Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeartRadio. What could doctor Ruth, Serena Williams and
Speaker 1: Pamela Anderson possibly have in common? They are all subjects
Speaker 1: of My Guest Today. Documentary filmmaker Ryan White, The Emmy
Speaker 1: nominated director, takes on a dizzyingly wide range of projects,
Speaker 1: from the Mars Rover to the fight for gay marriage
Speaker 1: to the unsolved murder of a nun in Baltimore. The
Speaker 1: most recent project is Pamela A Love Story. It's a
Speaker 1: re examination of nineties bombshell Pamela Anderson and the major
Speaker 1: events of her life, from her rise to fame to
Speaker 1: the leak of her stolen's sex tape with then husband
Speaker 1: Tommy Lee.
Speaker 2: I didn't feel like I had a lot of respect.
Speaker 2: Would you want to be a serious actress. I'm a
Speaker 2: serious actress. I had to make a career out of
Speaker 2: the pieces left. But I'm not the damsel in distress.
Speaker 2: I put myself in crazy situations and survived though. I
Speaker 2: don't care what people think, because that's the only choice
Speaker 2: I had. If I care what people think, it wouldn't
Speaker 2: be here. So men think, oh, she's the playboy, thanger,
Speaker 2: the sexual person, and they hate you for being something else.
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, The Baywatch Star retreated from The Spotlight
Speaker 1: to Vancouver Island, Canada. Much of the film takes place
Speaker 1: there and features a makeup free version of the actress,
Speaker 1: along with personal journals and home video. It's Anderson at
Speaker 1: her most raw and vulnerable, with White's insight into a
Speaker 1: different side of Anderson. I wanted to know why he
Speaker 1: thought she kept up the centerfold persona for so much
Speaker 1: of her career.
Speaker 3: Well, I think she would say that she got stuck
Speaker 3: in a caricature that she could not break out of.
Speaker 3: And I think finally with this film coming out, you know,
Speaker 3: and pulling away at that caricature. But one of the
Speaker 3: things I love most about Pamela is, you know you
Speaker 3: mentioned what could have been? Is that Pamela does not
Speaker 3: spend a lot of the real estate in her mind
Speaker 3: dedicated to what could have been. She's always looking forward,
Speaker 3: which makes for a very difficult documentary subject at times
Speaker 3: because she doesn't she doesn't want to reflect a lot
Speaker 3: on the past or regrets or you know, some of
Speaker 3: those heavier things that she went through in her life.
Speaker 3: She's a very I always I always relate Pamela to
Speaker 3: like a fairy. She's kind of floating through the world
Speaker 3: and always looking forward, and so I think that's more
Speaker 3: important to her than anything else. And I don't think
Speaker 3: you know. One of the things I also love about
Speaker 3: Pamela is she's not incredibly ambitious. She'll be the first.
Speaker 1: We're done, We're done the same subjects, because you just
Speaker 1: said it all.
Speaker 3: She never she never really wanted a career that bad.
Speaker 3: She doesn't love acting, she likes she's an artist like
Speaker 3: which is which is sort of ironic because I don't
Speaker 3: think anyone thinks of or most people don't think of
Speaker 3: Pamela Anderson as an artist. But she really does have
Speaker 3: an artist's brain, and she loves the artistic collaboration. So
Speaker 3: even if she's modeling, say, one of Pamela's best friends
Speaker 3: is the photographer David la Chappelle, and she told me that,
Speaker 3: you know, she drives David crazy because she's never interested
Speaker 3: in seeing the photographs after they take them. And to her,
Speaker 3: it's because that process of modeling is all about the
Speaker 3: collaboration with the artist in that case David, and that's
Speaker 3: what she enjoys and she doesn't really care about the
Speaker 3: final product, and she was very similar in making this documentary.
Speaker 3: She didn't care about the documentary product at all. She
Speaker 3: just enjoyed the hanging out part, the artistic collaboration part.
Speaker 1: I feel similarly and not too you know, intrude with
Speaker 1: my own life. But it's interesting that I relate to
Speaker 1: that because it's like someone would say, you want to
Speaker 1: come watch a cut of the film, and I'd say no,
Speaker 1: and to varying degrees, the directors and producers and people
Speaker 1: would look at me like they were like mildly aghast.
Speaker 1: They were like, you don't want to watch a cut
Speaker 1: of the film, And I'm like, well, what do you mean?
Speaker 1: Are you going to take my notes? So the sun
Speaker 1: approached you, you weren't leaning toward doing a documentary.
Speaker 3: He pitched you, He pitched me, and I actually said no,
Speaker 3: thank you. At the beginning. You know, I'm born in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty one, so mathematically that means Pamela is like
Speaker 3: the most famous person in the world. As I'm coming
Speaker 3: of age in my adolescent years in the mid nineties.
Speaker 3: So I also, like, I think a lot of people
Speaker 3: came with these preconceived notions about who she would be.
Speaker 3: And that's I spent a lot of my time saying
Speaker 3: no to making celebrity documentaries, and it's because of what
Speaker 3: I thought Pamela it would be that usually these huge celebrities,
Speaker 3: especially if her icon status, have a big team of
Speaker 3: people around them, of agents and managers.
Speaker 1: Was it like that with Serena?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: And that was part of the appeal of making the
Speaker 3: film about Serena as well. There were a lot of
Speaker 3: people around Serena, but Serena is autonomous. She did the
Speaker 3: deciding yes exactly.
