Q&A with Mark Farkas 10/4/09

MARK FARKAS, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, C-SPAN SUPREME COURT DOCUMENTARY: What we’re doing is a - come on. We’re doing a documentary for C-SPAN on the Supreme Court. We’ve done interviews with nine of the justices.

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: Cool.

FARKAS: It airs October 4, the Sunday night before the Supreme Court comes in to session, and we’ve been in the building for about two months …

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: Great.

FARKAS: … doing all the interviews and getting into the chamber and the Justice’s private dining room, some of their chambers. So ...

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: Oh, good. Will - you’re going to be on CNN? FARKAS: C-SPAN.

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: C-SPAN. OK, sorry.

FARKAS: October 4. It’s a common mistake. Don’t worry about it.

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: I’m not. I’ve actually argued in this building --

FARKAS: Have you really? UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: Yes. A long time ago...

FARKAS: We’ve talked to a number of attorneys who have argued in front of the court so we get both perspectives.

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: There is no both. Do whatever they say.

FARKAS: The only - the only one who seems to take the time to listen to the Attorneys is Justice Thomas. We actually talked about - talked about why he just chooses to listen instead of...you know. Well, we talked to a couple of attorneys, one who had won 21 out of 22 cases in front the court.

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: That’s good.

FARKAS: She. She.

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: Yes, she

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: OK, yes. FARKAS: And she likes the rapid fire.

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: Yes.

FARKAS: It’s like,you know, bring it on. It’s a conversation.

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: Yes, cool. OK, I’ll remember …

FARKAS: So October 4th at 9 o’clock. UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: I will watch that.

FARKAS: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: And we even get C-SPAN where we are.

FARKAS: There you go. Very good.

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: OK, thank you.

FARKAS: Thanks, OK.

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: Did you film it? Oh, OK. Am I going to get on TV?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN LAMB, HOST, C-SPAN: Who’s your friend? FARKAS: Just a tourist to the court who was an attorney, actually.

LAMB: How many times have you had somebody ask you if you were going to do this for CNN and you have to explain it to them? FARKAS: Never!

LAMB: So for the next 56 minutes we’re going to talk about your documentary on the Supreme Court. Let’s start with what is it. I know you said a little bit there, but give us more.

FARKAS: Well, it’s a whole week’s worth of presentations, starts Sunday night, October 4 with a original production called The Supreme Court: Home to America’s Highest Court, which is a 90-minute documentary that really takes you inside the building to tell its history, but also the function, and the function comes from all 11 living, current and retired Supreme Court justices. So it’s really an insider’s look at not only what the building stands for, but what happens inside there, and this was the first time any television project has ever had all 11 - or all living justices participate in one program.

LAMB: So why - I know this is your third big documentary at the Capitol, the White House, and now this. Why do you think the court was willing to talk? FARKAS: We went over there and pitched it to them and in terms of that we had done a documentary on the White House, had done one on the Capitol, which you know part of it was this building is seen less often than those two buildings. So here’s an opportunity for you to let the country inside the building. Again, about 500,000 people visit the Supreme Court each year, and so that was part of it, to open up the building to people who can’t get a chance to come to Washington to see it, and for those who do get a chance to see it, can you take us inside places where the process unfolds so we can take people even beyond what they’d see on a public tour. That was the pitch. We took it to Chief Justice Roberts, heard back pretty quickly from him that we could do it, and then a negotiation began of where inside the building we could get, and these things are organic. We originally started out with - you know we did not know how many of the justices would participate, sent letters to all of them, and eventually all of them sat down with us.

LAMB: So what were the rules?

FARKAS: Well, the only rule that we actually imposed on ourselves was that we did not want to talk about television coverage of the court. We took that as a separate subject. You know that’s something that we as a - as a company want. We’ve been asking for it for years. But it wasn’t the purpose of this. The purpose was really to get inside there and understand the process once we heard from the justices and take a look at the building.

So the - really, the only ground rules for the interviews themselves were let’s talk about the process, let’s talk about how you do your job. We did not want to talk about cases because it wasn’t about that. It wasn’t about the ideology of each justice. It was really about how they approached their job, and you know what goes on in their - inside the court that leads to collegiality you know. What’s the inside story of the court and not the politics and the judicial philosophy behind each one of the justices.

LAMB: We asked you to put together some clips that we’ll use in this hour, and none of this will be seen in the documentary. Is that correct? FARKAS: For the most part. There are a couple that - the longer versions we’ll play during this program, and shorter versions are in the documentary. But almost all of them will be part of the - we interviewed each justice and pulled excerpts for the documentary, and then later on in the week, Friday, Saturday, Sunday night, the entire interviews will be played. So the interviews work for two purposes.

LAMB: Let’s start with Chief Justice Roberts and Susan Swain had the question.

(START VIDEO CLIP)

SUSAN SWAIN: Do you remember your first oral argument?

CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS: Oh, sure. Yes, absolutely; a case called the United States against Halper. I was very nervous. But I was very nervous when I did my last oral argument as well. I think if you’re a lawyer appearing before the Supreme Court and you’re not very nervous, you don’t really understand what’s going on.

SWAIN: This is a question for all the members of the Bar up there, I guess, and for all those attorneys who eventually find themselves lucky enough to have a case before the court; what is it that you wish you had known about the process when you were on that side that you now know? ROBERTS: Everybody tells a lawyer in that position you have to answer the questions. Don’t try to avoid the questions or distinguish your case in any way. I hope I did that when I was a lawyer, but the importance of that is very accentuated. I appreciate it so much more now that I’m on the other side of the bench. You have to appreciate that the justices are engaged in the process of trying to help themselves decide the case correctly. So they’re going to ask hard questions, they’re going to ask questions that don’t put your case in the best possible light, and you need to appreciate that.

