Ezra Edelman, Marcia Clark & Carl Douglas Full on "O.J.: Made in America" | BUILD Series

We wanted the jury to see Bundy, but the defense said, "Well, if we're going to do that, we have to go to Rockingham, you don't need to go to Rockingham, but if you show them where they found the glove, that's all that could be said." that is relevant." I came to find out that IDO was going to let them go to Rockingham. He has to march the jury through the inside of the house, which is relevant to the fact that no part of the crime occurred inside the house. What are we doing there? What did we do that day? create an illusion when you walked up the grand staircase there was a big wall of family photos photos of friends photos of OJ's professional problem the overwhelming majority of the photos were of Caucasian friends and colleagues we had an African American jury and we wanted to make sure that the environment of the home to reflect the themes we wanted to reflect, we eliminated all their white friends, but for all these black people we uploaded photographs that they had probably never seen before because that is what we were told the jury would identify with.

We

made

it black. There was a Norman Rockwell lithograph that we took from Johnny's office. They put that photo at the top of the stairs. We didn't delete all the photos of him with white people, but they have all been happening with the dark clothing. do that, oh you gotta be kidding me, it's night and day, this was the house of an African American man who had no association with any white guys at all. Marsha looked at the wall and said, Karl, you know damn well he's never had so many blacks. people on her wall in her entire life Marsha, what are you talking about?

How dare you accuse us of those things? I felt miserable, I was angry, that's very dirty. If we had had a Latino jury, we would have had a photo with a hat there. there would have been a mariachi band in the front we would have had a piñata on the top stairs I objected he went outside we called a hearing and I said this has no relevance now they have changed the scene it was never relevant to begin with and now it is completely irrelevant, now You know, the defense is always going to go further, that's what they do, it's up to the judge to stop them, don't let them get away with it, guys, thank you very much for being here, congratulations, I think for what the statement may be definitive about the OJ Simpson case and what it meant culturally at the time and now I want to ask you what you thought not only when making this documentary but maybe even before you set out to do it, what do you think? 20 -plus years have done to the OJ trial the OJ story culturally the way we see it uh I don't know I mean I think the story is what it is.

I think 20 years helps give us all a little perspective. little distance to be able to talk about things that would have been too raw to talk about 20 years earlier and I think it also gives us license to go back further to discuss Oh j-story and try to help explain what happened in 1994. 1995, which we don't I think you could have done if someone had set out to do this, you know, tears after the trial was over, so that time like that for a documentary filmmaker is all you feel two years after the trial. It wouldn't be a concession to argue too much about the racial context in the OJ case because I seem to be referring to the documentary, and even if I remember correctly when I was young, white people for the most part wouldn't.

Let's allow for the racial context when it comes to the case, they wouldn't really understand it well, you'd have to talk to those white people so uh, I don't know, I mean, yeah, I mean, the fact is that if we had done this in 1998, the woman to my left wouldn't have been talking to me and the man to my right might not have been as free with his words as he was, so again that's where if you're going to start To do something and try to get a view panoramic, time is imperative, well, I guess we'll take this to you, so Marsha, I mean, she's the resident white person regarding the case, you're the prosecutor.

Aside from being a white woman 20 years later, what is her perspective on the case? How do you see it beyond just being a major disruptor in her career and the kind of emotional toll it probably took on her professionally when I When I received the Simpson case, I had been handling cases in downtown Los Angeles for ten years. The racial divide in terms of the impact on the criminal justice system was very familiar to me and there was no case where I had a black defendant. where race did not become an issue or there was no effort to make it an issue because of the lawyers' gaze being so confrontational that I think, as they pejoratively call it, I'm not interested in the race card as if there were.

There is no basis for the racial divide because there is one, but that's how we talk about it, so for the sake of shorthand, forgive me, but the race card was played in every case where there was a black defendant, that's how it was, and that's how The Simpson case arose. It was pretty clear that it was going to happen even in the early days and then of course the story of Mark Fuhrman laying down the gauntlet came out and it was very clear and that was like six weeks after the murders so we knew. We were going to face that uphill battle and that was not news to us.

What surprised me is that you know living in the bubble that I did, that awareness of division wasn't something that everyone else was aware of and you're absolutely right. There was and still is a great refusal to accept that reality, that truth that Ezra tells so well in this film. White people still don't want to know, they don't want to hear about it. Well, I think just the term race. card is an amazing example from over 20 years later. I don't want to say to what extent we use a very cliché phrase, but I don't think the word race card is used now or that the words are used as much as they used to.

