This is Fresh Air.
I'm David Biehn-Cooley.
One hundred years ago today, the Grand Ole Opry began with a performance on the Alabama radio station WSM.
We're going to mark that anniversary with performances by two country artists who were members of the Opry.
We begin with the great bluegrass musician, Earl Scruggs, who perfected the three-finger style of banjo picking that became standard in bluegrass.
Along with guitarist Lester Flatt, he was half of the duo responsible for such bluegrass standards as Foggy Mountain Breakdown and the theme to the Beverly Hillbillies.
In 1945, Scruggs joined Bill Monroe's band, the Bluegrass Boys, the band that virtually invented bluegrass.
He made his first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry that same year with Monroe's band, which included Lester Flatt.
In 1948, Flatt and Scruggs left Monroe to form their own group and became one of the most popular acts in country music.
Their hit Foggy Mountain Breakdown became even more famous when it was used on the soundtrack of the 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde.
In 1969, Earl Scruggs formed his own band, the Earl Scruggs Review, with his sons Gary and Randy.
Earl Scruggs died in 2012.
Terry Gross spoke with him in 2003.
He had just released a CD called The Three Pickers, which featured Doc Watson and Ricky Skaggs.
Here's a song from that album, Feast Here Tonight.
Here's a song from that album, Feast Here Tonight.
I'll get me a briar and I'm twisting his hair.
That way I'll get him I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
I surely know.
That way I'll get him I know.
I'll get me a briar and I'm twisting his hair.
That way I'll get him I know.
I know.
Earl Scruggs, welcome to Fresh Air.
Thank you.
Now, you grew up during the Depression.
Your father died when you were four.
How did your family make a living when he died?
He was a farmer also, so I stayed on the farm until I got old enough to get a job in the factory.
On the farm you worked from daylight till dark, and in the factory you worked eight hours.
So I thought that was great.
Right.
Right.
Who did you hear play banjo before you started playing yourself?
I mean, I've read that there was no radio in your house when you were growing up.
No.
So who did you hear?
How did you hear them?
We had a banjo in our home.
My father played the old style banjo.
So I had a banjo there and my brother Horace had a guitar.
And so we just started playing just old tunes that we'd heard before.
And then a little later we got a Sears and Roebuck radio and started listening to some mainly the Grand Ole Opry and some programs like that.
But as far as the style banjo that I played, nobody had played it before me.
And the only thing that is different from my playing, from what I'd heard, is I had a three-finger roll later on and called Scruggs style, but it seemed to help me to play slow tunes as well as up-tempo tunes.
Most of the bands you're playing in the old days were hold-down type tunes, up-tempo tunes.
So could you put into words what your style of picking is, the three-finger style?
Well, it's just what you hear.
It involves...
It's a little misleading, say, three fingers.
It's actually two fingers, middle and index finger, and your thumb.
And it's kind of Some of the rolls will go if you number your thumb one, index two and your middle finger three.
It's like a one two, three roll over and over.
But to do a tune, it's like trying to say every word with the same exact same amount of syllables in the word.
You've got to alternate the role some to make the the tune flow, since you didn't have a radio when you were very young and and you didn't have a record player, so you're just like hearing you know musicians who may have been, you know living where, where you were.
How did you come up with your style of playing, with your style of picking, I guess the old days you have one main room you take company to when they come, that you don't use every day.
So I was in what we call the front room with a banjo one day and I was in a mode where if somebody had asked me what I was thinking about and I bet you've been in that mode yourself you couldn't tell them what you was thinking about.
You were just kind of sitting there.
And I was picking the banjo, and I was playing a tune that's still played today called Reuben.
And when I realized what I was doing, I was playing the way that I play now.
It was like having a dream and wake up, you're actually playing the tune.
So that was the motive then and what I was doing when I learned exactly what I'm doing today.
You joined Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys in 1945.
This was the group that basically created the sound that's become known as bluegrass.
When you joined the band, could you hear that something different was happening there?
Oh, yeah.
Nobody had this style behind them in the group and he just did the type tunes that would make the banjo sound good.