Speaker 1: So the son pitched you, he did, And what convinced
Speaker 1: you after you would think you were leaning toward no,
Speaker 1: what convinced.
Speaker 3: You a zoom conversation with Pamela is what convinced me.
Speaker 3: So I had this lunch with Brandon, who's Pamela's son,
Speaker 3: and I think the subtext that you can't say out
Speaker 3: loud today when you're hiring people of that lunch was
Speaker 3: they were looking for a gig documentary director because I
Speaker 3: think they had tried out other directors and they just
Speaker 3: weren't the right fit. And most of Pamela's best friends,
Speaker 3: you know, she doesn't have a lot of people in
Speaker 3: her inner circle, but most of her best friends are
Speaker 3: Dan Matthews, David la Chappelle, gay men. So I think
Speaker 3: Brandon couldn't say that out loud to me.
Speaker 1: And do you think right right? And do you think
Speaker 1: that that's a I'm not a calling card. I think
Speaker 1: that's an advantage you have.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know if it's my sexuality necessarily that
Speaker 3: makes them comfortable. But you know, I also grew up
Speaker 3: in a house of women of like a single mom
Speaker 3: and a grandma and an older sister.
Speaker 1: Where did you grow up.
Speaker 3: In Georgia outside of Atlanta?
Speaker 1: Where'd you go to college?
Speaker 3: I went to college at Duke, which has the Center
Speaker 3: for Documentary Studies. So I studied all fields of documentary
Speaker 3: at Duke.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, you immersed yourself from that. Did you
Speaker 1: You knew then you wanted to go in that direction?
Speaker 3: Yeah. I wanted to be a filmmaker because I loved
Speaker 3: I loved films growing up. I didn't even know documentaries
Speaker 3: were a thing. It's not like they were playing, you know,
Speaker 3: at the megaplex in Georgia.
Speaker 1: Well, we're going to talk about that later, the expansion
Speaker 1: of documentaries into real programming. So you're there studying and
Speaker 1: when you get out, do you go to more education
Speaker 1: beyond that you go right to work.
Speaker 3: No, I'm like the only one of my friends that
Speaker 3: didn't go to graduate school. I went straight to work
Speaker 3: for you know. Two thousand and four is when I
Speaker 3: graduated from college, and there weren't a lot of jobs
Speaker 3: in the documentary space. There were, you know, very few,
Speaker 3: very few positions to be had. We were known as
Speaker 3: the broccoli of filmmaking, you know, where you don't want
Speaker 3: to but it's good for you. And so I worked
Speaker 3: for one of the very few filmmakers who was hiring
Speaker 3: at the time. Her name was Sherry Jones. She actually
Speaker 3: just passed away last year, but I kind of learned
Speaker 3: underneath her. She was one of the very few filmmakers
Speaker 3: who had her own company at the time because it
Speaker 3: was hard to make a living, and she basically made
Speaker 3: like frontliney type PBS documentaries or Bill Moyer's specials or
Speaker 3: Peter Jennings specials. But that was my first job, and
Speaker 3: I learned under her, and I learned how to run
Speaker 3: a business.
Speaker 1: You were in New York.
Speaker 3: It was in Washington, d C. Actually, wow, but New
Speaker 3: York really was the hubbit at the time. It's moved
Speaker 3: a lot over to Los Angeles since I've been in
Speaker 3: my career, but yeah, that was where I kind of
Speaker 3: cut my teeth was under Sherry Jones.
Speaker 1: What is the movie Palada? Your first one was called Palada.
Speaker 3: It was It's a documentary about pickup soccer, street soccer
Speaker 3: all over the world that we filmed in twenty five countries,
Speaker 3: which is totally absurd, Like, the only the type of
Speaker 3: film that you would think you can pull off at
Speaker 3: twenty five years old. If a twenty five year old
Speaker 3: were coming to me now that I would say, that's insane.
Speaker 1: You know, I can see are you trying to raise money?
Speaker 1: You're like, I want to do leave about soccer, and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, where is it? Said?
Speaker 3: You go everywhere everywhere.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go everywhere that soccer is and make
Speaker 1: a movie about it. So after you do that, what's
Speaker 1: the first movie you do, Whether it's a pitch from
Speaker 1: you or someone's commissioning you were approaching, what's the first
Speaker 1: movie you have where you've got a real budget? Who
Speaker 1: was it for?
Speaker 3: It was my third film that was for HBO, where
Speaker 3: Sheila Evans was the head of HBO. At the time,
Speaker 3: and she is, you know, the the godmother of ADUs.
Speaker 3: Oh you did, She's the best. Yeah. It felt like
Speaker 3: I had gotten the golden ticket when Sheila bought my film.
Speaker 3: I made a film about gay marriage that came out
Speaker 3: I think twenty fourteen, but I started making it Case
Speaker 3: against eight, Case against eight, So it was about Proposition eight,
Speaker 3: which passed in two thousand and eight when Obama was
Speaker 3: elect did so Case.
Speaker 1: Against eight has great resonance for you. You're at Sundance,
Speaker 1: you're nominated for two m's. Is that correct? Yes, and
Speaker 1: you're shortlisted for the Oscar. Yes to everything I'm assuming
Speaker 1: changes after that.
Speaker 3: It did, and also the documentary landscape was changing after that.