Back then it was almost seen now, as you said, as a pejorative term over 20 years ago. I don't know if the general public saw it in a pejorative way. I mean, Carl, you could attest that it's the one with the lawyers. Although James, in case how often the mainstream media told you that you guys were playing the game, cite the race card, yeah, Rick and I wouldn't call it a card either. I refer to it as a letter of evidence or a letter of credibility because practicing law in Los Angeles, a very diverse area, diverse community, white, black, yellow, brown, all types of people, you had to be aware of the racial dynamics and , in particular, the history with African Americans in particular and the LAPD, which is that dynamic part of this case. and that this film does a wonderful job of exploring that history and that dynamic.

No one can really understand OJ Simpson's verdict without appreciating the context and history of the city in which that entire case took place, as was that part of his speech when What you started making this documentary was understanding the context of the city and the story behind the case within that city or was it something that you started to find while investigating the OJ Simpson case, it was definitely part of the initial presumption. or when I got the idea of ​​wanting to tell these two lines of stories, one involving the LAPD in the black community of Los Angeles and one involving OJ, and I kind of knew that was something I wanted to do.

I had been going to explore for decades and That for me was the exciting thing about tackling this film, not just having to explore or regurgitate the details of the trial as many people have done in the last 20 years or so, and I lost you when I started traveling , I will also applaud you. There are certain sensational aspects of the trial that are hidden within your seven and a half hour documentary, of which I thought, well, we don't have time, we didn't have time for them, it's very dry, since it was like that. one of the driest jokes ever told, it was my thank you, I'm sorry you didn't do it, oh I get it, it's a joke, I got it, I got it, um no, I mean, I think you know there are both types . from the pure sense of who you are in terms of what you're interested in, what you're trying to explore and then there's also the understanding of how certain things have hijacked what the most important parts of a story are and I do that.

I feel like the sensational way the trial itself was covered covered certain characters that evolved or became famous because of said trial, that wasn't something I was interested in and explored, so I felt like both because I wasn't interested and I also wanted to. distinguish. You know what we were doing because of what had been done before, it was an easy decision to leave those things, you know, out of it, Marshall, one of the things that broke my heart when I was watching this and it's not something I think about. I realized and it could have been the recent Ryan Murphy and I just didn't remember that it was when you were presenting to all the jurors all the domestic violence scenarios that Nicole Brown Simpson went through and they just didn't seem to care and the kind of society that we live in, where I think we're still rightly very fascinated by the racial context of this situation, but apparently we're not that fascinated at all in the domestic violence context of the situation in the context of being a woman in the hands of a very powerful man and not being able to escape.

I think one juror even says that if you can't get yourself out of there, then I have no sympathy for you when I think that more than 20 years later we have done it. So much research on domestic violence survivors and we realize that there is a certain level of post-traumatic scenarios where women don't feel like there is a possible way out. Do you feel like we've changed and elevated the way we speak? about race in this country, but perhaps we have not been able to do the same when it comes to domestic violence situations. I think we have

made

some progress.

I think it's okay, it may be a silver lining in the event that it did raise some awareness that we're not there yet it's better, but it's not good, but at least I think some opinions have changed as a result of the exposure during the trial and the discussion of those issues that previously there was a general feeling that it is a family matter. It's not even really a crime, it's just something that happens between a husband and wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, and they sweep it under the rug and I think more and more people are realizing that it is a crime and that it should be reported and that's how it should be. prosecuted, so I think there is greater awareness, but I think we have a very long way to go because the domestic violence statistics are still staggering and women are still being murdered by their partners on a regular basis, partners who are also repeat offenders, yes . there is a there is a path that they follow up to the moment of the actual murder, yes, riki, one thing that has happened, although we, the defense attorneys, now call it the rule oj every time the police come to a domestic violence case in Los Angeles if one party has an injury the other person goes to jail, that's what we call them in the vernacular, the do rule, which is a direct consequence of some of the issues that

marcia

and chris darden raised during the trial, so there is now a greater tendency for law enforcement to hold someone accountable even from the beginning, which was not always the case before 1994, surely it is either an unwritten rule or it is just that I don't know if it's not written, better than that, that's not how it's practiced now if someone is hurt someone will go to jail it doesn't matter if they say it's due to an accident I don't know what happened I did it myself someone will go to jail now what we call the rule of yes, it's not, it's not a real rule, but but but but what Karl says he's right, so now it's much more likely that there will be an arrest and that there will be a prosecution.

We also used to let cases fall by the wayside when the victim refused to support the case if the victim recanted, withdrew his testimony and said I don't want to continue, then it would often be dismissed, that would be the end, not anymore, now the prosecutors and the police continue to press the case. Carl. I have to ask you, you know, when we get to the end of the documentary. I don't think I'm giving anything away, it's a documentary, it's all historical fact, but there's this idea that even within the black community, the way it's portrayed is that even if I did it, we'd have one, you know, white people get away with it all the time they get away with insults towards us all the time why can't a rich black man get away with it too and that was part of the feeling of a victory at least it's part of the idea of I think the doctor that Marie brings up and what was happening at that time now for you, looking back over 20 years, was worth it.

