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QuickBooks, backing you. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday Morning. We're beginning with the age-old debate over whether homosexuality is a behavioral choice or an inborn trait. Although researchers have long concluded it's part of a person's nature, there are still those insisting it's an affliction in need of a cure. We call our cover story God Only Knows. It's reported by Aaron Moriarty. And that is the mood state that sets you up for homosexual enactment. It's a dangerous, debunked practice that's happening right now all over America. It's happening in Sunday school classes. It's happening at youth camps. There is this underlying belief that a 10-year-old gay child needs to be repaired or converted.

Later on Sunday morning, the secret world of gay conversion therapy. Then it's on to our look back at that year of years, 1968. As Richard Schlesinger will remind us it was 50 years ago this month that a seemingly washed-up politician made a comeback for the ages.

This is my last press conference. In the 1960s, Richard Nixon had an image problem. He was a loser. He had lost and lost and lost. But as former Vice President Walter Mondale remembers, Nixon got some unexpected help. Do you think Johnson wanted Nixon to win? I thought so for a while. 1968, a year of setbacks for the nation and the comeback of Richard Nixon.

Ahead on Sunday morning. A headline making great escape from prison is about to be relived in a new television series. And directing this most serious of stories is the comic actor Tony Dacovil's been talking to. Over the past decade, male modeling has had a shadow cast over it by one man. Ben Stiller, known for acting in I'm coming.

Don't leave. And directing comedies, has made a new drama about a notorious prison escape. What do you hope people get from this film? I'm hoping that people get drawn into the world.

And I think we all, to a certain extent, want to escape from part of our lives. Ahead on Sunday morning. Breakout with Ben Stiller. Seth Doan has a Veterans Day story about the wounds of war. Serena Altschul talks with Matthew Broderick and Kenneth Lonergan about a family saga on Broadway. Ben Tracy finds pizza on the menu, but far from Italy.

And more, all coming up when our Sunday morning podcast continues. Is homosexuality a choice? Can religion steer young people away from them? Or is homosexuality a choice?

Can religion steer young people away from that choice? Our cover story is reported by Aaron Moriarty of 48 Hours. I was a perfect, golden, super-Christian, ideal man. And inside? Inside, I was scared, broken, afraid. I knew it wasn't real. I cried myself to sleep so many nights, praying, God, please change me. 29-year-old Adam Trimmer grew up outside Richmond, Virginia, struggling to keep a secret from his deeply religious Southern Baptist parents. We were sitting there doing a Bible study. I was hiding. I was singing at church. I was a missionary.

I did everything to try to be the best Christian. And I would just wake up, and I was still gay. And so, at 17, Adam came out to his mother, Paulette. He said, I am gay.

I know I am gay. And I just turned and looked to the side, and tears just rolling down my face. And I looked at him, and I said, Adam, a man shall not lay with another man. And he started crying. I wanted him to know that it's in the Bible, and you're going against God. Did you hug him at that moment?

No. I did not hug him. And I remember hearing him tell somebody, when I went to my mom, instead of getting love and support, I got religion. A year later, after Adam was also rejected by his first love at college, he attempted suicide. I was trying to leave this world.

I just wanted to die. While in the hospital, a youth pastor suggested a controversial treatment known as reparative or conversion therapy. Had you ever heard of that before? Never.

What was it called? Healing from homosexuality. Even though it's been 45 years since the American Psychiatric Association determined that homosexuality is not an illness that can be cured, an estimated 700,000 adults in the U.S. have received some kind of conversion therapy. Evangelical people essentially believe that homosexuality is a sin. It's a transgression against God's heart and mind.

You are safe because God is with you. Stan Mitchell, a pastor in Nashville, Tennessee, says conversion therapy is used every day, as he puts it, to save souls, even those of children as young as 10. These children are dealing with the fear that they might be able to live with the fear that they might spend eternity tortured because of their natural way of being in the world. So to ask them, do you want that?