Speaker 3: That was like the year that Netflix was emerging and streamers,
Speaker 3: you know, were kind of a glimmer in our eye
Speaker 3: at that point. But the real changing factor for me
Speaker 3: a Case Against Eight was very successful critically, but I
Speaker 3: followed that up with a documentary series for Netflix called
Speaker 3: The Keepers, which was about the murder of a nun
Speaker 3: in Baltimore, but basically cover ups of the Catholic church,
Speaker 3: which is you know, no yeah, no revolutionary story, but
Speaker 3: it was in the it was in the era of
Speaker 3: Netflix where there just wasn't the overabundance of content. It
Speaker 3: was the follow up to Making a Murder, It was
Speaker 3: it was the next true crime series on Netflix after that.
Speaker 3: So there was such a huge captive audience. So the
Speaker 3: amount of people that tuned in for The Keepers was
Speaker 3: mind blowing for me as a documentary film maker.
Speaker 1: Eventually you get to the point where you start doing
Speaker 1: these biographical ones. You do, Doctor Ruth West, Is that
Speaker 1: your first one, Doctor Ruth?
Speaker 3: I think I did Serena before, Doctor Ruth.
Speaker 1: Oh, you did shoot it before, so let's talk about that.
Speaker 1: So Serena, I would imagine that someone who is as
Speaker 1: I always have a different metric which is not just
Speaker 1: successful and monolithic in their career, but they deserve it.
Speaker 1: She's earned everything that's come her way. I mean I
Speaker 1: was there at the US up them when she freaked
Speaker 1: out on the judge. I was there in the President's box.
Speaker 1: Did you find that the yin and yang of the intensity?
Speaker 1: Because athletes are people who have to turn on a
Speaker 1: level of aggression you and I can't even imagine, and
Speaker 1: then turn it off exactly.
Speaker 3: But she could turn that on playing cards with you
Speaker 3: as well. Yeah, Parade so she that's just in that's
Speaker 3: in Serena's DNA in a way that I've never seen before.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm the exact same age as Serena. She's
Speaker 3: I think a couple weeks younger than me. So being
Speaker 3: around her was so it was so fascinating because she
Speaker 3: was so youthful. I think there's some arrested development when
Speaker 3: you're when you get really famous and successful at something
Speaker 3: when you're a teenager. And so Serena has this infectious
Speaker 3: spirit unless she's playing a game, and tennis included. That's
Speaker 3: like she is one of the most fun people to
Speaker 3: be around outside of a tennis court. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: that there is a switch in her and even you know,
Speaker 3: even in practicing tennis, she was so intense.
Speaker 1: Who broke with that? Who broke that production? You pitched
Speaker 1: them or they came to you.
Speaker 3: Well that was interesting because that was before the documentary heyday.
Speaker 3: And you know, I hate even talking about this documentary
Speaker 3: because it's literally unavailable now we talk about the shifting
Speaker 3: Landscape of documentary was made by Epics, and Epics had
Speaker 3: a license at some point which lapsed and now there's
Speaker 3: actually no way to watch that documentary.
Speaker 1: You see the Suina doc.
Speaker 3: Yeah, unless I send you a Vimeo link, it's currently
Speaker 3: not on any of the streamers, and it's because the
Speaker 3: license laps and it didn't go to one of the streams.
Speaker 3: So I mean, it's one of it's probably I love
Speaker 3: Serena and I love tennis, so it's probably one of
Speaker 3: my favorite films. I think I've made fifteen and I
Speaker 3: got to be there during the craziest year of Serena's life,
Speaker 3: and she let me the craziest year of her career
Speaker 3: at least, and she let me film everything craziest. Why
Speaker 3: because it was the best year of her career and
Speaker 3: then it ended in the biggest failure. That was the
Speaker 3: year that she won the first three Grand Slams was
Speaker 3: at the US Open. The field had totally opened up.
Speaker 3: She just had to beat two kind of unseeded, no
Speaker 3: name Italian women to win the Calendar Slam. It was
Speaker 3: gonna be the first Calendar Slams in thirty years labor. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and she lost in the semi final to Roberta Vinci.
Speaker 3: I was there on the court with her filming and
Speaker 3: it was the biggest you know, there's a part in
Speaker 3: my film where I'm just in bed with her afterwards,
Speaker 3: and she's talking about being such an embarrassment to the
Speaker 3: entire country. And so to me, that film is incredibly
Speaker 3: special because I had never seen an athlete of her stature,
Speaker 3: let a filmmaker that close to the process and be
Speaker 3: that vulnerable to the pain, the pain and that the
Speaker 3: ups and the downs. And you know, that's where I
Speaker 3: think Serena is. Serena, Doctor Ruth and Pamela I consider
Speaker 3: very similar, even though it's totally different fields.
Speaker 1: Only you could make a statement like that house so well.
Speaker 3: They're great documentary subjects in the sense that they have
Speaker 3: they've all been through, they've been you know, chewed up
Speaker 3: and spit out by society, Pamela and Serena more so
Speaker 3: than doctor Ruth, I think, But they're they don't really
Speaker 3: care that much how they're perceived, because they've had the
Speaker 3: worst things said about them, and so they're very unashamed
Speaker 3: about who they are. And so that's like when you
Speaker 3: have a non controlling documentary subject who's just allowing you
Speaker 3: to be everywhere, which both Serena and Pamela did. That's
Speaker 3: where the really good stuff comes from, I think, is
Speaker 3: opposed to when you have agents and managers and publicists
Speaker 3: circling you and saying, don't say this, don't say that.