So it was a good shot to start with because he had Grand Ole Opry exposure and that gave me a lot of exposure when I went to work with him.
And it got immediate attention because nobody had heard that kind of a banjo picking.
So it caught on real fast with the public.
Why don't we hear one of your recordings with Bill Monroe from 1947?
This is one of the famous ones, Bluegrass Breakdown with Bill Monroe and mandolin Lester Flatt guitar, my guest Earl Scruggs banjo, recorded in 1947.
Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys recorded in 1947 with my guest Earl Scruggs on banjo.
What was life on the road like with Bill Monroe?
It was terrible.
If I hadn't have been 21 years old and full of energy, just came off in a farm and a thread mill where I could you know I thought to do an hour show on the road.
Would was a pushover compared to eight hours in the mill or from sunup to sundown on the farm.
And music was my love, so to get into a group that had good singing and playing and Bill had that especially good singing and had a good fiddle player.
So I went in, and it just seemed to make a full band, especially for that style of music.
That was long before anybody had tagged it as bluegrass.
It was just country music.
But why did you hate traveling so much with the band?
Why did I hate it?
It was because we did it 24 hours a day, practically.
Back then, there was only two-lane highways, and he traveled in a 41 Chevrolet car.
And we'd leave after the opera on Saturday night and maybe work down in South Georgia about as far as you could get for a Sunday afternoon show and on down to Miami someplace for Monday or Tuesday and work till about Thursday and start working back to Nashville.
So it was just you'd only be in Nashville long enough to do the Grand Ole Opry and to get a change of clothes and pack your suitcase and head out again.
I was single at the time, so I was living in a hotel and I had one suitcase.
And so I had to really work on it to keep clean clothes for every night doing a show on the road.
Now, it was in the Bill Monroe band that you met guitarist Lester Flatt, who became your long musical partner.
What were your first impressions of him when you first heard him play?
And sing.
Well, I liked his singing and his playing fit in good with that style of music.
And we piled around together, roomed together.
And so we did that for two and a half, three years.
And that's when really we never had talked about starting to show ourselves.
But I had made up my mind that I was going to just get off the road.
So I worked two weeks' notice, and when I started to leave that night, Lester turned in his notice.
And while he was working his notice, he gave me a call over in North Carolina and said why don't we get on the radio station over close to your home and try it as a group ourselves?
So that's how we got started with the Foggy Mountain Boys.
Now, you started recording.
You and Lester Flatt started recording in, I think it was 1948.
And for the first couple of years, you recorded for Mercury Records.
During that period, you recorded what became one of your best-known songs, Foggy Mountain Breakdown.
Yeah.
Is there a story behind the song?
Well, it's just a simple song that I probably wrote in 10 or 15 minutes.
And it...
And I've written several other tunes and had some pretty big hits, but nothing like Foggy Mountain Breakdown.
How did Foggy Mountain Breakdown end up being used in the movie Bonnie and Clyde?
He called and wanted me to write a tune for them.
Who called?
Warren Beatty, who wrote and starred in the show.
So he called back I think I'm quoting this exactly the way it was in a few days and he said he didn't want me to write anything because he'd found a tune that he thought fit what he wanted.
See, we recorded that tune before they got, what I say, good equipment.
I mean just plain everyday microphones and a radio station and know to start making music tune sound fuller or something.
It was just raw material.
Well, that i mean it didn't have no echo chamber or anything on it.
So that's what warren beatty heard in that tune.
So he didn't want to try to record another tune because he thought that the equipment that they had then was probably would give it a more modern tune than what we had recorded, which turned out to be Foggy Mountain Breakdown and the sound that we got then.
So you're saying that he used the original recording and he didn't want you to re-record it?
He took the Mercury recording and that was it.
Why don't we hear that original recording of Foggy Mountain Breakdown?
And this is Lester Flatt and my guest Earl Scruggs.
And you mentioned, when you got off the road with Bill Monroe, what you wanted to do was a radio show.
And first you did one in Bristol.
