Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to this week's edition of the Bob
Speaker 1: Left Sets podcast. My guest is Oscar winning director of
Speaker 1: the movie ch Risk, Ryan Fogel. Ryan, Good to have
Speaker 1: you here, Good to be here now. In this particular case,
Speaker 1: I have a bike riding friend and he's going on
Speaker 1: and on about ch Risk. But he can see Academy
Speaker 1: screeners and he sees everything. But I'm sitting in front
Speaker 1: of Netflix one night and I start to watch and
Speaker 1: I get hooked. This is at the end of the year,
Speaker 1: long before the Oscar run up, and if you haven't
Speaker 1: seen the movie, the movie is really phenomenal. But my
Speaker 1: first question is you won the Oscar four months ago.
Speaker 1: Are you still on a high? March Aapel May. Yeah, got,
Speaker 1: that's as great. What was it mall in March April May? Yeah,
Speaker 1: four months? Um, yeah, I think I think I'm still
Speaker 1: on a high. Overall. Um, it's a it's a surreal
Speaker 1: experience to to go through that, and especially the lead
Speaker 1: up to the Oscars and um, it's exciting and also
Speaker 1: an overwhelming sense of pressure. Um. And so I think
Speaker 1: it took me probably a couple of months just to
Speaker 1: decompress from that and but yeah, it was a spectacular experience.
Speaker 1: It was like being on tour of the rock band.
Speaker 1: I've mentioned a friend of mine used to work with
Speaker 1: you to management and they would go on the road
Speaker 1: for two years and would take her a year to decompress.
Speaker 1: I I I can see that. I mean I was.
Speaker 1: The film came out in August of of last year,
Speaker 1: so almost almost a year ago, and the press started
Speaker 1: in July, and I was essentially on a an eight
Speaker 1: month NonStop press and promotional tour. UM. And so when
Speaker 1: it ended essentially after the Oscars, it was kind of
Speaker 1: like a all right, now what um? And that was?
Speaker 1: That was really a sum ride. And where do you
Speaker 1: keep the oscar? Um? The Oscars? Just sitting in a
Speaker 1: hallway the first the first month, UM, I wouldn't let
Speaker 1: it leave my side. I would I would bring it
Speaker 1: to the kitchen, it would come on the bedside table.
Speaker 1: And then and then when I would leave the house,
Speaker 1: I was so paranoid, UM that I would like put
Speaker 1: it in like a shoe bag in the trunk of
Speaker 1: my car UM, or just carry it kind of like
Speaker 1: inexplicably in a like a shoulder bag. UM. And now
Speaker 1: it seems to kind of have a semi permanent home,
Speaker 1: and I've put in a really great security system with
Speaker 1: all sorts of cameras. Really really, let's say hypothetically it
Speaker 1: did get stolen, can you get a replacement I have?
Speaker 1: I really have no idea because like they number them,
Speaker 1: so I have like Oscar number four thousand, I think
Speaker 1: one thirty six, so I guess that's four thousand, one
Speaker 1: six Oscars in ninety years something like that. And UM,
Speaker 1: you know they they like didn't give Netflix one, so
Speaker 1: it would be Oscar only went to myself and my
Speaker 1: producing UH partner that the Academy recognized, Dan Coogan. So
Speaker 1: I don't really know what what protocol is. UM. I
Speaker 1: do feel like I already need to bring it back
Speaker 1: for a polishing, though it starts to age. So now
Speaker 1: that you've first thing, UH, Kobe Bryant was rejected for
Speaker 1: admission just recently to the Academy. Have you tried to
Speaker 1: get in? UM? While I I haven't heard, I think
Speaker 1: they announced UM and UH, you know each of the
Speaker 1: UH it's all through the various branches that decide. So
Speaker 1: I was automatically eligible and considered because I won the Oscar.
Speaker 1: But apparently it's not it's not given. Um so, UM,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm gonna hear sometime the next couple of
Speaker 1: weeks or something. UM, I hope the branch let me in.
Speaker 1: It's it's by branch. So the so the doc branch,
Speaker 1: these members and I and I've been told there's like
Speaker 1: thirty or forty on the committee basically decide who they
Speaker 1: allow him to the branch. And I think they allow
Speaker 1: him maybe five ten people a year. Um. Well, unlike Kobe,
Speaker 1: you have history in film, so your odds are pretty good,
Speaker 1: but you never really know. So let's go back. You're
Speaker 1: from Denver, grew up in Denver, my family is still there,
Speaker 1: went to school and Boulder. Uh. Let's go back. What
Speaker 1: did your father do for a living? Um? Wow, this
Speaker 1: is great. Nobody has asked me this, uh in an interview.
Speaker 1: My dad uh retired from law about I guess probably
Speaker 1: four years ago. And he was a UH. He started
Speaker 1: as a as a us S or attorneys who was
Speaker 1: one of the uh youngest U S district attorneys ever.
Speaker 1: He got a district attorney right out of law school. Um.
Speaker 1: And this was in Denver. Yeah, and then he was
Speaker 1: a UH. He was a prosecutor Um, he went into
Speaker 1: private practice and most of the at least in the
Speaker 1: first probably two thirds of his career, was mostly criminal law. UM.
Speaker 1: And then on the later part of his practice. My
Speaker 1: dad's seventy five, now, UM, he branched off into all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff. UM. But uh, yeah, great, great guy.
Speaker 1: I got to see him for Father's Day. And why
Speaker 1: did he retire? UM? I think you know, it was
Speaker 1: a combination of I think he called it, you know,
Speaker 1: I think at about seventy And I think also the
Speaker 1: law practice changed a lot. He was never Um, he
Speaker 1: never had a firm. He was in private practice his
Speaker 1: whole life. He always said, I I didn't want the
Speaker 1: stress of a firm, didn't want the stress of employees.
Speaker 1: I mean he I think he found it stressful enough
Speaker 1: having a paralegal and a secretary and finding good people. UM.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, I think the the business
Speaker 1: changed a lot. UM. And also I think he just
Speaker 1: uh was was ready to kind of you know, he's
Speaker 1: involved in all sorts of other things, a lot of
Speaker 1: charity stuff. He just I think he has ah, he
Speaker 1: has a lot of other interests. And your mother, did
Speaker 1: you work outside the home? Um? Growing up? No, I
Speaker 1: have an older sister who lives in Denver, married, and
Speaker 1: I have a younger brother who's an artist. You're the
Speaker 1: middle kid in New York and in the middle. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm a middle kid too. How much older your
Speaker 1: older sister and how much younger is your younger brother.
Speaker 1: My older sister is uh, almost three years older than me,
Speaker 1: and my younger brother is five years younger than me.
Speaker 1: And I and I guess I was kind of the
Speaker 1: the bully among my family, but not not intentionally. I
Speaker 1: was like getting bullied in school, so I'd come home
Speaker 1: and be a terror. But you're using the term bully.
Speaker 1: How did you bully inside the house? I I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure. I mean you would probably have
Speaker 1: to ask my brother. So he said you were the bully. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there was I remember this was probably fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1: Uh so you're you're you're a guy connection. How old
Speaker 1: are you today? Uh? Okay, so when you're like almost thirty,
Speaker 1: what happens? Um my? Um uh yeah, it's actually no,
Speaker 1: it was now. No, it was more like when I
Speaker 1: was like and uh and I remember I'm home visiting
Speaker 1: and my brother, um uh had he was very very
Speaker 1: upset with me and hurt with me. And he had
Speaker 1: never never actually talked to me about this, um and
Speaker 1: he had had like these recollections from from childhood that
Speaker 1: that essentially that you know that I that I you know,
Speaker 1: was bullied him and um and I think he was
Speaker 1: right because I was having a hard time in school.
Speaker 1: I was always kind of the the little guy getting
Speaker 1: picked on. And so then I would come home from
Speaker 1: school after being picked on and and pick on my
Speaker 1: my younger brother. So do you think playing that role
Speaker 1: in school affected your career path of your success? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: I think uh uh. I had a I had a
Speaker 1: really stable childhood. From a family perspective. My parents are
Speaker 1: still married. There was no drama in the home. There
Speaker 1: was there was none of that stuff that you hear,
Speaker 1: you know where you know people grow up and have
Speaker 1: parents that are alcohol or addicts or has divorce and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. So none of that was um was
Speaker 1: was present in my home. Um. But uh uh, for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, I think is as a kid, I grew
Speaker 1: up always feeling like an outsider. I was always I
Speaker 1: was always kind of like the short kid. Uh And
Speaker 1: um and I think as as I became an adult,
Speaker 1: especially because cycling, which was a lifelong thing for me.
Speaker 1: Just UM, it's it's a massochistic sport, like you really
Speaker 1: have to really like to suffer, and the guys who
Speaker 1: can suffer the most basically do the best. On top
Speaker 1: of that and genetic ability, but a lot of it
Speaker 1: just comes down to how much you're willing to suffer.
Speaker 1: And UM, and I basically done that my whole life,
Speaker 1: writing and I think UM in Icarus and other things
Speaker 1: in my life. UM, I don't know when to UM,
Speaker 1: I don't stop. I just I get something in my
Speaker 1: mind and I'll just okay. Well it worked out with Charus.
Speaker 1: Are there are other times when it didn't work out? UM?
Speaker 1: That's an interesting question. UM. Yeah, there was certainly other
Speaker 1: times when when it didn't work out. UM. Before Charus,
Speaker 1: I UM essentially right when I when I turned thirty.
Speaker 1: UM I. Prior to that, UH, for several years, I
Speaker 1: was in stand up comedy. I was um UH, I
Speaker 1: was acting and writing and and UM I basically wrote
Speaker 1: UH and starred in UH this play called Utopia and
Speaker 1: opened it up. I wrote it with a with a
Speaker 1: friend of mine, Sam Wilson. And there's a whole story
Speaker 1: behind that. How how how that came together and we
Speaker 1: opened it up in l A. And it became a
Speaker 1: pretty substantial hit. So how many years ago was that this? Uh?
Speaker 1: It started in two thousand three, and then we played
Speaker 1: about three shows in l A. I brought it to
Speaker 1: New York and then it played in New York for
Speaker 1: three and a half years. Uh, and it was. It
Speaker 1: was a big hit. We had productions of it running
Speaker 1: in other cities. UM and I did a book, created
Speaker 1: a traveling show, UM another show outside of that, UM
Speaker 1: and you know, and and and I added inadvertently basically
Speaker 1: trapped myself into this world. I was now essentially the
Speaker 1: Utopia guy, which I would like him too, being probably
Speaker 1: like David Swimmer on Friends, Jason Alexander on Seinfeld. I mean, nobody,
Speaker 1: nobody saw me outside of essentially basically I was the
Speaker 1: Gutopia guy. And and and I was. I personally performed
Speaker 1: as the star of this product and probably six hundred shows.
Speaker 1: And it was an interesting kind of be careful what
Speaker 1: you wish for, because um, I was a struggling actor, writer, comedian.
Speaker 1: Suddenly I basically wrote a role for myself, created the show,
Speaker 1: produced the show, and it was now a hit. Now
Speaker 1: I was trapped in the show and UM, and during
Speaker 1: this period of time, I realized that I really didn't
Speaker 1: want to act anymore, and what I wanted to do
Speaker 1: was was direct and produced because that that, to me,
Speaker 1: UM was more akin to my personality, which is being
Speaker 1: able to kind of oversee the bigger picture of it
Speaker 1: and what I found. All of a sudden, as I
Speaker 1: started getting success with the play and I went on
Speaker 1: on auditions auditions for a short amount of time, I
Speaker 1: suddenly would kind of go in and being like, wait,
Speaker 1: I'm the I'm the starring creator of this of this
Speaker 1: really really you know, success full show, and now all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I'm coming in and and auditioning for
Speaker 1: Dorito's commercial or auditioning for you know, a couple of
Speaker 1: lines on a TV show, and it and and and
Speaker 1: I and I didn't like it. So I decided that
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to do that anymore. I didn't I
Speaker 1: had no interest in auditioning, and that I would and
Speaker 1: that I really wanted to direct because I was directing
Speaker 1: UM the show, you know, inadvertently as well by producing it,
Speaker 1: and I was, um, you know, in charge of all
Speaker 1: the casting, and so when cast members would leave the
Speaker 1: show and then other cities of the show. So UM,
Speaker 1: sitting on the other table watching actors audition made me
Speaker 1: never want to audition again. And so I decided that
Speaker 1: I wanted to adapt the play into a movie. And
Speaker 1: Sam and I basically adapted it into a screenplay, and UM,
Speaker 1: I wanted to direct it. Held on to direct it,
Speaker 1: and it took me about five years to get UM
Speaker 1: what was a million and a half dollars to to
Speaker 1: make the film and and it was. It was one
Speaker 1: of the worst experiences of my life. I was supposed
Speaker 1: to have a twenty six day shoot that turned into
Speaker 1: a nineteen day shoot. A week into the production, UM,
Speaker 1: so we had boarded the entire production. I had found
Speaker 1: all my locations, and the financier had decided that he
Speaker 1: was going to try to make this film Non Union
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles with a cast that included Jennifer love
Speaker 1: Hewitt and Rita Wilson and Tom Arnold and Peter Stormare
Speaker 1: and Jamie Lynn Siegler and all these other John Lovitt,
Speaker 1: there's all these guys in it, and UM and so
Speaker 1: a week into the production, of course, the the Union
Speaker 1: came knocking saying, Hey, what what are you guys doing.
