This story was originally published Feb. 1, 2023.
Lizzie Gottlieb’s recently released “Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb” is the best movie I’ve seen that features a debate on semicolon use.
That’s not the only reason to watch the veteran filmmaker’s endearing, insightful documentary on the 50-plus-year relationship between her father, heralded book editor and former New Yorker editor Robert Gottlieb, 91, and Caro, 87, the indefatigable nonfiction maestro. The pair has worked, and frequently battled, from Caro’s Pulitzer Prize-winning breakthrough, “The Power Broker,” about the life and impact of New York City’s urban planning czar Robert Moses, to the soon-to-be five-volume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson.
Lizzie Gottlieb, 52, shows how both men’s adherence to routine and editorial rigor — Robert Gottlieb edits in pencil; Caro uses a typewriter — has produced a peerless, popular body of work in a factoid world. It cannot last. The men are in a “race against time” to finish the project, said Gottlieb, fronting a bookcase that included her father and Caro’s works, during a late January Zoom call.
In this interview edited for clarity and space, Lizzie Gottlieb discussed why “Turn Every Page” took seven years to make, why Caro’s work inspires zealotry, and how the film’s air of mortality touched her.
When was the first time you heard of Robert Caro?
Lizzie Gottlieb: That’s a really good question, and I have no idea. I think that sometimes when you grow up around things or thoughts or ideas or books, they’re just part of the fabric of your life. I grew up in this house that books were all around us, and I’m sure “The Power Broker” was just there. Talk of Caro was in the air in our house.
Is that what prompted you to say, “I really want to get into the relationship and how these books are put together”?
LG: Robert Caro says in the movie, “I didn’t want to write a book just to tell the story of a great man.” I feel similarly. I didn’t want to make a movie that just said, “Look how incredible my father is” or, “Look how incredible Robert Caro is.” I was drawn to this story a little bit because of the tension and the peculiarity, and the unique alchemy of their relationship fascinated me. The fact that I didn’t know anything about it really fascinated me. If I had made a film of my father and Toni Morrison, while I would’ve loved to make that movie, it also would’ve just been a lovefest. And then that’s not really a great story. That’s just nice.
There was a kind of formality and a bit of a distance between these two guys, and that intrigued me. I know that there was a moment, I think after the third book, where my father turned to Bob Caro and said, “We can’t do this anymore. We have to let go and we have to be nicer to each other.” And he said they did. And the fourth book was easier. And then the relationship on “Working” I think was even easier. And they’ve both said that over the course of making this movie, they have turned into friends. So that’s pretty amazing. We’ll see what happens when they work on volume five.
(Note: Fear not. Lizzie Gottlieb says Caro is working “unbelievably hard every single day” on it.)
Do you think you helped facilitate that?
LG: My dad says he now likes Bob Caro more because Bob Caro likes his daughter. So that softens him. But I think that maybe it’s not so much that I did anything, but I think that for them having to stop and think about and articulate what they have been to each other over these decades, I’m sure that that helped them kind of reframe and maybe appreciate what they are to each other.
Are we ever going to see that kind of partnership where it’s so intense with two individuals trying to craft the perfect book or the perfect anything?
LG: This film took me seven years to make, and part of the reason I was able to make the film I wanted to make is because I had incredible partners who believed in me and believed in the movie. So I think there are probably scientists who collaborate and take a long time to figure out whatever it is that they’re trying to figure out. So I don’t think that kind of work is over, but I do think the world of journalism and the world of publishing has changed so drastically. And I think that financially it’s hard to support this kind of project. Certainly over the seven years, I think people looked at me like I was out of my mind: “You’re still working on that movie?” (Laughs) So you have to have a little bit of grit to be able to withstand that sort of raised eyebrow skepticism.
Why did it take seven years for you to make the movie?
LG: I mean, you can’t rush a movie about Robert Caro. (Laughs) I have so many answers to that and I don’t want to be defensive about it, but I think that it was a really, really complicated story to tell — partly just convincing them first to agree to do it and then to slowly trust me and that my intentions were worthy in some way. Appropriately, it took Bob Caro a while to kind of open up to me, but also there was no reason that this movie should work. It’s a movie about two very, very old men who spend their time sitting in chairs contemplating word choice. Like, that doesn’t scream out as a cinematic bonanza, right? But it’s a buddy movie in which the two men won’t be in the same room with each other. That’s hard.
Also, it’s a movie that has to explain who is Robert Moses?, who most people haven’t heard of. Why does a dedication to studying Robert Moses mean something today to people in America? Like, why does that matter? Why does it matter to understand what Lyndon Johnson did, for better and for worse, in the 20th century matters so much now? — but to try to explain that without throwing the story off-balance. Once you go down the road to the Voting Rights Act, who cares about a semicolon? It was a really complicated balance of storytelling.
It sounds like you were almost acting like a journalist in finding the right way to turn the material into something palatable and informative, but trying to reach the people you needed. There was a little bit of Caro-esque activity in all this.
LG: Absolutely. There were so many moments of following Caro and realizing we were trying to Caro Caro, but also to figure out how to make this movie work for the avid Caro fans, the people who I would say, “Oh, I’m working on a movie about Robert Caro,” and then, like, grown men would start weeping and say, “Where’s volume five? Where’s volume five?’” And then they would say, “Are you sure you should be wasting his time with a movie? He needs to be writing.” My producer Jen said, “We should put a thing on the poster saying, “No Lyndon Johnson books were harmed in the making of this movie.”
To make the movie work for those people, but also people who’ve never heard about any of these men — it was really, really hard to make it accessible, funny, emotional, and meaningful.
Why do you think so many people have a connection to these books?
LG: Look, these are very big books. So, first of all, when you read them, you’re devoting a big chunk of your life to this book. The books are unbelievably compelling, gripping page-turners. So, right away, you feel a deep connection to the person who wrote them because you’ve shared so much time and he has shared so much with you. I think you feel his incredible effort and diligence and ethics and dedication writing them. And you feel that he has written these books because he wants to understand how power works in America. And he’s doing it because he wants to improve democracy, and he’s uncovered things that are mind-boggling, staggering, shocking.
So when you read them, you feel like you’re being let in on this secret of how power works in America on an urban level and on a national level. So you feel like you’re part of this special club of dedicated, hardcore people who get it. And that makes you feel grateful and emotional and connected to the person who wrote them.
The people you’re profiling, they’re both in the autumn of their years. One is your father. How did that affect you as a documentarian and personally while making this movie?
LG: One of the things you need in order to make a documentary is to know what’s at stake. There has to be a lot at stake for a story like this to work. They’re racing, tortoise-like, to finish their life’s work while they can. My dad is 91 years old; he’s going to be 92 in April. So I think there’s a lot at stake for the people who care about these books and are hoping that they will be finished. And then, of course, there’s so much at stake for me because I really cherish every moment I have with my dad — and I wanted that to not in any way take center stage in the movie, but to come through. Because I have a lot to lose here as well. And I have gained so much here, so I wanted that to be a sort of undercurrent in the film. Obviously, I think about it all the time.