I don't look in those contexts. I am representing a person accused of a crime. My job is to stay within the rules and do everything I can to force the prosecution to meet its burden of proving his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I can't worry or dwell on the implications of what this case will do for the defendant's other cases in the future I have to because of my sworn obligation to my client, to deal with the here and now, that is a truly unique responsibility. from a criminal defense attorney. Marcia used to be a defense attorney before becoming a prosecutor.

She understands that it is something that laymen don't always understand. I understand that in the United StatesUnited it is better to say that nine guilty people are found innocent than that one innocent person is convicted of a crime. I have been a trial attorney for 36 years. I have represented an innocent person who was convicted of a crime there. There is no worse feeling than that wow. Is incredible. Azra got involved in the making of this documentary. Did you know how long it was going to be? Initially I have an idea of ​​the scope, well the initial concept was to do five hours of television, so you know, four hours and twenty minutes, thirty minutes, however long it was like that. , since I had no idea how to do it as I would do it.

A twenty hour film. I just dove into the idea that I had ideas in terms of what I want to explore and it got bigger as I went because you don't know who's going to cooperate. You don't know the material that you're going to come back with after you go out into the world and the fact is that this story really, in many ways, is about everything and that doesn't mean that you can discover a It's a way to cohere the material to a point where whichever one makes sense, but we were fortunate enough in terms of the people who cooperated and the images we were able to find, you know, I think the scope in the end, the length. is justified, can I jump in with one thing that absolutely gets back to your point about you know you could have gone with the tabloid?

Know? The reason I was willing to sit down with him is because he wasn't going for the tabloid. He wouldn't have done it any other way, he really wouldn't have done it. He was tired of talking about the case that people had already made up their minds, there was no explanation and particularly when we talked about the refusal to accept the racial divide that had so much impact. big impact on the case and I was tired of shouting into the wind and I wasn't going to do it again and I certainly wasn't going to sit and talk about the minutiae of the trial, enough of going to read a book, but he told me, then tomorrow I'll He said, you know what, we're going for a much bigger picture, we're going for global, we're going for race in general and I thought this is really important, you really have to be a part of it. this is you know you have to do everything you can to support this is so profound and then Ezra, unlike everyone else, sat down when we sat down and asked us questions that were so probing, he's a great interviewer, he was a incredible interview I was in.

I left a little soaked, you know, it was a really difficult time, but it was fascinating to do it because I had such deep and insightful questions. I have to agree one hundred percent that Ezra Edelman is a great filmmaker. I was reluctant to do it. I thought it might be too cheesy. I may be very superficial, but I had the opportunity to talk to him and his mother, Marian Wright Edelman, is one of my heroes, so I looked him up and when I saw where his heart was, I saw that he had the time and commitment to ESPN to make a quality documentary.

Then I was willing to sit down, we sat for four or five hours and it was noticeable in my interviews that the longer I was there I became more relaxed and relaxed and he was able to ask those probing questions again. information that no one else had gotten before here are some cities that I got more lists he started laughing if he let loose more I couldn't tell he's pretty loose from the jump Regards Kyle's not shy, you're coming out hot on the heels of FX American Crime Story , which I also think was a really incredible achievement and as much as they didn't do it, I would say that they went after the tabloid, they touched on it a little bit and I would even say that the show as much as it addresses a lot of the issues that I think are addressed in the United States United they have a sort of sensational sheen to them that's really great for everyone to absorb quickly and I think there's more beneath the surface.

Did you feel any competition with that program? You saw it? that show and see how they could have approached something and cut anything out or thought about it that way. I haven't seen it at all. Maybe you're going to do it in a while? Yes, you are very small, yes, no, I mean the last thing I saw. What I would have done is watch a dramatization to find out what I did or didn't do right, so with all due respect to the show, what I heard is great, no, it didn't affect my type, it didn't affect me at all.

In terms of what we were doing right, I think one thing that the show has done and I think his documentary is going to do is give a kind of long-awaited appreciation of both his and Johnnie Cochran's work. I remember growing up as a blue-collar kid the way my parents, like other white parents referred to Johnnie Cochran in the neighborhood, was mostly derogatory, they saw him as an outcast, they saw him as someone who played the race card. and I'm very excited as a 32 year old that I get to see these new pieces look back at this man as a kind of civil rights justice attorney and someone who worked as diligently and as hard as him instead of just knowing him through a kind of prism of White America, I heard it before and Ricky, that was one of the reasons why I was very interested in being part of this project because, you see, Johnnie Cochran in Los Angeles was as well known before OJ Simpson as he is. returned to the national level after OJ Simpson.