Speaker 1: And instead of ponying up what would have been a
Speaker 1: couple hundred thousand dollars more, they took a week out
Speaker 1: of my shooting schedule. So all of a sudden, I
Speaker 1: had another basically two weeks to do what was supposed
Speaker 1: to be done in three weeks. UM. And I was
Speaker 1: given eight days to do my director's cut. Uh. And
Speaker 1: under the d g A the Director's guild, Um, you're required.
Speaker 1: The director is required I think a minimum of six
Speaker 1: or eight weeks. And the film was non d g A,
Speaker 1: which was the lesson that I learned not to make
Speaker 1: a non union film over again. And I was given
Speaker 1: eight days and um and then uh, they decided not
Speaker 1: to sell the film, and they decided that they would
Speaker 1: release it straight onto on demand. UM. So they put
Speaker 1: it into theaters on a Sunday at two o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning, at two o'clock in the afternoon, uh, to
Speaker 1: pretend that it was in theaters now. And so of
Speaker 1: course there was no money ever spent to market the film.
Speaker 1: There's no money to promote the film, and the film
Speaker 1: left me in director's jail. I had invested the last
Speaker 1: amount of money that I had into the film, and
Speaker 1: I came out of this experience essentially broke and beaten up,
Speaker 1: a really really depressed and and I went through a
Speaker 1: really really hard time and I didn't know, uh if
Speaker 1: I was going to be able to uh continue to
Speaker 1: find another place within the entertainment industry to continue to create.
Speaker 1: And I started looking at other businesses, and I started
Speaker 1: getting back into cycling, and cycling for me was essentially
Speaker 1: my therapy. And and so I was riding my bike
Speaker 1: a ton, trying to figure out what I was going
Speaker 1: to do with my life and how I was going
Speaker 1: to pay my bills. UM. I was even thinking about
Speaker 1: moving back to Colorado, and Lance confessed and multiple tours
Speaker 1: de France, and it was now basically the beginning of
Speaker 1: and Any confesses. And I'd been really kind of back
Speaker 1: into shape on the bike. And you know, everybody in
Speaker 1: the sport and anybody Rise always a was wondering did
Speaker 1: he dope or not? And be you know, I think
Speaker 1: anybody who's ever been into endurance sports or real a
Speaker 1: real athlete wonders, Hey, what what would these drugs do
Speaker 1: for me? What would these pds do for me? And
Speaker 1: did you believe he was a doper before he confessed,
Speaker 1: I was on the fence, um because he was like
Speaker 1: my hero, like uh As, I think he was way
Speaker 1: beyond cycling. I mean, he was arguably the biggest athlete
Speaker 1: on planet Earth and the most well known athlete on
Speaker 1: planet Earth, much more so than even Lebron James or
Speaker 1: because he was he was so international. Um So there
Speaker 1: was that part of me that always believed, no, he
Speaker 1: couldn't know, he wouldn't. But then as the years went
Speaker 1: by and you and you realize that everybody else you
Speaker 1: know had confessed doping, a big caught for doping. The
Speaker 1: guy got second place, third place, and then you'd read
Speaker 1: all these like journals basically going whatever these numbers and
Speaker 1: his watts per kilo and all this stuff seems unfathomable.
Speaker 1: But um, I wasn't so shocked that he had doped.
Speaker 1: But what really caught me about it was the way
Speaker 1: that they got him, which was they got Lance kind
Speaker 1: of like al Capone on tax evasion. They never caught
Speaker 1: him how the system was supposed to catch him, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, the guy uh had had managed to this
Speaker 1: day to pass every single but there was one where
Speaker 1: he was it was a positive and he explained it away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that but that was back way way into in the
Speaker 1: early part of his career. If I remember, that was
Speaker 1: like and they didn't kind of really have the true evidence. Um,
Speaker 1: but I mean the way that they get him is
Speaker 1: basically by launching a criminal investigation and all of his
Speaker 1: teammates now under essentially you know, a criminal testimony, admit
Speaker 1: to doping in exchange for essentially immunity, and rat Lands out,
Speaker 1: you know, in the process. And I'm going, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: should we be mad at Lands or should we be
Speaker 1: like like looking at this system and going what sort
Speaker 1: of fraud is this? And the only way that you
Speaker 1: can catch an athlete after five tests through launching a
Speaker 1: criminal investigation and getting all of the teammates who did
Speaker 1: the same thing as he did Rata Mountain is in
Speaker 1: exchange for his own uh you know, uh, in exchange
Speaker 1: for their own immunity. And and so I I started going, wait,
Speaker 1: there there is a bigger story here that people are
Speaker 1: not looking at. And that story to me was that
Speaker 1: the global anti doping system nothing to do with cycling
Speaker 1: really just all of sport. Because if you're going the
Speaker 1: most tested athlete on planet Earth has been managed to
Speaker 1: has managed for ten fifteen years to get around the system. Well,
Speaker 1: what about every other athlete on planet Earth and all
Speaker 1: the sports that they're hardly been doing any testing on.
Speaker 1: So so I got this essentially, this idea that I
Speaker 1: wanted to go on like a super size me journey
Speaker 1: proved that the anti doping system was a fraud, And
Speaker 1: inadvertently I was hoping to kind of redeem my hero
Speaker 1: lance and show that this guy was essentially a needle
Speaker 1: uh in the global haystack. Uh. And of course what
Speaker 1: transpired ended up being, you know, a million times crazier
Speaker 1: and bigger than anything I could have imagined as as
Speaker 1: I set out. Um, but but that was what what
Speaker 1: set me on the journey. And and as I started
Speaker 1: on this journey, it took me about a year to
Speaker 1: raise the first bit of money to get going, which
Speaker 1: was how much ran should your father help you out?
Speaker 1: Why do you think he had helped me? He had
Speaker 1: put a little bit of money into the into the movie,
Speaker 1: and that didn't pay back, and and I didn't. My
Speaker 1: father is not a wealthy guy. You know, he's done fine,
Speaker 1: but he's retiring. Um, you know, my my parents are
Speaker 1: just being they're they're fine, they're not. Well, well, let's
Speaker 1: just go back here a little bit. So you go
Speaker 1: to school, you're the young person of the outcast. What
Speaker 1: what age do you start riding bicycles. I started riding
Speaker 1: bikes when I was thirteen years old. Um And what
Speaker 1: kind of it happened is I had I had been
Speaker 1: playing soccer in baseball, and I wasn't really good. Um baseball,
Speaker 1: I was essentially the Jew on the baseball team. And
Speaker 1: growing up in Denver, uh, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: anti Semitism, and um I was essentially the Jew um
Speaker 1: and Uh I was the Jew on the soccer team.
Speaker 1: And M and cycling for me is a really it's
Speaker 1: a very individual sport. There's a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of team elements and ultimately the guys.
Speaker 1: You know, once you get on a team, it is
Speaker 1: a lot of teamwork. But the sport in and of
Speaker 1: itself is not dependent on this kind of you know,
Speaker 1: like a baseball team or soccer team. And and it
Speaker 1: was right about the time that M. Greg Laman won
Speaker 1: the first tour in and Um I had a friend
Speaker 1: of mine in middle school and his brother essentially got
Speaker 1: into cycling. I was in seventh grade and he got
Speaker 1: a bike, and I was like, oh, this looks kind
Speaker 1: of cool, and so, um, I wanted to buy a bike.
Speaker 1: And I detailed cars all summer. I started up a
Speaker 1: little car detailing business where people would bring their car
Speaker 1: over to my parents house in the morning from around
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. Boar and waxed the car charge him. I
Speaker 1: don't remember thirty five bucks. And I saved up six
Speaker 1: hundred dollars to buy my first bike, which was what
Speaker 1: it was, a track. It was a purple truck with
Speaker 1: yellow tape on the handlebars. How many I think at
Speaker 1: the time, it's probably twelve as twelve speed and and
Speaker 1: I got on this bike, and I was I was
Speaker 1: on my way. I mean I I grew up with
Speaker 1: asthma my whole life, and and the doctor always said, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, you shouldn't ride a bike. You can't ride
Speaker 1: a bike. Um, but I got on that bike and
Speaker 1: and um, it was it was just kind of like
Speaker 1: my freedom. And I and I started riding every day
Speaker 1: after school. I would breaking away. Um yeah, it seemed
Speaker 1: breaking away. So you're now writing independently what you're saying,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get myself in shape to enter competitions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. I was ski racing in the winters and
Speaker 1: not well. But but you know, I started ski racing
Speaker 1: when I guess I was probably about twelve, and that
Speaker 1: was where in Colorado at Winter Park, which is um
Speaker 1: a mountain about ninety minutes from Denver. And um. I
Speaker 1: started skiing when I was about three years old and
Speaker 1: decided I wanted to race, and that was also part
Speaker 1: of the cycling, which was all the guys who were skiing.
Speaker 1: It was cycling in the summer. It's like both of
Speaker 1: those sports. If you talked to any real skier, they
Speaker 1: ride their cyclists, and if you talked to any real cyclists,
Speaker 1: their skiers generally. Um and uh. So I had started
Speaker 1: ski racing basically a year before that and decided that
Speaker 1: cycling would be a good way to stand shape and
Speaker 1: um and and it also has got a real kind
Speaker 1: of solo element to it. And yeah, so I started riding. Okay,
Speaker 1: So when you you obviously had a bike before that,
Speaker 1: but now you have a bike that you can actually,
Speaker 1: let's say, compete with. At what point did you enter
Speaker 1: after getting the bike the competitive system pretty much right away,
Speaker 1: like within within within like the next year. So the
Speaker 1: first kind of summer I got into it that I
Speaker 1: got really into it. And there was these races in
Speaker 1: Colorado called the red Zinger Mini Classics, um like red
Speaker 1: Zinger t Special Seasons, which are from Colorado exactly. And
Speaker 1: and they were also at the time sponsoring, um the
Speaker 1: Bigger Bike Race which I can't remember, within these the
Speaker 1: Course Classic Colorado, Yeah, and that Tour Colforado was in
Speaker 1: recent years, but it was it was a course Classic,
Speaker 1: and Michael Eisner was developing, was promoting all those races
Speaker 1: and I've got to know him over the last year.
Speaker 1: Awesome guy. And UM, so the Course Classic was going on,
Speaker 1: and the red Zinger Mini Classic was kind of like
Speaker 1: you know what the kids were doing in and during
Speaker 1: the summer, basically I think it was every other week
Speaker 1: there was another red Zinger Mini class They were two
Speaker 1: day races like on Saturday Sunday, three stages, a time trial,
Speaker 1: a road race, and like a criterion or circuit race.
Speaker 1: And I started doing those when I was I think
Speaker 1: I was thirteen when I did my first one, and
Speaker 1: I and then every year, how well did you do
Speaker 1: in that? So I was I was basically the guy
Speaker 1: who was um better than but never uh never one.
Speaker 1: So asthma was a huge thing for me. And what
Speaker 1: would happen is is I would start the race, I'd
Speaker 1: have to have my asthma attack. I'd have an asthma attack,
Speaker 1: and then I would taken in Hailer and this set
Speaker 1: and the other, and then after the asthma attack, I
Speaker 1: would recover and then I'd spend the entire race catching
Speaker 1: back on. And then we was there like a preventive Wait,
Speaker 1: you can't use well, that was the thing at the time.
Speaker 1: What I was using was this nebulizer solution, which is
Speaker 1: like this machine. I mean you look like you know, uh,
Speaker 1: Frankenstein or something and puffing on this machine and there's
Speaker 1: there's never you know, solution coming out of it. And
Speaker 1: so I would so I'd take this nebulizer solution like
Speaker 1: in the parking lot you had. I'd find someplace to
Speaker 1: like plug it in outside the race. I mean, I
Speaker 1: remember this, and that would dilate my lungs and hopefully
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have the asthma attack. But most of the
Speaker 1: time I would have the asthma attack and then I'd
Speaker 1: spend the whole race catching back on. But if it
Speaker 1: was a mountain stage, it was a climbing stage, because
Speaker 1: I was always kind of like the you know, I've
Speaker 1: got a climber's build. Um eventually knock off every almost
Speaker 1: everybody and finish like fifth or six. But I never one. Um.
Speaker 1: But just so I know, if one isn't asthmatic, is
Speaker 1: that a band drug? Well, and that's a whole other
Speaker 1: thing which is which is interesting. So like this whole
Speaker 1: thing with Chris Froom. If the guys won, I think,
Speaker 1: what has he won? Four Tour de Frances Now, uh,
Speaker 1: you know he's under this whole investigation for using uh
Speaker 1: Salm Salma beauty role, which is the drug which totally
Speaker 1: changed my life. So um, I guess probably about when
Speaker 1: I was twenty years ago or something, a drug by
Speaker 1: the name of advert came on the market which is
Speaker 1: Flew Coast, I mean, and sal Salma beautiful. And this
Speaker 1: drug essentially stops you from having asthma, prevents asthma just
Speaker 1: flat out. So you just take I take a puff
Speaker 1: of this every morning, just one like it's like a discus.
Speaker 1: And in my mind right now I don't have asthma.
Speaker 1: I haven't had an asthma attack in twenty years. But
Speaker 1: if I stopped taking this drug in twenty four hours
Speaker 1: from now, I will be reminded that I have asthma.
Speaker 1: So it's crazy. I mean, this drug completely stops asthma,
Speaker 1: but if you take too much of it or whatever
Speaker 1: what they're saying Froom did. Uh, it's it's a band substance. Um.