It’s good to establish and I think I didn’t appreciate this as much as I should have, some dispassion. Yes, you want to have a certain level of zeal and commitment to your client’s cause. The justices know that. But when they ask you a question about a difficult case, it’s better to sometimes say you know I appreciate that that case doesn’t support my side. I appreciate that that causes us some difficulty. Here’s why I think you shouldn’t rely so heavily on that case as opposed to as soon as they ask us you know no, that case doesn’t hurt us at all, and here’s why. They’d like you to be part of the process that is helping them come to the right result. They understand you’ve got a client to represent, and they expect you to do that, but if you can convince them that you’re on their side in helping them reach the right decision as opposed to something they have to push against to get you to give an answer, I think that’s very helpful, not only to the court, but also to you client.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Chief Justice Roberts is 54, been on the court four years, a Harvard grad. How important was he to your access? FARKAS: I don’t think we’d have gotten any of it done without Chief Justice Roberts. He was the one we approached first to even get the project off the ground, and then dealt with not only the public information officer over there, but the counsel to the Chief Justice. So he was very important to it. He was one of the earliest justices in the process, who said, yes, I’ll sit down for an interview. I don’t know how much you know that plays into how many of the other ones sat down with us, but it couldn’t have hurt. So he was very important.

LAMB: Is it safe to assume that if he said no, we wouldn’t have been able to do this? FARKAS: I think it is. I mean there’s - well, we did find out in talking with all of them is the chief has - you know there’s some roles that the chief has that the other justices just don’t care about. You know they’ve each got their own vote. There’s certain things the chief can do, and there’s certain things a chief cannot do. A project like this would never have gotten off the ground if it weren’t for him, no.

LAMB: Where was this interview done?

FARKAS: We did most of the interviews in-- they’ve got two really nice conference rooms that are right around the Supreme Court chamber itself, so most of them were done in the conference rooms. Some of them were done-- we did on-camera tours in three of the justices’ chambers, but most in the conference rooms.

LAMB: Well, as someone who participated with you in this, although it’s - the public wouldn’t realize how little we talk about what you actually put in the documentary. I was involved in five of the interviews, and Susan Swain was involved in six because you’ve got a total of 11. Let’s look at one of those that was done in the office, and this is the Justice John Paul Stevens, and actually, to check his background, he’s 89 years old and he’s been there for 34 years, and the indication is he’s only hired one clerk for next year. That might mean what?

FARKAS: Well, traditionally, they have four clerks in each one of the chambers, and the thinking is is if he’s only hired one clerk for next term, that’s normally the amount of clerks that a retired justice has. So there’s some speculation since he hadn’t hired all four that he might not be coming back, not this coming term, but the following one.

LAMB: He’s a northwestern law grad. Let’s watch.

(START VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Over here on your wall is a number 22 baseball jersey. What’s that from?

JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: Well, that’s - that was a gift from my law clerks a few years ago because they know I’m a Cub fan and kind of encourage my continued interest in the Cubs.

LAMB: When did you throw out the first ball? STEVENS: That was three or four - about three years ago, I guess. Now, do we have a picture of that here? No, I don’t, do I? But I think three years ago that …

LAMB: What was that like? STEVENS: That was the highlight of my career. Had my head on all my grandchildren, not all of them, but most of them there, and I can tell you I was a hero that day. That was much more important than my job.

LAMB: Well, I want to know if you made it from the mound to the catcher.

STEVENS: Oh, absolutely. I threw it high and wide. I had to practice, though, I tell you the truth.

LAMB: More pictures over here on your wall are from what? STEVENS: Well, the first one is a picture that was at Gerald Ford’s funeral that his family gave me that I happened to be in just as the casket was passing by, and then there is a couple of letters that he wrote to me that I’m very proud of, and this is a picture here that was taken at the swearing in of the vice president in January.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Now, I don’t remember what we talked about before that, but obviously this was personal stuff. Why did we want the personal stuff? FARKAS: Well, I think you want to understand - not only want to understand them as people, but this here is a chance to take visitors - I mean not visitors, but viewers of the film and our Supreme Court Week back inside into their chambers, where you really do get a chance to understand who they are as people, where they like to work, how they like to work, and so in each one of the offices - again, we went in three of them - you saw you know it’s a window into what they’re like as human beings. Actually, with Justice Stevens, after we had done the on-camera tour, we were shooting a little bit of b-roll, as we call it, of the office, and I got a chance to talk with him not about the law but about tennis. I used to play tennis in college, and he’s a huge tennis fan, still plays a couple of times a week.

So you know it’s a chance again to understand what they’re like as people, and that’s one of the things I came away with from the whole project is it’s a legal institution that not a lot of people understand. I think if you watch our programs you’ll understand more about how the process unfolds there, but also it’s a human institution.

LAMB: How much time did Justice Stevens give us, because I actually can’t remember, and how much time did Chief Justice Roberts?

FARKAS: Chief Justice Roberts, we sat down with him for 55 minutes, and Chief - I’m sorry, Justice Stevens, the tour of his office was about 40 minutes. You know we go into each asking for more time. They say you can have this amount of time, and normally it came out somewhere in between.

LAMB: Here’s Justice Thomas. He’s now 61 years old. He’s a Yale Law School graduate. He’s been on the court for 18 years.

(START VIDEO CLIP)

SWAIN: When you go out here - or outside of this place, are you frequently recognized? JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS: Oh, goodness. Yes.

SWAIN: Are you? THOMAS: Oh, yes. The anonymity’s gone, that is probably or was probably one of the more difficult things to accept the sort of loss of anonymity, the ability to walk down the mall unnoticed or to go to Home Depot unnoticed.

SWAIN: Because of the confirmation hearings?

THOMAS: No, those have been 18 years ago.

SWAIN: Right, that’s what I’m thinking.

THOMAS: But no, it’s still - I mean I’m - you know I’m the only black guy up here, so you know it’s easy to recognize. I think when Justice O’Connor was the only woman, it was easier to pick one person out who’s different, and maybe that’s part of it, and then you know I think that I’ve enjoyed such positive press you know and notoriety. So the - I think that may be a part of it. I have no idea.