Then in 1953, you ended up doing a radio show in Nashville at a station there.
WSM, yeah.
Yeah, and it was, I think, a 15-minute program every morning at 545, which is pretty darn early to have to perform.
We'd come in at 2 o'clock and go to bed and get up at 4 to try to get up awake enough to do a live radio program.
But that was your bread and butter in those days.
By that I mean we made our real, really our living by the road work that we did.
We'd go out and do shows and charge admission and get a percentage of that and also some flat rate too.
But that just put us to working in better ways.
Bigger auditoriums and bigger crowds.
The show was sponsored by Martha White Flour.
Yeah.
And I understand the jingle, for that became pretty well known and you were even requested to play it at some of your concerts.
I've never heard it.
How did it go?
Now you bake bright with Martha White.
Goodness gracious, good and light.
Martha White for the finest biscuits, cakes and pies.
It's Martha White, self-rising flours.
And the group says, the one all-purpose flour.
Get Martha White self-rising flour.
It's got hot rise.
Hot rise was actually a baking soda that went into the bread.
It makes bread rise.
You know that, yourself being a lady.
But I thought it was pretty cleverly written.
So did you get like a lifetime supply of free Martha White flour?
Oh, no.
Oh, no, they would probably have done that, but I got a lifetime of work with Martha White.
It was a great company, and they helped us just more than I could total up, I guess.
How long did that show last?
I wish my wife was in here.
She could tell you better than me, but it lasted.
For a lot of years, and we went into television.
Television came in in about 1955 so we started transcribing the morning show, radio show, and we'd sleep late but we'd have to do a live television show at a different city each night.
The reason I say a live television.
That was before they had television cameras to film you with, so we'd have to.
We'd leave four o'clock monday morning to go to down in georgia.
Had two cities in georgia, atlanta being one, and let's see, wednesday was florence, south carolina, and thursday was huntington, west virginia, and friday was jackson tennessee, down west tennessee.
And saturday, back at wsm television and do the grand ole opera on saturday night.
And for Working on Sunday, we were free until 4 o'clock Monday morning and we started that 2500-mile tour again.
There is a Gibson banjo that is named for you.
It's called the Earl.
Yeah.
It has a portrait of you on it and your signature.
Is it a lot of fun to have a banjo that's dedicated to you?
That bears your name and likeness.
It is.
As a matter of fact, they're making five different models with my name on it from the plain banjo, which they're all basically the same banjo.
What runs up the cost is like gold plating and engraving and things of that nature.
Do you play one of those Gibsons or do you play something else?
Well, yeah, I play a Gibson banjo.
Is it an Earl?
No.
Well, basically it is.
I'm playing a banjo that I've been playing since back in the late 40s, I guess, early 50s.
But they're still making basically the same banjo they were making way back there.
When you say you're still playing the same banjo, do you mean it's literally the same instrument or that it's the same model?
Same banjo.
Same banjo.
So do you have to get it like redone occasionally?
Uh well, the only thing you're going to wear out on on the banjo is the head.
The head is used to be skin, but now it's plastic.
They will wear out on you and the strings outside of that.
Uh, you play one for a thousand years, unless you got it broken some way.
Now, what do you love so much about this banjo?
Is it just a sentimental attachment, or is there something special about the sound?
Well, it produces the sound that my ears are looking for.
Maybe I've just gotten used to it, but I like the sound that I get out of that particular banjo.
I feel at home with it when I take it out of the case and start.
When you start with another instrument, they all have their feel.
And playing the same instruments, you know what it's going to feel like when you take it out of the case and start to perform.
Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.
It's been my pleasure.
Bluegrass banjo player Earl Scruggs speaking to Terry Gross in 2003.
He died in 2012.
We'll hear from another country artist, Loretta Lynn, after a break.
And Justin Chang reviews the new documentary My Undesirable Friends, Part One, last air in Moscow.
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We're marking the 100th anniversary of the Grand Ole Opry.
One of its biggest stars was the beloved and influential country singer Loretta Lynn.
