Exclusive Interviews

Written by: Katherine Brodsky

Photo © 2010 via KinoSmith

The exceptionally prolific and Academy Award-winning Brigitte Berman is no stranger to fascinating subjects. Her latest, is the legendary (and colourful) Mr. Hugh Hefner.

Opening in August, Berman’s documentary “Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel” looks beyond sexual escapades, Playboy mansion and multiple girlfriends. Instead, the documentary zooms Hefner's contributions to the civil rights movement, the sexual liberation movement, and even feminist causes.

Given unprecedented access into Hefner's world, Berman dives deeply into the man behind the Playboy empire. Borrowing from his journals, drawings, and archival footage, she pieces together a deeply compelling portrait and sheds light on a side that is not typically told.

First Weekend Club caught up with Brigitte to discuss the film, Hugh Hefner, and adventures in documentary filmmaking:

K: When you first bonded with Hefner it was over music – in particularly a film you made about Bix Beiderbecke. Can you talk a bit about that?

B: Sure. When I won the Oscar for the Artie Shaw film that’s when Hef actually discovered me. And he found out that I made a film about Bix Beiderbecke who happened to be his truly favorite musician. So it’s one of those extraordinary things where a film you’ve made some time ago kind of leads you full circle to this incredible opportunity. I met him and got to know him. We kind of shared [love for] movies and music and jazz and stuff like that. And over the years I’ve become very friendly with him and with his executive assistant.

When he heard that I had made the film on Bix she called and asked – could you send a copy of it down to LA. And first I thought this must be a joke really. You know – Hugh Hefner calling me in my little apartment in Toronto, Canada. Give me a break! And I said to please ask him to send me a letter.  And a few days later this letter arrived – really, really friendly letter asking for a copy of the film and I sent it to him. It was quite amazing. And that started it all. When he celebrated his 80th birthday about four years ago now – he’s 84 – that’s when I decided I was going to make this film. He was celebrated for Playboy – you know being Mr. Playboy – his entourage of women. But I knew there was a more complex side to him. When you go to his movie nights, especially on Friday nights, he reads the notes. And afterwards we discuss the films. You sit around the screening room at the mansion, about 10 or 12 of us, just talking about the movie that we’ve just seen. And it’s quite remarkable. So I knew the depth that he had. So I researched some more and found out a lot of very amazing things and decided to make the film.

K: You’ve known Hef for a number of years – so why did you choose to wait until now to make this film?

B: It never really struck me before. I was at his big birthday party and there he was being celebrated for who everybody thinks he is. And I knew he was more than that. I don’t really know why ideas suddenly come into your mind – into your imagination, but I was flying back on the plane and I said I really want to make a film about the other side of Hugh Hefner. That’s what I want to do next – and began to research that. It was a real responsibility but also a real privilege. And he gave me total creative freedom.

K: Hugh Hefner – at least to me – he’s just such a fascinating subject. Probably one of the most fascinating that you could have for a documentary film. How did you choose which specific elements of his work and life your documentary would focus on?

B: First of all, he has over 2,000 scrapbooks in his attic at the mansion. I started by just reading and going through his scrapbooks. That’s what I usually do. I just begin and I make notes on everything and I just let it all kind of pour into my brain. I looked at everything that had been done about him – all the interviews he’d done over the years – starting with the Mike Wallace interview in the 50s. I then put together a list of people that I would want to interview – both yay- and nay- sayers. I started to contact them and continue the research. I made my list of questions for every one of them – with everything – civil rights, freedom of speech – and I looked at different areas of his life that I thought would be interesting. And the more I researched – the more that opened up. New people came into my sphere that I had to interview. And of course the Playboy After Dark shows that Hugh Hefner literally designed and put on the air. They had a lot of amazing people in them. Some of these people I also interviewed - like Joan Baez – who was an anti-Vietnam person. So was Hef very much so. So they had a lot like that in common. And also because I thought she was the best – most amazing person that I wanted to meet. (Laughs)

K: Yeah. (Laughs) That’s always a good excuse.

B: Yeah. But it was a great interview. She really gave me a tremendous, tremendous interview about Hef and the period. She was real treat – one of my favorite interviewees. Barry Melton too. He used to buy Playboy Magazine, as he jokingly says – of course as everybody always says – only for the articles. Hef wanted them to do [an anti-war] song which nobody else would allow them to do on television. When Ed Sullivan found out that they were going to do the song on his show he paid them not to appear.