It was important to me. I worked with Johnnie for 12 and a half years. He is no longer here to explain what was happening then, so I took it on board and promised his wife that he would do everything he could in my power. To enhance his legacy and respect the work he did, do you think his legacy was tarnished after the OJ case? I think in some communities that didn't properly understand the role of a defense attorney, in fact, there could be challenges from my perspective. As a 36 year old attorney, I applaud what he did, he fought hard, he certainly pushed, as did his work as a defense attorney, but I am proud of the work that he and each member of the defense team did, Marsha, do you applaud what he did?

What did? Like I had to go there, yeah, I knew you did, I know you were feeling it, but you know what a defense attorney was. Now I am a defense attorney again and I understand that I agree with Carl, all defense attorneys are going to go above and beyond. as hard and fast as I can, I would too when I play the race card to a certain extent. I think you have to use all the arrows in your quiver, your job is to defend the man sitting next to you, that's all your job if we're limited to you're not there to seek a fair trial, that's not your job, but the The problem with that is that it is up to the judge to stop, it is up to the judge to control the proceedings and stop them when they progress. too far, but it's true for the prosecution, the judge shouldn't let the prosecutor run wild either, so ultimately that's where the buck has to stop and if it doesn't, you've got a mess, there's a part of the documentary when you are exploring OJ.

The character you talk about when he was younger is, even then, a very soft-spoken type of guy who gets out of trouble and brings out this aspect of him where it was made in America and it's very much about race or that it was okay. at a very young age, the kind of sociopathic person who, for lack of a better term, could become famous, did you ever feel that way about his character? It's like the chicken or the egg, no, but by no means is it for everything, nature versus nurture of it. I think OJ was an incredibly handsome, charming, athletically gifted and intelligent guy and he was since he was a kid, so I don't.

I don't know what happens when you know that certain things are reinforced for you and you have an idea of ​​what you can do from an early age. That being said, when you go further and you get to a place when you're 20 years old and those things are reinforced a thousand times when you become a football star and suddenly people want to put you on television and pay you a lot of money and create in you a paradigm that did not exist before. I guess there was a sense of exceptionalism that kind of starts to not only seep in but also cement, so I think, like when I think about OJ, I think he believed in that exceptionalism for himself and I think that was carried further. , it's very difficult for me to talk about OJ as a person because I never met him.

Karl obviously spent a lot of time with him, so he has a different idea of ​​who AJ was as a man. Did OJ believe in his own exceptionalism? Oh, that's probably the case and I think One of the fascinating things for me about this documentary was that it helped me understand who the do that I came to know really was and, more importantly, why he wasn't familiar with some of the fascinating stories and anecdotes told by his older friends and his elementary school classmates. about in the movie and I think learning that and hearing that gave me a great understanding about the do that I got to know and enlightened me more to understand why he was the way he was, what do you feel like you needed to understand?

No, I didn't always agree with OJ's politics. You never agreed with his politics. I didn't always agree with his politics. We had a different political perspective and I didn't really know where he was coming from. Hunters. Point Galileo High School, knowing that he has this quality of being what I call a depressed brother, he could talk the talk on the street, he could play cards with you, he talked trash about all those things that were part of his life, but in the end At the same time, he was very comfortable and seeking acceptance from the mainstream community, so those two things don't always intersect with me, but the movie explained a lot about how that happened and why he was like that.

I absolutely have to ask one more time. Ask before I let you go, the infamous Mark Fuhrman is interviewed at length in this movie just one question for me, yeah okay sorry no no you do an amazing job of keeping an objective eye while interviewing him it was that difficult given its history. Or do you think his past has been elevated to something that isn't necessarily the case when it comes to him, except for the fact that he's now a Fox News pundit? Well, by the way, I think that I and it's kind of like I said about do, it's impossible for me to know what exists in these types of hearts and in the heart of an individual's mind.

I think who he was and how he was portrayed during the trial was extreme and my job in sitting down. With him it wasn't figuring out who he is and if he is this or that. My job was to get him to reflect on his experiences of this time and that his experience is working in this case and, hope

full

y, by listening to him participate. with them you know you get a better idea of ​​who he is as a man, but I mean, the last I was there I wasn't, I'm not his judge or jury, you know, and the fact that he chose to sit across from he.

To me, the whole time he did it, it says a lot about him, so I think my favorite part of the documentary before I let you go is when the Mark Fuhrman tapes come up and we just cut to you and you're like, what could my part be? favorite? from the documentary guys, I have to let you go when it premieres part 1 premieres this Saturday on ABC at 9 o'clock and then - Tuesday on ESPN part 3 Wednesday on ESPN then Friday and Saturday over the course of the week It is an incredible job, congratulations, thank you very much