She was famous for her singing, her songwriting and her life story told in the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter.
The film was adapted from Lynn's memoir, which described how she grew up in poverty in eastern Kentucky, became a wife at age 15 and, after having four children, started writing songs and performing.
She made her debut on the Grand Ole Opry in 1960 with her first song and first hit, Honky Tonk Girl.
Terry spoke with Loretta Lynn in 2010.
Lynn died in 2022.
Let's start with... with Lynn's Honky Tonker.
Now, the song we just heard, that's the first song you wrote.
It was your first record released in 1960.
You say you wrote it in 20 minutes on a $17 guitar that your husband bought you.
That's true.
Because he thought you sang well.
And you wrote a song because he told you to.
Do you think you ever would have written or performed if your husband didn't say that's what you should do?
No, I wouldn't have because I was too bashful.
I wouldn't get out in front of people.
I wouldn't.
You know, I was really bashful, and I would never sing in front of anybody.
So when you wrote Honky Tonk Girl, with absolutely no songwriting experience, how did you approach writing a song?
You know, I just sat down with my guitar.
I was outside.
In fact, I was leaning up against the old toilet out there in West Coast in Washington State.
Did you say the toilet?
The old toilet, yeah.
And I sat there and wrote Honky Tonk Girl and Whispering Sea.
So what made you think of the story that you tell in Honky Tonk Girl?
Well, I think I probably listened to a bunch of people, you know, their songs and stuff.
And I figured, well, if they can write, I can too.
So I just said, hey, I'm going to tell a story.
And that's what I did.
And had you hung out at Honky Tonk, so did you know them from songs?
No.
When I first started writing, my husband got me a job at this little bar.
And me and a steel player and my brother, he played the fiddle and sang.
So we sang together, and so we really had a good time, you know.
And I wrote Honky Tonk Girl and Whispering Sea during that time.
So you were doing some performing.
Yeah, I just had started.
In fact, I'd never sang in front of anybody until my husband pushed me out there, you know.
I'd never been out and sang for anybody.
But in whom you sang?
I rocked the babies to sleep.
And in Kentucky, when I was growing up with my sisters and brothers, we all sang and rocked the babies to sleep, you know.
But that was about as far as we ever did, you know.
So when you recorded your first single, Honky Tonk Girl, you were 24.
You'd already been married for 11 years because you got married when you were 13.
And you already had four children.
Do I have that right?
I had four kids.
And the twins came a little bit later.
Yeah, the twins come later.
What was your life like as a wife and mother before you started recording?
It wasn't easy.
Me and my husband both worked.
I took care of the farmhouse.
I cleaned and cooked for 36 ranch hands.
Wow.
Yeah, before I started singing.
So singing was easy.
Yeah.
I thought, gee whiz, this is an easy job.
So you cooked and cleaned for 36 ranch hands and had four children?
Uh-huh.
Sure did.
Paid the rent on the old house that we lived in, and that's what I did to make the rent.
Yeah.
It wasn't easy, let me tell you.
Life was hard.
So when you made your first appearance on the Opry, which was the same year that you recorded Honky Tonk Girl,
Right.
You weren't used to performing on such a prestigious stage in front of an audience like that.
Did you know how to perform on stage in a place like that?
Not really.
I just got on there with my guitar and I sang.
I mean, I just did it just like I was doing it at home, you know.
I never thought about it being the Grand Ole Opry, because if I had have, I wouldn't have been able to have done it.
You just pretty well got a figure.
Well, you know, this is something like you do every day.
Right.
It's so much like what you do every day.
Yeah.
So the next song we're going to hear is a song that you first recorded in 1966 Don't Come Home a-Drinking with Lovin' on Your Mind.
And this is a great song.
But first, I want to hear the story of how you wrote it.
You'd already had About six years of songwriting experience behind you.
You probably were no longer leaning against the toilet when you wrote this.
I was probably—Dude fixed me a little writing room at this time out in Goodleysville.
Dude was your husband, your late husband.
Dude was my husband, yes.
And he's the only one I've ever had.
