Barbara Kopple 0:00 I put a wireless mic on two guys who were leafleting, and one of the places they happened to be leafleting was the Knowltons. mr. Knowlton was the president of Hormel. Movie Excerpt 0:11 Could I talk to your husband? Movie Excerpt 0:12 No, but there's something I would just love to say to you. Aren't you guys happy working at the Hormel plant? Movie Excerpt 0:20 Under the current conditions, no. We were happy making 10.69, and when the normal plant treated us decent. Movie Excerpt 0:26 Why do you stay at a place you're not happy? You know, nobody should stay. Movie Excerpt 0:30 We don't have all the money in the world like like the Knowltons do. Movie Excerpt 0:33 I can just when we were your age, we weren't making Movie Excerpt 0:44 Then give us a fair shake like you got a fair shake. Todd Melby 0:58 This is the Drunk Projectionist. I'm Todd Melby. As a young filmmaker, Barbara Koppel won two Oscars for Best Documentary. In 1977, Copple's Harlan County, USA, won the Academy Award for Best Doc. Then, in the 90s, another Koppel documentary, American Dream, won the Oscar. In episode two, we talked to Koppel about Harlan County, USA, and today we chat with her about American Dream. Although the two movies focus on the struggles of labor unions, they're quite different. Instead of the soulful Kentuckians of Harlan County, in American Dream, Copple's film focuses on stoic Minnesotans. Instead of a straightforward story of coal miners trying to unionize, American Dream had lots of competing and at times confusing interests. There's Hormel, the Austin, Minnesota meatpacking company that created Spam. Some people pronounce it Hormel. There's the local meatpackers union, populated by the Minnesota men working the line, and then when Hormel rushed to cut the hourly wage like a buzz saw on a pork shoulder, the workers rebelled and broke away from the International Union. To summarize, there's the company, the Breakaway Union, and the National Union. Copple breaks it down for us on this episode of the Drunk Projectionist. Movie Excerpt 2:36 the hormel company had put us into a corner, and we were going to come out after them. We're going to be on strike as of midnight Friday. Movie Excerpt 2:44 I see people working together, people willing to share, people opening up. I think we're pulling together. You know, we're a big family. Movie Excerpt 2:51 What the hell is the matter with that? What plan of action is everybody here looking for? Barbara Kopple 2:58 There was this guy who lived in New York City, and his name is Ray Rogers. And Ray Rogers had a company known as Corporate Campaign. And he came by one day, and he said, "I'm doing a campaign in Austin, Minnesota, and you should come and film it. And that's how it started. And I said, "Okay, but actually, I was trying to do something that was a little different before that, and having some great problems with it. I was in Worthington, Minnesota, where an armor plant was closing, and it was almost like the grapes of wrath, except all the people were really sad and depressed, and thinking that it was their fault. And people would say, "I never missed a day of work, and and I don't understand why this plant is closing. And I would come back from filming in Worthington and just be really sad because there was no hope. And then. then Ray told me about Austin, and I also heard on the radio people, you know, chanting and talking about what was happening in Austin, Minnesota, and they were saying, you know, that song, "We're Not Going to Take It" from Twisted Sister. I thought, oh my goodness, there's life there. There's something really happening there, and so I went to Austin, Minnesota. Movie Excerpt 4:36 Two years ago, under the incentive program, my last incentive check in the hog cut in the new plant, I grow $637 for 47 hours work. After the incentive program was taken away, I went down to $409 a week. Today, I'm making 300 and. $12, working twice as hard for the same amount of hours. Barbara Kopple 5:05 In the meat industry, wages were being slashed, and wages. I think they were making 1069 an hour, and it went down to 659 an hour, if I remember it correctly. But it was pretty terrible because these were people, you know. Your grandfather worked there, and your father worked there, and you worked there. Speaker 1 5:31 My father worked for George A. Hormel Plant for many years. He was also a very proud man. He was a hard worker. He was proud of his products. He was in the days of heavy production. He went out on a stretcher one day from the plant. My husband now. I'm proud to be a wife of a hog cutter. I'm proud of the products, but I don't like the way they're treating my family or my husband. Barbara Kopple 5:58 And they didn't understand what was going on, and they got really angry about it because they had given so much of their lives and so many of the generations to the Hormel Meatpacking Company. Todd Melby 6:12 So, what did they decide to do about it? Barbara Kopple 6:13 They hired Ray Rogers, who does the corporate campaign, and they decided that if they couldn't negotiate what they wanted, they would have to strike, and so of course they decided to strike in the middle of a Minnesota winter where it was 60 below with the wind chill factor, and they went out on the picket lines, and it was very confusing though too because you had these other entities, you had the National Union, who was trying to stop the bleeding in every other area. You had P9, who was rewriting their contract and fighting the only way that they knew how, and then you had the company. So it was a very complicated film to make because there were so many different groupings. Where Harlan County, it was more black and white, and this there was a lot of gray areas. Todd Melby 7:14 There were lots of gray areas because you have Jim Gaet from P9. He was he was the head of the local, and plus all the all these white guys with with mustaches, you know, terrific 1980s Midwest mustaches. So Gaette was the local guy. Ray Rogers was the guy from New York, and despite the name of the organization he was with, corporate campaign, they weren't for corporations. They were about helping unions challenge corporations that were tied to the company. And then there was the guy Louis Anderson. Lewie Anderson 7:41 Looking for somebody to run in here with a fucking white horse. You don't even know what somebody come in here walking. You don't even know what negotiations is all about. You come in here and act like you know every goddamn. I did not come in here and act like I know everything. Louis, the hell you never. Our members are asking for some