Speaker 3: If Serena's told that, she would say, I'm going to
Speaker 3: say what I want to say now.
Speaker 1: I would imagine we'll just choose these two examples of
Speaker 1: how parapatetic. The Sermena williams Is of the world are
Speaker 1: traveling in the world everywhere, go go go, tournament, tennis appearances, whatever.
Speaker 1: Her whole bouquet is of activities, and there's Pamela sitting
Speaker 1: by the river. You know what I mean. Did you
Speaker 1: have to chase Serena around the world to film her?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean I basically made that film myself because
Speaker 3: I didn't have a crew because Serena is so on
Speaker 3: the go. You know, you can't. You can't with a
Speaker 3: sound person and a camera track jump in a tar
Speaker 3: with Serena or on a private plane. So that movie's
Speaker 3: just basically me with my camera alongside Serena the whole way.
Speaker 3: Pamela is actually quite similar. Like you would think the
Speaker 3: bigger the documentary subject or the bigger the fame, that
Speaker 3: the bigger the crew would be, or the more overproduced
Speaker 3: the celebrity would want it to be one of the
Speaker 3: things I loved about Pamela from the beginning when we
Speaker 3: had initial conversations like that zoom, she wanted to do
Speaker 3: something totally stripped down, in bare bones. Pamela hates watching
Speaker 3: celebrity documentaries and I hate them do to be honest,
Speaker 3: like the overproduced ones that feel like these glossy, you know,
Speaker 3: one interview portraits. And so we did that film very
Speaker 3: very stripped down, small crew, no lights at all, you know.
Speaker 3: I remember asking Brandon her Son, like, like, what do
Speaker 3: we need for a hair and makeup budget, and like,
Speaker 3: how do we deal with that in Vancouver Island? And
Speaker 3: he burst into laughter and said, my mom's gonna do
Speaker 3: her own hair and makeup. She has her entire career.
Speaker 3: And so she constantly challenged those preconceived notions I had
Speaker 3: of her probably being, you know, this larger than life,
Speaker 3: perhaps more difficult personality, and she was incredibly easy to
Speaker 3: work with in that way.
Speaker 1: Director Ryan White. If you enjoy conversations with insightful documentary directors,
Speaker 1: check out my episode with the most recent winner of
Speaker 1: the Academy Award for Feature Documentary, Daniel Rher.
Speaker 4: You asked quite a pointy question and that's whether or not,
Speaker 4: like say, actually has a reasonable chance of ever becoming president.
Speaker 4: And what he spoke to was the Moscow mayoral race
Speaker 4: of twenty thirteen. He started that race with two percent
Speaker 4: of the vote. People didn't like him. They caricatured him
Speaker 4: as just a blogger and some wacky internet guy, and
Speaker 4: he finished with twenty seven percent of the vote. It
Speaker 4: wasn't a fair election. There was malfeasans and I think
Speaker 4: the Kremlin who let him run an election was so
Speaker 4: nervous about his performance. He ran an American style campaign.
Speaker 4: He was kissing babies, knocking on doors in the subways,
Speaker 4: distributing literature, tens of thousands of volunteers. There has never
Speaker 4: been a political organization in Russia like that.
Speaker 3: They were afraid.
Speaker 4: I don't know if the guy will be president, but
Speaker 4: what I hope, at the very least is that he
Speaker 4: will have the chance to compete in the democratic election.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with NAVALNY director Daniel Rohr,
Speaker 1: go to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break,
Speaker 1: Ryan White speculates on the impact that filming the document
Speaker 1: Henry had on Pamela Anderson's life. I'm Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you're listening to Here's the Thing. One of the themes
Speaker 1: of documentary filmmaker Ryan White's Pamela A Love Story is
Speaker 1: the roller coaster of Pamela Anderson's love life. The film
Speaker 1: examines her relationships with rockers Tommy Lee and Kid Rock
Speaker 1: and her most recent brief marriage to contractor Dan Hayhurst
Speaker 1: the fifth for the actress, I wanted to know what
Speaker 1: Ryan White discovered about Anderson's search for true love from
Speaker 1: working on the film.
Speaker 3: She's always looking for some things, a spark, and that
Speaker 3: spark is often combustible, as it was with Tommy and
Speaker 3: I think it's a spark. It's too combustible. And she
Speaker 3: knows that it's the type of relationship that is unsustainable
Speaker 3: because there's too much passion at the center of it.
Speaker 3: But that's always what she's seeking out. But I'm curious,
Speaker 3: like watching the film, though, did you? Because for me,
Speaker 3: as someone who got to inherit all Pamela's archive and
Speaker 3: get to watch all of these tapes and the you know,
Speaker 3: the stolen sex tape has gone down in infamy, but
Speaker 3: getting to watch all these other tapes that they had
Speaker 3: shot of each other, and I hope the film does
Speaker 3: this in some ways. I hope it also strips the
Speaker 3: caricature of Tommy a little bit, where he's a human being.
Speaker 3: And when you watch the tapes of you know, them
Speaker 3: just falling in love or starting a family or once
Speaker 3: they have kids, I think that passed out rocker fades
Speaker 3: away a little bit and you get to see the
Speaker 3: real hymn.