Do you want to be gay? You're asking them, do you want to go to hell? To avoid that fate, Adam Tremmer asked his family to help him pay for a retreat with an organization called Exodus International. The mission of Exodus was to help people who were same-sex attracted to not act on that. We're here to listen, to encourage.

Exodus was once the leader in the field, in part because of its charismatic director, Alan Chambers. He refused to even say the word gay. Instead of using the word gay, I'm a person with same-sex attractions.

And why is that better? Because I felt like the, even the word was caving in on something that we shouldn't cave in on. Chambers was the organization's best advertisement. He had undergone conversion therapy himself and now had a wife and two children. Did that give you hope? Absolutely.

I looked at it and I said, wow, this can really happen. Lonely, frustrated, and that is the mood state that sets you up for homosexual enactment. The therapy is based on the belief that homosexuality is caused by nurture, not nature, and so it can be reversed.

Hand or hands on hips, go! There are classes as depicted in the current movie Boy Erased on how to act less gay. Is this a manly shape I'm making or is it a girly or feminine shape? Adam Trimmer was introduced to something called cuddle therapy. Cuddle therapy intended to create aversion to another man's touch.

And we cuddled in his bed. You cuddle with another man and this is supposed to help you get rid of your same sex? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. No, it's okay. It is okay because that's real. And Adam, like most who go through conversion therapy, was also told his homosexuality could be traced back to a troubled family relationship.

Usually, for the boy who will develop same-sex attractions, around the age of two and a half or so, there's something that prevents him from detaching from his mother and attaching himself to his father. In Adam's case, a distant father and over-involved mother. The counselor looked at her and just told her that she was so overbearing as a mother that she needed to let me go.

Mind you, this is being told to a mother of a son who just tried to kill himself. What did that therapy do to your relationship with Adam? It killed it. It all but killed it. He didn't want to have anything to do with me. Alex Cooper says that what she was subjected to when she was 15 almost killed her. And when you say beat me, what do you mean?

Like fists to the stomach. Raised in a loving Mormon home in Southern California, when Cooper came out to her parents, they sent her to Utah to live with a couple recommended by church leaders who offered unlicensed therapy. So I was there to become straight. Your parents thought that this couple could turn you straight? I know, it's wild to think that it's even a thing that goes through people's minds.

But it happens every day. At first, it was just meetings. I was going through the gospel and talking about why I was there. It's a giant, terrible mind game. But the most unbearable part, Cooper says, was a backpack filled with rocks that she was forced to wear all day, every day. Do you have any idea how much weight you were carrying? I think about 40 pounds.

About 40 pounds. And the point of the backpack was to represent? The physical burden and pain of being gay. The so-called therapy didn't change her sexual orientation. But Cooper says it broke her spirit. And after several months, she too tried to take her life.

On my 16th birthday, it was kind of like a gift to myself. I just took every pill in the house, and I just remember being so excited to not be there anymore. I was a pastor in a megachurch, and I was party to destroying these people. Pastor Stan Mitchell once himself sent parishioners to conversion therapy.

Do you have any idea of how many young people you had recommended go through conversion therapy? God, I've tried to forget. I've tried to forget.

But he can't forget the damage he's seen. In the last four years, I've done at least three or four funerals of people who took their life because of this issue. Since Mitchell began speaking out in 2015, he has lost two-thirds of his congregation.

The only thing I regret is I didn't do it sooner. People died while I was trying to find courage. As for the American Medical and Psychological Associations, they warn against the use of conversion therapy. And now, more than a dozen states ban licensed therapists from using those practices on children. So especially if you're a woman and you've got some friends who are gay, just be careful about that relationship. But some powerful religious organizations, such as Focus on the Family, say the government is going too far. I want people to know that God changes people, that leaving homosexuality is a possibility, and that we should have the freedom to do so. The government shouldn't step between me and my counselor. That's not their role.

Jeff Johnston, the group's issues analyst, insists people who don't want to be gay, even children, have the right to try to change. But you know the state has the right to limit any kind of therapy when there's some evidence that it can be harmful. You know, I know there's some outrageous things that happen in life, like backpacks with rocks.