That’s what I found very inspiring about Hefner: He stuck his neck out in whatever way was necessary.

K: And there was the blacklisting going on then as well…

B: The blacklisting with Dalton Trumbo – absolutely. Hef asked Dalton to write an article on the Academy Awards for Playboy Magazine and Dalton thought that obviously he’s going to use a pseudonym like everybody else has. And Hef said “absolutely not – you wrote the article and your name is going to be on it”. It totally infuriated Ronald Regan who was then the president of the Screen Actors Guild in California. He wrote a long, incensed letter to Hef – which of course was in the archives – in the scrapbooks.

He accused Hefner of being anti-American. And how dare he – and he’s hurting this country. Hef said: I think you’re the one who is un-American by what you’re saying and by your actions. I am doing what is in our Constitution and what is, most definitely, the American thing to do. And he did. Later, of course, he was on several presidents’ enemies lists like Nixon, Hoover, and Regan.

K: It’s one of those things where, after the fact, you are thinking – of course – that’s the right thing to do – you would have done that. But at that time he would have been facing such danger…

B: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. He never looked behind himself. He wasn’t afraid. He was absolutely fearless. He did things because he felt they were the right thing to do. He was for human rights – very much so. Not just civil rights. Not just freedom of speech – but human rights.

K: And he took action…

B: He took action. That’s exactly right. You take a look at the forum in Playboy Magazine over the years. Letters would pour in from around the world where people would write in about something that was wrong. And the post office in the US opened people’s mail. They wrote in. Hef and Playboy took on the American post office. Not an easy thing to do…

K: And Playboy was then considered to be, beyond just the pictures of pretty scantly clad women, a literary magazine…

B: Absolutely! It’s not quite the same magazine that it once was. I mean it was really way out there. All magazines change and they change with the times. But when you look at the early magazines it is just astonishing some of the people in them. I’ll tell you one case – for instance. In the early 70s a woman wrote in from Florida – she’d been given 15 years in prison for having an abortion. Hef and his legal team heard about that. So Hef sent one of his legal people to meet with her. This person then drafted an argument and opened up the case and presented that to the judge. Her prison sentence of 15 years was changed to a year and a half – or something like that – house arrest. The judge asked for the argument to look at it and to use it to help update the abortion laws in Florida. A lot of this also led to Roe v. Wade decision that came down later on. Quite astonishing!

K: With such a rich treasure chest – or goldmine, I imagine that it must have been very, very difficult to edit this film?

B: The story I just told you – the abortion story –It is not in the final film. I just couldn’t find room for everything. It’s a dynamite story, but I had to make choices. My first cut was seven and a half hours long. We slowly cut the film down from seven and a half hours to two hours and the credits.

K: You used animation a little bit throughout the film. How did that come to be?

B: Well, Hef also wanted to be a cartoonist, but he ended up not becoming one. He created the magazine and very strictly, strongly oversaw the cartoons in the magazine. He still does today. Along with keeping scrapbooks and letters and photographs and mementos from his entire life starting when was 15 years old, he also did cartoons about his girlfriends, life, being at school, working, creating Playboy, etc. He even made cartoons about a B&W film he made when he was very young.

So I looked at all those cartoons and they are wonderful. They are so meticulously made. The first frame where the title is he would say – Drawn June 1950 – Colored August 1950 – with the exact date. He kept track of everything - which told me a lot about him. It showed me just how finicky and perfectionistic he was. Because he told the story of how he decided on the name Playboy so well in the cartoons, I thought it would be fun to actually use the cartoons to tell that story [instead of having him or other people talk about it]. Let the man from 1953 – as he’s drawing it – let him tell the audience today how he came up with Playboy.

K: Do you have a favorite part in the film?

B: Yes. I love all the Playboy After Dark [bits]. I really do. I will tell you one other favorite part that always cracks me up is when Hef goes back to his high school reunion. And there he is sitting – an icon – forty years later. He is holding the banner with his classmates. And I think to myself – How many people would do that?

K: I wonder what life was like for him in high school. I wonder if he was popular or not.

B: He always says the high school years were some of the best years of his life. He was very popular. He wrote for the newspaper. He drew cartoons for the newspaper. And he starred in plays. He had girlfriends. Got great marks. Very active.