Speaker 1: But I had this drug been on the market when
Speaker 1: I was growing up and when I was racing, who knows.
Speaker 1: I mean, my life might have been very different. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're racing an age race all through high school,
Speaker 1: race all through high school, and then, um, my first
Speaker 1: year in college, how did you decide to go to Boulder? Well,
Speaker 1: I went to Boulder. Um, I had gotten into Middlebury.
Speaker 1: Goes you went to Middlebury. So I almost went to Middlebury. Uh, right,
Speaker 1: because I was looking at basically a place that I
Speaker 1: could basically ride my bike and ski and I went
Speaker 1: and like visited, and I was like, Wow, this is
Speaker 1: really cold and and and the mountains are nowhere as
Speaker 1: big and beautiful as Colorado. The cycling doesn't look anywhere
Speaker 1: as good as Boulder. I was like, you know, I
Speaker 1: think I'll I think I'll stay home and I think
Speaker 1: My parents also were kind of going like, wow, Middlebury
Speaker 1: is gonna cost a lot of money, and you got
Speaker 1: Boulder in your backyard. And I loved Boulder, um, and
Speaker 1: it looked like you know, and I had been going
Speaker 1: up there cycling. I wanted to stay you know, close
Speaker 1: to skiing. I loved Vale and all the mountains, and
Speaker 1: so I decided to go to Boulder and and I
Speaker 1: was easing. Uh, and I got sponsored by a team
Speaker 1: in Canada, and um, when I was nineteen at the time, eighteen,
Speaker 1: and I'm in this horrific bike crash and I lose
Speaker 1: uh seven wow yeah, and um and all of these
Speaker 1: are every single one of them are basically um, I
Speaker 1: had to have root canals. So I had to have
Speaker 1: eight eight root canals. Um. You know, they didn't lose.
Speaker 1: The mir shattered and the teeth died, and I basically
Speaker 1: spent like two years with like plastic teeth in my mouth.
Speaker 1: Is they're doing root canals and it's wonders for your
Speaker 1: dating life. Yeah, it was just it was it was
Speaker 1: really bad. And what it and what it did was
Speaker 1: it made me like essentially not want to raise a
Speaker 1: bike anymore, because you have to be fearless. And so
Speaker 1: now I'm basically back on the bike. And and when
Speaker 1: you're racing, you know, you're you're within you know, an
Speaker 1: inch of the other guy's wheel, and I'm going weight.
Speaker 1: I don't want to basically lose all my teeth again.
Speaker 1: So suddenly I'm I'm writing, you know, defensively instead of offensively.
Speaker 1: And and I and I kind of realized that this
Speaker 1: was not essentially the career that I wanted for myself. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just such a brutal sport and very few people
Speaker 1: ever make any a living in it. Unlike the you know, NBA,
Speaker 1: where there's whatever it is, eight players in the NBA
Speaker 1: and the guy who's making the least amount of money
Speaker 1: is still making like seven hundred thousand a million a
Speaker 1: year or something like that. In cycling, basically nobody is
Speaker 1: making any money other than Lance Armstrong, you know, right,
Speaker 1: And uh, and I said, huh, maybe this is not
Speaker 1: the the career path for me. We take a quick
Speaker 1: break and come back with more of my conversation with
Speaker 1: Oscar winning filmmaker Brian Fogel recorded live that the two
Speaker 1: in studios in Venice, California. Most of the time I
Speaker 1: talked to musicians like Shirley Manson of Garbage or industry
Speaker 1: executives like Motown President Ethiopia have to marry him. But
Speaker 1: sometimes we go off the beaten path with our guests
Speaker 1: like Tony Hawk and this week I'm speaking with Brian Fogel,
Speaker 1: the mastermind behind the documentary Icarus. Whether you come for
Speaker 1: the music, the tech business, or otherwise, be the first
Speaker 1: year next week's episode by subscribing to The Mob Left
Speaker 1: That's Podcast. I'm tune in Apple Podcast for your podcast
Speaker 1: player of choice. While you're there, be sure to rate
Speaker 1: and review the podcast. Okay, let's get back to my
Speaker 1: conversation with Brian Foegl. Why don't you stop competing? Do
Speaker 1: you stopped riding your bike? Are you still continuing to
Speaker 1: ride your bike? No, I kept riding and um and
Speaker 1: I took a so I kept riding through through college,
Speaker 1: but it just really became like a hobby. And in
Speaker 1: the back of my mind, I was always going to
Speaker 1: race again, but but I didn't and um, and then
Speaker 1: I moved out to Los Angeles. Before you go, So,
Speaker 1: you're in college, are you studying acting entertainment things? No,
Speaker 1: I was. I was studying sociology and psychology. And the
Speaker 1: reason why is UM basically like the entire football team
Speaker 1: was sociology majors. And I didn't view myself as like
Speaker 1: going into like a graduate program. I didn't see myself
Speaker 1: as being a doctor or a lawyer. I had always
Speaker 1: kind of been entrepreneurial and UM, and I didn't really
Speaker 1: know what I wanted to do, but I knew that
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to be a scientist or or something
Speaker 1: that required like a real graduate degree, so UM, so
Speaker 1: I studied those two things and UM. And after college
Speaker 1: I moved to Aspen. But before you moved to Aspen,
Speaker 1: now you're in college, are you still the runt or
Speaker 1: do you fit and in college? Now I'm starting to
Speaker 1: fit in. And then you moved to ask me to
Speaker 1: be a ski bum Um Yeah. Essentially moved to Aspen
Speaker 1: UM after college with the idea that I would UM
Speaker 1: ski and UM ride my bike and UM and I
Speaker 1: had UH started up a little business with a friend
Speaker 1: of mine where we were essentially UM having computers manufactured
Speaker 1: UM and UH and selling them through through the classified
Speaker 1: ads at the time, where you know, like kind of
Speaker 1: like what Dell was doing, but you know, on a
Speaker 1: micro cause him level where we would advertise essentially, you know,
Speaker 1: build a computer and you know we put ads and
Speaker 1: classified and so I could be anywhere to do that.
Speaker 1: And uh, and I had a company and I was
Speaker 1: like at the time, and I had like a company
Speaker 1: that I was contracting through in Los Angele, US and
Speaker 1: and so I was I was doing that, went to
Speaker 1: Aspen and had come out to l A, Los Angeles
Speaker 1: a few times and loved it. And just like the weather,
Speaker 1: I just um kind of fell in love with the
Speaker 1: city and and decided that I would So how long
Speaker 1: were you ask him? A little bit less than a year. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you come to l A, you like the weather,
Speaker 1: you have the computer business. At what point do you say, hmm,
Speaker 1: I want to go into the entertainment business. So I
Speaker 1: guess I'm probably at the time. And um, this was
Speaker 1: actually nineteen Uh it was and and I'm I'm living
Speaker 1: in Beverly Holes area, uh and and I'm working out
Speaker 1: at this this gym called Crunch on Sunset in West Hollywood.
Speaker 1: And I meet this and I meet this girl. Uh.
Speaker 1: We date for a short amount of time. And my
Speaker 1: whole life, I was always doing um voices accents like
Speaker 1: like when I was a kid, I would leave, um,
Speaker 1: like my parents had a phone, a phone recording device,
Speaker 1: you know, if an answering machine, which nobody uses anymore,
Speaker 1: and I guess I would. I would leave what would
Speaker 1: probably be considered like, you know, unacceptable accents on the machine,
Speaker 1: just pretending to be someone you know, like whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: like hi, you just reached the phogol if I am
Speaker 1: late leaving message, you know that kind of stuff. But um,
Speaker 1: and so I was always doing voices and impressions, and
Speaker 1: this girl was like, you know, you know, have you
Speaker 1: ever thought about doing comedy? You should, you should do comedy.
Speaker 1: You're missing your calling. What what are you doing in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles selling computers? You should be a stand up comedian.
Speaker 1: And I go, huh, maybe I should, And I decided
Speaker 1: to take a stand up comedy class. It was a
Speaker 1: class at the the Prov and the class was like
Speaker 1: a six weeks class or something like that, once a week,
Speaker 1: and at the end of a class, basically you hustle
Speaker 1: all your friends to come to the improv and your
Speaker 1: friends have to buy drinks and everything, but the show
Speaker 1: is free and they get to witness basically the stand
Speaker 1: up comedian class basically performing at like five o'clock on
Speaker 1: a on a on a Tuesday at the improv kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So I do this like six week class.
Speaker 1: I get up there, uh you know, and do my whatever.
Speaker 1: It was five minutes, ten minutes, I don't remember. And
Speaker 1: I thought, Wow, I really like this. I want to
Speaker 1: be a comedian. And how did you go over um
Speaker 1: that evening? I went over really well because it was
Speaker 1: it was a warm room. There were there were a
Speaker 1: lot of friends that I had convinced to come to
Speaker 1: watch me. And I was ah, I was doing like
Speaker 1: like prop comedy where I just like it was really bad.
Speaker 1: It was really bad, and uh, it's like, go, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go do comedy. And so I started doing
Speaker 1: like open mics at the at the comedy Store and
Speaker 1: the laugh Factory, and you know, in that world is
Speaker 1: kind of dark. You're basically like standing in line all
Speaker 1: day to like go on for like a three minute
Speaker 1: spot um, you know, whenever they do their open mic nights. Um.
Speaker 1: And I did that for probably about a year and
Speaker 1: a half two years, and I and it's like, I
Speaker 1: don't think this is for me because the life is
Speaker 1: too hard or success is too hard. Why do you
Speaker 1: decide to say this isn't for you. You know, I
Speaker 1: was doing a lot of like improv classes too, and
Speaker 1: my personal experience was in the clubs. Um, there's just
Speaker 1: all these like comedians like fighting for a couple of
Speaker 1: minutes on stage, and it was kind of like a
Speaker 1: dark underbelly um behind like you know, you get on
Speaker 1: stage and all of a sudden, your whole job is
Speaker 1: to be funny. But like the the guys who were
Speaker 1: trying to get up, and it was just it was
Speaker 1: it's a it's a really strange world. And anybody who's
Speaker 1: who's went through this, and I'm sure any any comedian
Speaker 1: this went through this would would would say this as well.
Speaker 1: Um and uh, I just found it just kind of
Speaker 1: like dark and depressing. And and here I was basically
Speaker 1: like standing on a sidewalk for for eight hours trying
Speaker 1: to get like a three minute spot, you know, to
Speaker 1: go up at the comedy store. And I'm like this
Speaker 1: just this just isn't isn't great. And so I decided
Speaker 1: that I wanted to you know, get into acting and
Speaker 1: take acting classes and so were continuing to support yourself
Speaker 1: building computers. No, so I had um, I got I
Speaker 1: had gotten out of the computer business, and I'd like
Speaker 1: sold my clients to this, to the company that that
Speaker 1: was building the PCs, and uh and I had a
Speaker 1: little bit of money, like like tucked away, and so
Speaker 1: I decided that while I was essentially acting, that I
Speaker 1: was going to be a day trader in stocks. And uh.
Speaker 1: So I was like, you know, twenty four years old,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna beat and the UH and and tech stocks.
Speaker 1: If you remember, at this time, we're going crazy like Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle.
Speaker 1: I mean you couldn't lose. I mean, you know, and
Speaker 1: and and all these stocks were going through the roof.
Speaker 1: But then there were all these like um tech companies.
Speaker 1: I remember it was like I two I t w
Speaker 1: O and j D s U and broad Calm and
Speaker 1: all these and and they were just you know, going
Speaker 1: through the roof. And so I start going into stocks
Speaker 1: just you know, I'm taking acting classes, I'm doing comedy
Speaker 1: and improvlem. So I'm trying to find a way into
Speaker 1: the business. But I'm basically gonna, you know, make pay
Speaker 1: my bills through day trading. And this was working great
Speaker 1: for about about a year. And uh and so I
Speaker 1: had uh and I had never taken a class in
Speaker 1: it or anything, but I mean, you really couldn't lose.
Speaker 1: I'm just And then I realized that there's option trading,
Speaker 1: which is which is essentially the kiss of death, which
Speaker 1: you know, basically you can just buy, uh own the
Speaker 1: stock for a fraction of a stock price, so you
Speaker 1: can buy like a thousand shares when you could have
Speaker 1: only really afforded to buy, you know, fifty shares. But
Speaker 1: when you lose, you basically lose like you like you
Speaker 1: had a thousand shares. You get wiped out really quick,
Speaker 1: but you can make big gains. So I was trading options.
Speaker 1: I mean it was, it was going really really well.
Speaker 1: And then this was and the whole tech market crashed
Speaker 1: and overnight the stocks went from like I don't know,
Speaker 1: two dollars a share to like two dollars to share,
Speaker 1: and I was in options and I got wiped out
Speaker 1: and it was it was and suddenly I was back
Speaker 1: to Okay, Now, how am I actually gonna gonna support
Speaker 1: myself as as a as an actor? Um? So so
Speaker 1: I start up this, uh this showcase company. Um. And
Speaker 1: the concept was I had been trying to break into
Speaker 1: acting and and and in in Los Angeles, and these
Speaker 1: things are still going on. They have all these like
Speaker 1: cold reading workshops and acting workshops and and and there's
Speaker 1: scam operations. You go in, you pay fifty bucks and
Speaker 1: you read for like some like casting director's assistant or
Speaker 1: some manager's assistant or some agents assistant, and the laboratiz
Speaker 1: that like, you know whatever, some legitimate you know, agency manager.