SWAIN: When people come up to you, what’s - are the interactions like?

THOMAS: Oh, it’s always very pleasant. They’re very nice people. There are nice people, good people all over this country. You know the - one of the things that happens up here is we tend to be very heavily northeastern in our mentality. We’re - eight of the nine of us are from Ivy League schools. This court doesn’t represent all regions of the country. The - we don’t - there’s a tendency, there’s an easiness to sort of stay, to be almost cliquish in that way, with law clerks and et cetera. I like the idea of getting out to be around the real - the citizens, the other citizens in the country, people who make it all work, the people who put out our fires, the people who build our homes, the people who fight our wars. I like being around them. I also like the idea that their kids could come up here and clerk, that they can be a part of all of this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: And I thought it was interesting; we talked about the northeast schools. Four from Harvard, three from Yale, one from Columbia and one from Northwestern.

The - there’s a lot - I mean when you watch a documentary, or we watch even these interviews, people don’t see what’s going on around this. Who’s in the room with you and us when we’re doing them? FARKAS: Well, for every single shoot we had at the court, there was at least three to four people from the public information staff of the court who were with us. With the - when the justices walked in - and that’s actually Kathy Arberg who’s the Public Information Officer at the court, who really is the one who helped us out tremendously in getting all 11 justices to talk with us. So she was there for each one of the interviews and was integral in the process of getting us to the chief in the first place and to the justices afterwards, and she and her staff were with us for all the interviews, and you know it’s interesting because the Capitol and the White House are completely different in terms of their press staff. These are public information officers, and so their role is a little bit different. They’re not out there to you know quote-unquote get the guys or ladies in front of the camera.

Right there that’s the Public Information Office on a day of opinion release, and in the foreground is Kathy and her team who are just about - the reporters are listening, and they’ve just heard an announcement from the bench, and they’re about to hand out the information to the press. And so actually, I think people in the press there sort of appreciate that they don’t get spun by the public information officer. It’s - you know the justices speak through their opinions, and that’s - you know that’s the way it’s set up over there, so it’s completely different than the Capitol or the White House.

LAMB: Give us a better idea of the importance of Kathy Arberg. I mean we all know that Kathy’s in a very critical role over there, and there aren’t a lot of PR people in the court. Start with that. How many people would you put in the public relations business in the court?

FARKAS: Well, she’s got a staff of about five or six, and she’s got a deputy, she’s got someone else who sits right outside her office. So you know she’s incredibly important. You know she’s another one of these people that - you know first of all, if she didn’t want to do it, it may never have gotten to the chief in the first place. So the step one was through her, and then really all along the process - if we hadn’t held up our end of the bargain you know in terms of what we wanted to talk about with these folks and the way we went about our business, it’d have been very easy for them to say, OK, this is not what we expected, and I’m not sure if we would’ve gotten all the interviews. But you know to her credit and to ours, we’ve both - we had - you know had an idea. Going in, like I said, it’s a little bit organic; you don’t know how many are going to participate. But she was integral in carrying it off for us.

LAMB: Compare what you found at the Capitol, and what year did you do that documentary?

FARKAS: Went on the air in 2006.

LAMB: And how many months did you spend on that one? FARKAS: It was like I got a graduate degree. I think I - we spent about 2 years. I mean the Capitol compared to the Supreme Court. It’s been there since the 1800s. The Supreme Court’s only been there since 1935.

LAMB: That building.

FARKAS: The building itself, and the Capitol is much bigger than the Supreme Court, so it took a little bit longer. It’s also our first foray into doing documentaries really.

LAMB: And each member of Congress has a PR person.

FARKAS: Each member of Congress has a PR person, and they’re more than - you know they’ll do anything they can, some of them, to get - to get on camera.

LAMB: So switch down to the White House, what year did you do that? FARKAS: We did - that came out in 2008, just last winter, and it took us about a year, year-and-a-half to put that together.

LAMB: And you explained earlier how many people were in the room during the interviews at the court. How many people would be around an interview that was done inside the White House?

FARKAS: Oh, the White House. That’s - I mean - well, the court, I was - I was surprised that the public information officers were there with us and the electricians. But that was about a pretty small group compared to the White House, where, when you had an interview with the President or the First Lady, I mean you’ve got almost a cavalcade of people. You’ve got - you know you name it, press secretaries and deputy press secretaries and then the electricians, secret service, and you know so you probably have 15 in a room for an interview with the President, and with the - with the - even with the Chief Justice, she’d go to their office, get the Justice, the Chief, or all the other justices and bring them down. Didn’t have handlers with them.

LAMB: Let’s go back, and there’s no rhyme or reason to any of these clips. We’re using clips that haven’t been used in the documentary, and often personal stuff, just so you can get some sense of what these folks are like, and the next one is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

(START VIDEO CLIP)

FARKAS: Who is this lady right here?

JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG: That’s my mother, perhaps the most intelligent person I ever knew, but sadly she died when I was 17.

LAMB: I read that she died the day before you graduated from high school.

GINSBURG: Right.

LAMB: What impact did that have on you in those days? GINSBURG: It was one of the most trying times in my life, but I knew that she wanted me to study hard and get good grades and succeed in life, so that’s what I did.

LAMB: Behind you is some more pictures. I want to ask you about this one over here, because this has actually I think been published before.

GINSBURG: Yes. That is a photograph of Justice Scalia and me. We are taking an elephant ride at the Romba Palace. It was the palace of the last Maharaja of Rajasthan. It was a very elegant elephant, as you can see, but a rather bumpy ride.

LAMB: It’s often - why don’t we walk around your desk here, and we’ll go in back where your robe is, and she can show us that, but it’s often reported that you and Justice Scalia are good friends …

GINSBURG: Yes, that is true.