K: So he was a Playboy already.

B: No, he wasn’t. No. And he was quite serious. Even then if something was wrong, he wrote letters to the school newspaper complaining about the kind of dances that the principal insisted on – the kind of music that could only be played at the dances. And he kind of rebelled about that and wrote an article on that. And, naturally, got in trouble for it. So you can see that rebellious spirit in him even early on. Which is what I find fascinating. I love tracing and seeing where the man from today – the man who created that magazine – where he first appears. And you can really see it.

Even the very fact that he did so much already then. Just to keep that scrapbook takes a lot of time. To do all those cartoons. To write for the newspaper and still get great grades. But he loved, loved high school. He loved being part of a gang. He was very popular.

K: Before you met Hefner you must have had some preconceived notions about him – and so will the viewers of the film. Did you find that the audiences would come in and see the film expecting one thing, and were surprised by the focus of the film or by Hefner himself?

B: I remember when I used to baby-sit at one of the houses they had Playboy and I would kind of sneak a look at it and would put it away. I was surprised – what is this magazine doing here? I heard about Playboy and Hugh Hefner and was like this guy is crazy after women and all that. Which is why when I got that phone call I was like – come on – give me a break, he’s interested in Bix Beiderbecke? But when I met him I found him tremendously charming and so smart. So smart and focused. Which I really admire very much.

When the film came out I found at first the reaction was quite controversial. A lot of people just couldn’t get their head around that fact that this man who was Mr. Playboy, who loved all these young women, who lived with so many women, and – at that time was free – could really be this kind of a smart, freedom-fighting, totally serious and rebellious [person]. And still there are people who cannot absolutely get their head around it. And when the film gets reviewed, there are certain people when they review it, they do not review the film – they only review Hefner.

K: I wonder why people have such a hard time seeing both sides. To me, it’s really not beyond the realm of possibility that somebody that publishes Playboy (and is a playboy) is also somebody who could be very smart and care about specific causes. I don’t know why that is so difficult for some people to come to terms with…  

B: I would agree with you. What Hef usually says it that the way people react to him is like a Rorschach test. It says more about them than about him.

K: Has anything surprised you about the reaction to the film so far?

B: I guess what has surprised me is when I got a review calling it a fawning love letter. Because I know it isn’t. It’s not. It surprises me when they say that. But then they can say anything. It is unbelievable how varied the responses are. But generally the responses have been incredibly favorable which we’re delighted about. Really delighted. But I am always nervous. Very, very nervous. Even when I show the film.

K: Still?

B: Oh yeah. Can’t help it you know.

K: Well, that’s good in  a way, I think. What do you want audiences to take away from the film most of all?

B: What a good question. I think first of all I would like to have them put aside their preconceived notions for a while. Just watch this as a film and see that a man who is a Playboy has become known for being a Playboy... This person also is one of the most extraordinary human beings in the sense that when he sees that something is wrong – he will act on it. Be it for himself, for a friend or somebody he doesn’t even know. He hears about the cause and he acts on it. The integrity with which he does that. There are few people that I know that will actually act on what they believe. And he has all his life. I would like for people to see that because I think it’s important to act on what you believe. It’s frightening sometimes. It’s not an easy thing to do. But I believe the more we do that in the best of ways the better we become as human beings….

K: I think that’s a great answer. I think we’ve almost become apathetic in many situations as a society.

B: Too apathetic. Which is what is so refreshing about Hefner. Absolutely. And just recently he saved the Hollywood sign. Suddenly he’s the hero in Hollywood.

K: It’s been all over the news! One thing that I learned in the documentary that I didn’t know was that he had this TV show that featured jazz performers and how instrumental he was in the civil rights movement. This is not a side that we hear so much about.

B: No. Which is why I wanted to spend time on that in the film.

K: It’s such a big thing to undertake at the time.  Usually when there are conversations about Hef, they’ll maybe focus on his stance on sexuality and anti-censorship in that arena. But he also stood up against blacklisting in the McCarthy era and human rights in general. These are not things that are generally discussed. And they go largely ignored by the public.

B: That’s right. And the Vietnam War. And people being put in jail for many, many years for smoking marijuana. He stood up for that.

K: Why do you think that doesn’t get the same attention as his other endeavors and Playboy habits do?