answers, Louis. But give your members some answers, Ed. Don't make that shit on me. We're the you know the easiest goddamn thing to do is blame somebody for the goddamn problem that you're in. I can't change the circumstances. Blame you for the problem we're in, Louis. We're saying so. Todd Melby 8:11 He's a union negotiator. Barbara Kopple 8:12 Union negotiator, responsible for the entire meat packing community in states like you know Iowa and all over the country. Yeah, and Todd Melby 8:23 I thought Louis was a fantastic person to watch in the movie because his face was droopy and and his mustache was droopy and he was kind of stooped. I felt like he had the whole union world on his back and he was really trying to carry it and do his best against these insurmountable odds. Barbara Kopple 8:40 Yeah, he was weighted down, but yet he was really persistent, and he had grown up in Iowa, and he did. You know, he was worked in a packing house. Lewie Anderson 8:55 Go ahead, you can go ahead and scream and holler. We'll get that out of your system, then we can proceed. Todd Melby 9:01 And I was watching it as a viewer. You know, at first I'm like, okay, Jim Gaette. Yeah, I can totally understand why he hired this guy from New York. That's a really good idea. Maybe this will work. And then I'm like, uh-oh, it's not gonna work. And now it's like Louis Anderson. He's like the voice of reason. Barbara Kopple 9:16 I don't know what to say. I think everybody was flying by the seat of their pants, hoping it would work out. Todd Melby 9:23 Do you think Louis Cigarette was almost its own character? Barbara Kopple 9:26 I think it. I think it was. Louis Anderson has now passed away. So. Todd Melby 9:31 So, what was one of the key scenes from this movie? The Barbara Kopple 9:36 The most important scene. I mean, there were. There's so many, but the most important scene was going to people who they called P 10, who were workers who aligned themselves not with Jim Guyette and Ray Rogers, but with Louis Anderson, and they were coming. To a big fork in the road because people were, you know, being hired to go back to work, and if you didn't go back to work, you would lose your job. And so their fork in the road was, they had been union all their lives. What do they do? Do they cross the picket line? And I sat around with each one of them as they talked about their lives and they talked about the suffering they were going through and that they couldn't make any headway and some of them broke down in tears and you know that you know Minnesotan men in particular do not break down in tears very often, and the decision was to cross the picket line, and so I went with them. You know, and they crossed, and I got out of the car. But it was a really big thing going by all their friends who, you know, called them scabs and yelled at them people that they had known all their lives to cross a picket line and then there was two brothers and one brother said to the other brother you know if you cross the picket line you won't be my brother anymore and I think they still haven't spoken to this day, Movie Excerpt 11:21 Maybe I have to swallow hard, but if you want a job, you're going to have to take it, I guess, a little bit. Barbara Kopple 11:34 So, are you having problems with your brother? Movie Excerpt 11:38 Oh, I won't have any problems really until he crosses. If he crosses that line to scab, then there's nothing worse than a scab. So how can you have anything to do with a scab? Barbara Kopple 11:51 For me, because Harlan County was so clear, this taught me a lot about listening to all the different sides and allowing them to speak, and not bringing my own agenda to anything. Todd Melby 12:07 In Harlan County, it was union versus company, and this is four different viewpoints on the union. Barbara Kopple 12:13 Yes, exactly. Yeah, and so it was hard to make it clear. It was hard to get all the different sides to trust me. It was a tough film to make. Todd Melby 12:24 But you had terrific access. It seemed like you were at every meeting you needed to be at. Barbara Kopple 12:28 Well, sometimes I would have to stand up and give a speech about why I wanted to film something. And Todd Melby 12:35 What was the speech you'd make? Barbara Kopple 12:36 Well, depended on why I wanted to do it. That was a long time ago, you know, that I wanted to hear their side. I wanted to see what they were doing, and that this was going to be a history for them, something very, very important. And I remember going back to Austin after the film was finished, and it was in summer, and the only place that we could screen it out was the high school, which had no air conditioning, and it was on 16 millimeter, except they didn't have, you know, the proper reels, and so we were in the back sweating, taking a pencil, and you know they didn't have rewinds or anything, and putting it on reels so it could be shown on the projector, plus the fact I was scared to death of what would happen if nobody liked it. Or I remember sitting there looking where the exits were, but when the film played, it was quite amazing because it was total silence, and sometimes you could hear somebody cough or an occasional boo or something else. And then at the end of the film, people got up and they just clapped and clapped, and they were gave it themselves a standing ovation because now they can tell their children why they weren't there all the time and what they were doing and what they were struggling to do. Todd Melby 14:09 Wow, that must have been really, really tough. And was it like a was it a packed gymnasium at the Austin High School? Barbara Kopple 14:14 Exactly. Todd Melby 14:15 What happened to the union at Hormel? Barbara Kopple 14:21 Well, the union broke up, and the people who were P 10 took over. Jim Gaette was relieved of his position. Many of the workers did not get back into the plant, and they had a two tiered wage system, where the people who stayed in the plant and crossed the picket line got the 1069 an hour, and the other people working side by side with them would get 669 or something that was a lot lower. And that you know is real union busting to have that, and a lot of people just lost their jobs and had to go and try and find other work. Todd Melby 15:18 That's director Barbara Koppel. I interviewed her in 2016. Don't forget to check out episode two of the podcast. In that episode, Copple takes us behind the scenes of Harlan County, USA. The Criterion Collection has just released a new 4K restoration of Harlan County and American Dream. There's more information on that at Criterion.com. Transcribed by https://otter.ai