LAMB: … and people don’t understand how you could be so different in your thinking and still be friends. Can you tell us how that happens? GINSBURG: I have known Justice Scalia since the days that he was a law professor, and I was so taken by his wit and his wonderful sense of humor. I heard a lecture that he gave. I disagreed with most of what he said, but I loved the way he said it. Justice Scalia is a very good writer. He cares about how you say it, and he’s a very amusing fellow. When he sat next to me, both on the D.C. circuit bench and now - not this configuration but when Justice O’Connor was with us, I was sitting next to Justice Scalia. He could say something that was so outrageous or so funny that I had to pinch myself so I wouldn’t laugh out loud in the courtroom.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Thinking also, listening to her answer that all of the nine justices sitting on the court today had been on the U.S. Court - on a U.S. Court of Appeals, somewhere. Justice Ginsburg, the only justice with an office on the second floor.

FARKAS: I think during the time that we were taping over there, she was the only one on the second floor. There’s a big renovation project going on in - at the court. The building hadn’t been updated since it opened up in 1935, so this has been going on for a couple of years, and what we found are the justices are sort of displaced as they do - they’re doing work on her permanent chambers. She was moved upstairs. So you’ll find out, actually, in the long form interview that airs Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights that you know normally the law clerks are in their chambers with them. They’ve got three parts of their office, and hers are separated from her now because of the construction going on.

LAMB: When we were doing the actual interviewing, what were you doing?

FARKAS: I … LAMB: I wouldn’t know where you were, so what were you doing? FARKAS: I was trying to stay out of the way. For the interviews themselves, I was in the room listening, giving you and Susan time cues. For the walking tours, they were you know - again, you’re sort of a little bit loosey-goosey. You know sort of the route you’re going to take because you don’t know how long it’s going to take to get one from place or the other or what they really want to talk about. So I was trying to stay out of the way and trying to listen so I can come back here, take notes and really start thinking about how we’re going to use it in the documentary and the full version.

LAMB: How many cameras were in the room, and what kind of camera? FARKAS: We shot everything in high definition. So in - for the walking tours, we would have one camera in the room most of the time, and as you all went from one room to the next, we’d have a camera waiting in that room, and then we’d sort of leapfrog as we go from one room to the next, and normally we’d end up in one place, and we’d bring both cameras in there as they sat down in one location for the rest of the time.

LAMB: She talked about Justice Scalia and his sense of humor. See how much sense of humor you can see in this next clip with Justice Scalia.

(START VIDEO CLIP)

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: You really can’t judge judges unless you know the materials that they’re working with. You can’t say, oh, this is a good decision, this was a good court simply because you liked the result; it seems to you that the person who deserved to win won. That’s not the business judges are in. We don’t sit here to make the law, to decide who ought to win. We decide who wins under the law that the people have adopted, and very often, if you’re a good judge, you don’t really like the result you’re reaching. You would rather that the other side had won, and it seems to you a foolish law. But in this job, it’s garbage in, garbage out. If it’s a foolish law, you are bound by oath to produce a foolish result because it’s not your job to decide what is foolish and what isn’t. It’s the job of the people across the street.

So don’t judge judges unless you really take the trouble to read the opinion and see what provisions of law were at issue and what they were trying to reconcile and whether they did an honest job of reconciling them and of interpreting the words of the law in a fair fashion. That’s what counts. Unless that’s what you want your judges to do, you have a judiciary that’s not worth much. You have a judiciary that is just making the law instead of being faithful to what the people have decided.

So that’s my main advice. Be slow to judge judges unless you know what they’re working with.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Now, he wasn’t smiling very much in that interview. What was your reaction to the overall interview? FARKAS: Well, I was smiling a lot as we watched the interview unfold and then picking pieces out of it to put in the documentary. You have to be very careful what - when you’re putting something in a documentary not to take it out of context. You could easily have used the part about a foolish law or a stupid law, and that would have been taken out of context. But no, he’s - you know they all have personalities that were interesting, but his is - you know I feel comfortable in saying this because we’ve interviewed a number of journalists and other attorneys who have said the same thing; out of everyone, out of the nine who are there now, he’s the one who’s really - I mean his personality comes through, and even though that may not have been funny, I could see where he’s got a really good sort of biting sense of humor.

LAMB: And how much time did you - and Susan did that interview. How much time did you have with him? FARKAS: We got 30 minutes with him, and it was - it was a really, really good interview.

LAMB: Is somebody sitting there with a clock? FARKAS: There are - you know there was those folks in the room, the public information officers and staff who are in there. I’m keeping track of time. I’m sort of, as I’m keeping track of time, giving you or Susan cues, trying to - you know it’s an interesting process because they’ll like to keep it to the 30, we like to go a little bit longer. So it’s a little song and dance going on. But they’re keeping track of time, and I’m keeping track of time, and I’m trying to get us a little bit more time.

LAMB: Did anything unusual happen, and you were there for all 11 justices - two are retired now. Anything unusual happen? FARKAS: Well, in the - you know actually, one of the most unusual things that happened, we’d load in and load out everyday at the loading dock, and you’d see John Paul Stevens driving in, 89 years old, driving himself in to work, parking his own car, getting in the elevator. You’d see Chief Justice Roberts getting dropped off, and the day that we were going to do the interview with Justice Thomas, his wife dropped him off in the garage and we were literally there near a dumpster waiting to get escorted into the building, and I thought he was going to go into the entrance that the justices normally go in, and he came right over to us and said can I help you, and - is somebody coming down to get you, and we ended up having about a 15-minute conversation there at the loading dock with Justice Thomas about you know obviously nothing about the law. We talked with him about his RV, how he travels around the country. So it was sort of an unexpected conversation we had with him.