I know that's horrific. But those are such wildly extreme examples. And that's not what we're talking about in general. I have met dozens and dozens of people who have had deep change and deep transformation. And that's why we continue to advocate for their freedom. We haven't done everything right. But even the man who was once the living example of the power of conversion therapy admits he's never seen it work. We've hurt people.

Alan Chambers shut down Exodus in 2013. It didn't make me straight. Here I am happily married to a woman for almost 21 years. But you're still attracted to that.

Yes, that hasn't gone away. You know, and it won't. Alex Cooper finally ran away from the home where she was placed. And a Utah judge ruled she could return to her family and live as a gay woman. She's now 23 and shares an apartment with her girlfriend in Portland, Oregon.

Where did you get that kind of strength? I knew what happy felt like. I grew up happy, and I just knew that I could have that again. You staying for Scrabble tonight?

I think so. And Adam Trimmer quit therapy on his own and says he is now trying to undo the damage. Today, my mom and I have a restored relationship that conversion therapy tried to take away from us.

It has been so powerful to reconnect with her. You have your church, and your church tells you that homosexuality is wrong, but you've got your son. The only way I can answer that is I love God. I'm not going to change that. And I love my son.

I'm not going to change that. Ben Stiller has won plenty of laughs in comedies like Meet the Parents. Now, with a new miniseries about a prison escape, he's looking to win notice as a director. Here's Tony DeCopel. They could be literally anywhere.

We're leaving no stone unturned. In June 2015, a pair of convicted killers vanished from their cells inside a maximum security prison in upstate New York. And it seemed only a matter of time before their brazen escape and the 23-day manhunt that followed got its Hollywood close-up.

It was a traumatic event for not only the members of this agency, but also the community. But what might surprise you is just who's behind that close-up. Hi. It's been a long time. I was out of the country shooting Zoolander 2 when it happened, so I wasn't as familiar with it. Derek Zoolander, aka Ben Stiller, is one of the funniest actors on the planet. The star of three separate billion-dollar comedy franchises, Night at the Museum, Madagascar, and Meet the Parents.

Oh, we got a bleeder! Not to mention classics like There's Something About Mary, Tropic Thunder. Three-time male model of the year. And, of course, those Zoolander movies about an air-headed male model. Got to tame the beast before you let it out of its cage.

So this is what's confusing. It's sort of like, wow, there's a big prison break. We should make this into a great drama. Let's get the Zoolander guy to take a look at it. Yeah, some people might think that this could actually be funnier than Zoolander 2.

I don't blame them for that because I would probably think that, too, if I didn't know anything about what I was doing and they said, oh, Ben Stiller's going to do this because they don't know what's going on in my head. As it turns out, nothing was more serious than directing a real-life drama. The result is Escape at Dannemora, a seven-part miniseries debuting next Sunday on CBS's Showtime. It stars Benicio del Toro as Richard Matt, serving 25 years to life for the kidnap and murder of his former employer.

Yes, we want to open this. And Paul Dano as David Sweat, also sentenced to life for murdering a sheriff's deputy. How do you even get a hacksaw blade into prison? Well, that's where you sleep with the woman who runs the tailor shop. Key to their escape was help from a prison employee with a romantic appetite. Joyce Mitchell, played by Patricia Arquette.

And I think she's bored and she's looking to feel something. What does Ben do to help you bring out this character? I wasn't sure how he was going to be as a director, but he's really generous with actors and gives you a lot of support and listens to your ideas and really lets you try them out in a really authentic way.

And action. Although Stiller, at 52, has directed in the past, this marks the first time he's taken on the job exclusively. It was a personal revelation, directing and not acting, because, you know, who wants to direct me, right? I don't.

Good. Stiller says it was the nitty-gritty details of the story that hooked him. So much so that while filming on location last February, he made sure we saw the actual manhole cover where the two escapees emerged to freedom. I just kept on coming back to the facts, like what really happened. And if there was something that seemed kind of almost unbelievable, but it was true, that was something I wanted to try to include so that people would have that reaction and go, come on, that can't be true.

