Episode 156: Nuremberg with James Vanderbilt
The history books will tell you that World War II ended on September 2, 1945. The filmmaker James Vanderbilt, however, will tell there was still one last huge battle left to fight as the conflict officially drew to a close. It was a battle to be fought not in trenches but in a court room, with the eyes of the world watching – and the stakes were impossibly high. As detailed in the new historical drama Nuremberg, starring Russell Crowe and Remi Malek, the Nazi party of Germany had been stopped, with the surviving members of their high command arrested, soon to be brought to trial. It wasn’t enough to simply shoot them behind closed doors. They had to be held accountable for the unthinkable horrors of the Holocaust – the entire planet aware of the systematic cruelty they’d inflicted.
But giving these charismatic monsters a chance to excuse their actions in front of the global media risked giving their ideology a chance to spread. Get this wrong and in fifteen years, the Nazis might come back stronger than before. It’s this terrifying prospect that propels Nuremberg, written and directed by Vanderbilt, a storyteller known for films like 2022’s Scream, 2019’s Murder Mystery, 2013’s White House Down, 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man and of course, in 2007, Zodiac, directed by David Fincher, which James came on Script Apart to discuss in 2020.
In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, James and I break down the need to tell this story at this moment in time, as the number of people alive who lived through the Holocaust continue to dwindle and memory of the atrocities fades alarmingly from public knowledge: 66% of Americans under the age of 34 had no idea what Auschwitz was when polled as part of a major survey in 2018. You’ll hear about how Silence Of The Lambs became the unlikely structural blueprint for this wartime epic. And we also get into why the movie ultimately arrives at the timely message that barbaric tendencies that drove Hitler’s acolytes weren’t unique to the German psyche; fascism, authoritarianism could happen and perhaps is happening right underneath our noses.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.
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