One of the other sort of funny things that happened was we did an interview, the interview with Justice Kennedy, and it’s scheduled for 30 minutes, and when he came in the room, they said he’s got a very tight schedule and he’s got to keep the 30 minutes, and Justice Kennedy heard this and he said you know I’m not really in a hurry. I’ve got a lifetime appointment, and I’m not going to say anything that’s going to get me fired. They don’t need to be worried about anything. Go ahead and take a little bit of extra time with this. So you know it’s - it was a very, between us and the court, a very collegial understanding, but you know they wanted to keep it to certain lengths of time, we always wanted to push it a little bit. That’s sort of the - I think that’s the nature of any type of television interview you know you’re the company and then you’ve got the folks that you’re interviewing. So that’s normal, but it was sort of a funny moment at the recent - take some more time if you need it.

LAMB: I did mention earlier that Ruth Bader Ginsberg is now 76, and she’s been on the court for 16 years. Antonin Scalia’s 73, has served for 23 years. He’s Harvard Law School. The next up is the newest justice, and I know you’re trying to put this documentary together and get it ready for October 4. When did you get confirmation that Justice Sotomayor was going to talk to you? FARKAS: Well, we did the interview September 16, and we got confirmation on it probably about a week before. We had done interviews at that point with the other nine - or the other eight sitting and two retired, and you know our hope was that one, because they’d all - everybody else had done it, that she would, and she seemed you know from her - from her past on the you know Court of Appeals, had television cameras in the courtroom. We were hoping that she’d be friendly towards TV and say yes. And so we found about a week before that, and we sat down for the first television interview, and still the only television interview that she’s done since joining the bench.

LAMB: So the documentary’s on October 4. How much time? What was the date? Do you remember what date you actually did the interview? FARKAS: September 16 is when we did the interview.

LAMB: Here’s Susan Swain’s question.

(START VIDEO CLIP)

SWAIN: Are you able to process all of this?

JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYER: I haven’t connected physically with my mind and body yet. I’m still somewhere out here looking down and saying, oh, wow, is this really happening to me? And that’s what that felt like. One question that you probably wouldn’t know to ask was what was the most symbolically meaningful moment for me during my public investiture, and it was sitting in Justice Marshall’s chair and taking the oath with my hand on Justice Harlan’s Bible. It was like history coursing through me, and not - it’s a sort of interesting admission to make. I don’t think any person can be assured that they’re up to the task. I don’t know yet, and so those moments are, at one point, incredibly meaningful, and in a different way, incredibly frightening. It’s hard to convey the coursing of emotions that goes through one at a moment like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Anything - any surprises here? FARKAS: Well, one, I was surprised that we got the interview. I mean actually, for a number of them, I was surprised. You don’t - you - some of them are pretty active out there in the public during the - during the summer and during other times of the year, speaking to different conferences, and you know we’ve taped a number of them. But other ones you know you just - I didn’t think we’d get some of these interviews that we did. So that was one of the most surprising. I mean we were hoping, but I was sort of - you know each time I was a little bit surprised when we’d get some of these folks on camera.

LAMB: Was there ever an objection? I just don’t remember because I was only there for five of them. Was there any objection ever to any question we asked? FARKAS: No, never one. Never one. Never one. Not a single time.

LAMB: I tell you - now that you’ve asked me, my biggest surprise was the following answer, that - and I’ll explain why in a minute - that Justice Alito gave in his interview. Let’s watch.

(START VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Another quote that I saw of yours that supposedly ended up in your Princeton yearbook, and you can explain this one, that you hoped, quote, ”to eventually warm a seat on the Supreme Court,” unquote.

JUSTICE SAMUEL ANTHONY ALITO: I did write that, but it was - it was really a joke. It was like saying my ambition is to be the quarterback in the Super Bowl or you know the winning pitcher in the World Series. It was - it was a dream that I never thought I would come close to realizing.

LAMB: When did you first know that you had a good chance of being on the court? ALITO: Well, I knew I was a possibility - I wouldn’t even term it a good chance - when I was first called down for an interview with the White House, and that was in 2001. So after that point, I knew that you know - I’m sure they were - they had - they were interviewing many other people, but at least I was among that group.

LAMB: How long was it from the first interview until it was made public? ALITO: It was a long time because they interviewed me in 2001 in anticipation of the possibility of a resignation, which did not take place. So then I was not interviewed again until 2005.

LAMB: Is that hard on you, knowing that they are interested? ALITO: It’s - yes, in a way. In a way it is because I told myself that I - it was very unlikely that it would happen and I should - and I loved my job on the Court of Appeals, and so I should continue to do my best there, enjoy that with the expectation that that’s where I would serve out my career, and if something else developed, that would be - you know that would be great. But I didn’t want to put myself in the position of thinking that it would happen you know and feeling disappointed if it didn’t.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: As I was saying, the surprise to me was that he could be interviewed in 2001 and not take the job until 2006. It would just drive me crazy if I thought they were interested in me, and then every decision I wrote from that point forward they might be looking at rather closely. It’s happened before, of course. But that’s the first time I’d ever heard that he had to wait from 2001 to where he was actually appointed in 2005. Justice - Chief Justice Roberts took the job in September of 2005, and Justice Alito actually took the bench on January 31, 2006. He, by the way, is 59, and he went to Yale Law School and has served 3-1/2 years. You were going to say something?

FARKAS: Well, I - just to respond to were there any surprises, I didn’t know you were talking about the content. But one of the things that came out of the interviews, I mean I think to me who was not a follower of the court before I got into this and for a lot of people who watch it, there’s a lot of surprises. I mean I found out - I mean John Roberts, 54 years old, writes out his opinions in longhand. You know Justice Stevens, 89, types them on a computer.

So you know the whole process over there, because they’re not on television, I think there’s a sort of mysterious nature to the court, and so almost every interview, there was something illuminating that I did not know, and I think there’s a lot of things that people are going to find out that go on behind the scenes there. Just how they interact with each other is very interesting. There’s a personal side to it, but once they are started to write those opinions, it’s - you know there’s messengers that still take the opinions - the draft of the opinions from one office to the next. They could do it all from e-mail, but I guess it’s hard to do it from e-mail if you’re writing out your opinion in longhand.