Speaker 1: I was never quite sure with them what was real
Speaker 1: and what was them just performing, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like like you can tell that. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: one of the most tragic things because the sex tape thing,
Speaker 1: you know, the Kardashian Empire, which is now calculated in
Speaker 1: the billions of dollars, is founded on a sex tape
Speaker 1: that's not kid ourselves. Then you tell the story of
Speaker 1: the safe. They never found out who did it? Did they?
Speaker 3: Well, there's theories about who did it, and there's a
Speaker 3: whole Hulu show about some of those theories. But we
Speaker 3: actually have a line in the film that Pamela says
Speaker 3: where she says, I don't care who stole it. I
Speaker 3: don't need to figure that out at this point, And
Speaker 3: I think that's incredibly unimportant to her. The who it's
Speaker 3: just it did what it did to her life, and
Speaker 3: the who is not that important to her.
Speaker 1: Well, then that leads me to when she meets a
Speaker 1: solid citizen. She marries that guy, who's the guy that
Speaker 1: lives up there near her what was his name, Dan? Dan?
Speaker 1: And that didn't work. You think, why that didn't last? Why?
Speaker 3: Well, this is an interesting example. You know, you learn
Speaker 3: in film school or like documentary one oh one, that
Speaker 3: your job as a filmmaker is to not affect the
Speaker 3: person's trajectory in any way. You know, you hear these
Speaker 3: terms like cinema verite or fly on the wall. This
Speaker 3: was a glaring example of the films that I've made
Speaker 3: were the mere fact that I was making a movie change.
Speaker 3: It stirred something up in Pamela that even the very
Speaker 3: first shoot I had with her in Canada, that's when
Speaker 3: she's watching those tapes of her and Tommy's life basically,
Speaker 3: and she's just plugging them into the VCR and watching.
Speaker 3: She was going through this emotional turmoil. She had never
Speaker 3: watched those tapes, and she's looking at me saying, like,
Speaker 3: what the fuck am I doing here? I thought I
Speaker 3: was coming here to die. I was marrying a local
Speaker 3: I thought this was going to be the end of
Speaker 3: my life, and I'm watching the best years of my life.
Speaker 3: You know, I think she's self aware enough to know
Speaker 3: that she's seeing that through rose tinted glasses now and
Speaker 3: that even you know, watching those things in retrospect, she's
Speaker 3: overlooking a lot of the darkness that was during those years.
Speaker 3: But it stirred something up in her where, you know.
Speaker 3: I don't want to say the film caused a divorce,
Speaker 3: but it definitely precipitated her and saying like, this is
Speaker 3: not the final thirty years of my life. I need
Speaker 3: to get out of here.
Speaker 1: So she doesn't like to watch the movie. She doesn't
Speaker 1: like to see the movie. Did her son watch the movie?
Speaker 1: I assume so.
Speaker 3: Brandon produced the movie, so she watched cuts as we
Speaker 3: went along.
Speaker 1: Did he have any editorial control? No? Did he seek
Speaker 1: any editorial control?
Speaker 3: No? And I'm I mean he gave me notes, but
Speaker 3: they were actually good notes. This is the benefit of
Speaker 3: Usually producing a film with the son of the subject
Speaker 3: would be a nightmare. Sure, and I thought this might
Speaker 3: be a nightmare. I knew that was going to be
Speaker 3: kind of rolling the dice. But it's also the benefit
Speaker 3: of making a film about the child of a couple
Speaker 3: who've been the center of the tabloids for thirty years.
Speaker 3: Is they just don't really care. So the things I
Speaker 3: thought he would be really sensitive about, like his mom
Speaker 3: maybe well nudity for sure, but also his mom may
Speaker 3: be saying inappropriate thing here or there, or joking about
Speaker 3: other husbands or her sex life. Brandon was fine with
Speaker 3: all of that. So yeah, no, he didn't. He didn't change.
Speaker 3: I'm very lucky as a filmmaker. I haven't had a
Speaker 3: bad experience yet with a distributor or any producers ever,
Speaker 3: not letting me make what I want to make. And
Speaker 3: Ben Pamela herself was just so uninterested. So she did
Speaker 3: watch it once after the film was and I think
Speaker 3: she only kind of half watched it because she even
Speaker 3: when I talk to her now, she still doesn't realize
Speaker 3: some of the things that are in the film. And
Speaker 3: she watched it with her son Dylan at Netflix while
Speaker 3: the film the film was already coming out and she
Speaker 3: was doing press, and Brandon said like, Mom, you're you're
Speaker 3: answering these questions in such weird ways because you don't
Speaker 3: know what's in the film. Will you just watch it
Speaker 3: and Dylan hadn't seen it yet either, because Dylan wasn't
Speaker 3: a producer, So they watch it together in a little
Speaker 3: room at Netflix. Netflix asked me if I wanted to
Speaker 3: be there, and I said hell no, And apparently it
Speaker 3: was just well, first of all, there's a lot of
Speaker 3: nudity in the film, so it was a lot of
Speaker 3: Pamela covering Dylan's eyes, is what I've heard from people
Speaker 3: in the room. And she took a few bathroom breaks
Speaker 3: even while the film kept playing, so she still, you know,
Speaker 3: like like you see in the film. She gave me
Speaker 3: every single diary from her entire life. I have them
Speaker 3: in a closet with a coded lock on them. And
Speaker 3: she had no idea what I was going to use,
Speaker 3: how I was going to use it. And she's still
Speaker 3: because she's only half watched the film, doesn't really.