Everybody set? Wait. And... But Stiller couldn't get permission to film inside the prison. So he and his team built a full-scale replica of the cell block where Sweat and Matt hatched their plan. First, they pounded through a wall.

I mean, when you look at what they actually did, it's incredible. Then they cut their way into a steel pipe, exactly like this one, and then shimmied 15 feet to cut a second hole to freedom. Did you crawl through the pipes? Yeah, I got in our own pipes.

So you shimmied through? Yeah, I mean, as a director, I felt like I had to. He ought to know.

For our first date, I was planning on taking you someplace fancy. His parents are show business comedy greats Jerry Stiller and the late Anne Meira. But Ben didn't exactly dream of following the family into performing. In my mind, I was always thinking, I want to be a director, I want to be a director. I want to be a director, I want to be a director. So the whole got a Super 8 camera at age 8 or 9, that's true? Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was the only option back then. It was just lots of fake blood.

I remember making my sister throw up yogurt once in the elevator. By the way, you might want to put on a bathing suit because you'll be channel surfing in no time. But after directing the 1996 movie, The Cable Guy, Hollywood executives had a message for Ben Stiller, the director. The message being that, like, the phone not ringing. Message being there is no message, checking your messages and there's no message.

That's your sweet spot right there. Yeah, Cable Guy was not a hit. I actually looked up the review in the Times. Oh yeah, I think, yeah, the first lines are like, the first disaster movie of the summer. It's a comedy starring Jim Carrey.

Yeah, I remember reading that. I don't know if I read the rest of it. I wouldn't have, yeah.

You and me? Two years later, There's Something About Mary was a surprise hit, beginning actor Ben Stiller's career as a master of gross-out humor, humiliation, and pain. Are there gags that you've looked at in the script and been like, I'm sorry, I'm just not doing that?

Um, sure, yeah, those are the ones you didn't see. You know what, I have no gum-gum, sorry, and my name isn't Dum-Dum, my name's Larry. Still, broad comedy has always coexisted with the more serious roles Stiller says he's proud of. But he now admits humor may have to take a back seat.

You're beautiful. I'm not really that interested in doing that kind of stuff, you know, that's just where I'm at in my life now. Are we seeing a kind of semi-retirement from comedy?

Um, it, possibly. Full-on retirement? Um, I am going to announce my, it always goes well for actors when they announce a retirement, doesn't it? And action! Even so, Escape at Dannemora does sound more and more like an escape for Ben Stiller, too. Can we just do that again?

That would be a great escape. You'd be happy with that. Yeah, for sure. I love directing.

I would be very happy to do this, you know, as long as I can do it, for sure. Nice. All right, let's go one more time again while we're still rolling, all right? On this 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, Seth Doan has a story about a veteran of World War II still grappling with the wounds of war. This 94-year-old's journey from Pennsylvania all the way to a tiny grave in Cologne, Germany is deeply personal. I'm sorry, Katrina. I'll never forget you. He never met Katarina Esser, yet always feared her death might be his fault. What were you thinking when you were at her grave?

I asked for forgiveness if it was my shot that harmed her. A shot that still haunts him more than 70 years after he fired it in World War II. At the time, Clarence Smoyer was a gunner with the U.S. Army's 3rd Armored Division. He'd come ashore in Normandy three weeks after D-Day, crisscrossed France, Belgium, and in March of 1945, the fight to capture the key city of Cologne lay ahead. Our lieutenant got on the radio and he said, gentlemen, I give you Cologne.

Let's knock the hell out of it. Incredibly, Army photographer Jim Bates, who was documenting the Allied advance, filmed Clarence Smoyer's Pershing tank in a battle with a German panzer, a fight that's now seared into Smoyer's mind. I saw movement over on my left side, so I fired armor-piercing shells through the corner of the building, thinking maybe I'd get a lucky hit, that I would knock the tank out. This little German car came around the corner and right down the street in front of us, and I think I may have hit the car. I might have been the one that hit the car and wounded Katarina.