Speaker 1: But it's not even it's like it's a it's a
Speaker 1: total scam. And so um, so I'm doing these cold
Speaker 1: reading workshops and these agent workshops, trying to get an agent,
Speaker 1: trying to get seen, and I'm realizing that this is
Speaker 1: a scam. And I decided that I'm gonna put together
Speaker 1: essentially this this showcase that's not going to be a scam,
Speaker 1: that I'm going to bring in legitimate industry people and
Speaker 1: I'm going to have the work critiqued, because that was
Speaker 1: essentially what I was missing from all these workshops. You
Speaker 1: do these workshops and you'd go, Okay, well what did
Speaker 1: you think of me? And are you actually gonna call
Speaker 1: me in for a meeting or do you want to
Speaker 1: represent me? And and times out of a hundred, you
Speaker 1: would just do this thing and leave with this big
Speaker 1: question mark in your mind, but you'd be fifty bucks,
Speaker 1: you know, poor. So I just scided I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: together this um this actor's showcase, and I rent a theater.
Speaker 1: I started advertising in backstage West and lo and behold,
Speaker 1: there's a real need in the marketplace for this. So
Speaker 1: I start together these showcases where essentially, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: I put up like twelve five minute scenes and I
Speaker 1: would direct all the scenes. I I team be actors together.
Speaker 1: I'd give them material out of plays or something that
Speaker 1: that I had written, basically just to see how it
Speaker 1: would go over. Uh. And I would and I would
Speaker 1: team everybody up and they would go work on on
Speaker 1: their scenes, come back and rehearse. And then I'd put
Speaker 1: together this showcase and I had four wall a theater.
Speaker 1: I'd bring in a light guy, a sound guy, you know,
Speaker 1: put basic furniture on the stage, and bring in all
Speaker 1: these agents and managers and casting directors. But they would
Speaker 1: actually critique the work. So so the actors myself included,
Speaker 1: would come out of this and go, hey, you like me,
Speaker 1: you didn't like me? Actually want to take a meeting
Speaker 1: with me? You you want to you know whatever. And
Speaker 1: so I started doing this and about two years into it,
Speaker 1: UM and I was holding these showcases probably every other month. Uh,
Speaker 1: I was paying my bills, you know, it was it
Speaker 1: was just it was enough to get by. Plus plus
Speaker 1: I was actually getting on stage and working and getting
Speaker 1: my work critiqued. UM and I meet this guy who
Speaker 1: had come in to do the showcase with me, and
Speaker 1: we decided that we're going to write a ten minutes
Speaker 1: scene for for the showcase. And we come up with
Speaker 1: this concept for the scene then, and the scene is
Speaker 1: basically going to be an a Jewish guy and a
Speaker 1: Christian guy and they're at a Jewish singles mixer, and
Speaker 1: we went, well, why are they each there? And we
Speaker 1: decided that essentially, the Christian guy was at the Jewish
Speaker 1: singles mixer because he wanted to meet and marry a
Speaker 1: Jewish girl so they never have to make another decision
Speaker 1: in his life. And and the Jewish guy was at
Speaker 1: the was at the singles mixer because his mother had
Speaker 1: forced him to be there. But what he really wanted
Speaker 1: to do was, you know, run off with an Asian
Speaker 1: and this was the worst thing in the world. And
Speaker 1: that the Christian guy had been basically convinced the Jewish
Speaker 1: guy to teach him how to pretend to be a
Speaker 1: Jew so that he could basically marry a Jewish goal
Speaker 1: so he never had to make another decision. So we
Speaker 1: put up this this ten minute scene at the showcase
Speaker 1: and it went crazy and people were laughing. And I
Speaker 1: had never heard a reaction to this, and anything that
Speaker 1: I had done, from stand up comedy to all the
Speaker 1: acting classes plays nothing, and and Sam and I go, hey,
Speaker 1: we're we maybe we're onto something. And so we performed
Speaker 1: the scene over the like the next four or five
Speaker 1: months and start thinking, hey, do do we turn this
Speaker 1: into like, try to write this as a TV pilot,
Speaker 1: We try to write this as a movie. And theater
Speaker 1: is what made sense to me because I said, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: this is we could do this. We can put put
Speaker 1: on a play. And so we spend the next year
Speaker 1: writing essentially this ten minute scene into a full length play.
Speaker 1: And and when we're done writing this play, I had
Speaker 1: been introduced to Elliott Gould and um and I had
Speaker 1: been introduced to him through Frankie Blonde's producer Yeah, who
Speaker 1: passed away a few years ago. And Frank had had
Speaker 1: run Paramount and he had run MGM. He was kind
Speaker 1: of like a legend and and Frank read the play
Speaker 1: loved it. He said, I think maybe Elliott would like this.
Speaker 1: He gives it to Elliott, and Elliott likes it, and
Speaker 1: I go and meet with Elliot Gould at like five
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning at Nate Nows. And this was
Speaker 1: the craziest thing because Elliott, um, I wonder if if
Speaker 1: his day to this day probably still does this. I mean,
Speaker 1: like he would like to go to Nate now so
Speaker 1: like five in the morning because there was nobody there
Speaker 1: and he wouldn't get hassled, but he wanted to be
Speaker 1: at Nate Now's I remember. We go to meet Elliott
Speaker 1: and it's literally like five in the morning, five thirty
Speaker 1: in the morning. And and the day before he had
Speaker 1: like called us and you know, call her. I d
Speaker 1: on the on the phone, it shows up Elliott Gold.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god, like Gold to calling you
Speaker 1: know what? That's a the phone. He's like Hi. He's
Speaker 1: like Hi, this is Elia Gould And I'm like hey Elliott.
Speaker 1: He's like, you want to have breakfast with me? I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: what time? He's like, how's five in the morning. Get
Speaker 1: they That was I'm like five in the morning. He goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: they opened it five for five thirty. I'm like, and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking to myself, you know, there's really a part
Speaker 1: of me that's gonna go, you know. And I remember
Speaker 1: I go, you know how It's like, how's like maybe
Speaker 1: seven in the morning. He's like, you know, I really
Speaker 1: like to go like five in the morning. I'm like, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: five in the morning. And when this is gonna be nuts.
Speaker 1: So go and sit down with Elia Gould and m
Speaker 1: and he agrees that the whole basically kind of like
Speaker 1: host this reading workshop of this play like Elia could
Speaker 1: presents um. It turns out that he that he that
Speaker 1: what he had really connected to in the play um
Speaker 1: was basically the play has kind of had like all
Speaker 1: this um uh circumcision elements in it, and and Elliott
Speaker 1: was not in favor of circumcision and uh, and he
Speaker 1: just and he really thought that that was that was
Speaker 1: great in the play. And so he hosts this this uh,
Speaker 1: this reading and we bring out like a couple hundred
Speaker 1: people over a couple of nights to try to back
Speaker 1: this play. We need like eighty dollars to do it,
Speaker 1: and a few hundred people show up and we're trying
Speaker 1: to get everybody whatever, donate a couple of hundred bucks,
Speaker 1: five hundred bucks, whatever, and not no one is willing
Speaker 1: to essentially finance this play. And um, uh, so we
Speaker 1: decided to rack up my credit cards and my parents
Speaker 1: loaned me a little bit of money but not much.
Speaker 1: Is just really just going for it, and uh put
Speaker 1: together a whole production and open opened up the play
Speaker 1: in in Los Angeles and it became a hit theater
Speaker 1: at the Coast Playhouse in West Hollywood on sam Oka Boulevard.
Speaker 1: It opened up in um, I think it was May
Speaker 1: third or something, two thousand thirteen, and the l A
Speaker 1: Times gave us like a rave and suddenly, you know,
Speaker 1: you could not get a ticket to this show for
Speaker 1: for six months. I mean they were just lined up.
Speaker 1: How many performances a week? We were doing five shows
Speaker 1: a week and the theater was ninety nine set. But
Speaker 1: what we had done is we had turned it into
Speaker 1: like a hundred and twenties theater. We had stacked in
Speaker 1: all these chairs into there, totally against fire code, but
Speaker 1: you know, we we were selling the seats and uh
Speaker 1: and within about a month and a half, two months,
Speaker 1: I had recouped the play, and suddenly I was making
Speaker 1: a living essentially as an actor uh in in my
Speaker 1: own play that was producing and um and that went
Speaker 1: on for the next five years before the uh the movie.
Speaker 1: Did you have any money in the bank? Was this
Speaker 1: lucrative in any way? UM, I'd done, I've done okay,
Speaker 1: Like when the show was in New York, I was
Speaker 1: doing pretty well, but New York is very expensive. UM.
Speaker 1: And then I had UM had like this traveling production
Speaker 1: of it were um. Originally it was Sam and I
Speaker 1: the guy that I wrote the show with, and then
Speaker 1: it was just me doing another thing. And that had
Speaker 1: sustained me for a while. That and speaking engagement. So
Speaker 1: I'd get all these um, basically speaking engagements. I'd get
Speaker 1: called into this fundraiser, that fundraiser and Jewish fundraisers. I assume,
Speaker 1: yeah mostly, And how did you get those gigs through
Speaker 1: through an agency, through an agent? And what would they
Speaker 1: be worth? Back then they're pretty good, like okay, and
Speaker 1: then what would you rap be what? What? What would
Speaker 1: they get for their money? UM? You know they'd get me.
Speaker 1: I mean, what would you do? You had this note?
Speaker 1: So I would outside go in and basically UM I had,
Speaker 1: you know, they usually wanted me to do like forty
Speaker 1: five minutes or an hour, and so I I'd go
Speaker 1: in and basically and UM I crafted like a power
Speaker 1: point multimedia kind of comedy UM where I'd include kind
Speaker 1: of bits of material UM from the play UM, but
Speaker 1: I would tell stories and and just you know, crazy
Speaker 1: stories about like my parents, UH took a trip years
Speaker 1: ago to China and UH they went. It was through
Speaker 1: their synagogue and they and the trip was going to
Speaker 1: be a Kosher trip through China, even though even though um,
Speaker 1: even though my parents UH are not super religious, but
Speaker 1: the synagogue was a Kosher trip to China. And my
Speaker 1: parents were telling the story about basically how the rabbi
Speaker 1: had like a torah on like a total long that
Speaker 1: he's totaling through the streets of China because anytime they
Speaker 1: would like encounter like on kosher food, I guess the
Speaker 1: Rabbi would like open up the Torah, read some sort
Speaker 1: of read some sort of prayer, and then and then
Speaker 1: any dish that you know, silverware, flatwear plates, anything that
Speaker 1: they encountered that was like on kosher, the Rabbi could
Speaker 1: immediately like turn it into kosher, you know, by pulling
Speaker 1: my whipping out the torah, and uh so I I
Speaker 1: had photos like this was like, you know, part of
Speaker 1: the what I would do is speaking. I had photos
Speaker 1: of like my parents like basically this roaming pack of
Speaker 1: old Jews through China. And I mean the photos are
Speaker 1: ridiculous because what their entire trip was was basically searching
Speaker 1: for Chinese Jews. When my parents, wherever you go, you
Speaker 1: gotta go the synagogue, right so wherever, and that's my thing.
Speaker 1: But my parents, wherever they go, they basically have to
Speaker 1: find the Jew anywhere anywhere in the world. They basically play,
Speaker 1: you know, find the Jew and and so so here
Speaker 1: they are in China, basically just roaming through China and
Speaker 1: and like one of the things they did they went
Speaker 1: to this this this this town I'm trying to remember
Speaker 1: the name of it, uh Nanking or something like this.
Speaker 1: It's basically a town in China where apparently Jews lived
Speaker 1: and Jews had settled this town and the town essentially prospered.
Speaker 1: And then you know, and there's a Jewish cemetery in China.
Speaker 1: And this was worth and my parents estimation, like a
Speaker 1: twelve hour train trip to China in the middle of
Speaker 1: a winter to go find like a Jewish cemetery in China.
Speaker 1: But to me, this was just comedy. I mean, this
Speaker 1: was just pure insanity. And so, you know, so I
Speaker 1: would go into these, like, you know whatever speaking engagement
Speaker 1: that these fundraisers tell, These tell these funny stories, um,
Speaker 1: you know, my upbringing and growing up and uh, and
Speaker 1: that was essentially sustaining a living for me. You're listening
Speaker 1: to my conversation with Oscar winning documentary and Brian Fogel,
Speaker 1: recorded live at the tune In Studios in Venice, California.
Speaker 1: I hope you're enjoying this episode of the Bob left
Speaker 1: Sex Podcast. If you want to see videos, photos, and
Speaker 1: sound bites from Brian and the rest of my guests
Speaker 1: is they joined me in the studio, visit at tune
Speaker 1: In on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Now more of my
Speaker 1: conversation with Brian Fogel. I'm the Bob left Sets Podcast.
Speaker 1: How many of those gigs, uh speaking engagements do you
Speaker 1: think you did? M hmm? Probably over maybe four years,
Speaker 1: five years. I probably did maybe on ard of them. Okay,
Speaker 1: very good, you know, high number. So then it stopped
Speaker 1: because you no longer want to do it or it
Speaker 1: plays itself out. I can't played itself out, and I
Speaker 1: didn't want to do it. Um. It was really UM.