B: I think one reason is that it is more out in the open. He doesn’t stand out there and wave his flag with the other issues. He just doesn’t. If you read Playboy and you read all the forum letters, you begin to get an inkling of it. The other thing is that when you see the Girls Next Door on television he sometimes comes across – I don’t want to say a silly old man –  but I do think that people who see him think that.

K: It seems like there is almost this artificial façade – that once you cut through that there is…well, the title of your documentary in there...

B: That’s right. In this funny sneaking suspicion that I had, too, is that he has fun with it… You can see that there is a real sense of humor in the man. I think that it is this sense of humor that I believe also delights in people maybe being fooled a little bit.

K: Well, the very fact that he wears pajamas…

B: But you know what – to him it’s comfortable. He’s comfortable. He works in his house. He lives in his house. People come to him. He is able to do. And he does it. It’s just kind of become one of those things that he does. Actually when he goes out, he won’t go in his pajamas. But at home he is in his pajamas. At the mansion – he is in his pajamas.

K: Having known him for this many years – was there anything that you uncovered while you were filming this that really surprised you?

B: Well, there are two things. One I put in the film. And the other I didn’t put in the film. The one I put in the film is about the orphan babies that he transports – which I just love. There it was buried in one of the scrapbooks and I suddenly saw. And when he was just starting out with Playboy there was quite a delicious thing that I discovered. There was a hoax that he did in Chicago where he and his friends all dressed up as prehistoric people in togas. They went into the subway and started to paint the subway walls. When the police found out about it, they came to them and tried to stop them. They actually had a letter that they had gotten that said they could do it. And it wasn’t until the following morning that it was actually found out it was illegal and that they had no right to do it when they tracked the letter down. But what was amazing was that Hef was one of the people who did that. He actually started it. It was like an incredible hoax that he did, but then it became a story in Playboy. It was like he was creating his own stories. Do you know what I mean?

K: I know exactly what you mean, actually.

B: They had to go to court for it. It became quite something. But the audacity- I just thought wow! (Laughs)

K: Now, Hefner he is a big fan of the cinema – even going as far as organizing movie nights at the mansion. You attended some of them. Can you describe your very first movie night?

B: Oh my goodness gracious. Oh. I cannot. But I am going to describe an early one for you. It was in December, like in my second year that I was there. And Don Adams from ‘Get Smart’ was still alive. Hef wanted to put a movie on that was in the Christmas spirit. It was a Friday night movie so he read the notes and then there was a discussion in the movie theatre. Then afterwards the discussion continued in the dining room around the table. There was a religious flavor to the film. And Don Adams – who is a very staunch Catholic – began to talk about Catholicism. And then another person jumped in about Catholicism and religion. I am listening to this. I am putting myself outside of the scene. And I am thinking nobody would believe me that I am sitting here at the table at the Playboy mansion and we’re talking about religion and Catholicism. It was so absurd. (Laughs) It was great.

K: My one last question for you is – When this film comes out a lot people are going to get an idea of the real person behind this Playboy fantasy for the first time. There is also a feature film being written about him by Diablo Cody. When all is said and done, do you think Hugh Hefner actually cares about what people think of him?

B: Yes I do. Very much. It may not come across like that but I certainly think so. When I have shown the film at the mansion and when he came up – he flew to Toronto for the Toronto Film Festival. Every time – even the fourth time that he had seen the film – he was genuinely moved to tears. Every time. Which really surprises me. It touches him very deeply. I think what really – the biggest compliment for me was the first time he saw the film – he just looked and me and said ‘you read me very well’. For me, it was an incredible compliment. I think one of the reasons he is doing so many interviews about the film at this time is that he is proud of the film. He had no idea what I was going to come up with – he never saw any of the footage. He didn’t really look over my shoulder. I just worked on my own. I think he was really quite tremendously surprised and delighted by it. I do think he cares.

K: And I guess also at this point in his life he maybe cares even more.

B: Yes. But I think even when he was younger he cared because of the scrapbooks that he kept. He is going to give them to his alma mater – university. You wouldn’t be keeping such a record if you didn’t care.

HUGH HEFNER: PLAYBOY, ACTIVIST and REBEL opens August 6 in Toronto, August 13 in Montreal, and August 20 in Vancouver. It is distributed in Canada by KinoSmith.