Katarina Esser was a grocery store clerk. A young girl was taken out and laid on the street there, still alive, but she was shot in the chest. I saw the medics were there and treated her and left her lying beside the car on the highway there.

She didn't deserve to die that way. All the time I see her lying on the street. We went to that street, now bustling, and to Smoyer, almost unrecognizable. Was it the film that jogged your memory? Yes.

He admits he's a little confused between what he recalls from that day versus what he later saw in that film, stored away for decades at the National Archives. I saw, could see her hair. You remember seeing her hair? Yeah. And I saw her hair. You remember seeing her hair?

Yeah. And I remember seeing her eyes blink. He had heard somebody said, hey, they've uncovered the film of the 3rd Armored Division fighting in Cologne, and I think that's your tank. And he plugged it into his VHS player, and the war came back to him.

Author and historian Adam Makos is writing a book, Spearhead, out in February, which chronicles Clarence Smoyer's battles through Europe. Clarence had seen a lot of death and destruction, but it was this moment in Cologne that stayed with him. I think there was something about Cologne. It's the narrow streets. I mean, it was close urban warfare. They're worried about German guns dug into the basement. You have German soldiers and snipers moving through tunnels, through the walls of the houses.

And then on top of that, you have to worry about a German tank coming around the corner. Inside the German tank, which also fired toward Esser's car, was bow gunner Gustav Schaeffer, whom Smoyer met years after the war and befriended. The former fighters from both sides were united by the fear they'd been the one who'd killed Katarina Esser. While working on the book, author Adam Makos also developed a friendship with Smoyer and tried to help the man he sees as a war hero come to terms with the past. And so the more he watches the film, the more he replays it in his mind, the deeper it sinks. And now it's part of him.

You don't think of World War II veterans as holding on to something like this, but they suffer just like the guys in the modern wars. I'm the grandson of the sister of... Makos set up a dinner in Cologne so Smoyer could meet some of Katarina Esser's extended family, including her niece Lenny, who's 83. They shared stories and toasted to her memory.

How should I say this? History becomes real. Mark Hieronymus has a PhD in history and is a relative of Esser. It was a nice, friendly meeting, but this is a man who's responsible for taking the life of your great aunt. Yes, yes and no. Is there really a responsibility in a war like the Second World War? And there's never been a war like this before, nor again. Is there a responsibility for the death of one person?

I don't think so. More than 70 years later, on what he acknowledged was likely his last trip, he went up to the top of Cologne's cathedral to look out over a now peaceful city that's been rebuilt. Down in the nave of the cathedral, he took another moment to reflect. For Katarina, I ask her, forgive me if it was my shots that harmed her. You probably have to forgive yourself.

Yeah, yeah. I just don't go away. He still has nightmares and admits there are still tears.

This veteran is proud of his service, but says the battle never truly goes away. 1968 was a year filled with twists and turns, including a dramatic turn of fire, 50 years ago this month, with the election of a politician who'd all but written himself off years before Richard Schlesinger looks back. You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore. It was hard to imagine in 1962 that Richard Nixon would be worth kicking around anymore. He'd lost one presidential election and he just lost a second election to be Governor of California.

Thank you, gentlemen, and good day. Even Pat Buchanan, who would become one of Nixon's speech writers, knew rehabilitating him would be tough. He was a loser. He had lost and lost and lost.

The only way you get rid of this loser image is to win. But by 1968, the stage was being set for a law and order candidate like Richard Nixon. The country was pre-revolutionary in 1968.

Historian Evan Thomas is the author of Being Nixon. There were race riots, riots on campuses. The country was divided in a way that had not been since the Civil War, worse than it is today. Nixon's main Republican rivals, George Romney and Nelson Rockefeller, dropped out. Nixon was lucky in that the Republican Party was falling apart around him. Nixon was lucky in that the Republican Party was falling apart around him and Nixon, the old pro, was there to fill the vacuum. So was Nixon lucky or good? All great politicians are lucky and good and Nixon was both. Lucky for Nixon, the Democrats were being divided on the left by the Vietnam War and on the right by George Wallace, who was siphoning off voters attracted by his race-based populism.