Speaker 1: David NuGen and I produced The Summer Dock to be
Speaker 1: programed for you in East Hampton, and let's say, going
Speaker 1: back to fifteen years ago, they would fire the starter's
Speaker 1: pistol at Sundance. The latest crop of the of the
Speaker 1: more exciting docs was announced and screened at Sundance, and
Speaker 1: then we had a relatively easy time booking three, sometimes
Speaker 1: four of them, but now if there's twelve, we have
Speaker 1: our eye on good God, we consider ourselves lucky we
Speaker 1: can get two or three of them. They're old to
Speaker 1: selling like hotcakes. Do you find that explosion is a
Speaker 1: part of your career as well?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean, and that's that's a lot of people
Speaker 3: talk about Sundance now and the lack of truly independent
Speaker 3: films because so many documentaries over the last few years
Speaker 3: that have gotten into Sundance had distribution already, even if
Speaker 3: it's not super public, like I've had films. I think
Speaker 3: I've had four films at Sundance, and there's been times
Speaker 3: I've been at Sundance where you don't know my film
Speaker 3: has a distributor attached. It might seem like a free agent,
Speaker 3: but it's not. And I think Sundance is doing a
Speaker 3: good job of moving back a little bit more to
Speaker 3: independent filmmakers. Not that not that I'm thrilled about that,
Speaker 3: because usually my films do come with distribution at this
Speaker 3: point in my career, So I don't want it to
Speaker 3: get harder to get into sun Dance just because I
Speaker 3: have a Netflix or an Amazon behind me. But I
Speaker 3: think we're seeing like an EBB and flow in the
Speaker 3: documentary industry. And I don't want to get too nitty gritty,
Speaker 3: but like recently we've seen a lot of documentary units
Speaker 3: shut down, like at HBO, Max, CNN Films, Showtime, Zoom shutdown. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and they just made NAVALNI, which won the Oscar and
Speaker 3: so the documentary part of CNN Films is shutting down.
Speaker 3: And so we're also seeing this constriction that at least
Speaker 3: for people in my world, is a little concerning because
Speaker 3: you know, like back when I made the case against Date,
Speaker 3: Sheila and Evans, like that was the golden ticket, like
Speaker 3: I said, but that was one of the only distributors
Speaker 3: at the time unless you went the theatrical route, where
Speaker 3: your film got a lot of attention because Sheila was
Speaker 3: so powerful at HBO. And then there was you know,
Speaker 3: the birth of all of the streamers, which was incredible
Speaker 3: for the last ten years. But now we're seeing that again.
Speaker 3: So I don't know anywhere, especially, I'm interested to hear
Speaker 3: you say it's hard for you guys to even get
Speaker 3: three or four films, because I think what we're seeing
Speaker 3: now is a lot, especially a lot of the political
Speaker 3: films or hard hitting films are a harder cell, like
Speaker 3: the things that Shila would have taken on at HBO
Speaker 3: ten or fifteen years ago, those are often the ones. Assassins.
Speaker 3: It's a great example, you know, that was one of
Speaker 3: the very few films where I eked out a sale
Speaker 3: of that film. I almost lost a lot of money
Speaker 3: making that film. Not because people didn't love it. All
Speaker 3: the distributors loved it, but they were afraid of it.
Speaker 3: They were afraid why because it was about North Korea,
Speaker 3: because of the Sony hack. No one wanted to touch
Speaker 3: a film that was going after Kim Jong Un. No
Speaker 3: one wanted to go after a film. Geopolitics are really
Speaker 3: difficult right now.
Speaker 1: Director Ryan White, if you're enjoying this conversation, tell a
Speaker 1: friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio apps, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3: Back.
Speaker 1: Ryan White shares the movie that inspired him to become
Speaker 1: a documentary filmmaker. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing. Director Ryan White helmed one of
Speaker 1: my favorite documentaries of all time, Assassins. It traces the
Speaker 1: murder of Kim Jong UN's half brother Kim Jong nam,
Speaker 1: and the subsequent trial of his killers. The film needs
Speaker 1: to be seen to be believed. Considering the near total
Speaker 1: lack of diplomatic relations with North Korea. I wanted to
Speaker 1: know how White managed to pull off a film with
Speaker 1: such a challenging subject matter.
Speaker 3: I came across it because I went to Duke, and
Speaker 3: a journalist who had gone to Duke, who was what's
Speaker 3: much younger than me, had written an article in GQ
Speaker 3: magazine that had been very popular in whatever year that was,
Speaker 3: like twy eighteen, and he approached me because he was
Speaker 3: getting a ton of documentary interests because True crime was
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen twenty nineteen was huge, and this was
Speaker 3: like true Crime on steroids. It involved Kim Jong un,
Speaker 3: It involved a prank show, it involved female assassins, involved
Speaker 3: a capital punishment trial that was happening, And so I
Speaker 3: flew with the journalists to Malaysia where this trial was happening,
Speaker 3: and met all of his sources, basically all the people
Speaker 3: who had played a role in recruiting these women to
Speaker 3: be on the so called prank show. Because the women
Speaker 3: were saying, yes, we assassinated this man, but we thought
Speaker 3: we were on a prank show when we did the assassination.
