BROADCASTS.com

b'BOB NIEMACK is the zealous executive producer of Discovery\\u2019s long-running docudrama medical series \\u201cUntold Stories of the ER.\\u201d Bob began his action-packed production career as an editor and won a national Emmy for editing the groundbreaking documentary \\u201cScared Straight!\\u201d \\u2013 a film he says came dangerously close to never being seen.\\xa0(49:13) EXPLICIT \\xa0 \\xa0 EPISODE NOTES - Posted June 24, 2017: Tomorrow will mark my 25th appearance as the announcer at BOB NIEMACK\\u2019s mostly-annual softball game. Bob loves to celebrate his birthday by playing softball with friends, family and TV colleagues, and I\\u2019ve had the privilege of providing live, amplified commentary over the years at what he calls the BBBB: Bob\\u2019s Birthday Baseball Bash. But Bob\\u2019s PIERSON TO PERSON episode STILL SWINGING has nothing to do with baseball \\u2013 or softball, for that matter. Although the title is certainly a nod to our summertime tradition, this episode is really a profile of one of my first production mentors who, after 45 action-packed years in the television business, is every bit as enthusiastic about the work he does as he ever was. I met Bob when he and his producing partner and wife, Ann Hassett, hired me as an associate producer in 1990. Bob and Ann had produced several award-winning documentaries for HBO and were just starting up a new one when I went to work for them at Niemack/Hassett Productions. NHP documentaries focused on a wide range of difficult human experience: alcoholism and drug addition, teen pregnancy, suicide, drunk driving, prostitution, mental illness, incarceration and parole, etc. As a former sociology major at UCLA, the topics that Bob and Ann covered were right up the darker part of my alley and learning how to make films about complex social issues, while assisting them in that process, was an amazing opportunity. The two years I spent working for Bob and Ann was like going to film school \\u2013 albeit a very small, private one \\u2013 and I \\u201cgraduated\\u201d not only with invaluable production skills, but a filmmaking ethos that I\\u2019ve carried with me ever since. I\\u2019m talking about a compassionate and respectful approach to telling personal stories of real people, which Bob summed up beautifully when we sat down to record this podcast episode: \\u201cThe job of a documentary filmmaker is very much akin to the role of a therapist. You open up with a question and then you patiently listen. And my guiding principle for the entire process is that when we\\u2019re dealing with people who are troubled, if we\\u2019re not part of the therapeutic process, we don\\u2019t deserve to be there. Those people are not our subjects, they are our collaborators. And if you portray them in a way that they can\\u2019t live with, you\\u2019ve done them a disservice and, I think, have done something that is irresponsible." For as long as I have known Bob, we\\u2019ve never really talked that much about his early days in production. I knew he began as an editor and that he\\u2019d edited Arnold Shapiro\\u2019s groundbreaking prison documentary \\u201cScared Straight!\\u201d But I had no idea how enormously challenging that doc was for Bob to cut. \\u201cMany people don\\u2019t know that when the film came back to us in the edit room, all the footage covering the convicts who were ranting at the kids had been scratched by one of the two cameras. We thought we were going to have to abandon the project. So we were forced into a curious kind of filmmaking where most of the show had to shown on cutaways \\u2013 the reverses on the action. So we lingered long and hard on these kids who were being terrified by these convicts who were screaming at them, and it turned out to be very effective. And it taught me a really important lesson, which is that the story is often where the silence is. Not where the noise is. You\\u2019re attracted to the commotion of the convicts in this thing, but seeing the impact on these kids as tears well up in their eyes was so powerful.\\u201d Necessity is, as the saying goes, the mother of invention. \\u201cScared Straight!\\u201d went on to win the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 1978 and Bob won himself a national Emmy for outstanding individual achievement in editing. Bob and I also talk about his directorial debut on a documentary called \\u201cShoot/Don\\u2019t Shoot,\\u201d which deals with a topic that\\u2019s as timely today as it was in 1982: the use of deadly force by police. He also recalls the humiliating moment when he and Ann were accused of lying at a public screening of their HBO film \\u201cKids in Crisis.\\u201d And we discuss the Niemack/Hassett film that he and Ann are most proud of and that has, undoubtedly, helped save countless lives over the last 20 years. Bob is now wrapping up his 8th season as executive producer of Discovery\\u2019s \\u201cUntold Stories of the ER\\u201d and I\\u2019m honored to have him as my guest on the 25th episode and Season 1 finale of PIERSON TO PERSON. BP \\xa0 Many thanks to the composers of the music featured in this episode royalty free through Creative Commons licensing: 1. "Strings & Blips" by\\xa0Adam Selzer -\\xa0needledrop.co/artists/adam-selzer/ 2. "Slow Driver" by Blue Dot Sessions -sessions.blue/sessions/ 3. "I\'m So Glad That You Exist" by Will Bangs\\xa0-\\xa0needledrop.co/artists/will-bangs/ 4. "Dry Air" by Podington Bear\\xa0-\\xa0soundofpicture.com 5. "Ringling" by\\xa0Podington Bear - soundofpicture.com 6. "Don\'t Go" by Podington Bear - soundofpicture.com'