These are the kind of folks that people are sick and tired of in this country all over the United States. Nixon was ready to get kicked around again, but he still had a lot of kick left in him. Those who have lost elections in the past have come back to win.

I hope to come back to win. The plan was to run against Lyndon Johnson, the incumbent president. But just two months after Nixon got into the race, I shall not see. Luckily for him, And I will not accept. Everything changed.

The nomination of my party for another term as your president. Patrick Buchanan told Nixon that Johnson had dropped out. Did he seem surprised? Oh, he was stunned.

We were stunned. Nixon accepted the Republican nomination in August of 68, just a few weeks before his biggest break yet. The Democratic Party can't be democratic. I mean, what hope is there for democracy? Democrats had their calamitous convention in Chicago. While the cops were outside clubbing demonstrators on the head, delegates were inside, shooting themselves in the foot. Enforce order in the convention. Nixon loved every minute of the Democratic convention. Don't elect those crazy Democrats. You're going to have riots in the streets.

Elect me and I'll bring some order and quiet. Vice President Hubert Humphrey won the Democratic nomination, but his old friend, then Senator Walter Mondale remembers, it didn't mean much. He finally had his chance and the nomination was worthless. Worthless?

Well, it proved to be worth something, but at that time it looked like it was poisoned. By contrast, Nixon's campaign ran with military-grade discipline. He traveled with an entourage of managers and message men, overseen by John Mitchell. We do operate, I believe, in an orderly fashion, and that comes from preparation. We have planned it and programmed it and have had the time to carry it out.

It was all working. Nixon was up, way up in the polls until September 30th, when Hubert Humphrey turned the tide with this speech. I want to talk with you about Vietnam. Humphrey repudiated Lyndon Johnson's war policy. As president, I would stop the bombing of the North as an acceptable risk for peace.

The announcement would narrow the polls dramatically. Nixon immediately had an unexpected order for his personal aide, Dwight Chapin. Get President Johnson on the phone. Who did he say that to? He said it to me. I had no idea what to do, so I asked Rose Woods, who was Nixon's secretary, she said call 456-1414 and watch the White House number. That's the White House number, and asked to speak to the president. Mr. President? Yes. I'm awfully sorry to bother you. This is Dave Nixon.

Yes, Dave. President Johnson was recording the call as Nixon discussed Humphrey's speech. This will be a trip, as I'm sure you know, as a dramatic move away from the administration.

It's my intention not to move in that direction. Did you have a sense of how strange that call was? I felt that it was one of the most intriguing political maneuvers that I had ever heard.

For Richard Nixon to be calling Lyndon Johnson, and he's telling the president, I'm with you, not exactly the words, but implying it. Mondale thinks it's evidence that Johnson might have been rooting against his own party's nominee, his own vice president. Do you think Johnson wanted Humphrey to win? Maybe.

I'm not sure. I think at the end, the last two weeks, he wanted him to win. But I think the early part of the campaign, he was mad at Humphrey. He thought Humphrey wasn't being loyal enough. Do you think Johnson wanted Nixon to win? I thought so for a while, because he was doing things to help Nixon. But Johnson ended up helping Humphrey come within a hair of winning.

With this speech, five days before the election, I have now ordered that all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam cease. I thought we had lost. Humphrey had momentum.

I thought we could make it. Those must have been very heady days. Yes, finally going to get a Minnesota president. They almost did, but Nixon held on to win by just about 500,000 votes. Richard Nixon had known bitter defeat in elections even closer than this, and he was magnanimous in victory. Nixon had Dwight Chapin set up a meeting with Humphrey just days after the election. And as the meeting ended, Chapin saw a side of Nixon, who few others ever saw.

The men had their arms around one another. Humphrey was sobbing. Nixon was patting him on the back saying, Hubert, you know, everything is going to be okay. You and Muriel are going to have a great life.