Speaker 1: I was very focused on getting the film made. And
Speaker 1: so one can still see the film, right, Yeah, are
Speaker 1: you happy with the film? Mixed? Uh? Not? You know
Speaker 1: that I wasn't able to to do what I wanted
Speaker 1: to do creatively. UM. I had come into the production
Speaker 1: with like a hundred and fifteen hundred sixteen page shooting
Speaker 1: script and then I was forced to cut out of
Speaker 1: it a week into the shoot. So we literally shot
Speaker 1: like an eighty five page script. Um. And there is
Speaker 1: nothing in the film that we didn't shoot. There's nothing
Speaker 1: on the cutting room floor, literally nothing. They're not even
Speaker 1: a single scene nothing um and UM. So you know
Speaker 1: it's I think for what it was, there's it's fun,
Speaker 1: there's good laughs, but it's not. Um, it's not the
Speaker 1: film that I wanted to make, not not by long. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that film goes to v O D when um,
Speaker 1: two thousand and I think it was October something like that,
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve. And so at what point do you
Speaker 1: start riding your bike again? I was really starting to ride.
Speaker 1: I mean before it went to v O D. The
Speaker 1: film had already been finished, So it had been had
Speaker 1: been finished for I don't know ten months, eleven months,
Speaker 1: and they were trying to figure out what they were
Speaker 1: going to do with it, um and um. So I
Speaker 1: was already going, um, this was not leading to other work,
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't It wasn't leading to really any
Speaker 1: opportunity these despite the film having a pretty big cast
Speaker 1: in it, And so I was trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what I was going to do. And and so that
Speaker 1: was you know, two thousand twelve, really all of two
Speaker 1: thousand really all of two thousand thirteen and two thousand
Speaker 1: thirteen is when I probably really started spending a lot
Speaker 1: of time on the bike. Again basically you're lost mentally,
Speaker 1: you don't know where you're going, and you're obviously a
Speaker 1: fan of the scene. The bike scene does a light
Speaker 1: you have a lightbulb moment, Yeah, I mean the the
Speaker 1: I think it was a combination. I was I was
Speaker 1: looking at other businesses, but I didn't want to be
Speaker 1: in another business. I mean, my my my life since
Speaker 1: as you know, I'm twenty four years old, twenty three
Speaker 1: years old, has been in entertainment and I don't. I
Speaker 1: didn't know anything else other than how to basically create
Speaker 1: and make things. And so I really, um, I didn't
Speaker 1: want to go into anything else. I wanted to to
Speaker 1: continue making film. I wanted to continue um in in
Speaker 1: in that world. Um and uh so you know I
Speaker 1: grasped onto this, this idea um of kind of a
Speaker 1: supersize me movie. Did it come to you just that quickly,
Speaker 1: like you're on your bike one day and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you go, fuck, it's supersized me on a bike? Um?
Speaker 1: It was? It was. It was a process. I was.
Speaker 1: I was riding bikes a lot with a with a
Speaker 1: guy by the name of Tim Comerford. You might know
Speaker 1: who he is, Timmy c. He's the bass player for
Speaker 1: Rage Against the Machine. It was a bass player, an
Speaker 1: audio slave. Now he's in Profits of Rage. He's had
Speaker 1: an amazing career. And uh, Timmy and I were out
Speaker 1: riding a ton and and we were always, you know,
Speaker 1: I was we were always talking about Lance and he
Speaker 1: knows Lance and and the whole thing that you know,
Speaker 1: Lance had confessed and just philosophically about it. And you know,
Speaker 1: through our conversations, I was, you know, trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what what I wanted to do, and I grasped
Speaker 1: onto this idea of basically showing that the anti doping
Speaker 1: system is a fraud. And I remember one day we're
Speaker 1: out on the bike and I'm thinking like, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna like go hire somebody like an athlete to go
Speaker 1: do this. And Timmy's like, dude, just dope yourself, Man,
Speaker 1: you got dope yourself. I'm like, yeah, you're right. He said, yeah, Man,
Speaker 1: just dope yourself. You do the drugs, you do it,
Speaker 1: you do it. I'm like, yeah, Timmy, you're right. You're right,
Speaker 1: that's what I should do. And UH, and so you know,
Speaker 1: the idea essentially was was was born that I was
Speaker 1: gonna basically ride my bike, take a lot of drugs
Speaker 1: and prove that the system was a fraud. Now when
Speaker 1: was that epiphany? Now was UM probably middle of two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen. And then it took me another year to
Speaker 1: get the first UM three or fifty thousand to start
Speaker 1: shooting and UM and then that year I had developed
Speaker 1: essentially like a treatment and like a proof of concept,
Speaker 1: and UH went in and started essentially talking to producers
Speaker 1: about you know, like this is the idea and um,
Speaker 1: you know, and everybody kind of loved the idea. Essentially
Speaker 1: it supersized me in the world of sports, um with
Speaker 1: you know, not only for those people who don't know.
Speaker 1: Supersize me is the famous movie where he eats Morgan Spurlock,
Speaker 1: who's now gotten caught up in the me too movement himself.
Speaker 1: He eats McDonald's for a month and he's assessed by
Speaker 1: a doctor and sees the biological effects exactly and essentially
Speaker 1: and supersize me. Basically it's McDonald's for a month, which
Speaker 1: you can imagine that is not healthy for you. But
Speaker 1: you know, he basically just turns into almost like a
Speaker 1: dying man on on camera. Is all that he's eating
Speaker 1: is basically supersize me meals from McDonald's. And the takeaway is,
Speaker 1: you know, just the destroyer of how bad fast food
Speaker 1: is for you and uh and you know, in in
Speaker 1: my version of it, it was really going to be, um,
Speaker 1: A what do these drugs do? B Are they good
Speaker 1: for you? Are they bad for you? But the bigger
Speaker 1: takeaway was a do they make you? Know? Do they
Speaker 1: make you champion? Can you win if you were cheating?
Speaker 1: Which was always kind of an idea in the back
Speaker 1: of my mind, which is all the years I was
Speaker 1: racing and all the years that I was writing Bike,
Speaker 1: I was always wondering had I done this, would have
Speaker 1: I been great? Could have I won? And on the
Speaker 1: and the bigger part of it, which I thought was
Speaker 1: going to be the more compelling narrative, was to show
Speaker 1: that the global anti doping system essentially was a fraud,
Speaker 1: didn't work and that lover hate Lance Armstrong, the guy
Speaker 1: was a needle in the overall haystack of of cheating
Speaker 1: and corruption and sport. And that was what I hope
Speaker 1: to to show. And that and that concept UM was
Speaker 1: essentially what what got kind of this initial investment and
Speaker 1: from where I don't want to say name, but what
Speaker 1: kind of an individual was a company? It was a
Speaker 1: friend and um could that friend afford to lose? Three yes?
Speaker 1: And um and uh it was it was really what
Speaker 1: had happened is I had UM as. I had teamed
Speaker 1: up UM with another producer who I don't want to
Speaker 1: mention on the film and UH and he was going
Speaker 1: to come in and produce and uh. And very early
Speaker 1: on before we actually picked up cameras um UH, we
Speaker 1: got into creative differences he was looking at Icarus in
Speaker 1: the film, and I had named a Icarus from day
Speaker 1: one before I ever picked up a camera. And you're thinking,
Speaker 1: was my thinking was, is that this the story of Icarus.
Speaker 1: A myth of Icarus is basically a Chris is the
Speaker 1: on of of Datalus, and he wants to basically fly,
Speaker 1: and his father says, great, you can fly, and he
Speaker 1: builds the wax wings and he says, hey, you can,
Speaker 1: you can. You can fly. Just don't get too close
Speaker 1: to the sun or your wings are gonna burn and
Speaker 1: you're gonna plummet to your death. And to me, that
Speaker 1: was the story of Lance Armstrong. It was the story
Speaker 1: of of any athlete that had essentially been caught cheating,
Speaker 1: which is them hadn't been actually caught for for taking drugs,
Speaker 1: even though they were they were taking drugs. They had
Speaker 1: been caught because they they of their own egos. They
Speaker 1: had been caught because somebody else had rated him out.
Speaker 1: They had been caught, you know, for for other various reasons.
Speaker 1: But it also was the metaphor for me of of
Speaker 1: anything in life, which is the idea that that you
Speaker 1: can anything that you pushed too far. Um has an
Speaker 1: adversary effect. Hopefully that will be the effect for the
Speaker 1: current US had been rustration. But um, but that is
Speaker 1: essentially the myth of Icarus that you can you can
Speaker 1: fly as long as you're not an asshole. And just
Speaker 1: going back to this point, because all during the victories
Speaker 1: of Lands, Greg Laman is saying it's impossible because it's
Speaker 1: about oxygen processing and he has that process and Lamps doesn't,
Speaker 1: and he, you know, he got in trouble with his
Speaker 1: bike manufacturer, et cetera. What was your view point on
Speaker 1: Laman who turned out to be right? Of course, my
Speaker 1: you know, here's the thing that you know, Laman won
Speaker 1: three tours. He he could have won five tours, but
Speaker 1: he got shot by his I think brother in law
Speaker 1: hunting and then he basically e p O rethropoe eaton,
Speaker 1: which is increases red blood cell mass became started being
Speaker 1: used by essentially the peloton al all the guys who
Speaker 1: are writing, and Gallinda rain Spaniard Uh comes into cycling
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden he is he is a mutant,
Speaker 1: and Lamand is suddenly slow. He goes from being the
Speaker 1: greatest writer in the world to just being a guy
Speaker 1: in the pack and Lamand realizes that essentially that all
Speaker 1: these guys essentially are taking e p O drugs, and
Speaker 1: instead of himself choosing to use e p O, he
Speaker 1: essentially decides to retire from the sport and then you know,
Speaker 1: has a bitter bitter taste in his mouth. Um. I
Speaker 1: don't know the whole relationship obviously between Lance and Lamand.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, I mean, the guy did
Speaker 1: win three tours, he could have won five. Um, he
Speaker 1: had a decision to make that. You know, hey, either
Speaker 1: either you know, either either go with the flow or
Speaker 1: you know or don't. He decided not to go with
Speaker 1: the flow, which was everybody starts taking the history. But
Speaker 1: as you're getting into the process, is he a hero
Speaker 1: or zero? When a book? Well, as a kid, he
Speaker 1: was my hero. Um, I don't. I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: know him personally, so I don't. I don't know how
Speaker 1: to comment on it. Um. I've gotten to know Lance
Speaker 1: pretty well. Now, Um, what's your at this late date,
Speaker 1: what's you're feeling? Once? Um, I was riding bikes with
Speaker 1: him all last weekend and nasmen and Um, you know,
Speaker 1: he's he's complicated. But I love him or hate him?
Speaker 1: I mean the guy won seven Tour de Frances. He did,
Speaker 1: he won them? And uh. And when you talk to
Speaker 1: all of and this was interesting. When I was making
Speaker 1: the original movie, I was talking to many of the
Speaker 1: guys that they're raced against him, and every single one
Speaker 1: of them, and I spoke to I said, did Lance
Speaker 1: win seven tours? And I said, and they would? Every
Speaker 1: single one of them said yes. I said did he
Speaker 1: win the fairly? And they said yes. I said, could
Speaker 1: have you beaten Lance? And they said no. So when
Speaker 1: his entire peer group of everybody who raced against him
Speaker 1: during those seven Tour de France victories believes that he
Speaker 1: essentially won those tours, you got a question, this idea
Speaker 1: of wiping somebody else as somebody out of the history books,
Speaker 1: because when you do that with Lance, well why don't
Speaker 1: you go back to and wipe out Miguel into Rains victories?
Speaker 1: Why don't you wipe out every single tour victory from
Speaker 1: arguably who knows? When you know? Uh? And so you
Speaker 1: know it was a it was a selective persecution. Yes,
Speaker 1: the guy had lied, Yes the guy had covered up
Speaker 1: the line million times, but it's not like the tours
Speaker 1: before him were one cleanly. And it's not like the
Speaker 1: tours after him were one cleanly. So especially essentially he
Speaker 1: got you know, those seven tours stripped from him, um
Speaker 1: for for for complicated reasons. Uh. More of I think
Speaker 1: kind of a uh a moral efficacy to show that
Speaker 1: this behavior isn't going to be tolerated, You're not going
Speaker 1: to be able to lie and get away with it,
Speaker 1: rather than kind of a scientific reality of whether or
Speaker 1: not whether you know everybody else was doing it. Um. So,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a very complicated um situation. But I
Speaker 1: do have, you know, a lot of respect for him
Speaker 1: in the sense of the guy was single minded in
Speaker 1: his pursuit of a victory and love them or hate him,
Speaker 1: you know, I think the majority of athletes to get
Speaker 1: to that level, um have to be completely single minded
Speaker 1: in their focus, and he's certainly and he certainly was
Speaker 1: when it all costs and um and that's and that's
Speaker 1: what he did. And Okay, So getting back to your narrative,
Speaker 1: you have this person who's gonna produce the move and
Speaker 1: you have creative differences. Yeah, and so what happens after
Speaker 1: that you part ways? So um So I realized that
Speaker 1: that I'm basically going into what I assessed was another
Speaker 1: Utopia movie situation where I wasn't going to be able
Speaker 1: to uh, to do what I wanted to do. Was
Speaker 1: that guy attached to the money, Well, what had happens.
