean, I'm picturing you as a young woman in the Stranger's Bar. What kind of stories were you hearing there? A young woman in a very short miniskirt. It was absolutely that time. Once the rather inebriated member of Parliament looked at me and said, what is a woman dressed like that doing here? And I was really shocked because, you know, everybody dressed like that then. But I guess he never left the House of Commons. But I was so happy, but it was a five-year grant, and it was coming to an end. And I think my poor Professor McIntosh was afraid he'd never get me off the premises.

25:54And I was really beginning to panic about how I was about to lose my ringside seat. There just weren't researcher jobs going. I couldn't be an MP because I was an American citizen. In any way, I was no good at making speeches. So I thought, well, the only thing to do was to marry an MP. So I got as far as actually leafing through the Times Guide of the House of Commons looking for a suitable candidate. Any eligible bachelors in there? There were one or two, but I'm not going to tell you who I picked out. But just at that moment, Brian Lapping appeared, and he worked for Ganondorf, and they hired Brian, who was a print journalist, to do unusual ways of making politics on television.

26:43And he was in the middle of trying to staff a series about what was wrong with Parliament, and he did a researcher who knew about Parliament. And there I was, and I soon discovered that television was an even better way of discovering political secrets. and we decided we would make a fly-on-the-wall film of one clause of a bill going through the House of Commons and we asked for access from ministers and civil servants and how they reacted with MPs wanting to change the bill. And we got it. And that had been something that we had been trying to get when we were writing his parliamentary books and they wouldn't do it.

27:30but the thing about television is that politicians really need television I mean they need to persuade the public that what they're doing is right so they have to give some access to television and maybe that's something I've been playing on ever since Norma I want to find out what happened next but I'd love to hear your fifth disc before we do that tell me about this next one why have you chosen it? at Oberlin we had a very good theatre group they did things like Gilbert and Sullivan and musicals and my favourite performance during my time at Oberlin was a show called The Fantastics and the story of this musical is two fathers' friends wanting their children to get married and they came up with a brilliant strategy they forbid them having anything to do with each other.

28:27And the reasoning is explained in this very charming song, Never Say No. Children! Lovers! Fantastics! Geese! How clever we are! How crafty to know! To manipulate children! You merely say no! Oh, dog's got to bark, a mule's got to bray. Soldiers must fight and preachers must pray And children, I guess, must get their own way The minute that you say no Never Say No from the musical The Fantastics performed by the new Off-Broadway cast. Norma Percy, your first job with Brian was on the series State of the Nation. Now, the first programmes were about Parliament and I know that you had some strong views about how you should approach the work that you were doing.

29:20What exactly were you pushing for? They were set to make a series about what people thought was wrong, ordinary people thought was wrong with Parliament. I was shocked and horrified. What do ordinary people know about how Parliament works? I mean, if you want to interview ordinary people, you should ask them about their weddings or things that happened to them. But the people who know what's wrong with how Parliament works are the MPs that work there. So what we should do is go to the MPs themselves and ask them. And when you ask MPs, it's improving the ability of the backbencher to have some say on what Parliament asks.

30:01And I, of course, with my training from working in Parliament with President McIntosh, knew the answer, which was select committees. so what had been a series that was going to go to ordinary punters just like they do on the news became a strong argument for select committees. So that's quite a big shift to redirect the programme in that way. Where did your self-confidence come from? Oh, from belief that I was right. Tell me about the Norma Percy method because you developed that quite early on. Talk me through it, if you wouldn't mind. The essence of the method is what we do is try and show what goes on behind closed doors, inside the room when the big political decisions are made by getting people who were there, only those who were there, and asking them what happened.

31:00But there are lots of things that are important, but perhaps I think the most important is speaking to everyone first off the record and getting them to tell the story and edit their stories together to make a script and then we start to film. Your approach of bringing all sides and often conflicting versions of events so that you allow and create this complexity. You're in the room where it happens, to quote Hamilton. You hear the story, viewers hear that, and they're in the room too, but they can judge for themselves. this was important. But what we find is people's stories do support each other as to the facts, although the interpretation and the spin differs.

31:47So the viewers should be clear as to the facts and they judge who was right in the spin. Do you remember when you realised that you'd hit upon a kind of mechanism, an approach to making films, that was going to be very special? I wonder if this way of making programs would ever have been developed if it wasn't for the luck of the first one which was a series called End of Empire which looked at how Britain left each of its top colonies and in that case it meant looking at it from the British officials who ran the empire but also from the other side and it meant that we talked to people who were terrorists at the time the program were made, who, when it was over and the flag came down, they became police chiefs and presidents.