LAMB: What part of the building would they not let you see? FARKAS: Well, we took - there is a place in the court they call the highest court in the land, which is the basketball court, and we wanted to tape up there, and it was under construction, that part of this construction project. So we could not tape up there, and then we got footage of the justices’ conference room from them, but we weren’t allowed to go into the justices’ conference room. And it’s one of those things where I appealed it and you know you’re at the court of last appeals at the Supreme Court, and they say no, and yes.

LAMB: Why so sensitive? FARKAS: You know what? I - it’s one of those things that they didn’t write out an opinion for that one, so I’m not sure why. You know for all their legal opinions, they write out their reasons why. There has just been a change of policy and - you know again, we got the footage that we needed, but we’re not able to get in that. That was the only place we really wanted to get into that we were not allowed to get into.

LAMB: Susan Swain asked the following question of Justice Kennedy.

(START VIDEO CLIP)

SWAIN: In your 21 years here, have there ever been for the institution any dark days? JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY: Any dark days? SWAIN: Yes.

KENNEDY: Oh, I guess everyday when you’re not in the majority you think is a dark day. Judges were once lawyers, and we think of arguing a case, and I’ve not met too many lawyers that don’t think they’re on the right side, and if you can’t convince your colleagues, then you think it’s a dark day. But the nature of the profession is that you - you go on to the next case and respect your colleagues. One of the things you learn when you’re a judge is that you’re not the only person in the room that is objective, disinterested, detached, knowledgeable, unbiased. Your other colleagues feel the same way, and you have to recognize that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Justice Kennedy, 73, Harvard Law Graduate, served there so far for 21-1/2 years, and you interviewed him for how long? How long were you in that room? FARKAS: Well, that’s one we’re scheduled for 30 minutes and went just about 40 minutes or so. We took about 10 extra minutes with him.

LAMB: And when you were - as the producer, and you eventually had to take all of the video, and how many hours of video did you have when it was finished? FARKAS: Well, you take the 11 justices, and out of that you know - out of that, half-an-hour to an hour with each, and then we tally that up, and then the footage from the rest of the court, probably another 50 to 60 hours or so, 70 hours ballpark in terms of raw footage and interviews that we did, and that’s not even taking into account the journalists, attorneys, historians and curators that we interviewed. So probably a little bit more than that.

LAMB: What part of the building did you find the most interesting that you didn’t expect to? FARKAS: I got to tell you that the justices’ dining room. Now, it’s not any spectacular looking room. I mean it’s nicely adorned, but it’s what happens in there that sort of - that was one of the surprises to me, that they sit down after oral argument, and sometimes they hear two cases in a day, they go have lunch together, eight or nine of them, whoever can show up, and they’ve got one rule, and that rule is they do not talk about the cases. They talk about the theatre, they talk about football games, they talk about whatever their personal interests are, and I think about the times where I’ve gone out on road trips with colleagues and we’ve spent all day on a shoot and we go to dinner. A lot of what we talk about is what we’ve done that day.

So I find that - I find that really interesting that there’s this impetus there to get along because you can really disagree with each other on your judicial philosophy and your opinions, but if you - if you can break - as Clarence Thomas says, if you can break bread with someone, look them in the eye, it’s hard to be angry at them. So it’s a way for them to move on from one case to the next. So that - you know that room and what happens in there was really - you know it’s illuminating that they do that.

LAMB: I want to show a clip in a moment from Justice Breyer, he allowed us in his office. I did the interview, so I remember it. But I also - it was both ends of the spectrum. There’s a segment in there, and I - you know I’ll go back that as an instructive segment on how this all comes together where he shows us where the briefs are and the people that submit every - on a monthly basis the …

FARKAS: The cert petitions. He really walks us through the entire process.

LAMB: Yes, I know, that whole segment is about 17 minutes.

(START VIDEO CLIP)

--No transcript--

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Very, very interesting. But there’s also some personal stuff. This may look ridiculous, but we talked about this kind of thing. Here’s Justice Breyer.

(START VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: On a lighter note, I see some bobble-head …

JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER: Yes, I think somebody’s making those. So they send them to us …

LAMB: I don’t see one of Justice Breyer up there.

BREYER: No, I guess for better or for worse.

LAMB: But up on the bookcases in this office are a lot of photographs. What are …

BREYER: Oh, these are my law clerks. I - we had a law clerk reunion. I was a judge for 13 years in Boston in the court of appeals there. I’ve been 15 years here. We had a reunion of my clerks. They were - I’ve had 111 law clerks, and 87 of them came to the reunion. A couple of weeks ago - absolutely wonderful. It’s like having this marvelous family, and they’re married and they have children, so I feel like a grandparent of 1,000 children. But it’s really nice.

LAMB: What’s your favorite place in this building? BREYER: I like this office, to tell you the truth. I’ve become a home body. I mean what I do most of the day. I say the job you know is reading and writing. I told my son this. I used this joke 100 times, but it’s true; I mean I say the job - I say if you do your homework really well, then you’ll get a job you can do homework the rest of your life. But that’s - I’m reading, and I’m writing, and this is a very, very pleasant room to work in, and I like it. I occasionally go out to the - you know every 2 weeks I’m hearing oral argument, sitting in the courtroom is always an impressive experience, and I very much like that too. But no, I can’t say I really like the exercise room the most. It’s the hardest work. There is a track - a Nordic track down there. But this is comfortable. I like it in the winter, and I like it in the summer. There’s a very nice view. It’s a very great privilege to be here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: I wish we could to show, but it can’t. I just remembered that when we got to the office, his brother was there, who’s a district court judge I think out in San Francisco - I hope that’s right - and they don’t look at all alike.

FARKAS: No, I mean a little bit shorter. Yes, didn’t look alike.