Speaker 3: It's unbelievable. It's literally unbelievable. But as we started peeling
Speaker 3: back the layers we started and meeting the people who
Speaker 3: were a part of recruiting them, it seemed I don't
Speaker 3: know about believable, but it seemed conceivable at least that
Speaker 3: maybe they were telling the truth. And then it became
Speaker 3: a film that was about life or death. Like I knew,
Speaker 3: I was making a film that would probably prove that
Speaker 3: these women were innocent. But if I didn't finish the
Speaker 3: film in time, I needed the film ready to go
Speaker 3: in case they were convicted, because they were going to
Speaker 3: be hung almost immediately in the Malaysian court system. So
Speaker 3: it was a very it was very heavy film to
Speaker 3: make and not to ruin the ending, but luckily both
Speaker 3: women got off at like the eleventh hour, you know.
Speaker 3: Like I said, I thought I had struck gold with
Speaker 3: that film because it was true crime, but it was
Speaker 3: on a geopolitical level. I thought who distributed that In
Speaker 3: the end, It was a company called Greenwich. No streamers,
Speaker 3: no streamers.
Speaker 1: Where can you find it now?
Speaker 3: I think it's on Stars, but none of the streamers
Speaker 3: would even put it on their platform, much less make it.
Speaker 3: You know, a yeah, yeah, it's it's It was a
Speaker 3: It was a film that nobody wanted to touch. And
Speaker 3: unfortunately I learned a lot of lessons from making that
Speaker 3: film on how you for example, Well like in Avalney,
Speaker 3: for instance, Daniel pulled off something very brave and incredible.
Speaker 3: But now that distributor doesn't exist anymore, I don't know
Speaker 3: where you would take an evalni now, so touching you know,
Speaker 3: North Korea, Russia, China, these countries, it's more and more difficult.
Speaker 3: You can make those films, but are they going to
Speaker 3: find a home? Are they going to and if they
Speaker 3: can't find a home, are they going to find an audience?
Speaker 3: And knowing that we all spend at least a couple
Speaker 3: of years, if not five or six years making our films,
Speaker 3: to think that they'll just you know, be a tree
Speaker 3: falling in the forest, I think is all of our
Speaker 3: worst nightmares as filmmakers.
Speaker 1: Well, it's also, like you said, you're right, the arc
Speaker 1: of that film is kind of a specific, which is
Speaker 1: it goes from being like mysterious, you don't know what's
Speaker 1: going on here, to being downright silly to being like
Speaker 1: crushing at the end, like you really think they're going
Speaker 1: to I mean I was, I was really thinking if
Speaker 1: I stopped the film and said, okay, everybody, let's bet
Speaker 1: what happens, I would have bet they were going to
Speaker 1: be killed.
Speaker 3: That's what everyone was telling us. Everybody on the ground
Speaker 3: was saying, they're going to die.
Speaker 1: Now have you only shot digital your entire career? Did
Speaker 1: you ever shoot film?
Speaker 3: Well, we shot some film with Pamela actually, ironically so
Speaker 3: my last film. I shot some film, But I've never
Speaker 3: shot a full document like I give me shelter type
Speaker 3: of You don't felt fully on film. Oh I would
Speaker 3: love to, but the budgets don't support it. Also, my
Speaker 3: style of filmmaking doesn't really support it. Like I can't
Speaker 3: jumping on a private plane with Serena with my little camera.
Speaker 3: I can't do that with tons of mags. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and I shoot a ton, you know, and most so
Speaker 3: do most of my colleagues at this point.
Speaker 1: For you, I'm sure there's a lot of films that
Speaker 1: you're considering. You probably get a lot of pots on
Speaker 1: the stove. Have you ever examined the subject and you
Speaker 1: thought you were going to make the movie and then
Speaker 1: you cut out. You didn't do it.
Speaker 3: Only one time. And I still feel incredibly guilty about it.
Speaker 1: Can you say that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was a long time ago. It
Speaker 3: was early in my career, but I started making a
Speaker 3: very Aaron Brockovich type of story about a community that
Speaker 3: had been built on top of an old shell oil
Speaker 3: reservoir basically, and it's your unfortunately it's your Diama Dozen
Speaker 3: environmental terrorism store, and it's you know, people getting cancer
Speaker 3: and not realizing why, and then they realized they're living
Speaker 3: on top of an oil field. And it was such
Speaker 3: a bleak subject.
Speaker 1: Matter what part of the country.
Speaker 3: It was near LA in Carson, California, just south of LA,
Speaker 3: and it was just such a bleak subject matter. I
Speaker 3: couldn't raise any money to do it, and I'd started
Speaker 3: shooting it, and then I had to go to all
Speaker 3: these people that were my characters and say, like, I'm
Speaker 3: bowing out. And I still like even saying that. I
Speaker 3: hate saying it out loud right now because I still
Speaker 3: feel very guilty about it. But I'm very careful now
Speaker 3: in picking documentaries. You know, I can only make maybe
Speaker 3: two things at the same time. I'm very careful at
Speaker 3: picking things that I think will make it to the
Speaker 3: finish line.
Speaker 1: What are you working on next?
Speaker 3: I am working I'm doing a return to true crime.