And so he fixed me this little writing room, and I'd go out there and I'd write.
And this was one of the songs that I wrote, was Don't Come Home Drinking with Loving on Your Mind.
And at this point, did you feel like, I know how to write a song?
Oh, yeah.
When I wrote Don't Come Home a Drinking, I knew I could write because I'd had quite a few on the charts for that time.
Now you've said that your husband is in every song that you've written in a large way or in a small way.
Still is.
I mean, if I write a song, he's in there somewhere.
Were you thinking of him when he wrote this song?
Oh, yeah.
Would he come home after drinking like that?
Well, sure.
If a man drinks, he's going to come home drinking.
He liked to drink.
Was the song intended to send him a message at all?
Not really.
I probably told him many times.
I didn't have to sing about it.
Okay.
Well, let's hear the song.
All right.
This is Don't Come Home a-Drinking, recorded in 1966 by Loretta Lynn, and it was a number one country music chart.
Well, you thought I'd be waiting.
You came home last night, you'd been out with all the boys and you ended up half tired.
But liquor and love, they just don't mix.
Leave the bottle or me behind Now.
When you started performing, Patsy Cline was your mentor until she died.
But, you know, she hadn't been in the business that long when I came to Nashville.
She'd only been singing two or three years.
So she must have really related to what you were going through.
Oh, yeah.
We talked a lot.
What were some of the things that she taught you that really helped you a lot?
Things relating to, you know, from clothing to performing style to dealing with the music industry.
Yeah, go ahead.
You know, with the style and everything that I was, you know I was in blue jeans and a T-shirt, or blue jeans and just a western shirt.
And she taught me a lot, how to dress.
What did she tell you about how to dress?
Well, she told me to get out of the jeans, you know.
Of course, I would wear them till we get to the radio station.
Then I'd get in the back seat and put on my dress.
Then I'd take the dress off and go back into my jeans and wait till the next radio station.
And then I'd go back into my dress again.
And did she give you any advice about performing?
Not really.
I think she wanted me to learn that on my own.
And I think it's best for every artist to learn on their own what they're going to do on stage and how they act.
And I don't think anybody else can teach you that.
We're listening to an interview Terry Gross recorded in 2010 with Loretta Lynn.
We'll hear more after a break.
This is Fresh Air.
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Let's get back to Terry's interview with country singer Loretta Lynn.
Terry asked her about one of her controversial songs, The Pill.
We have a lot of them that says it like it is, so that's really.
I guess we're not to talk about the way it is.
This has some lyrics that I think you know really were controversial in some country music circles at the time.
And the lyrics include, this old maternity dress I've got is going in the garbage.
Mm-hmm.
You've set this chick in your last time because now I've got the pill.
I'm tearing down this brooder house because now I've got the pill.
Yeah.
So the song sounds autobiographical in some ways.
I'm not saying that you were necessarily angry in the way that the character in the song is angry, but you had six children.
I had six kids.
I lost three.
You lost three?
Yeah.
I lost three.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I didn't realize that.
I was about five and six.
Well, I lost them before they were born.
Oh, so you had six and lost three others?
Mm-hmm.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's a lot of pregnancies.
Yeah.
Right, okay.
Stating the obvious.
Did you share the song's anger?
Well, I sure didn't like it when I got pregnant a few times.
You know, it's hard for a woman to have so many kids.
And, well, at the time, I guess I had four and then got pregnant and had, you know, with the twins.
But, yeah, I was a little angry.
Let's hear it.
This was released in 1975, recorded in 1972.
This is Loretta Lynn, The Pill.
You whined me and dined me when I was your girl, Promised if I'd be your wife you'd show me the world, But all I've seen of this old world is a bed and a doctor bill Tearing down your brooder house, Cause now I've got the pill.
All these years I've stayed at home While you had all your fun, And every year that's gone by, Another baby's come.
There's gonna be some changes made Right here on Nursery Hill.
You fed this chicken your last time, cause now I've got the pill.
This old maternity dress I've got is going in the garbage.
