Name: Errol Morris on Letterman, May 13, 1982
Uploaded: 2017-10-25T02:42:16.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Errol Morris on Letterman, May 13, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-10-25. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Errol Morris on Letterman, May 13, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-10-25. Transcript available.

Thank you very much. My next guest is one of the very few filmmakers in the
world who makes
documentary films that are filled with as much emotion, excitement, human
interest, and humor
as the finest fictional films. It's a great pleasure to have him with us
tonight. Please
welcome Errol Morris. For the last couple of days, we've been looking at the
clips of your
various motion pictures and enjoyed them a great deal. And we have a couple
here tonight.
Gates of Heaven. Yes. About pet cemeteries. This sounds like it's a little grisly.
Not
at all. I think it's a very funny film. And although it's about pet cemeteries,
one
never sees any dead pets in the film. One is treated instead to a variety of
different
topics. Pet cemeteries is a setting for a whole assorted number of things that
go on.
So it's just the framework in which your movie takes place. That's exactly
right. It talks
about two of these, right? Your film deals with two of them. How did you hear
about the
one or the other? Initially, how did this project begin? There was an article
that appeared in
San Francisco Chronicle, and the headline read, 450 dead pets to go to Napa.
And I investigated
further. I found out that there was a pet cemetery that had gone out of
business about 40, 50 miles
south of San Francisco. All the pets buried there were to be dug up,
transported north to another
pet cemetery where they were to be reburied. And this became the backdrop for
the film.
We're going to take a look now, I guess, at the first bit of film from Gates of
Heaven. And what
do we need to know about this? I should introduce the first clip. These two pet
cemeteries, one was very,
very, very successful. One was a big failure. And the clips that you'll be
seeing this evening are from
the pet cemetery, which was a big, big success. And the man who runs it is
named Calvin Harberts.
This is an enterprise, which he has invested a great deal of hope and perhaps
even prayer. He was in the human
cemetery business in Hawaii.
Okay, so we're going to see Cal here now. And he came back to California,
retired,
went into a supermarket and noticed that there was more pet food being sold
than baby food.
And that's when he made the decision to start his own pet cemetery. And you'll
see a clip of him and his wife.
This will be Cal. What's his last name? Cal Harberts. Harberts and his wife
from Gates of Heaven.
The basic tenant of our church, the Bubbling Well Church of Universal Love,
incorporated in January of 1977 is, the church has as its tenants, a belief in
a supreme being
who does not differentiate in bestowing his benevolence on all species of life,
whether of this earth or any form of life hereafter.
The thought occurred to me that any God, any supreme being that was indeed
compassionate and concerned
about people was sure to be concerned about any living creature. God is
supposed to know when the sparrow
falls, when the lilies of the field bloom. So surely at the gates of heaven, an
all-compassionate God,
an all-compassionate supreme being is surely not going to say, "Well, you're
walking in on two legs.
You can go in. You're walking in on four legs.
We can't take you. I don't believe this will happen."
Now people come up and there is a common bond. The church, we have, we don't
have formal services.
We're not trying to save any souls or collect money or anything like that. It's
just a,
it's sort of a, um, a church of love. We do not have to go too far afield to
make this conversion
because, um, we have our own chapel. We have stained glass windows. We even
have a bell.
And we're usually talking in terms of death and talking in terms of hereafter.
Well, this is the very essence of any other religion.
So if, in the hereafter, there are no pets, I think, I don't think any of us,
uh, that love our pets would
really, um, uh, feel maybe, I don't, I can't say we wouldn't want to go, but,
um, I, I really believe that
they'll all be there in this spirit.
What, uh, how does, how does your style of... By the way, this clip could have
been set up a
little bit better because what you're seeing, um, in the clip is after founding
the pet cemetery,
he has now made the decision to convert it into a church. Oh, I see. So it's
also a religion and
a pet cemetery, kind of, uh, one-stop shopping for pet owners. Uh, how does
your
style of, of documentary filmmaking differ from, from other people?
Well, I think you can see, just looking at the clip, that there's been no
attempt. A lot of
documentary films made today, people have handheld cameras, they scurry around,
they try to hide,
they try to remain as inobtrusive as possible. In this kind of filmmaking, we,
we stare down, uh, the
subject almost like a big game hunter. There's no attempt made to hide at all.
In fact, the
camera is put on a tripod and they speak directly to the camera, so it does...
Are people receptive to
that? Does it take them a while to warm up to that notion? I think they love it.
It gives them an
opportunity to perform. Do these people feel that they're being made fun of or
made light of?
Everybody in the film has had an opportunity to see themselves and they all
like themselves in the
film and they all like the film as well. So it's pretty much a direct
representation of what they
would be talking about or saying in their own living room or with their friends
or whatever, huh?
More or less. Yeah.
Uh, all right, Errol, you want to set up this next bit of film for us and, uh...
Okay.
Cal, when he started Bubbling Well Pet Memorial Park, the successful pet
cemetery...
Bubbling Well...
...needed labor. Um, there had to be pets that were picked up from the veterinary
offices,
there had to be graves dug. And so he hired both of his sons to do the work,
Phil and Dan. And part of
the film is devoted to their fantasies and their dreams. Dan, although he
spends the days digging
graves, dreams of becoming a big rock star. And Phil, who was a successful
insurance broker, or maybe
not so successful insurance broker, depending on how you look at it, is now
driving a refrigerator truck
where he takes the dead pets from the veterinary offices. And he has all of
these systems, plans for
success, formulas that will turn him into a happy, rational, productive person.
Okay, so here's where we
meet Phil and Dan. Gates of Heaven. In former years, I would write like three
and four songs a week, and I've
got a little notebook where I've got about probably 50 songs. And, uh, you know,
you always have the
dream in the back of your mind that someday these songs will be published and
you'll be famous. But, uh,
as you get older, you start realizing that maybe those are just what they were
dreams, you know,
nothing more. But, uh, dreams are nice to have, something to look forward to.
You know, it gives you
more satisfaction, something that you can think about. Our mind is like a
computer. You know, if our mind
read or extracted a data line from it, if you put in positive, you would get
out positive. If you put in
negative, you get out negative. So you have to understand that. Our mind is,
you know, we can go
into a negative part and into a positive part. And then if you really want to
get in more involved,
there's a in between that people never get really negative and people never
really get positive.
They call it the gray area. But, uh, the mind reacts to suggestion and
suggestion is merely
an external force or, or an external thing that you perceive through your
senses. You know,
like your smell, your sight, your feeling. Uh, you could even be, uh, smelling
a big vat of spaghetti,
you know, and it suggests to you that you're hungry. Um, so therefore, our
strongest power that we have
is in suggestion and the power of prayer. That's the strongest power that we
have.
I got a stereo system aside from a recording system. It's a, uh, it's a Pioneer
SX-1010 and it's 100 watts
per channel, which is very powerful. And on some occasions, let's say late
afternoon, when there's
nobody up here at the park, I'll take my speakers and I'll put them outside and,
uh, turn it, turn it up.
And it, you can hear it. It goes through the whole valley and, uh, you can hear
it from, you know, miles
Thank you.
This is going to be on public broadcasting soon?
I hope it's going to take some time before it goes on to PBS.
Oh, okay. I was under the impression it's going to be on shortly.
But we'll look for it when it eventually makes it there.
And it's being released again as a motion picture, right?
That's right.
Carol Morris, ladies and gentlemen, director of the show, Gates is Heaven.
We'll be right back with comedian Jerry Seinfeld.
We'll be right back.