Rory Kennedy on Helen Thomas Film

Rory Kennedy on Helen Thomas Film, Coming to HBO on Monday: "The Role of Journalism in a Democracy"
By Joe Strupp - E & P
Published: August 14, 2008

When Rory Kennedy told her mother, Ethel Kennedy, that she was going to make a documentary about Helen Thomas, the former Mrs. Robert Kennedy responded, "Do you really want to do that? She was awfully hard on Jack."

Eventually, though, her mother understood what the veteran documentary-maker with the famous name wanted to do, even allowing her to interview Thomas at her famed Hickory Hill home in McLean, Virg., over five days in the spring of 2007. "The three of us had lunch together every day," she adds.

"Helen didn’t want to do it in her home and we were looking for a different house and HBO liked the idea," Rory Kennedy said. "We decided to just have it be Helen on Helen and it was a real opportunity to speak with her."

The result is "Thank you, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at The White House," a 40-minute documentary set to debut on HBO this Monday. Kennedy, the youngest of Robert and Ethel Kennedy's 11 children, and a veteran documentary maker, said HBO sought her out to make the film, which includes pieces of some 20 hours of interviews with Thomas. "She has a compelling personal story, she was very determined to be a journalist at a young age," Kennedy says "I think it is also the story of the role of journalism in America and the role of journalism in a democracy."

As a subject of news stories about herself or her famous family, Kennedy is better equipped than many to judge the role of the press. She says, for the most part, she still welcomes a fair and active journalist.

"I personally have great admiration for journalism and journalists. There have been times in my life when it would have been nice to have more privacy," she says during a phone interview Thursday. "But it goes with the territory. I think we all feel very lucky to have access to have people hear what we have to say."

The film takes square aim at Helen Thomas' latest battles with President George W. Bush, opening with a press conference in which Thomas asked Bush why he wanted to go to war.

"Your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis," Thomas says in the clip. "Every reason given has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war?"

A question Bush deflected, claiming he did not want to got to war. "After that, I became persona non grata," she says in the opening piece of the interview with Kennedy. "There is a blackout now, I believe, until the end of his term."

Kennedy admits part of the film's effort is to show how Thomas's direct questioning and tireless investigation is being lost in today's White House press, particularly in the run up to the Iraq War.

"Has the media been asking the hard questions?" Kennedy says. "I do share her analysis of what happened in the lead-up to the war, the press did not do their job adequately. The press has changed over the past 30 years. Helen has remained true to her craft, despite the shift."

The film then offers a montage of presidents taking the oath of office, from the first covered by Thomas, John Kennedy, to Bush, 43. "I think presidents deserve to be questioned," Thomas then tells Kennedy. "Maybe irreverently most of the time, bring them down to size."

That appears to be the basis of Kennedy's film, to show more how Thomas has earned the title of Dean of the White House Press Corps, and even at 88 is still poised to continue her column for Hearst.

Despite a recent illness that has sidelined her since May, Thomas is seeking to return to her weekly column, a job she took in 2000 after nearly six decades with UPI. Those years form most of the film's background.


The film does include its share of humor, such as a Thomas appearance on The Daily Show, and her send-up of former Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro in a Gridiron Dinner show, in which she sings, "Gerry from Queens."

Kennedy did ask Thomas if she ever used her sexuality in the job. Thomas' answer: "I never had the potential … nobody made a pass at me, darn it!"

The filmmaker says she purposely chose not to include interviews of any other colleagues or critics of Thomas: "I wanted a film that gives as much screen time to her, her story and her take on things."

Kennedy says she did not include some elements of the story, such as the hate mail Thomas said she received during much of her scrutiny of the pre-war activities.

She also hopes that current and future White House correspondents will have the drive and courage to ask the tough questions that Thomas always has: "There is a hope that there are journalists who will emerge and forge ahead and do that job. I hope we will have more Helen Thomases."

Clips in the film of Thomas calmly questioning John Kennedy or shouting questions to a helicopter-bound Ronald Reagan, seek to show her range of manners and inquisitive investigations. The film has less background on Thomas, although it provides a glimpse into her childhood as the daughter of illiterate Syrian immigrants who grew up in Detroit and later joined UPI in 1943 as one of the few women D.C. reporters. "I could be nosy all the time," she tells Kennedy.

Thomas is also candid in her views about the presidents she has covered.

On John Kennedy, she said she saw he was "struggling," at his first press conference so she purposely ended the press conference with "Thank You, Mr. President," which became her signature closure.

On Lyndon Johnson, she claims he purposely held walking press conferences around the White House grounds to make it difficult for reporters. "He'd be speaking almost in a whisper," she recalls in the film. "We used to call them the Bataan death marches." She also notes his Vietnam debacle, stating: "he should have had more courage to pull out," and later, "he had lost his credibility in so many ways."

As for Richard Nixon, she said: "once you lie, your credibility is shot. If you lie too many times, it's all over." When Nixon passed her on the way to make what would be his resignation speech, she said to him, "Good luck, tonight." He responded, "Pray for me."

She also took herself and other White House reporters to task for failing to break the Watergate story: "You always feel, 'this happened under my watch and I should have done a better job.'"

Gerald Ford was "gentle and very kind," while Ronald Reagan was "very affable, but very, very distant," she recalls, adding that Jimmy Carter's "greatest contribution was that he made human rights the centerpiece of his foreign policy."

On Bill Clinton's troubles: "It was a nightmare for the Clintons, I'm sure. As reporters, it was a story you couldn't avoid. I don’t know how he possibly could have taken what he took. He was asked so many personal questions … nobody, no president has ever been subjected to that kind of tyranny."