The clothes I'm wearing from now on won't pick up so much yardage.
Now you've said that you never even used the pill as birth control before.
Well, if I'd have had it, I'd have used it at the time.
Back when I was having all the kids, we didn't have birth control pills.
Or if they did, I didn't know anything about them.
Well, you write that there's a lot you didn't know about when you got married in 1947.
You didn't know anything about sex either, did you?
No, you say you didn't know anything about sex or even pregnancy.
You say when you got pregnant, you didn't even know the word?
Is that right?
Well, I don't know.
I guess we just called it having a baby.
We didn't call it pregnant.
Back in Butcher Holler, there was a lot of things we didn't know.
A lot of things they still don't know back there.
You probably had no idea you were ever going to become famous.
No.
Never.
And I still don't.
I'm not famous.
I'm just me.
I want to play another song, and this is something more recent than what we've been hearing.
This is your collaboration with Jack White.
He produced an album of yours in 2004, Van Leer Rose.
How did you meet?
I went to Detroit to work, and Jack White come to see me.
And of course he told me about when he was little.
He was about nine years old when Coal Miner's Daughter come out.
He stayed in the theater the whole time, all day long, and watched coal miner's daughter over and over and over.
So when he got a chance to work with me, he says I told him I had to go home because I said I've got to hurry because I got to record tomorrow.
He says well, how about me come and being the producer?
I said well, why not?
That's how we got together.
So he was in Nashville by the time I was and we recorded and that's how we started.
The track I want to play is called Miss Being Misses.
You wrote all the songs on this album.
And this is one of my favorites.
I like the song a lot, and also I just love how stripped down it is.
It's just you and a guitar.
Is that Jack White on guitar?
That's Jack White.
Okay.
Do you want to say anything about writing the song?
Well, you know, I don't like to talk about the way I write songs.
I just let people hear a man or what I'm talking about.
All right, good enough.
So this is Loretta Lynn from the 2004 album Van Leer Rose, produced by Jack White, who's accompanying her on guitar.
I lie here, all alone In my bed of memories.
I'm dreaming of your sweet kiss.
Oh, Like so many other hearts, mine wanted to be free.
I've been held here every day.
Since you've been away from me, my reflection in the mirror, it's such a hurtful sight.
Oh, I miss being Mrs. Tonight.
That's my guest, Loretta Lynn, with Jack White on guitar from the album Van Leer Rose, which Jack White produced of Loretta Lynn's songs in 2004.
Your husband, who we've spoken a little bit about, died in 1996, and you didn't perform for a while after that.
How has your life changed since he's been gone?
Well, not for the better.
I mean, I miss him so much, you know.
He kind of kept things going like me recording, and he'd always tell me how good I was, you know, and that always helped a lot.
And he would say, you know, we need to get a new record out or whatever.
He always kept me moving.
And if it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have been singing period, because he thought I could sing and he put me to work.
You know, so many people are...
I think, kind of baffled a little bit by the relationship, because it seems in some ways to have been a very rocky relationship.
And at the same time, you stayed with him throughout.
I think we had a relationship.
We fought one day and we'd love the next.
So, I mean, to me, that's a good relationship.
If you can't fight and if you can't tell each other what you think, your relationship ain't much anyway.
You don't need him anymore to tell him you're a good singer, right?
I mean, you know that, right?
Well, I don't know about that, but I try.
Well, Loretta Lynn, it's really been great to talk with you.
Thank you so very much.
It's been nice to talk to you, honey.
Loretta Lynn speaking with Terry Gross in 2010.
Loretta Lynn died in 2022.
Tonight, the Grand Ole Opry will celebrate its 100th anniversary with a live stream concert.
Coming up.
Justin Chang reviews a new documentary about Russia's crackdown on independent journalists.
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Our film critic, Justin Chang, says the best documentary he's seen this year is a five-and-a-half-hour film called My Undesirable Friends, Part 1.
Last air in Moscow.
Filmed over several months in late 2021 and early 2022...