Speaker 1: He wasn't giving the money, but my investor was attached
Speaker 1: to him being attached. And that was my investor's confidence
Speaker 1: to put in the money because because this guy was
Speaker 1: was involved, and and this guy was seeing the film
Speaker 1: as basically like how you shoot a feature, how many
Speaker 1: shoot days you're gonna do, Who's going to be your crew,
Speaker 1: your insurance or this year that? And I'm thinking to myself, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is this is me with a cameraman and another guy,
Speaker 1: and we're just gonna shoot, and we're gonna shoot, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna shoot, and we're gonna shoot and we're gonna shoot.
Speaker 1: And I have no idea where this going. But I
Speaker 1: don't need a crew on sliders and and drones and
Speaker 1: and you know, and twenty people on a set. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna go shoot every day. And and so I
Speaker 1: realized that this was not how I wanted to make it,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't anywhere what I envisioned in the film.
Speaker 1: And I realized this because I's in a conversation with
Speaker 1: a guy and it goes, so, wait, so you're gonna
Speaker 1: take drugs and you're gonna get super big, and I'll
Speaker 1: buffed out. I'm like, no, no, no, I'm I'm like
Speaker 1: a cyclist. Man, I'm going to turn into a toothpick
Speaker 1: and I'm just gonna go up the mountains faster. And
Speaker 1: so he had like a whole different idea of what
Speaker 1: of what this was gonna be like he he imagined
Speaker 1: me turning into the Hulk, and I basically imagine myself
Speaker 1: turning into a toothpick and flying up the mountains, you know.
Speaker 1: So uh, there were all these things and and um,
Speaker 1: and I realized, and I'm like this, I don't want
Speaker 1: to make the movie under this. Um, under this notion.
Speaker 1: Shall I go back to my friend? And I said, look, um,
Speaker 1: I want to take I want to take your money,
Speaker 1: and I really want to do this, but I can't
Speaker 1: work under under this. I went through I went through
Speaker 1: really bad situations and I just need to be free
Speaker 1: to create. I need to be able to to just
Speaker 1: go do this, to go make this film. And uh,
Speaker 1: and he basically said, go for it. I trust you,
Speaker 1: I believe in you, go go do this. And so
Speaker 1: I set out essentially on on my own with with
Speaker 1: a cameraman UM and then I would hire other people
Speaker 1: for the first year of the production. And at the
Speaker 1: end of the first year, after I had shot a year,
Speaker 1: I put together this h It was like a twenty
Speaker 1: five minute piece with at the time a guy who
Speaker 1: was editing on the film, T J. ROADI and uh
Speaker 1: Uh we put together this twenty five minute piece. And
Speaker 1: and I had brought in an amazing writer to help
Speaker 1: me by the name of Mark Monroe uh and kind
Speaker 1: of a consulting editor Doug Blush. And these two guys
Speaker 1: UM New Dan Cogan, who's Impact Partners and Impact Finances
Speaker 1: doc they're one of the very few companies that actually
Speaker 1: financed documentary truly Finances. UM and Mark Doug see this
Speaker 1: twenty five minute piece that I did, they said, I,
Speaker 1: I think this is great. Let us get this to Dan.
Speaker 1: They get it to Dan, and the next day I
Speaker 1: literally get a call. Dan calls me goes, this is
Speaker 1: this is amazing. What do you need? How do we
Speaker 1: help you? We want to be a part of this,
Speaker 1: And that basically started the next three years of this
Speaker 1: film's journey, and you're living off the money that's part
Speaker 1: of the budget. Yes, during the time that I was
Speaker 1: making the film. Okay, so you decide to dope, when
Speaker 1: how do you actually get the dope? And how long
Speaker 1: do you take it? How do you feel when you're
Speaker 1: taking it? Um, So I decided to tell me again,
Speaker 1: how do I get the drugs? So I get the drugs.
Speaker 1: This this is an interesting thing. So what we consider
Speaker 1: basically as doping is the same thing that's basically being
Speaker 1: sold as anti aging. So in the sport world, this
Speaker 1: is doping. In the in the medical science world, this
Speaker 1: is this is the fountain of you. But there's that
Speaker 1: guy who's like sixty five years old and every magazine
Speaker 1: who's buff who saw cybergenic? Right, Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: basically the same thing. I mean, what they're doing is
Speaker 1: they're selling testosterone, h G H, thyroid d H E,
Speaker 1: A vitamin injections I V you know, vitamins and you know,
Speaker 1: and so so what I realized was almost all of
Speaker 1: this stuff you could get with the prescription if I
Speaker 1: found basically an anti aging doctor. So, um, I find
Speaker 1: this guy in in Veil, Colorado, Scott Brandt's he's in
Speaker 1: the film a little bit, and I tell Scott what
Speaker 1: I want to do, and he's like, sure, great, I'll
Speaker 1: prescribe you. He's not worried about any ethical issues. Well no,
Speaker 1: because I mean he's prescribing me legal you know. Basically, Now,
Speaker 1: I'm a guy who has low testosterone human growth hormone
Speaker 1: deficiency will. I mean, all guys essentially after they're like
Speaker 1: twenty five, have low testosterone. We all have human growth
Speaker 1: hone deficiency because our bodies basically stopped making growth hormone
Speaker 1: after we stop growing. So every human on planet Earth
Speaker 1: once you're about eighteen or nineteen has a growth hormone deficiency.
Speaker 1: So that's what they prescribe under you know, low testosterone
Speaker 1: growth deficiency. Um. Basically, all of our thyroids generally start
Speaker 1: slowing down as our as our ability to process fats,
Speaker 1: which is why as you get older it's harder to
Speaker 1: lose weight. So you have a you know, whatever, a
Speaker 1: slow thyroid or whatever is. You can take thyroid. You
Speaker 1: can take all these things under you know, essentially just
Speaker 1: under the auspices of aging. So he prescribes me all
Speaker 1: this stuff. Um. But the one thing that that is
Speaker 1: that is harder to get is is e p o
Speaker 1: orthropoeten And uh uh, I don't want to say how
Speaker 1: I got that, but I got it. And so just
Speaker 1: in theory, how does someone someone has to get it
Speaker 1: on the black market or it's available and you have
Speaker 1: to get the right kind of prescription. Either either you
Speaker 1: can you can get on the black market. You can
Speaker 1: get it out of China and Taiwan in all these
Speaker 1: places if you know where, if you know where to go,
Speaker 1: and basically what what you know you can do is
Speaker 1: you you order a couple of them and hope that
Speaker 1: one of them makes to you, make it to you. Okay,
Speaker 1: so do you start to say, well, you know I
Speaker 1: got him, it's Wednesday, and start taking all of it,
Speaker 1: or did you start with one and add another one?
Speaker 1: Well I had uh that was the whole thing, so
Speaker 1: you know, um uh Gregory Rachenkov, Um, you know I
Speaker 1: had met him. Okay, let me go back to the movie. Okay,
Speaker 1: you get the doctor in Veil and then you go
Speaker 1: to the doctor U. C. L A who says he's
Speaker 1: in and then he's out. Yeah, I mean then the
Speaker 1: Don Catlin was essentially out before I ever rolled a camera. Uh.
Speaker 1: He had referred me to Gregory, and I had started
Speaker 1: talking to Gregory essentially in February, which was right during
Speaker 1: the Socy Olympics. Lo and Behold. Uh. So Don Catlin
Speaker 1: had decided not to be in the film before I
Speaker 1: ever started shooting. Um, and he had referred me to
Speaker 1: Gregory before I ever had, before I had ever started. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you did not even though you had the prescription,
Speaker 1: you didn't take anything until you spoke with Gregory. That's right,
Speaker 1: I had. I had come up with the plan, and
Speaker 1: the plan was we were starting. I started shooting about April.
Speaker 1: The first race in Europe, this Hote route, which I did,
Speaker 1: was in August. So the plan was I was going
Speaker 1: to train clean, which I documented and shot hundreds of
Speaker 1: hours of footage. It's all basically sitting on hard drives
Speaker 1: because none of it really made it made its way
Speaker 1: into the movie. Very a very little bit of it
Speaker 1: made its way into the film. I was going to
Speaker 1: train clean and then Gregor and I had a plan
Speaker 1: that basically starting in mid December January, the beginning of
Speaker 1: is when I would go on my doping program, and
Speaker 1: that would give me enough time to basically build the protocol,
Speaker 1: figure out my wash out period, which is you know,
Speaker 1: when you'll test clean, when you'll test positive. They're testing. Well,
Speaker 1: that was so that the race basically says they're going
Speaker 1: to test, and to my knowledge, they never tested. And
Speaker 1: so as I as I saw that after the first year,
Speaker 1: I realized that in order to have any sort of
Speaker 1: um legitimacy to this, that I have to basically create
Speaker 1: and document my own process. And so in this and
Speaker 1: as I started doping, I got really religious about it.
Speaker 1: Um you know, like showing on camera, here's here's the newspaper,
Speaker 1: here's today's day, and my entire freezer was basically filled
Speaker 1: with like frozen uh, piss samples, frozen urine samples. Okay,
Speaker 1: but going back, so in terms of it, I'm just
Speaker 1: worrying what physical effect did you feel when you started
Speaker 1: to take this drug? These drugs, it's incredibly subtle. So
Speaker 1: you know, there's this idea of oh my god, you're
Speaker 1: gonna turn into Superman. That's not it at all. Nothing
Speaker 1: takes the place of training, nothing takes the place of
Speaker 1: a hard work. What what these drugs do, or hormones
Speaker 1: do is essentially help your body recover so that you
Speaker 1: can train just as hard the next day and over
Speaker 1: day after day, week after week, month after month. Because
Speaker 1: your body is recovering and you're able to do that
Speaker 1: same effort day in and day out, you become you know,
Speaker 1: fitter and stronger and faster. Uh So that is the
Speaker 1: the overall result. But none of that takes the place
Speaker 1: of the training and all they so, and I didn't
Speaker 1: feel It's not like I started taking all this stuff
Speaker 1: and it suddenly felt like Superman. It was more like
Speaker 1: I was taking all this stuff and and you know,
Speaker 1: on a day and day out basis, I was recovering.
Speaker 1: Um and uh like the growth hormone. Whenever I would um,
Speaker 1: whenever I would take growth hormone, UM, my girlfriend at
Speaker 1: the time should go did you take h g H today?
Speaker 1: And I'd be like, why do you say that? And
Speaker 1: she goes out when you smell like a baby? Um. So,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, that makes sense because the
Speaker 1: scent that we're responding to in puppies and babies is
Speaker 1: basically that they're making tons of growth hormone and that's
Speaker 1: what baby scent is, that's what puppy scent is. So
Speaker 1: apparently when I was taking growth hormone, I was. I
Speaker 1: smelled like a baby or a puppy. Very very very
Speaker 1: exciting for all your listeners, but um forgetting you know,
Speaker 1: the training, etcetera, and your everyday life when you were
Speaker 1: taking this this regiment, did you literally feel any different? Well? Um,
Speaker 1: my libido was great? Uh it really it really helps
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, which is an obvious thing which
Speaker 1: in men, your your sex drive and everything is is
Speaker 1: essentially how much does sastro and you have? And that's
Speaker 1: why as you age, you know you're you're you're not
Speaker 1: as fierce. I guess and so so I was, and
Speaker 1: you know, I felt like I generally was like you
Speaker 1: know nineteen twenty again, um where you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that that that that was? That was an
Speaker 1: interesting idea. Um. I also, I guess, was smelling like
Speaker 1: a baby. But did you feel okay or did you
Speaker 1: wake up and go? I felt I felt I felt great.
Speaker 1: I felt great. So what about going other than because
Speaker 1: you mentioned with the derivative of all the where all
Speaker 1: this comes from, are you now a believer in anti
Speaker 1: aging with these drugs? I don't. I don't take uh.
Speaker 1: I stopped taking everything other than other than I've still
Speaker 1: taken like a very small dose of testosterone UM to
Speaker 1: to maintain kind of a like a healthy level, because
Speaker 1: my my testosterone was actually low, legitimate legitimately low. If
Speaker 1: I go off of it, it's like it's legitimately on
Speaker 1: the low side. So I take like a very small,
Speaker 1: a small amount, like you know, like um, once a week,
Speaker 1: I'll take I'll take a small amount um. Other than that,
Speaker 1: I don't take any of this stuff because the h
Speaker 1: G H. The thing is is if you're taking h
Speaker 1: g H long term, what they say is that your
Speaker 1: forehead starts growing, that your actual bones start growing. And
Speaker 1: so like Gregory and and guys um, Gregory was always
Speaker 1: able to like look at guys and go he took
Speaker 1: too much HD eight, which is like if you look
Speaker 1: like a lot of these football players are big wrestlers
Speaker 1: and stuff, you've got these huge heads, well, you know,
Speaker 1: apparently that's kind of a side effect of h g H,
Speaker 1: which is your your jaw on your forehead keep growing.
Speaker 1: So you basically turned to neanderthal um. So I, you know,
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, I I don't want to
Speaker 1: you know, side out. I don't take any h G
Speaker 1: H anymore. UM, the E p O, which is increasing
Speaker 1: your blood red blood cell mass. There's no reason for
Speaker 1: me to take that either, because why do I need
Speaker 1: to you know, I'm not I'm not competing in racing.
Speaker 1: I don't need that oxygen carrying capacity um. UM. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, my my experience with it is that, um,
Speaker 1: the public perception is very different than the reality. Um.