LAMB: Yes. When you finally got all this material together and got to the edit room, how much time did you have to spend there? FARKAS: That is - not that any part of the process is easier than the other, but to me that is the most challenging part of the process is to take all of this - because again, it’s organic. You go in with a certain idea of what you’re going to do, and then you get all 11 justices, and it changes thing. So we spent a couple of months in the edit suite arranging, rearranging, showing copies of it to my boss, changing things again, adding music in. Some - you know you’ve got to go through a process of really fine-tuning everything. And so we were done, for the most part, with the document for the bulk of it, 90 percent of it, by the beginning of August, and then we’ve spent these last month-and-a-half or so - you know we got more - well, number one, we got interviews in that time period with Justice Thomas, Justice Alito and Justice Sotomayor. So that you’ve got it done, but you don’t. So it changed it once again, and we had to rearrange things. So it’s - that’s the most intense part of the process.

LAMB: How often did you know standing in the room during these interviews that you had the clip that you needed for the documentary, as it happened? FARKAS: Well, there’s sometimes where you just know it. It could be some place that they’re talking about in the building, or it could be a zinger of a quote, and you say that’s it, and you make a little note and you make sure that you look at it, and it’s like did - you know when you get in the edit suite, did I remember it the way I remembered it then? And so there are definitely some of them that you know that are going to go in there, but there’s others - again, I’ve over used the word organic, but it does change as you’re going through the process.

LAMB: We’ve done this three times because of the documentaries you’ve been involved in, the Capitol, the White House and this one. Give the audience an update on you. How many years have you been at C-SPAN? FARKAS: I’ve been here since I was nine, I think.

LAMB: Yes.

FARKAS: Twenty-five years. Started in 1984.

LAMB: Came from? FARKAS: Came from the College of William & Mary. You know I had a - my first job out of college was at a local television station in Alexandria, covered our city counsel and baseball games and things like that. Then I started here part-time and figured I was going to quit in 6 months and go get a real job, and one thing led to another, and you know we’re doing these type of documentaries now, and so it’s a - it’s a great challenge. But I do want to say that it’s not just me. When you’re doing projects like this, you’ve got folks from the shooters, Bob Reilly, the director of photography, Bob Young, who did a lot of the shooting for this as well. That’s the first part of it. My staff you’ve got Rick Stoddard, who is not only an associate producer but he’s an editor now. I mean he has trained himself on the Avid. So the bulk of the editing was done by Rick and a woman named Anna Caulder, who works here, and so it’s not just me. It’s a really - it’s a team that works on this. And you know that expands above me to my bosses as well.

LAMB: Compare this experience to the other two. Which is the hardest? FARKAS: Well, this one has been the most intense because there’s - you know there was - we wanted to get it out before the court came back into session. So you know this one was I think probably the most challenging in terms of deadlines that we had to meet, and then you know the other challenge of it is you’ve got 11 justices, and you want to get them all in there. With the White House and the Capitol, there weren’t as many characters to weave into the productions, and we’ve learned as we’ve gone along that the shorter the documentaries themselves are, the better. So there’s a lot more cutting involved in this one and a lot more people to cut.

LAMB: By the way, Steven Breyer’s 71. He’s a Harvard Law School grad and one of four on the court and has served for 15 years. The next one up is the only justice that we interviewed - and Susan Swain did the interview - when she was out of the active court participation Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, and this has made the most news out of all of this so far, the whole business about the robes. Let’s watch Justice O’Connor.

(START VIDEO CLIP)

JUSTICE SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR: I remember that when I first sat on the court, I had a plain black robe that I had used in Arizona in the courtroom, and I had brought that robe with me. It was very simple, and I did not have a judicial collar in those days in Arizona. I just put it on over whatever I was wearing, and I was given a note that had been written by someone sitting in the audience one day in the courtroom, and it said, ”Dear Justice O’Connor, I’ve been in the audience watching the court today, and I noticed that you did not have a judicial collar. Now, all your colleagues were wearing white shirt collars, and they showed under the robe, and you just looked like a washed out justice to me. What’s happening here?” And so I took that note to heart, and I thought, well, maybe I should try to find some kind of a white judicial collar of some kind that I could wear because I didn’t always have a white shirt under the robe.

And it was hard to find. Nobody in those days made judicial white collars for women. I discovered that the only places you could get them would be in England or France. I did manage to get a collar or two from France, and there was a woman who had been the first female judge in the State of Delaware. She was older at that time, and I had met her, and she gave me her judicial collar, which was kind of a lace thing that she had acquired somewhere down the line, and that was pretty elegant, so I used that as well. But finding an appropriate judicial collar for a woman turned out to be quite a task.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Were you surprised at how much attention this got?

FARKAS: I was; on the other hand, I wasn’t. We released some of these clips to the press right around the time that Judge Sotomayor was becoming a justice when she heard the special case in September, and so, well you know a lot of the reporters picked up on Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg because of the - obviously the connection with being female justices, and it was sort of a lighter side of the court in terms of some of the stuff that we did.

LAMB: The last, but not least, justice is the retired Justice Souter. By the way, Sandra Day O’Connor - where’s my stuff here. She’s 24-1/2 years she’s served on the court, and she actually was a Stanford Law grad. So she’s the only - the only one that’s outside …

FARKAS: Outside the Northeast …

LAMB: … outside of the Northeast except for Northwestern. Tell this Justice Souter story. Because - this is not an easy one.

FARKAS: Well, he said yes to doing an interview with us, and number one, we were surprised by that. That was a huge surprise because he’d not done any interviews on television, and as far as I know for print either, in his 19 years on the bench, and the reason that he said he’d do this one was in honor of a friend of his named Paul Byard, who was an expert on the courts - the court buildings’ history and architecture. And so Justice Souter said - you know that was the original intent of the program was really to take a look at the building because, again, we didn’t know how many justices we’d get to talk about the process. So he came on board pretty quickly and said yes, I’ll do the interview, and - but it really, with Justice Souter, it was really was in honor of his friend, and while we did talk with him about oral argument, the library and some other things, he really wanted to concentrate as a way to pay homage to his friend Paul Byard. So we talked with him for about 20 minutes on the portico - the west portico of the court.