Speaker 3: I'm actually working with Charlie's Theren on a film about
Speaker 3: an incredible story about a mother who gave up her
Speaker 3: daughter for adoption and then twenty years later finds out
Speaker 3: that her daughter went missing when she was young, and
Speaker 3: she goes on this quest to find out what happened
Speaker 3: to her daughter, and that kind of uncovers a serial
Speaker 3: killer who was living in a small town. I really
Speaker 3: resisted going back to true crime after The Keepers was
Speaker 3: such a phenomenon and didn't want to be pigeonholed in
Speaker 3: that way. But this is the type of true crime
Speaker 3: that I love, where there's an incredible character at the
Speaker 3: center of it, and Charlie's brought us the project and
Speaker 3: it's very passionate about it. And I'm always trying to balance,
Speaker 3: you know. I made a film last year called good
Speaker 3: Night Appy, about a robot that went to Mars, and
Speaker 3: it is very hopeful, very heartwarming. It's really about the
Speaker 3: best parts of humanity. And I'm always trying to kind
Speaker 3: of balance, you know, subjects that are quite dark and
Speaker 3: bleak and make me feel afraid when I'm out there
Speaker 3: in the field like an assassin's with something that is
Speaker 3: much more fun and hopeful and can kind of bring
Speaker 3: me and my crew because I roll the same people over,
Speaker 3: my editors, my producers on the same films that can
Speaker 3: kind of bring us out of that darkness in a
Speaker 3: sort of Yin and Yang way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, assassins is one of my favorites. I really
Speaker 1: mean that. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: Thank you well. You were one of the few.
Speaker 1: When you see the moment where they get him at
Speaker 1: the airport where they do it to him, the real
Speaker 1: moment when they do with him, you're kind of like
Speaker 1: you just gasp, like there it is. You know they
Speaker 1: really did this him. Now. Last question is, because I'm
Speaker 1: such a doc junkie and I'm assuming you are too,
Speaker 1: give me three docs that just were indelible in your
Speaker 1: movie going history.
Speaker 3: I mean, I could give you dozens, but I'll anecdotally
Speaker 3: like the film that made me a documentary filmmaker. Do
Speaker 3: you know Agnes Varda, the French filmmaker who passed away recently,
Speaker 3: She to me is like she's my ultimate, Like if
Speaker 3: I could if I could have dinner with someone, it
Speaker 3: would be her. And that's what's cool about my industry
Speaker 3: is you are with an arm's length of your hero.
Speaker 3: So I got to meet her many times before she
Speaker 3: passed away. But it was seeing her film in a
Speaker 3: theater at Duke when I didn't even know what documentaries were.
Speaker 3: It was the film called the Gleaners, and I, well,
Speaker 3: it has a French title, but that's the English translation.
Speaker 3: That just blew my mind and made me want to
Speaker 3: be a documentary filmmaker. And in those same years, Spellbound
Speaker 3: came out, the Jeff Blitz's film about the Spelling Bee,
Speaker 3: which totally changed my conception. Again if the Broccoli filmmaking
Speaker 3: that you don't want to do it, but it's good
Speaker 3: for you, where Spellbound was pure entertainment, a hilarious film,
Speaker 3: a character portrait of many kids during that year's script
Speaker 3: Spelling Beiece. So that one changed my conception that I
Speaker 3: couldn't make things that are entertaining, which really is my
Speaker 3: goal as a documentary filmmaker. I'm not an activist filmmaker.
Speaker 3: I don't really make the matic films. I mostly focus
Speaker 3: on character films, even if it's about a robot that
Speaker 3: I hope will entertain people by going on this journey.
Speaker 3: And then Laura Poitross. I don't know if you've met her,
Speaker 3: but like I could go on and on about a
Speaker 3: lot of her films. You know, her film this year
Speaker 3: was All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, which was beautiful.
Speaker 3: But I remember seeing a film of hers soon after
Speaker 3: I graduated, when I was very young in the documentary
Speaker 3: business called called The Oath, and that is such a
Speaker 3: beautiful film. And you can tell in all of Laura's
Speaker 3: films how hands on of a filmmaker she is. And
Speaker 3: that's what I strive to do as a filmmaker. Like
Speaker 3: I said, not huge crews. I think the smaller we are,
Speaker 3: the more intimate it is, and the better performance. And
Speaker 3: I'm using that in quotation marks you get out of
Speaker 3: your documentary subject, even if they're as famous as Serena
Speaker 3: Williams or Pamela Anderson. The more stripped down you are,
Speaker 3: I think, the better results you get. And Laura Poitrous,
Speaker 3: I feel like has done. She made the Edward Snowden film,
Speaker 3: you know, where she's in hotel rooms with him as
Speaker 3: he's fleeing, and so I think she really taught me
Speaker 3: in her films a lot of that sort of diy feel,
Speaker 3: which I really love. No matter how successful or how
Speaker 3: big our budgets get, I still love making films in
Speaker 3: that diy. I'm just carrying a camera, you know, and
Speaker 3: in a room with sometimes just me with that person.
Speaker 1: It lends itself to documentary filmmaking and its pure sense
Speaker 1: more easily if you've got a bunch of guys setting
Speaker 1: up a bunch of c stands and you've got a
Speaker 1: whole lot of shit going on exactly. It's tricky. But anyway, HI,
Speaker 1: very best to you. Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thank you, I appreciate it. I enjoyed the conversation.
Speaker 1: My thanks to documentary filmmaker Ryan. This episode was recorded
Speaker 1: at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by
Speaker 1: Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hobin. Our engineer is
Speaker 1: Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Daniel Gingrich. I'm
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio.