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HBO: The film opens with the infamous "Johnson
for President" TV ad that juxtaposes a little
girl counting daisy petals with a catastrophic
nuclear explosion. Tell us about that
commercial and how it impacted the film you
made about your grandfather, Barry
Goldwater.
CC Goldwater: Well, I was five years old when the commercial
ran so I don't have a real recall of it, but in
doing this film I've seen it hundreds of times.
And it really left a mark in my mind of kind of
how the advent of electronic dirt started.
It was really a vicious, nasty campaign, and it
was the advent of being able to do
commercials where you don't even have to say
your opposing candidate's name in a
commercial anymore. All you have to do is
allude to the fact of how nasty that person is,
and the other person gets hurt for it. So the
truth and logic in politics were not there, and
I think that was the first of that type of
commercial. It ran one time only, and was
pulled from the air because my grandfather
threatened to sue Lyndon Johnson for
running it.
My grandfather actually had an opportunity to
combat that commercial, which was an ironic
situation nobody ever really knew about.
There was a little bit of a mischief that
happened within the Johnson administration.
This situation involved a gentleman in his
administration and a young boy who were
found in a men's room of a YMCA, and the
suggestion was that there was some hanky-
panky going on. When this was presented as a
way to get back at Lyndon Johnson, my
grandfather put his foot down and said,
Absolutely not, that's not the kind of person I
am, that's not my character, and that's not
what I stand for. So I think we show in the
movie the kind of character that he was.
He had many opportunities to slam Lyndon
Johnson and to be extremely vicious to
Richard Nixon and other people but he didn't
take those opportunities because that wasn't
the type of person he was.
CC Goldwater:
You know, in asking people like Walter
Cronkite and Hilary Clinton to do interviews
with me, it was really amazing because I
didn't know whether they would be amenable
to it. I thought God, the first thing they're
gonna say to me is, Are you nuts? The guy's
been dead for seven years. Let's not bring out
the dead.
And it was surprising because they all wanted
to talk about Barry. I think there was kind of
a sense in their hearts that whether they were
Republican or a Democrat, they felt that they
wanted us to tell Barry's story and tell it with
honor because he was such a stoic man in the
sense that whatever he said is what you got.
There was no messing around. He was
straight forward. He was always on target with
what he said, and I think that that's what I
got from my interviews with these people.
HBO: It seems like his willingness to speak his mind
was both a blessing and a curse.
CC Goldwater: He was very outspoken. He didn't suffer fools
at all. He was the kind of person who would
rather be with a group of boyscouts or
lieutenant airmen from St. Luke Air Force
Base above being with a group of lobbyists. He
was a very forthright person. There was no
nonsense with him.
He would say things like, he'd like to lob a
nuclear bomb into the men's room of the
Kremlin. He would say things like that and he
mean it. I mean, if he actually had a bomb
that he could have shot off outside his house
and got it into the Kremlin bathroom, he
probably would've done that.
He once said, he'd like to saw off the eastern
seaboard and let it float out to sea. Well, in
everybody else's mind that's just a really
wacky thing to say. But he's looking at them
going, well they're not voting for me anyway,
so why would I even want them?
HBO: As time passed though, Goldwater seemed to
have very little in common with what the
conservative party became. How did he differ
from say Reagan or George Bush today?
CC Goldwater: As he was got older, and after he retired, he
started to see the religious right having more
of a presence in our political world. He felt the
government was interfering way too much in
our rights and our decisions, as to women to
make their own choices, as to men and men
to get married, for women and women to get
married. He felt that for politicians to get that
involved with our lives was unconstitutional.
He was a constitutionalist. He felt very, very
strongly about the constitution. It was his
backbone, it was what he believed in, it's what
he honored and strived to uphold. And I think
what's happened with our political system
now, unfortunately, there are many, many out
there now that say constantly that they are a
"Goldwater Republican" but they're the
farthest thing from a Goldwater Republican.
I think in this film you will see a very, very
colorful side of a man that had multi-
interests. He had interests in flying and
aviation. He was a phenomenal pilot, he flew
everything. He flew jets, he flew test planes.
He could jump in a cockpit and fly any kind of
plane.
CC Goldwater:
He was an avid photographer. He would take
his camera everywhere he went. He was very
interested in Native American culture, and
was very supportive to their needs and wants,
especially in Arizona. He was very supportive
to our water system in Arizona, the Colorado
River and how we protect it and how we
maintain our own water rights.
HBO: What do you hope people take away from the
film?
CC Goldwater: I hope people see this film as being a more
extensive view of a man that had an amazing
life, who was complex and who accomplished
a lot. He never wasted time. He was a doer,
not a talker. He loved life and loved things
around him. I hope everybody will see this
beautiful man I knew, and loved.
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