LAMB: And one of the things that he really wanted and it made it - it’s really - we haven’t been able to do it the right way, and this is one of the things we want to explain. He wanted us to make mention every time we used anything from him that it was directly related to Paul Byard, his deceased friend who wrote about the court, and it’s hard to do, so I hope we haven’t done him an injustice. You were going to say something?

FARKAS: Oh, I don’t think we’ve done him an injustice. I mean this is a - I mean again, he wanted to pay honor to his friend, and he learned everything about the architecture and history of the building from his friend, and so this was a way to let folks know about that.

LAMB: How long did he spend with us?

FARKAS: He spent about 20 minutes with us. LAMB: Here is - and this was done outside. FARKAS: It was outside.

LAMB: Right outside the front door.

FARKAS: Right outside the front door. You can hear some birds chirping and people in the backdrop.

LAMB: OK, let’s watch.

(START VIDEO CLIP)

FARKAS: And what about the whiteness? Your friend, Paul Byard, wrote about the whiteness of this building compared to those around here.

JUSTICE DAVID SOUTER: Yes, he did. I remember that. Compared with the - with the New Hampshire granite of the Library of Congress, and of course the Capitol across the street. The whiteness, I gathered from Paul, was a way of, on Gilbert’s part, to realize the intention of giving the building a prominence that its site made very difficult. One of Gilbert’s ideas, as I recall - again, from the - from the Byard lecture - was to site this building down East Capitol Street to the east of here so that the street itself would be an avenue leading up to it. Well, he couldn’t do that. He had to put it where they had - where they had the room for it, and in effect, the whiteness of the marble combined for example with the - with the great sweep of the staircase leading up to it gave this sort of Roman temple form the degree of emphasis that, if left to his own designs, he probably would have achieved by having a long avenue leading up to it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: I must say, I’ll never forget his - the expression on his face when he walked out of the court and saw the camera sitting there.

FARKAS: Well, he was a bit surprised. He hadn’t done it in 19 years, I think anyone hadn’t done - sat you know sat in front of a camera would probably be a little bit surprised.

LAMB: Justice Souter is 70, and he’s back home in New Hampshire. He was a Harvard Law School grad and he served in the quarters, you said, for 19 years. As you look back at this particular experience, what did you personally learn, and do you consider yourself an expert on the Supreme Court? FARKAS: Oh, gosh. There’s people who have covered the court for 50 years, like Lyle Denniston, Joan Biskupic. There’s so many great reporters out there who have covered it who are experts on it. I feel like I’ve gotten almost a graduate degree on - you know on the quick in terms of how the place works and the history of the building, and you know what I came away from it is that it is a human institution. It’s - you know the oral argument I went to, part of it. You know Justice Breyer actually was the one who brought it down to a level that someone who’s not a lawyer could understand.

So the thing for me that I got most out of it, and I hope viewers will get out of the whole week and the documentary is understanding how the process works over there, because we do demystify it, and understanding that these are human beings. I mean I think actually one of the neat things that Justice Souter said, it’s a human institution and we don’t always get it right. It wasn’t in that clip we played, but it’s in the documentary. And so it - you know they’re nine people up there trying the best they can, and they’ve all got personalities.

LAMB: If you could do it over again and get everything you wanted, what would you ask for? FARKAS: More time. I mean you know these are some of the most brilliant people who I have gotten a chance to be in the room with, and the time flies quickly during these interviews. I mean as you know you get in there and you have 30 minutes, even 45 minutes, and you’d figure with Justice Sotomayor, who had only been in - you know been sitting on the bench for a week since when we got a chance to sit down with her you know how much could she talk about was what everyone was thinking, and you know the time just went by like that. So just getting more time with them to learn more about them and to sort of get inside their minds and get inside the court through that.

LAMB: Now, I know there were a couple of things that were fun to see, and that were the little figures on the - or would it be the other side of the building, which would be the East side of the building. What were they, and what was your favorite? FARKAS: Well, the pediments on both sides of the building, and the east side of the building was interesting because it’s looking toward the east, so you’d have sort of these figures from the past, the eastern law givers, you had Moses, you’ve got Solon. But to me, the most interesting thing was on the west pediment, the part of the pediment that everyone sees as they go up to the court, and you see equal justice under law, and you figure, well, that must be in the Constitution. That must - you know where did that come from? You figured it must come from the Constitution. It came from the architectural firm who did the building, and then the other thing, when you look up there, in that pediment is Chief Justice Taft, who was lead chief justice and was instrumental in getting that building made. He’s there as a - when he was a law student. You’ve got John Marshall up there. You’ve got the architect up there. You’ve got Charles Evans Hughes, who succeeded Taft up in the pediment.

So you learn lots of little things as well, that you know they have a connection to that place. And that’s the other thing. Out of all of these documentaries that we’ve done, the Supreme Court is interesting because it’s in the moment. They’re trying to interpret this document that’s over 200 years old, but it’s in the moment, but they look to the past for everything, and so it was a good connection for us.

LAMB: Now, I’ve asked you this before; your wife Paige and your daughters Sidney and Meagan FARKAS: Meagan, yes.

LAMB: … have comments about what their dad’s involved in. Did they have any interest in this compared to the others? FARKAS: Well, kids are always going to be more interested in the White House you know because that’s a house, and that’s a cool house, and the President lives there. So they were automatically interested in that. What’s interesting about this one is my daughter Sidney now is 13 and is taking an honors civics course, and so they’re studying the Constitution and the Supreme Court. So she’s shown a little bit more interest. They know who - because partly because of me and partly because of the classes that she’s taking, they know something about the Constitution now. So you know I try. It’s part of what we try to do is get the word out there about how government works, but you know the older they get the more interested they get.

LAMB: Thank you, Mark Farkas, producer of The Supreme Court. We look forward to watching the completed project.

FARKAS: Thank you, sir. END