Bucking Book Bans: Arthur Bradford’s Film “To Be Destroyed”

Sea Change Radio

As kids, many of us read “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury and thought, "man, this book banning and burning stuff is terrible." Apparently, though, not everyone felt the same. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to filmmaker Arthur Bradford about his most recent documentary for MSNBC Films entitled "To Be Destroyed," which takes viewers inside efforts to ban books from a public high school in Rapid City, South Dakota. The film follows author and literacy advocate Dave Eggers, as he travels to the school district where his novel, "The Circle," was pulled from shelves along with four other titles. Bradford tells us about why this topic felt so important to him, gives us a glimpse behind the making of the film, and discusses how the documentary reveals some larger truths about right-wing crusaders in this country. Narrator| 00:02 - This is Sea Change Radio, covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise. Arthur Bradford (AB) | 00:21 - I asked him about this notion that teachers were indoctrinating students, and he said, I, I don't have time to indoctrinate students. And if I had that ability, I would use it to get students to turn their work in on time and to wear deodorant every day. Narrator | 00:36 - As kids, many of us read “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury and thought, "man, this book banning and burning stuff is terrible." Apparently, though, not everyone felt the same. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to filmmaker Arthur Bradford about his most recent documentary for MSNBC Films entitled "To Be Destroyed," which takes viewers inside efforts to ban books from a public high school in Rapid City, South Dakota. The film follows author and literacy advocate Dave Eggers, as he travels to the school district where his novel, "The Circle," was pulled from shelves along with four other titles. Bradford tells us about why this topic felt so important to him, gives us a glimpse behind the making of the film, and discusses how the documentary reveals some larger truths about right-wing crusaders in this country. Alex Wise (AW) | 01:50 - I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by Arthur Bradford. He’s a documentary filmmaker and his latest film is “To Be Destroyed.” Arthur, welcome to Sea Change Radio. Arthur Bradford (AB) | 02:02 - Thanks, Alex. It's good to be here. Alex Wise (AW) | 02:05 - So I should tell listeners that Arthur and I are friends from high school, and I haven't seen him since his debut film. How's your news? First, tell our listeners what how's Your News was all about. I thought it was terrific. AB | 02:18 - Yeah, that was like over 20 years ago that that film came out. I had been working at a summer camp for people with disabilities and uh, I was teaching a video class there and we started doing these news programs, and one of the segments that kind of took off was having some of the campers, people with disabilities do man-on-the-street interviews. And so this movie, “How's Your News?” was a feature documentary where we took five of the more outgoing people with disabilities from the camp and we drove across the country, uh, and they would interview people all along the way. AW | 02:56 - And at the, at the screening that I saw of this, they were all in attendance as well, along with Francis Ford Coppola. It was a really cool event. And the kids, who are now adults, were very engaging and I highly recommend that film to folks. Can people rent it on Amazon still? AB | 03:14 - It's kind of hard to find, like there's also different versions of it. So after we did that, you can find it on YouTube, honestly, that's probably the best way. But we did a feature length film of it that was on HBO and then, years later, we also did, we started going to political conventions. So in 2008 we went to, um, no, 2004 we went to the political conventions. And then we did a short-lived series for MTV called How’s Your News? which is probably really hard to find,