Humphrey chokes out, if there's anything that I can ever do, I want to be doing it for you. It was such a poignant moment. On Broadway, a new production that shines a light on the frailty of age. Serena Altschul has saved us a seat. I've had the gallery for years now when nobody comes in there.

So I'll get myself a job in an office and you can take the place in the front. It's a story of family relationships and a grandmother's last years in decline. Writer Kenneth Lonergan's The Waverly Gallery just opened on Broadway. But this is a play whose beginnings trace back to the late 1970s, when the lives of two teenagers and a gallery owner intersected in New York's Greenwich Village. I first came here with Matthew's family, as a matter of fact. His mom and dad.

Matthew is his childhood friend, the celebrated actor Matthew Broderick. I grew up a few blocks right down this street, across the street from the Waverly Gallery. And I would see his grandmother in there before I knew Kenny. At 15, he and Kenny met in school. At auditions for Midsummer Night's Dream.

Almost immediately, they began taking note of who got what role. We both got parts. He got a bigger, much bigger part than me. Yeah, but you got a better part. You think so? I think it's a better part. Yeah.

I mean... I was the wall and you were... Demetrius. Although he had the chops to perform even Shakespeare, Lonergan didn't stick with acting. Yeah, I started writing plays I guess in ninth grade and I was really interested in writing all through high school really. In fact, he went on to write and direct a movie 2000's You Can Count on Me. You don't write me for six months.

I don't know where you are. For a movie, if you're not going to direct it, you might as well say goodbye to the material forever if you're the writer. All the while, he was writing plays, of course, like The Starry Messenger featuring Broderick and Lonergan's wife, J. Smith Cameron. And last year, his Manchester by the Sea You can't just die. I'm not, I'm not.

earned Lonergan an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and a Best Director nod. Margaret, are you grieving? And a constant of his films. Hi, Simmy.

His movie star pal. Great to finally meet you, Patrick. And always a supporting role. Always a little teeny and they get smaller and smaller.

Yeah, they have gotten smaller and smaller. They say I'll just walk by and... Kidding aside, their support for each other is unwavering. So it's no surprise that Broderick was there when Lonergan's once vibrant grandmother began showing signs of dementia. It was very gradual. So, you know, I knew about thinking her dog was still alive. It wasn't, that always broke my heart that she had to be told again that her dog was dead because she'd forgotten once.

I always felt that was a miserable thing. Yeah. So my grandmother's gallery was right here.

The window was right there where she used to sit at her desk. You're still writing for the newspaper? No, I don't write for... What? I don't write for the newspaper. Oh, what do you do? I write speeches for the Environmental Protection Agency. Who reads them?

The Waverly Gallery, first staged in 2000, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama the next year. Oh, Ellen is here. Did you recognize me?

Yep. The mother is played by the Tony Award-winning actress Joan Allen. Lucas Hedges plays a version of a young Lonergan. As for the grandmother, that's the legendary comedy writer and actress Elaine May. She last appeared on Broadway more than 50 years ago with another legend, Mike Nichols. She's incredible in the part. Why was she perfect for it? There's this uncanny resonance that's both Elaine, the character she's playing, and my grandmother. And Broderick says her performance shows an anguish that's usually kept private.

It's rare that somebody has held a glass up to it like that, intensely and that accurately. I've lost my purse! Oh, why is Ellen so angry at me?

Will you tell her you're not mad at her? Where are my keys? Just to find my keys.

I can't find my keys. They don't understand that they don't understand. Yes.

And they don't see themselves as someone who should be put on the shelf. It's said that Kenneth Lonergan's works are timeless and that the Waverly Gallery might just be his best so far. Of course, Matthew Broderick sees them only as a best friend can. I love all of them, to tell you the truth. I really can't pick, and I can't pick from his three wonderful movies. I like all of them.

I like the first movie because I have a larger part in it. I'm Jane Pauley. Thank you for listening, and please join us again next Sunday morning. George is right up there, but New Hampshire is a surprise. In New Hampshire, people really just kind of don't like Maggie Haskins. For more from this week's conversation, follow the Takeout with Major Garrett on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.