So when I started The Stuff of Hollywood--
early in this process, when its focus was on gun violence,
I had gone to read the continuity script of a movie
that I hate, which is D.W. Griffith's
1915 The Birth of a Nation.
And for you younger folks in the audience,
it was the first feature film that
was shown in the White House.
And as far as I know, it still remains
one of the highest grossing films ever,
even though it was back in 1915.
So when I was doing the research on gun violence,
I read the continuity script.
I wasn't able to really find anything that was useful for me.
Fast forward to 2021, and I'm in St. Louis
on a three-year appointment as a writer in residence,
and I'm teaching modern and contemporary documentary
poetics.
And as part of that class, I had my students
take a trip to Olin Library Special Collections.
I had worked with a librarian there so
that she could pull out things from their archives,
from their collections that spoke
to the college's history of some kind of activism
or political activity.
Unbeknownst to me, it was not at all anything
that she actually pulled out for the students.
There was a box called Black film
promotional material, the collection.
And she just happened to tell me,
as the students were walking around looking
at different things that she had set out,
she said, oh, we have this Aunt Jemima thing
or something in here.
I don't know why she thought I'd be interested in it, but anyway.
So I go in this box, and in it is this pamphlet.
And so when you go to a concert or you go to the theater,
they give you a pamphlet, right?
So this was a pamphlet, an original one
from the original screening of The Birth of a Nation.
And I have no words to describe how
I felt having that piece of history in front of me.
I felt a number of things.
Keep in mind that the fall of 2021, this was after January 6.
And so my position in the world as an American citizen
had changed quite a bit.
So I went back and reread the continuity script,
and it had a different weight than it did the first time
that I read it.
And so I have a 30 plus page minimalistic section that
is all documentary poetics, which means none of that section
is of my voice.
And the two sources for that section,
there's language that I extracted from the continuity
script, from The Birth of a Nation,
and I went through all of the transcripts
of the Congressional hearings from January 6,
and I removed language for that.
And so for most of this section--
you can't see it this far away--
the language that's italicized, that's on the left side
is from The Birth of a Nation.
And the language on the right side
is from the Congressional hearings.
And they always-- that language always begins with,
begin video tape.
So me being OCD, as Copper Canyon was putting this book
together because there were mistakes on everybody's part,
but many on mine.
I'm good at big picture, but I'm not so good with the details,
if I'm honest.
So anyway, I wanted to make sure that the citation for The Birth
of the Nation at Olin Library at Wash U, that it was correct.
And so I'm working with the librarian
to make sure that we have it the right way.
For whatever reasons, I didn't think it was probably right.
And so I happened to go to the Smithsonian
Museum of American History because I saw that they had
a copy of the pamphlet as well.
And I wanted to see how they were crediting
this piece in their library.
And this is when I found this.
So this is the real cover of the pamphlet with the Capitol,
the US Capitol in smoke.
And the librarian and special collections at Wash U
had no idea, which was kind of a lesson on what you think
you have and what you think that you have all of the truth,
but you might not.
And so this was the original cover,
and I thought is this like, is this for real?
So they at Wash U, the librarian,
they had to do the work of correcting their citation.
And I thought that this was an interesting process, just
to learn what the real cover looks like.