Telling the Story of His Family, and of a Union
'Brothers on the Line,' Sasha Reuther's Film on the
U.A.W.
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: October 9, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/movies/brothers-on-the-line-sasha-reuthers-film-on-the-uaw.html?pagewanted=1

It's a powerful image: Blood streaming down a union
organizer's nose and splattered all over his white shirt
after thugs from the Ford Motor Company attacked him and
others who were distributing union fliers.
That 1937 photograph is just one of the searing scenes
in "Brothers on the Line," a new documentary about the
Reuther brothers: Walter, the future United Auto Workers
president standing next to the bloodied organizer, and
Victor and Roy. Together they played a pivotal role in
transforming the United Auto Workers into what was for
decades the nation's most powerful labor union.

Victor Reuther's grandson Sasha Reuther features that
photo prominently in the new documentary, which he
directed and helped produce, to tell how the brothers
built the U.A.W. and how that union helped raise living
standards for not just one million autoworkers, but also
for a large swath of America. The film shows the fierce
struggles and sit-down strikes that led to the
unionization of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, and
how the U.A.W. played a major role in underwriting the
civil rights movement as well as that of Cesar Chavez
and the farmworkers.

"Some will say it's a love letter to the family, and
it's the Reuther boy who did it," Sasha Reuther said.
But he added that he took pains to include criticisms of
the Reuthers, showing blacks in the 1960s protesting
that they were underrepresented in the union's hierarchy
and complaints that Walter purged many Communists who
had played an important role in building the union.

Still, as a family member, "I felt destined to tell this
story," Mr. Reuther, 36, a graduate of the Tisch School
of the Arts at New York University, said recently at his
Upper East Side apartment. "I feared that if I didn't do
it, it's going to disappear."

Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor of labor history at the
University of California, Santa Barbara, said, "There's
a dramatic story to be told about the history of the
U.A.W., and it needs to be told to every generation."

The documentary, which will be shown on Tuesday in
Manhattan as part of the IFC Center's Stranger Than
Fiction series, focuses on Walter, a gifted speaker,
shrewd negotiator and confidant of Presidents John F.
Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. The film also tells of
Victor Reuther, the most intellectual of the brothers,
who became head of the U.A.W.'s international division,
and of Roy Reuther, who, as the union's political
director, used its power to help elect Kennedy and push
through Medicare, Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act and
other landmark legislation.

At some early screenings, Sasha Reuther said, he was
struck by how little many young people know about the
history of the labor movement. "The immediate reaction
is, 'Why haven't I heard of any of this before?' " he
said.

He added that he was especially moved by the way an
African-American student responded at a Washington high
school. The teenager was surprised to see whites
attacked, Mr. Reuther said. "He said, 'I thought things
like that only happened when African-Americans were
beaten up in the civil rights movement.' "

For Mr. Reuther, one of the biggest challenges with his
debut film was shaping a concise and moving story out of
the ocean of archival material he discovered -- not just
that in the union's archives, but also nearly 100 hours
of 16-millimeter film at Wayne State University in
Detroit. So he brought in a veteran film editor, Deborah
Peretz, to help mold and streamline the documentary.

"I suppose you can say we had an embarrassment of
riches," Ms. Peretz said.

Professor Lichtenstein, also the author of a biography
of Walter Reuther, "The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit,"
said he was impressed by the archival material the
filmmakers found, especially a recording of a phone
conversation in which Johnson warned his longtime ally
Walter Reuther not to turn against him and oppose the
war in Vietnam.

"I want you to tell the rest of them that I'm no goddamn
fascist," Johnson says.

Linda Reuther, a daughter of Walter, said that segment
was eye-opening: "I was opposed to the war for a long
time. I had no idea why Daddy wouldn't be against the
war. It didn't make sense to me until I saw that clip."

Some critics say the Reuthers were so successful in
pushing up wages and benefits that it made Detroit's Big
Three automakers uncompetitive once Japanese imports
started flowing in. Professor Lichtenstein said, "The
film puts the question forward about what happened to
the auto industry, but it never comes to an answer on
that one."
Asserting that there was some complacency in the
U.A.W.'s leadership after Walter died in 1970, Sasha
Reuther said that union officials focused more on
continuing the great wages of the past than on keeping
the automakers competitive. "Any organization like that
has to be flexible," he said. "The contract should be a
living document and needs to change with the times."
 
He said he felt fortunate that Martin Sheen agreed to
narrate the film, an opportunity the actor leapt at.
"The Reuther brothers, particularly Walter, have been
heroes of mine since my childhood," Mr. Sheen said. Not
only did they build the U.A.W., he added, "they
basically created the middle class."

There had been other efforts to document the Reuthers'
legacy on film, Sasha Reuther said. He recalled that
soon after the 1992 release of "Hoffa," which starred
Jack Nicholson as the Teamsters leader, Hollywood
producers approached Victor Reuther.

He said his grandfather rejected the idea, fearing that
such a film would, like "Hoffa," focus on violent
episodes, like an assassination attempt on Walter's life
-- a shooting that left Victor with a glass eye -- and
confrontations like the one with the Ford thugs that
came to be known as the Battle of the Overpass.

But making a movie was something Sasha Reuther, like a
number of relatives of other notable figures recently
(Deepak Chopra, Ethel Kennedy, William Colby) had long
considered. "It's been in my mind and heart for 20
years," he said, and he even filmed 10 hours of
interviews with his grandfather while a student.

After graduating, he made a living directing and
producing reality TV, commercials and music videos, but
prepared on and off for a Reuther brothers film. It
wasn't until 2004, at a memorial service for his
grandfather, that his wife, Sonya, pressed him to step
up. Pointing out the U.A.W. and civil rights leaders in
attendance, he recalled, "She said, 'Your story, the
family story, is right here.' " And she told him, "If
you don't do something soon, a lot of these people will
be gone."

So Sasha Reuther plunged in. "The message of the film,"
he said, "is that they were about something bigger than
the fight just to make union jobs better."

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