Speaker 1: And the only thing that I've that but I but
Speaker 1: the H G H certainly helped in recovery. That that
Speaker 1: is without questions. Okay, so before you find before Gregory,
Speaker 1: let's all the information of his history. What is the
Speaker 1: end of the movie going to be? When the end
Speaker 1: of the movie was hopefully going to be that I
Speaker 1: had beat the test, you know, the Gregory which you
Speaker 1: know you believe and everything that he goes. You know,
Speaker 1: you beat the test, and and the takeaway was woe
Speaker 1: if you could do this? What does this mean? You
Speaker 1: know clearly clearly the system has got a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of flaws in it. Um. But at the
Speaker 1: same time I did that race the second year, I
Speaker 1: didn't do as well as I wanted to do, and
Speaker 1: I was and I was really questioning my my thesis
Speaker 1: at the time, and um, but you know, Gregory was
Speaker 1: under investigation, and I had spent that that year while
Speaker 1: I was doping and racing, I was also interviewing all
Speaker 1: of the guys who were investigating Russia and investigating Gregory,
Speaker 1: and none of them had any idea that I was
Speaker 1: working with Gregory. None of them had any idea I
Speaker 1: was doping. And that was how I was able to
Speaker 1: get those interviews where all these guys are essentially talking candidly,
Speaker 1: not realizing that that not only did I know the guy,
Speaker 1: but that I was, you know, working with him and doping.
Speaker 1: So what point does the bell go off in your head?
Speaker 1: Wait a second, I have another story here that I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tell. UM, I would I would consider it more
Speaker 1: like a ping that had been you know, had been
Speaker 1: ping ping, you know, for for about a year, where
Speaker 1: where clearly there was, um, there was an elephant in
Speaker 1: the room, but I didn't know if it was gonna
Speaker 1: turn into a wooly mammoth or whether it would just
Speaker 1: you know, kind of just go away and leave. Because
Speaker 1: I didn't know what this investigation was going to find,
Speaker 1: and I certainly didn't know how deeply into what level
Speaker 1: Gregory was involved because during that year and a half
Speaker 1: I was working with before UM the film takes his turn,
Speaker 1: he hadn't disclosed that to me. I mean, he had
Speaker 1: kind of hinted that he was, you know, but he
Speaker 1: had never disclosed this. UM. So, so I had I
Speaker 1: had believed, um that there was a bigger story, and
Speaker 1: I was working on that, on that on that story,
Speaker 1: I was, you know, I was, I was making sure
Speaker 1: that I had that foot in the door. But I
Speaker 1: also had made a very conscious decision that if I
Speaker 1: became Gregory's like investigator UM or if I became you know,
Speaker 1: basically the guy who was going to go try to
Speaker 1: try to do this, that that I would lose what
Speaker 1: my what my premise was that I wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to execute my plan. And to me at the time,
Speaker 1: UM my my thesis, and also working with Gregory, this
Speaker 1: incredible character was going to be enough to make for
Speaker 1: an interesting and hopefully entertaining film. UM And and so
Speaker 1: as as that story progressed, UM, the real turning point
Speaker 1: to me was of course November where where WADA, the
Speaker 1: World Anti Doping Agency, releases that its findings of this
Speaker 1: of this investigation and it's a three report, but it
Speaker 1: is focused only on athletics track and field UH. And
Speaker 1: that was because WADA, which is in the pocket of
Speaker 1: the i o C, the Olympics UH, their mandate was
Speaker 1: only that they could investigate track and field. So even
Speaker 1: though Richard McLaren and Dick Pound and Go the Younger
Speaker 1: had uncovered all this other evidence across other sports, the report,
Speaker 1: the three page report, everything else was redacted out of
Speaker 1: that report that didn't have to do with track and
Speaker 1: field because WADA was still trying to essentially sweep this
Speaker 1: under the carpet with with the ioc UM. But this
Speaker 1: report was damning enough that Gregory was forced to resign
Speaker 1: from the lab, the laboratory was suspended, and Russia was
Speaker 1: banned from international competition and all athletics and track and field.
Speaker 1: And and that basically UM followed with with Putin on
Speaker 1: state television because now this was a pretty big scandal,
Speaker 1: UM coming out and essentially saying that not only is
Speaker 1: Russia have nothing to do with this, and we deny
Speaker 1: this entire report and everything in this report. But if
Speaker 1: anything in this report is true, UM, it will be
Speaker 1: the individuals that will be held accountable and punishment will
Speaker 1: be absolute. And that was Gregory's death sentence. That was
Speaker 1: that was it right there. And and so I'm watching
Speaker 1: this unfold in the news media while I'm while I'm
Speaker 1: skyping with Gregory, and um, we're about six days into it,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, and I'm trying to convince Gregory to
Speaker 1: let me come to Moscow. I'm like, hey, I want
Speaker 1: to I want to come. You know, this is now unfolding,
Speaker 1: and now I'm going, whoa, this is? This is the story.
Speaker 1: And Gregory's like, no, no, no, no, no, no no,
Speaker 1: do not come to Moscow. And and uh and there
Speaker 1: we are, and just as that is in the film. Uh.
Speaker 1: He reaches a point about six seven days in where
Speaker 1: he realizes that they're going to kill him, that they're
Speaker 1: planning his suicide. And I said, hey, let me I
Speaker 1: want to come to Rush. He's like no, no, no, no
Speaker 1: no no, I need to get out. I need to escape.
Speaker 1: And I'm like when when do you want When do
Speaker 1: you want to go? And he goes tomorrow. I said,
Speaker 1: I said tomorrow. He goes, hees, yeah, I need a ticket,
Speaker 1: buy me a ticket. I need to get a ticket.
Speaker 1: And and the conversation was literally happening. I think probably
Speaker 1: ten o'clock at night, you know, my time, and I
Speaker 1: go online. I find him a ticket. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: there's a flight tomorrow with like you know, like literally
Speaker 1: twelve hours after that, I'm like, there's a flight tomorrow.
Speaker 1: This this is like good, okay, book it. And I
Speaker 1: booked the ticket and I go, oh my god, this
Speaker 1: guy is coming. And and we didn't know if he
Speaker 1: was going to get through you know, immigration, if you
Speaker 1: if Russia had put a hold onto visa, but um,
Speaker 1: he had a US visa because he had been lecturing
Speaker 1: in the United States UM on anti doping, and the
Speaker 1: head of the US Anti Doping Agency, Travis Tiger, had
Speaker 1: given Gregory the visa to come lecture in the United
Speaker 1: States on anti doping even though he was the anti
Speaker 1: anti doping Lab director. And Russia, because it was seven
Speaker 1: days after this whole report just hadn't got around it.
Speaker 1: You know, it was so fast that they hadn't put
Speaker 1: a stop on his on his on his visa, They
Speaker 1: hadn't put it into you know, into interpoll to stop
Speaker 1: him from traveling, and so he was miraculously able to
Speaker 1: get out. He arrives in Los Angeles and about a
Speaker 1: month later, right about Christmas, I realized that this is
Speaker 1: essentially this a scandal on a magnet. That's that's unfathomable,
Speaker 1: um and that and that the evidence he has essentially
Speaker 1: changes all of Olympic history. We'll pause here for a
Speaker 1: brief moment and get right back to Brian Fogel. Many
Speaker 1: of you already know that I'm a writer, but for
Speaker 1: those who think I'm just the host of this podcast,
Speaker 1: check out my archived and left sets dot com in
Speaker 1: addition to reading my commentary on music tech in the
Speaker 1: world at large. Will be the first to find out
Speaker 1: where we're publish a new podcast. Go to left sets
Speaker 1: dot com and sign up for the news letter. Now
Speaker 1: more with Academy Award winning filmmaker Brian Fogel, recorded at
Speaker 1: the tune In Studios in Venice, California. Now, do you
Speaker 1: think deep inside when he was working with you, he
Speaker 1: had an urge to get this story heard or it
Speaker 1: just happened by accident. You've been asked that question so
Speaker 1: many times, and I think it was it was a
Speaker 1: combination of things. We we developed a really big trust
Speaker 1: between us and and the trust was was a friendship
Speaker 1: that I think crossed any boundaries of a of a
Speaker 1: of documentary film. And and I think it was because
Speaker 1: at the time I was the subject and he was
Speaker 1: the advisor. And then it flips and he becomes the
Speaker 1: subject and I become his advisor and protector and and
Speaker 1: so we we had this trust and and and he
Speaker 1: liked that it was devious. He saw me as kind
Speaker 1: of devious. He saw me as a guy who was
Speaker 1: out there to kind of buck the system. H Gregory
Speaker 1: loved Armstrong Lance, huge fan, and like the idea that
Speaker 1: I was going to show that you know, that Lance
Speaker 1: was just one of of of you know, of so
Speaker 1: many and and he liked that I as an athlete
Speaker 1: because he is an athlete. And and in his mind
Speaker 1: he had justified which is kind of like maybe like
Speaker 1: a Russian thing. He basically went, oh, Brian's an amateur athlete,
Speaker 1: so it's okay. Even though even though you know, even
Speaker 1: though everything he's doing was against all water code, he
Speaker 1: kind of decided that because I wasn't like basically a
Speaker 1: Russian professional athlete, that this was not going to be
Speaker 1: a big deal, which is kind of insane to think,
Speaker 1: but that is, uh, that's what happened. And and there
Speaker 1: was never a dime of money exchanged ever. H But
Speaker 1: at this late date, he's still in hiding, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and his family is still in Russia, that's right. And
Speaker 1: his family safe from what I've heard. Yes, Okay, So
Speaker 1: now this all happens, at what point do you say,
Speaker 1: not only do I have a different film here, but
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a big story and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make Hay with his film. Well, um, I
Speaker 1: knew that it was a really big story right at
Speaker 1: the end of you know, right as this was happening,
Speaker 1: the question really became between me and my my producing team,
Speaker 1: Dan Cogan, David Fialco, Jim Schwartz, Um was how are
Speaker 1: we going to get this story out? How are we
Speaker 1: going to see to it that this that that his
Speaker 1: evidence could be proven as true? How were we going
Speaker 1: to protect him? And how were we going to manage
Speaker 1: this crisis? And and you know, and I truly had
Speaker 1: his life in my hand. Um, you know, we went
Speaker 1: to using burner phones, We took our edit offline, we
Speaker 1: moved our production offices four times, we moved Gregory's location
Speaker 1: four times. I mean, it became a cat mouse games
Speaker 1: as the stakes were increasing and UM, and we brought
Speaker 1: on a crisis manager, Mike Citric, very very well known guy.
Speaker 1: The New work Times last week had a huge front
Speaker 1: cover Sunday story on him, and and he's considered the fixer.
Speaker 1: He's a guy that like every guy like even Trump.
Speaker 1: Trump went to him in his bankruptcies, Kobe Bryant went
Speaker 1: to him with when he was Michael Jackson went to him.
Speaker 1: Most recently, Harvey Weinstein went to him, and Mike Citric
Speaker 1: basically dismissed him as a client once he realized, you
Speaker 1: know how bad this was. UM. But so we bring
Speaker 1: on Citric and and what we were trying to figure
Speaker 1: out was how we were going to get him, uh
Speaker 1: the right lawyer, and how we were going to bring
Speaker 1: this story public and UM and all these elements, you know,
Speaker 1: between the FBI getting involved, between Nikita Kamaia of his
Speaker 1: friend who was running Russata dying, we realized we were
Speaker 1: out of time, and we made a decision that we
Speaker 1: were going to go to the New York Times and UH,
Speaker 1: Mike and Sally Hoffmeister his his partner, UM basically called
Speaker 1: Dean back and say the editor the editor of the
Speaker 1: New York Times and say, um, we have the Moscow
Speaker 1: Lab director and he'd like to talk. Would you like
Speaker 1: to come out to Los Angeles? And the next day
Speaker 1: Rebecca Ruiz and Michael Sartz come to Los Angeles and myself,
Speaker 1: Dan Cogan and Gregory Rachenkov sit for three days with
Speaker 1: The New York Times and we had prepared this dossier,
Speaker 1: this like three page three uh, you know, three ring
Speaker 1: binder of essentially, you know, one of the greatest gifts
Speaker 1: ever given to the New York Times. It was it
Speaker 1: was here it is, guys, here is the biggest scandal
Speaker 1: in the history of sports, wrapped up in a bow
Speaker 1: in a silver box. You know that we've already engraved
Speaker 1: n y T and uh. And we sat there for
Speaker 1: three days and we presented everything, Gregory presented everything. Um,
Speaker 1: and they ran the story front page the following week,
Speaker 1: huge story, you know, with a whole fold out, and
Speaker 1: then the following day with another front page with a
Speaker 1: fold out and uh. And then the whole chain of
Speaker 1: events continued to to transpire that ultimately lead to Russia
Speaker 1: being banned from the Olympics. So you make the movie
Speaker 1: and the movie premieres at Sundance. Yeah. So it premieres
Speaker 1: uh in January of last year, January at Sundance, and
Speaker 1: and I did not feel like the film was finished.
Speaker 1: My creative team didn't feel like the film was finished.
Speaker 1: We the story was still unfolding. Uh. And yet you know,
Speaker 1: when Sundance calls, you have six weeks to finish your film. UH,
Speaker 1: And anybody who's made a film knows that that is
Speaker 1: not a lot of time. And so all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you're in this crazy race to getting your sound mixed,
Speaker 1: on getting everything. Then, but we went into Sundance with
Speaker 1: with a film. You know, I think everybody saw it,
Speaker 1: Sundance loved it, and uh, but in my mind, it
Speaker 1: was not It was not where it needed to be
Speaker 1: because the story was was was was was still unfolding. UM.