It follows several independent journalists in Moscow as they deal with the fallout of Vladimir Putin's crackdown on reporters and Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine.
My Undesirable Friends received a Gotham Award nomination for Best Documentary and is playing at select venues around the country.
Here is Justin's review.
In October 2021, the New York-based filmmaker Julia Loktev flew to Moscow amid nationwide protests in support of the Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny.
Vladimir Putin's government had begun cracking down on independent journalists covering the protests, branding them as foreign agents, a designation that effectively stigmatized them and forced them to include disclaimers with their work.
Loktev began filming several of these journalists who courageously kept reporting that on the abuses of the regime, including her friend Anna Nemzer, a talk show host for the independent channel TV Reign.
Hoping to capture the journalists' ordeal as nimbly and thoroughly as possible, Loktev became a one-person crew, following her subjects around their homes and workplaces and filming on an iPhone.
She shot for months as tensions mounted, culminating in Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Not long afterward, all her subjects fled the country.
The result of her efforts is an extraordinarily tense and intimate new documentary, My Undesirable Friends, Part 1.
Last Air in Moscow.
Loktev is currently making a Part 2, which will focus on the same subjects as they try to continue their work in exile.
Part one, though, is already a stunning accomplishment.
A harrowing immersion in the daily lives of journalists who find themselves in a state of freefall.
The film is divided into five chapters.
The first three take place in the months leading up to the invasion of Ukraine.
We see Anna Nemzer in the TV Rain studio interviewing activists who advocate for immigrants, people with disabilities and other marginalized groups.
We see journalists reporting from the front lines of the protests and not conforming to state propaganda talking points.
Whether they're data journalists, investigative reporters or feature writers, they all try to keep on working despite their foreign agent status, which some of them try to fight in court.
Others mock the term and treat it as a badge of honor.
Most of Loktev's subjects are women in their 20s and 30s and over the course of these five and a half hours were moved by their sense of camaraderie and community, and also by their gallows humor.
They hang out at each other's apartments and crack jokes about the likelihood that they've been bugged or that they might be arrested or detained.
As we'll see in the film's later stretch, they're not wrong to worry.
Loktev, who was born in the former Soviet Union and moved to the US as a child, is a superbly observant filmmaker.
In the past two decades, she's directed two fictional dramas, The Loneliest Planet and Day Night.
Day Night both slow-burning character studies that took their time getting under your skin.
My Undesirable Friends Part 1 is a work of similar patience, and once Russia's full-scale assault on Ukraine begins, the movie has us fully in its grip.
After the darkly comic tension of the first three parts, the fourth and fifth chapters become outright horrifying.
As the journalists make plans to flee, the story's center of gravity shifts to a reporter whose fiancé has been imprisoned for treason and who must make the heart-rending decision whether to stay or leave.
It's impossible to watch My Undesirable Friends Part 1 without without thinking of President Trump's ongoing attacks on the press.
It's also hard not to see the film's events from the depressing standpoint of the present, with Navalny dead and the war in Ukraine still raging miserably on.
Yet as grim as it is, the movie isn't a hopeless experience.
I came away with deep admiration and affection for these journalists— and for their devotion to their beleaguered but invaluable profession.
This is one of the most engrossing movies, fiction or non-fiction, that I've seen all year.
Because it doesn't have an American distributor, it also hasn't been the easiest movie to see.
It's now playing in select venues around the country and if you have a chance to see it in a theater in the coming weeks, you should.
Five and a half hours may sound like a commitment, but once this movie has begun, you won't want to leave.
And you'll be as eager as I am, by the end, to see what lies ahead for these intrepid souls in Part 2.
Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker.
He reviewed My Undesirable Friends, Part 1, last air in Moscow.
You can find a list of where you can see the film on the website argopictures.com.
That's A-R-G-O-T pictures dot com.
On Monday's show, Oscar-winning costume designer Paul Taswell.
He watched The Wizard of Oz as a child, designed The Wiz in high school, and now he's brought Wicked to life.
He talks about creating more than a thousand looks to tell the story of Wicked for Good.
I hope you can join us.
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