Speaker 1: And Netflix acquires it, and Lisa Nishimura and Adam Deldeo
Speaker 1: incredible partners, and and in essentially the negotiations, the first
Speaker 1: conversation is basically, uh, films not finished. And they agree
Speaker 1: and they allow me and my team basically the next
Speaker 1: five months to continue to work on the film to
Speaker 1: complete it. And we finished the film basically about this
Speaker 1: time last year, and then it aired premiered on Netflix
Speaker 1: in August following like Sundance London and a f I
Speaker 1: Dock and a bunch of festivals that had opened, and
Speaker 1: you're happy with the finished product. There's nothing in that
Speaker 1: film that that that I don't want, and there's nothing
Speaker 1: in that film that I would want to put in. Okay,
Speaker 1: So when it comes out, I mean, maybe it's an
Speaker 1: Olympic year. But it took, like it seemed from the outside,
Speaker 1: it took a while for the story to build in
Speaker 1: public consciousness. Did you feel that it did? Um? It was.
Speaker 1: It was certainly building in the sense that the New
Speaker 1: York Times story, the following stories, the investigation. Um. But
Speaker 1: I think as as kind of as big as the
Speaker 1: story was in the global press and certainly seeing it
Speaker 1: in papers all over the world, um, I think a film, um.
Speaker 1: And certainly, you know, Netflix being a hundred ninety countries,
Speaker 1: a million homes all of a sudden, Watching something on
Speaker 1: a television is very different than reading something in a newspaper.
Speaker 1: So okay, if we're reading about let's say, the immigrants crisis,
Speaker 1: is a separation going on between families right now, we
Speaker 1: can read about that in a paper and go, oh
Speaker 1: my god, that's terrible, or we might see a clip
Speaker 1: of that on CNN and go, oh my god, that
Speaker 1: is that is horrendous, But in the hands of the
Speaker 1: right creative team, and you craft that into into a narrative,
Speaker 1: which what we did with Icarus with music and sound
Speaker 1: and graphics and visual effects and animation and everything that
Speaker 1: is in that film. I think, um, it has the
Speaker 1: power uh to to really resonate. And I think that
Speaker 1: when the film came out, Um Gregory um became somebody
Speaker 1: not you know, a deviant on the pages of the
Speaker 1: New York Times who had orchestrated this doping plot, but
Speaker 1: became human and you see him for who he is
Speaker 1: as this lovable, incredible character that basically is is is complicated,
Speaker 1: but you know, but fully redeemable and and wants to
Speaker 1: come forward with the truth and tell the truth. You
Speaker 1: see that the size and scope of the scandal in
Speaker 1: a in a visual way of what this really was
Speaker 1: in the Denial of Russia. And I think that those
Speaker 1: elements um resonated and set off kind of a whole
Speaker 1: other um cascading um uh you know, domino effect. Because
Speaker 1: in the in the film as it sits right now,
Speaker 1: it says that Russia is going to the Winter Olympics
Speaker 1: and in August, and when we finished the film this
Speaker 1: time last year, that was true. But the film and
Speaker 1: what it's set off in the media, and then the
Speaker 1: work of Gregory's legal team and the work of the
Speaker 1: pr team behind the film was able to keep this
Speaker 1: story in the media, keep showing how big this fraud
Speaker 1: was and forced the Olympics to take action, which they
Speaker 1: didn't want to do. They did not want to write.
Speaker 1: Now from your perspective, though, because we live in a
Speaker 1: world where there are so many media messages, it's hard
Speaker 1: to break through. And you were at the epicenter. But
Speaker 1: did you feel as the months went by from August
Speaker 1: to the Olympics, could you feel the film having a
Speaker 1: greater attention in the world at large? Of course, and um,
Speaker 1: and it was a combination of the film being seen
Speaker 1: and and people like you and everybody you know that
Speaker 1: that the word of mouth And what I've found in
Speaker 1: the last year of this is has everybody's seen the film?
Speaker 1: I mean Lance Armstrong included, you know, they see the
Speaker 1: film and then they go tell every one of their
Speaker 1: friends that, oh my god, you have to see this,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you have to see this or people
Speaker 1: have seen the film two times, three times, four times.
Speaker 1: I was, I was, um, you know last week, you know,
Speaker 1: and this happens to me all the time I met somebody,
Speaker 1: he goes. So I saw the film because a friend
Speaker 1: of mine told me I had to see it. And
Speaker 1: then um, I made my kids watch it, and then
Speaker 1: we watched again with the entire family. And then we like,
Speaker 1: I mean, and the and we just amazing things in
Speaker 1: the film. You know, when you have Putin's denial, extrapolate
Speaker 1: that to every other thing he says relevant of doping,
Speaker 1: and when you see the scratches in the bottles from
Speaker 1: them previously being open, it's like better than any fiction movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there it is, and and and I think that
Speaker 1: you know what what happened is as you see this
Speaker 1: film and in the edit after Sundance, of course Trump
Speaker 1: had come into office, there was evidence that the election
Speaker 1: was hacked, and of course all the denials of truth
Speaker 1: and fake news and stuff. But we made a very
Speaker 1: conscious decision creatively that we weren't going to go there.
Speaker 1: We weren't going to get into the election. We weren't
Speaker 1: going to but we wanted to leave people with it
Speaker 1: and I think and I think we succeeded in this
Speaker 1: that we wanted to leave people with a Okay, if
Speaker 1: Russia was capable of this, is there any doubt that
Speaker 1: they could do that? And also if Putin lies about this,
Speaker 1: is there any doubt as to what else he's willing
Speaker 1: to lie about? And then and and hopefully mirror what
Speaker 1: has been the continuing effect of of um, you know,
Speaker 1: the the ongoing scandal and what's you know going on
Speaker 1: in the Mueller investigation, etcetera. So we we wanted to
Speaker 1: to have that resonate, which is the themes of of
Speaker 1: orwell and double think and that narrative which is which
Speaker 1: is truly unfolding on a daily basis um in this
Speaker 1: country and and certainly you know has been in Russia. UM.
Speaker 1: So that was kind of a very conscious decision that
Speaker 1: we made in creative process to leave those events out,
Speaker 1: but to hopefully leave the viewer with this feeling of
Speaker 1: angst um and kind of a pit in their stomach
Speaker 1: of how corrupt uh uh it's not only sport is
Speaker 1: but but the geopolitical process behind it. Well, you've certainly
Speaker 1: achieved your goal, and you really truly made a classic film,
Speaker 1: even though it's stated a specific time, the lessons will
Speaker 1: live for many decades beyond that. And the obvious question,
Speaker 1: and I'm surely not the first one to ask you
Speaker 1: this either, is now what UM? You know they up
Speaker 1: into the Oscar Race UM the Academy Awards. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't have time to to focus on what I
Speaker 1: was going to do next. But but I've had a
Speaker 1: lot of UM things in in the Zeyecheist UM and
Speaker 1: so there's there's a narrative feature that I'm attached to
Speaker 1: that I can't quite discuss yet to direct it, and
Speaker 1: it's an extraordinary script on a on a true story
Speaker 1: that is as as resonant and and politically relevant as
Speaker 1: Hicarus UM. There's a couple of unscripted doc series that
Speaker 1: I'm working on developing that that I hope to be soon,
Speaker 1: you know, going out with UM. And there's a couple
Speaker 1: of doc projects that I'm looking to produce UM. So
Speaker 1: I'm I'm kind of I I have a lot of
Speaker 1: ideas and things that I want to do, and and
Speaker 1: you know, with with all the creative process, it all
Speaker 1: takes time to to come together. So it doesn't it's
Speaker 1: not like a an overnight thing, even if other people
Speaker 1: want to work with you. Um, but I but I
Speaker 1: have um projects right now that I'm passionate about that.
Speaker 1: I'm that I'm working to get off the ground. Now.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it wasn't your goal in making this film.
Speaker 1: Certainly hearing you for the last hour to win an Oscar,
Speaker 1: But in this particular case you did, okay, And on
Speaker 1: some level that's a pinnacle of you know, pure appreciation
Speaker 1: winning the Oscar. But in this particular case, it's for
Speaker 1: a film that's not evanescent. It's not something Oh, it's
Speaker 1: a life trifle. Okay. Does having been to the mountaintop,
Speaker 1: is it easy to then go back and say I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make another film or is there somewhat a feeling
Speaker 1: I've done that I need a new challenge. Well, I
Speaker 1: think that's um it's an interesting question because, uh, this
Speaker 1: is kind of the second time of my life on
Speaker 1: a different level where I've felt like I kind of
Speaker 1: went to the mountaintop and and when I had this
Speaker 1: play and it went to New York and then became
Speaker 1: a big success, and um, I said to myself, well,
Speaker 1: how am I going to top this? How do I
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to go do Gutopia too. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to. Like I, I was like, well, anything
Speaker 1: I do is not going to you know, is not
Speaker 1: going to have this same thing. And I and I
Speaker 1: kind of became trapped in it in a way because
Speaker 1: I think that's that idea of having this whatever is
Speaker 1: as as a musician whatever you have this iconic album
Speaker 1: you know, um, you know, and and how you're going
Speaker 1: to top that? And it's and it's why you know,
Speaker 1: Roger Waters is still playing The Wall after all these
Speaker 1: years and Dark Side of the Moon because it's well, hey,
Speaker 1: you keep putting out new music, but it's not The Wall,
Speaker 1: it's not Dark Side of the Moon, it's not led
Speaker 1: Zeppelin to you know, it's just how you're going to
Speaker 1: top that? UM. And and so then to have this
Speaker 1: UM with Icarus on on a whole other level, on
Speaker 1: a on a global level. But the recognition of the
Speaker 1: of the Oscar which UM was just the most humbling
Speaker 1: of moments in my life. I just I still can't
Speaker 1: believe it. I that that that that we this team
Speaker 1: one one and and going on that journey and going
Speaker 1: on that stage alongside Dan and Jim and David and
Speaker 1: that was that was I don't. I don't know how
Speaker 1: you ever topped that, So I don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: I look at how to essentially top it. I think
Speaker 1: I look at how I can kind of move forward
Speaker 1: like creatively and do things um that I'm passionate about.
Speaker 1: So for me, UM, it's why I'm looking to um
Speaker 1: take a leap back into directing UM scripted feature because
Speaker 1: it won't be compared to Icarus, so it'll be it'll
Speaker 1: be another challenge for me to to use you know,
Speaker 1: those my my creative um uh skills or or mind
Speaker 1: to craft something hopefully of of relevance. And and and
Speaker 1: also if I'm producing in the documentary space, which is
Speaker 1: what I'm which is what I'm looking to start to do, UM,
Speaker 1: the films can live independently and not be judged against Chorus.
Speaker 1: So I know that if I go and immediately go
Speaker 1: direct another doc feature, no matter what it is, it
Speaker 1: will immediately be compared to Icarus, and it'll be like,
Speaker 1: well it's it's not Icarus. Well, well it can't be
Speaker 1: because I'll never be able to replicate that story or
Speaker 1: that journey. So I need to take a step back
Speaker 1: and and go find another creative outlet and and continue,
Speaker 1: you know, in the dock space um in uh in
Speaker 1: a little bit of a little bit of a hands
Speaker 1: off sense. Uh and but I I uh, I'm just
Speaker 1: kind of taking it a day at a time and
Speaker 1: try not to put much pressure on myself, um and
Speaker 1: uh and hopefully that the next journey will be successful
Speaker 1: or if it's not, all I'll go back to director's
Speaker 1: jail and then figure out how to how to start
Speaker 1: a kill. You have a long history of picking yourself up.
Speaker 1: I mean, the process may be painful, but you've always
Speaker 1: seemed to find the next thing, whether it be you know,
Speaker 1: going to become a comedian, doing the showcases, doing the
Speaker 1: one man show, you know, etcetera. So in any event,
Speaker 1: this has been wonderful, very insightful. I think we've gotten
Speaker 1: a three D picture far beyond the movie and far
Speaker 1: beyond other things that I've read, that people get to
Speaker 1: understand who you truly are, where you came from. So
Speaker 1: this has really been great, really edifying and interesting, and
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks Bob as Uh, You're
Speaker 1: a fantastic interviewer, because in all the interviews that that
Speaker 1: I've given around this and there's been a lot. I
Speaker 1: found myself talking about things that I've I've not spoken
Speaker 1: about in in any interview that I've done well. That
Speaker 1: certainly puts a smile on my face. And I was
Speaker 1: also anxious with something that has gotten so much attention.
Speaker 1: So I think we covered the basics and also the pnumbra.
Speaker 1: Thanks again, Thanks Bob. That wraps up this week's episode
Speaker 1: of the Bob Left Sets podcast, recorded live at the
Speaker 1: two In Studios in Venice, California. I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this conversation with Oscar winning filmmaker Ryan Fogel. I certainly did.
Speaker 1: I saw the movie. You should bial it up on Netflix.
Speaker 1: Hanging in There. It takes a wild twist, some of
Speaker 1: which we've covered. Your eyes will bug out and a
Speaker 1: orderately be Abob bike racing. Lit'll be about America and
Speaker 1: Russia and the world it later. It's a riveting story
Speaker 1: and I can't wait to see what he does next.
Speaker 1: Until that time, email me comments questions negative things that
Speaker 1: Bob and left sets dot Com. Until next time, I'm
Speaker 1: Bob left Sets out to do me try